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<html>
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<table border="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td><h1 align="center"><font face="Comic Sans MS"><u>Projects</u></font></h1>
<h2><a name="RemoteAirplane"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Remote
Airplane 1998</font></a></h2>
<p><font face="Arial">In the winter of 98 a few of my
friends and I were pondering the idea of flying remote
controlled airplanes in the summer. I found simple
plan designs on the web and started building my own plane
without using a kit from the hobby shop. I later
learned that the wing I had made was for acrobatic
airplanes and that it would be very difficult to fly for
a beginner. So I never dared to try and fly it and
got a pre-built plane from the hobby shop so that I could
learn how to fly RC planes first. Maybe one day when
I’m a little better at it I will attempt to fly my
custom made airplane. Whish me luck!</font> </p>
<h2><a name="Clue"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Clue 1996</font></a></h2>
<p><font face="Arial">Back in University I had a Software
Engineering course. Essentially this course was about
design and implementing our own software project. We
deceived to make a game of Clue. We had to use a
CASE tool to assist us in the planning/development. We
chose Rational Rose since it was about the only tool that
could generate the C++ code for the class diagrams and
re-generate without whipping out any implemented methods.
CASE tools require a lot of discipline to keep up to date
but it was nice to have a diagram that really reflects
the actual implementation at the end of the
project. </font>
<p><a href="images/clue_snapshot.jpg"><img
src="images/clue_snapshot.jpg" border="0" width="250"
height="200" nosave></a> </p>
<a
href="downloads.html#Clue"><font face="Arial">Download
the Clue Game.</font></a> </p>
<h2><a name="Tock"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Tock 1994</font></a></h2>
<p><font face="Arial">After the microsouris project and
two work terms in software I was getting more and more
interested in software. I especially liked
the no material required and pure creative aspect of
it. Object oriented programming was new to me at
the time and I decided after my C++ University course to
make a game using OOP technique. At first I was not
convinced of it's virtues and found that it complicated
things for nothing. I did not see the advantage of
data decomposition over procedural decomposition.
But after many complete rewrites of my game I came to
appreciate the object paradigm.
</font>
<p><a href="images/tock_snapshot.jpg"><img
src="images/tock_snapshot.jpg" border="0" width="250"
height="200" nosave></a> </p>
<a href="downloads.html#Tock"><font face="Arial">Download the Tock Game.</font></a> </p>
<h2><a name="Microsouris"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Microsouris
1993</font></a></h2>
<p><font face="Arial">At the University of Sherbrooke I
joined an extracurricular project named
microsouris. Microsouris is a yearly contest held
in Universities all over the world. A 16x16 cell
maze is built by the organization committee using 6
inches tall walls. Students build self reliant
robots (mouse) capable of detecting the walls of the maze
and deciding where to go. The goal is to find the
middle of the maze as quickly as possible. Our
group consisted of 4 teams: mechanical, sensors, hardware
and software. I was in the software group.
The goal for us was to come up with an efficient
algorithm that would minimize the robots
displacements. The only input we had was the
presence or absence on either sides of the
robot. The best way to understand the algorithm I
implemented is to imagine the mouse holding a rope that
it ties to the entrance of the maze. When the mouse
reaches a dead end it pulls back on the rope to come back
and marks the cells with an X indicating those cells do
not lead to the center of the maze. The rope is
also used to discard entire surfaces. If the rope and
outer wall enclose a surface that does not contain the
center cells then it concludes that the enclosed cells
are not part of the solution and marks them all with X.</font>
</font>
<p><a href="images/souris_snapshot.jpg"><img
src="images/souris_snapshot.jpg" border="0" width="250"
height="200" nosave></a> </p>
<a
href="downloads.html#Microsouris"><font face="Arial">Download
the Microsouris Screensaver.</font></a>
</p>
<h2><a name="PlasmaJar"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Plasma
Jar 1990</font></a></h2>
<p><img src="images/power.gif" align="right" hspace="5"
width="155" height="293" nosave> <img
src="images/plasma.gif" align="right" hspace="5"
width="171" height="210" nosave> </p>
<p><font face="Arial">Plasma is the fourth state of
matter the first tree are solid, liquid and
gas. Nowadays plasma balls are readily available you
might have seen some in hobby shops. Back then I was
fascinated by them. I bought a book describing how
to build one. It consisted of a cookie jar and a
high voltage power supply. The power supply used a
modified old TV fly-back transformer and 2 power bi-polar
transistor. It produced 30000 Volts. The
cookie jar needed to be sealed with epoxy and a valve had
to be put in on the cap so that air could be sucked out
and the valve closed after. I asked a science
teacher at my high school if he could use the school's
vacuum pump to depressurize my cookie jar. Once
that was done all that I needed to do was to connect my
power supply to it. This was one of the most
interesting projects to play around with. Thanks to
my 30kV power supply I also made a Jacob’s ladder
and experimented with other high voltage
experiments. I did get electrocuted a few
times. Luckily my power supply did not produce more
than a few milliamps.</font> </p>
<h2><a name="TimerII"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Timer II
1989</font></a></h2>
<p><img src="images/timerfr.gif" align="right" hspace="5"
width="288" height="92" nosave> </p>
<p><font face="Arial">After seeing some very nice rack
mount metal cases in the Mark V Electronics Catalog I
decided I would create a new Timer with a more sober
front panel. I decided to get rid of the
clapper. I also put my TV descrambler in the
box. Instead of controlling only one appliance it
would be able to control 6. The relays were
replaced by opto-electric isolators and power SCR
semi-conductors. This isolated the AC circuitry and
the digital 5VDC circuits. Instead of the ugly
silver switches used before the front panel would have
discrete Schmitt trigger buttons. Schmitt triggers
are those cool little plates on alarms clocks that detect
the slightness touch. Pushing them would change the
state of the outlets from on, off and timed. I also
added a cable interface because I thought it would be nice
to have the timer remote controlled. I could build
a remote control receiver at a latter date and plug it to
my timer through this simple cable interface.</font> </p>
<h2><a name="TimerI"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Timer I
1988</font></a></h2>
<p><font face="Arial">In the summer of 88 I was visiting
my mom who lived in Gatineau where the heat and humidity
is unbearable especially in July and August. We did not
have air conditioning but I did have a fan in my
room. I did not want to keep the fan going all
night because it eventually got cold in the middle of the
night so I thought it would be nice to make some kind of
timer to stop the fan after I was asleep and start it
again before I got up. To do this I used an old
alarm clock and hooked a driver circuit to the alarm
signal. The driver would activate a relay an turn
on the fan. I thought it would also be nice if I
could turn on/off the fan using a clapper device like the
one on TV. I put those two projects in a nice black
metal bock. The front panel had some flashing leds
and some silver switches. Unfortunately I don't
have any pictures of it.</font> </p>
<h2><a name="Half-PipeRamp"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Skateboard
Half-Pipe Ramp 1988</font></a></h2>
<p><font face="Arial">In the summer of 88 my friends and
I wrote a letter to the city of Campbellton New Brunswick
requesting a skate park for the skateboarders of our town
but it was turned down so we decided we would build our
own half pipe ramp. After a few weeks of research
on how to build a ramp, I drew up a plan for our own
ramp. We bought 8x4 sheets of 1/4'' plywood and
some 2x4s and we proceeded to put together our dream ramp
in my dad’s back yard. The ramp we built was
8' high and 8' wide. It was pretty big. Since
we did not have the fancy skateboard gear we would wore
our hockey helmets, kneepads, elbow pads and hockey
pants. We were not the most fashionable skaters in
town but that did not matter because we were not in it
for the looks anyways. We wanted to get some air, we were
fixated on rising 8 feet above the ramp like Tony Hawk.
Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the finished
8’ ramp.</font> </p>
<h2><a name="RemoteBoat"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Remote
Boat 1987</font></a></h2>
<p><font face="Arial">Initially I wanted to build a
racing speedboat but I did not have the special
water-cooled engine required to build it. So
wanting to use the airplane engine that I had I designed
a hovercraft boat except I put the engine in the front of
the boat. This was necessary since airplane engines
need the wind produced by propeller to cool them
off. </font> </p>
<h2><a name="TVDescrambler"><font face="Comic Sans MS">TV
Descrambler 1987</font></a></h2>
<p><font face="Arial">At 14 I read an article in Radio
Electronics magazine. It was about Gated-Synch
descramblers. The article described how the cable
company scrambles TV channels. It is accomplished
by applying 6-db suppression to the video signal's
horizontal sync pulses thereby making it impossible for a
TV set to maintain a synchronized picture on the
screen. The descramblers from the cable company use
some kind of reference signal that is either multiplexed
onto the audio carrier or onto some kind of out band
carrier on an empty channel. Since pirate
descramblers sold on the black market use this secret
reference they need to be changed each time the cable
company decides to change the reference. The
descrambler in the magazine eliminated the need for this
hidden reference signal so it did not matter where the
scrambling system would hide the reference. So I
decided to try an make this project. The
descrambler had many adjustments the magazine suggested
using an oscilloscope to tune it properly. But they
also had an elaborate explanation for people without an
oscilloscope. So after many hours of fiddling with
it I descrambled the First Choice channel for the first
time. That was pretty gratifying.</font> <font
face="Arial">Today cable companies use a different
scrambling technique all together. They adopted a digital
scrambling technique that are much harder to crack but
still possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </font></p>
<h2><a name="ElectronicBook"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Electronic
Book 1986</font></a></h2>
<p><font face="Arial">At 13 years old I got interested in
learning electronics. My first book was Getting
Started in Electronics by Forrest M. Mines III, from
Radio Shack. I would not suggest buying anything at
Radio Shack except for that book. It’s a pretty good
beginner book. With it I learned all about bread
boards, relays, resistors, capacitors, transformers,
diodes, transistors and digital circuits. Of course once
I started my Electrical Engineering bachelor I realized
there was a lot I did not know. What is it that they
say. The more you learn the more you realize you don't
know much.</font></p>
<h2><a name="RemoteLegoCar"><font face="Comic Sans MS">Remote
Lego Car 1985</font></a></h2>
<p><img src="images/lego_car.gif" align="right"
hspace="5" width="166" height="116" nosave> </p>
<p><font face="Arial">For years I was making lego cars
powered by little electric motors using elastic as the
drive belt. My friends and I would build these lego
cars and we would race them on dirt tracks. At 12 I
made a much bigger car using the receiver and servos of
my Tamaya Hornet dune buggy. One servo would turn
the wheels and the other would activate a switch to power
the electric motor.</font> </p>
</td>
<td> </td>
<td width="140"> </td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>