Game console switcher

So one of the problems with modern tv's is that they never have enough inputs. Or maybe its just that I have collected too many game systems over the years. Anyway, several of my game systems aren't connected and its a real pain to try and connect them so the few that aren't in storage rarely get played. And I love the old school NES.

So this weekend I had a cool idea. Move all the game systems onto one of our side shelves and build an RCA switcher to make it easy to switch the inputs without having to move the tv. Several designs were contemplates such as a only school telephone type switching system where you would still have to get up and pull change cabled. The advantage of this is that it is super simple to build but its still annoying.

Another idea was to get a dial switcher similar to the ones used to switch between keyboards back when people had multiple computers but only 1 keyboard and mouse. While this would be much nicer to use its not very expandable and if there is anything I have learned over the years its that the number of game systems I will own is not going to go down.

I finally decided on a digital switching system that will have several buttons that can be used in conjunction with an Arduino to switch between the inputs.

The first step in designing it was to build a set of buttons that I could read using the arduino and light up an led to indicate which input was selected. So over the last two days I have been fiddling with some things. Originally I was connecting each button to a different pin on the arduino and using a pin to light a corresponding led. This was easy to build and worked well but because each button used a pin on the arduino its not super scalable. The arduino I have only have 14 digital io pins and 2 of them are reserved for system use leaving me only 12. This means I could have at most 6 systems connected... I currently have 4 and I am planning on picking up a PS2 from a friend in the near future.

Then i stumbled onto this Instructable which has a very nice solution. By stepping down the voltage using resistors in front of each button and using the analogue I/O pin I can chain the buttons together and use only a single button. Using the smallest resister I had on hand I was able to chain 4 buttons together and use up only 150 of the 1023 possible values. Each button steps the voltage down by ~ 30 values which is good because I need some space to minimize false positives.Using this technique I can chain together up to ~25 buttons which gives me a good number to expand out to. At this point the limiting factor is still the digital I/O pins to drive the switching and the LED indicators but with 12 I/O pins completely open I am not hugely concerned at this point.

I am still getting the occasional false positive but I think there is a little more work I can do to smooth the inputs. Now I have to figure out how to connect the actual cables using either relays of NPN transistors.

One thing I should mention is that the resurgance of electronics on this blog is the direct result of me picking up a new toy. A DC bench power supply :)

~(' ')~

Thanks Giving

Yes this is super late.

So this year for thanks giving we kind of made it into a big deal. The center piece of this was of course the turkey which we picked up from the St. Lawrence market. Our turkey came from one of our favourite meal vendors Tanjo Family Farms.

We have picked up chickens from them before and all our bacon comes from them as well but the cool part about getting their birds is that you get liver and heart as well. The heart I had no idea what to do with but the liver was screaming to be made into a nice patte.

Patte is actually super simple to make. this recipe required me to dice up an onion and the livers and fry them in a little oil, salt, and pepper.

Once the liver was cooked through all I had to do was let it cool and toss it into the food processor. The liver from our 1 small turkey made these 2 very cute batches of  patte. Now i'm not a  fan of most liver but I found this to be very tasty.

The next cool dish was the home made cranberry sauce. Sadly it has been so long that I can't actually remember the amounts that went into this but it is basically a jam with cranberries.

Add the cranberries with sugar and a little water and cook them down. let cool and put into a container. :)

For the main course even our small turkey was way to big for us so I only cooked the legs and wings. These were on a simple baking try with some water, salt, pepper, and seasoning salt.

Finally thanks giving would be right without a pumpkin pie so We picked up a small baking pumpkin and I made several small pumpkin tarts as well as a large pie.This recipe came from sorted food and the part that I found the coolest was that it used condensed milk as the sweetener.

On top of this Talia made her mayo and carrot salad that she loves and I made a mint iced tea and lemon chiller. It was based on the starbucks milt lime refresher. I think I nailed that.

~(' ')~

Epic Caesar Salad

Yet another cooking recipe taken from the pages of sortedfood. This one is for an epic caesar salad made with home made mayo and a cool looking parmesan cheese bowl.

The thing that makes this super epic is really the parmesan cheese bowl which is simply to describe but hard to implement. First you have to grate a bunch of cheese into a circle. To get a really nice circle I actually used a cake form with a removable bottom.

This pan then goes into the oven to melt down for 15 minutes or so. After that time I had to pull the molten cheese off the tray and drap it over an upside down bowl... this is the hard part as it is molten cheese and neither of the 2 times I tried was I able to get it over the bowl without ripping the disk.

The first try was epically bad and turned more into a cheese plate than a cheese bowl

After that it was a simple process of making some mayo from scratch (lots of whipping) and thinning it down with some warm water.

The chicken was actually poached in water for 15 minutes or so in 80 degree water. After it was cooked through I simply sliced it up into nice chunks and grilled it on a hot grill pan to give it those nice grill marks.

Instead of croutons I made some herby crustini that were toasted with a little olive oil

 After this it was just a matter of final construction  with some sliced up cherry tomatoes and romain lettuce.

~(' ')~

rabbits away

So I know its been a long time since I posted anything. I have been crazy busy recently and kind of slacking when it came to taking pictures. I have done some stuff but not as much as I would have liked (stupid life getting in the way).

So on with the rabbit. Essix Fried Rabbit to be specific. I did take lots of pictures and it tasted really good except it was a little dry :(

First I had to mostly cook the rabbit in a broth with garlic and a bunch of other vegetables. This later turned into the base of a really nice rabbit noodle soup

After cooking :)

On the right I have flour, salt and pepper with a little garlic powder. In the middle a simple egg. On the right I have breadcrumbs and grated parmesan cheese.

Each piece goes through the above ingredients one at a time

Then they get tossed into some oil to deep fry.

Very tasty but kind of dry for my tastes. I think I may have over cooked them a little

~(' ')~

Wascally Wabbit

So this weekend I finally got a chance to make some rabbit. I have been wanting to try and make rabbit for a while but finding it is hard to do. I did find whole rabbit at the Healthy butcher on Queen st W.

WARNING: some people may find the next section disturbing. No blood as the rabbit is already cleaned, but these are pictures of me jointing the rabbit.

I found a really nice video on how to joint a rabbit on Jamie Oliver's website.

First I took the legs off. The front legs are really easy to take off and you can see them in the top middle of the next picture.

The back legs are a little harder to get through because there is a bone in the way but with a little worrying you can get around it without having to cut through the bone.

After the legs come off it was time to separate the back into nice sized sections. This required me to cut through bone and as was described in the video I used a large weight. My rolling pin is marble and I didn't want to smash a marble rolling pin into a metal knife so I used an old exercise weight.

Here you can see the belly flap meet as well. On the left side is the four back sections that look delicious. The stuff at the back right is actually the neck and tail parts which have a lot of bone and are hard to cook. We are gonna use them to make a stock. Nothing like rabbit noodle soup ;)

~(' ')~

winey salt

So ever so often the free metro newspaper actually has a good article. This past week there was an article about the TedX Toronto conference and a guy who started a webpage/company/blog all about preserving and canning (http://wellpreserved.ca/). Sadly I wasn't able to watch his talk due to work but I have been browsing the blog for the last couple of days and I came across this interesting idea for wine flavoured salt.

Now when I started my new job I was given a free bottle of wine. I don't like win. Everyone tells me its an acquired taste... I have tried to acquire it for a while but I don`t like wine. So I really didn't have an idea of what to do with this bottle of while. 6 months it has sat in on a shelf waiting for something to happen. Well today it is getting turned into salt.

Step 1: pour bottle of wine into pot.

Step 2: Boil the crap out of it until there is almost nothing left

Step 3: Dump 1 cup of coarse sea salt into the syrupy wine residue.

Step 4: mix well and spread out on a tray to air dry.

Step 5: ever so often run a fork through the salt just to mix it up. This will help keep it from sticking.

Mochi time

So I actually made this last weekend but since this weekend has been really crazy busy I don't think I will get a chance to do anything interesting.

For the last couple of weeks Talia and I have been having mochi deserts from the grocery store. The little bean filled ones.

I knew it was easy to make mochi but all the recipes I had ever seen used plastic wrap in a microwave. This really doesn't sit well with me so I had never tried it myself. Finally after much searching I found some videos that showed how to do it without too much difficulty and no microwave. I used the recipe from here.