Audio Switch- A Failure story

Ver 0.1

Ver 0.1.1

As I'm a music freak, I have different music on different machines of mine(a desktop and a laptop), but I have only one 2.1 channel sound system which has to be shared by both machines, for which I need to switch between both by plugging and unplugging to a machine each time. This turned out be a huge problem as I have to reach out to the wires plug in/out. So I thought of making a manual Audio switch which would help me with this problem.
First I came up with the Version 0.1 of the switch.
Its summarized below:

Advantages:

1. Easy to handle.

Disadvantages:

1. It was very unstable because it wasn't mounted on a PCB.
2. The sound output was not stereo mixed because of a design error.
3. Was very noisy.

Then I came up with the second version named 0.1.1(since no change in design), which is summarized below:


Advantages:

1. Was easier to handle than the old one.
2. Noise was reduced to a great extent.
3. Was stable as it was mounted on a PCB.
4. Stereo quality sound output.

Disadvantages:

1. Was prone to loose contacts and internal resistances of the extension chords.
2. Instead of providing two separate channels, the switch was multiplexing both inputs, which turned out to be a Disaster!

In the end both versions didn't satisfy my needs and the Audio switch turned to be a big FAILURE!

If if you have any suggestions to improve this please do leave a comment.

Solar Eclipse 2009

This year's very first eclipse, the solar eclipse was visible in Bengaluru. This time the eclipse wasn't as intense as last time(check this out) which happened in 2007 but it was fun watching the celestial event from my home. I wish I could see a total lunar eclipse from my home at least once in my life time.

Interfaced LCD on an ATMega8!

After slogging out for more than three years I finally managed to boot the LCD panel on an ATMega8!

This winter I was determined to boot the LCD somehow. When I was crawling on the WWW I found this guy's code/tutorial from
extereme electronics which turned out to be very useful. He has explained each step in the interfacing process.
Now since that I haven't done anything great I wont give much details on the interfacing, rather I would like to give the link to the tutorial. The tutorial is here.


In the end I would like to tell that seeing the LCD boot was a big boost to my morale.

What happens in a Movie theatre

After a very long time, today I'd been to a movie theater to watch "Masth Maja Madi"(review coming shortly ;) , see the right pane for Moo-wee-ter rating).

Surprisingly, this time I was inside the hall on time and was eagerly waiting for the movie to start. But the movie didn't start on time and instead kept playing trailers and ads.
I know that if a theater needs to survive it needs to attract its customers back, so he does his bit to make us go back by playing trailers and ads but off late I think it's being overdone, which kills the movie going spirit. Now I wont keep typing some nonsense to convey it, rather I choose to show it through a video.
Even I felt the same way Homer felt.

Please watch it and tell me , do you also feel the same?

Happy New year 2009!

I wish you all a very Happy New year 2009!(I know its late, but my apologies for that)Like last year even this year I have designed a Calendar themed on 'Panoramic view'.Please download it and have a look at it and send in feedback.
The link to the calendar in a PDF Full resolution pics
Here's a sample to the WORK I've done