Thursday, September 27, 2012

Project Rae Detour

I promised more meta hints and then failed to deliver. As my newspaper comics counterpart would say, "ACK!" However, instead of eating a pint of ice cream and talking to my dog, I'm going to show you guys what I've been doing.

This is 110% inspired by Rae and her associated (though different!) project. Drumroll, please!

full adder circuit bracelet geeky computer jewelry
Full Adder Circuit Bracelet

Wait, what the hell is that? you ask. At first glance, it seems to be a mostly-random jumbling of beads and chains in the haphazard multi-strand "boho chic" style or whatever that's so popular these days. Oh wait, there's more!

This bracelet is inspired by perhaps one of the most unlikeliest pieces of jewelry inspiration, a full adder diagram.

full adder truth table

This picture, rather, is a better help:


There are two AND gates, two XOR gates, and one OR gate. Each gate is represented by a different kind of bead. Seriously, go ahead and double-check! AND is mother-of-pearl, XOR is coral, and the lone OR gate is some kind of carved thing I assume to be plastic. The diagram Rae sent me for Project Rae had random values assigned (based on color distribution) so I just went with that, but as you can see there's a whole host of values to be used!

I really like how this came out. It's a nice change from pure beadery, and it also presents an interesting construction challenge. Overall I'm happy with how this "proof-of-concept" bracelet came out, but it's far from perfect. My method for this one (because I definitely want to make more!) needs some tweaking. Even though this is a pretty simple circuit, it took way longer than my numbers bracelets do! Someday I hope I can get this down to a science (pun intended) and bead up something like this:



What out-of-the-ordinary things inspire you?

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