Who
This is a work web page of Miroslav Cika, an Electronics and Workshop Technician at the McMaster University, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour (PNB). McMaster University is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Where
I'm located in the Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour (PNB) building (university building 34), in the room 115 (workshop). I occasionally make appearances in room 411 as well.
Contact
Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour building (university building 34), room 115 (workshop).
Telephone: 905-525-9140 extension 26509.
Email: cikam@mcmaster.ca
Type of work I do
Electronics, electrical, computers, woodworking, work with plastics, some metalwork.
Electronics, electrical, computers. Design, construction and repair of various electronic and electrical equipment.
- Design and construction of various customized analog amplifiers and/or sensors for sound, light, temperature, position, etc. They are often interfaced to digital computers for recording and data collection via USB, sound cards, parallel and serial ports, even keyboards and mice.
- Design and construction of customized pushbutton response boxes that interface to computers.
- Electric motor speed and shaft position control. I can control stepper motors, regular DC motors, geared motors, and servo motors. AC induction motors can be on/off controlled. All this can be used to create pick and place robotics applications, cnc machines, and similar motorized devices that are controlled by computers.
- Computer and microcontroller programming. I have good working knowledge of Python, C, QBasic, Arduino C, x86 assembly language, and assembly languages for PIC 8-bit microcontrollers, 68HC11, and 8085 lines.
- Design and construction of simple radio transmitters and receivers, for telemetry and control purposes.
- Good working knowledge and use of the following microcontrollers and microcontroller boards: Arduino Nano, Arduino Uno, Arduino Due, Arduino Mega, PIC 16F84A, 16F628A, 16F871, 16F874A, 16F877A, Atmel AVR AtMega 1284, Motorola 68HC11, Intel 8085.
- I used to use parallel and serial ports for control of the various devices, and data capture.
- Familiarity with operating systems: Linux, Windows, DOS.
- Creation of custom cables with various connectors.
Woodworking. Construction of various wooden objects, cutting, drilling.
- Construction of custom tables, shelves, chairs, boxes, chin rests, and similar implements.
- Drilling of wood in diameters from less than 1 mm to about 50 mm.
Plastics. Construction of various plastic boxes and experimental implements, cutting, drilling.
- Custom size transparent and non-transparent acrylic plastic boxes and tubes for experiments involving fruitflies, mice, rats, fish etc. Plates are joined together with plastic solvent.
- Plastic bending (6 mm and less thickness plastic sheets).
- Drilling of plastics in diameters from less than 1 mm to about 50 mm.
Metalwork. Cutting, drilling and bending of aluminum and steel metal plates.
- Cutting and bending of metal plates, typically only up to 2 mm thickness.
- Drilling the metal, not more than 20 mm diameter.
Some example work that I did
Fruitfly song recorder. Fruitfly would be confined within the small diameter hole cut into the acrylic plate with tranparent rotateable cover, and infrared beam would be interrupted by its movement or wing flapping. This change in infrared light would be detected, amplified, and sent to computer sound card input for recording purposes.
Small electronic board used to test various input and output devices.
Woodburning machine in operation.
Foam cutting with hot wire cutter.
Response pad with 4 pushbuttons.
Adjustable height chin rest.
Custom size fruitfly boxes.
Plastic bent on the hot wire plastic bender.
Guess who? Made with woodburning machine.
Another fruitfly contraption.
Modified neural net robot with non-contact collision sensors. Work in progress.
V-plotter drawing images on the whiteboard. Marker mount is actuated via fishing lines connected to motors diagonally above the whiteboard.
Experimental table for mice.
Hand held response cubes incorporating a switch, a vibrator, and an LED. Connected to a PC for data collection.
Small sensor interface box using PIC 16F628A microcontroller.
Larger sensor and actuator control box using Arduino Uno for computer interfacing. Foot pedals and some LEDs visible.
Aluminum bending and drilling.
Breadboarding and prototyping are my bread and butter :)
Radial maze for mice testing.
Education
Electrical Engineering Technologist (Control), and Electronics Technician. Both earned at Mohawk College, Hamilton, ON.
Web page
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