TIL: Building a clock in Texas is illegal

[Ichinisan]

I skipped around in some explanation video he posted to YouTube. He shows one of the other things he built. It really was an indistinguishable mess of wires and flat cables. Big components like inductive transformers were just hanging haphazardly all over it.

It looked extremely dangerous.

"it looked extremely dangerous"

because it was a "mess of wires" and components? HOLLY SHIT HAS PEOPLE GONE INSANE?

this should have ended after a investigation. it's a clock? ok laugh and call the teacher a racist idiot. wich they are..they knew it was a clock and still took it to the principal.

to many are trying ot justify racism ..

I was talking specifically about the inductive transformer. It carries AC current. It can be dangerous to have it dangling on wires, not mounted in any way, exposed to human contact.

I'm not completely ignorant about homebrew electronics. I get down and dirty with electronics all the time. I recognize potential danger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mW4w0Y1OXE#t=10s

 

[CraKaJaX]

I actually kind of liked VHDL, I thought about getting my concentration in hardware (but I'm glad I didn't now).

You guys made a coil?? Where was I for that!

I hated all types of programming. I don't have the patience to figure out where a ' ' is missing in 9,000 pages of text. But I'll sit there and troubleshoot a circuit all day long. Go figure.

Yea, we had to build a coil for one of our senior power projects. We set up to test in one of the bays that was used for the electric car. We had some MASSIVE corona/arcs that went all the way up to the I-Beams in the ceiling. I have pictures on my external at home I think...? :sneaky:

 

[CraKaJaX]

I don't think the whole state of TX can tell the difference between their assholes and a hole in the ground?

LOL. :awe:

 

[z1ggy]

I hated all types of programming. I don't have the patience to figure out where a ' ' is missing in 9,000 pages of text. But I'll sit there and troubleshoot a circuit all day long. Go figure.

Yea, we had to build a coil for one of our senior power projects. We set up to test in one of the bays that was used for the electric car. We had some MASSIVE corona/arcs that went all the way up to the I-Beams in the ceiling. I have pictures on my external at home I think...? :sneaky:

Yeah I think I liked it because I actually got to see things happening on the board and you could run simulation in whatever the VHDL software program was. I hate coding in general, too... Which is why I'm glad I didn't decide to try doing that for a career.

Hmmmmm I worked on that car as well but my piece was much less interesting All I did was buy some lame marine speakers and some kind of audio chip and made some settings for the car that gave it an "ignition" sound and back up sounds. But why was a tesla coil needed for the car? .... Were you guys trying to time travel? D:

I also got the pleasure of driving it to the local mechanic for an inspection. It failed. CU engineering FTW.

 

[Kaido]

This pretty much sums it up:

He’s vowed never to take an invention to school again.

 

[vi edit]

Pretty certain if this had been a blonde haired, blue eyed girl named Susie it would have been a non-story.

He was clearly profiled based on name and color. Sucks, but it's what it is. There's just some things you need a situational awareness about. He learned the hard way.

 

[CraKaJaX]

Yeah I think I liked it because I actually got to see things happening on the board and you could run simulation in whatever the VHDL software program was. I hate coding in general, too... Which is why I'm glad I didn't decide to try doing that for a career.

Hmmmmm I worked on that car as well but my piece was much less interesting All I did was buy some lame marine speakers and some kind of audio chip and made some settings for the car that gave it an "ignition" sound and back up sounds. But why was a tesla coil needed for the car? .... Were you guys trying to time travel? D:

I also got the pleasure of driving it to the local mechanic for an inspection. It failed. CU engineering FTW.

It had nothing to do with the car. We just used the bay there to test the coils.

My entire role for the car was lifting the original engine. This was the year they got a new Saturn from a junk yard that came with a complimentary giant dent in the passenger side from a deer running into it. My buddy and I got it done one weekend with beers and pizza and then sat on our ass the rest of the semester. :thumbsup:

 

[z1ggy]

It had nothing to do with the car. We just used the bay there to test the coils.

My entire role for the car was lifting the original engine. This was the year they got a new Saturn from a junk yard that came with a complimentary giant dent in the passenger side from a deer running into it. My buddy and I got it done one weekend with beers and pizza and then sat on our ass the rest of the semester. :thumbsup:

o0ohh I misunderstood. How the hell did you take charge of an engine lift being an EE? Sounds pretty sweet though.

Yeah my project was super easy. One team had the grand task of installing an entire generator system into the car, and a controller, lol. Paul McGrath for the freakin win. Best professor there.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

Pretty certain if this had been a blonde haired, blue eyed girl named Susie it would have been a non-story.

He was clearly profiled based on name and color. Sucks, but it's what it is. There's just some things you need a situational awareness about. He learned the hard way.

If I'm travelling (public transport), with potentially suspicious looking electronics and/or computer items. I will try and make sure they are well packaged.

E.g. Imagine going to an airport, with a carry on bag, which has lots of (suspicious looking), wires sticking out of it. Then (despite the loudspeakers saying "DON'T LEAVE YOUR LUGGAGE UNATTENDED"). I leave the bag, in a crowded area of the airport. Unattended, for a long period of time.

Potentially security and a bomb alert may take place.

Because he was a youngish School pupil. I accept his lack of experience, in making things NOT look like a potential dangerous bomb/device.

 

[gothamhunter]

Picture of said "bomb" he carried:
My initial image was incorrect. Here is the "bomb"

 

[Kaido]

"it looked extremely dangerous"

because it was a "mess of wires" and components?

...

this should have ended after a investigation. it's a clock? ok laugh and call the teacher a racist idiot. wich they are..they knew it was a clock and still took it to the principal.

to many are trying ot justify racism ..

To be fair:

1. Most people have no idea about electronics & only know what they see on TV, which is that green circuit boards = bomb parts. There's a thread here in OT about that prank where the late-night host showed people the original iPhone & told them it was the latest model and had them ooh & ahh over it. Unless you're a geek, you probably have no clue about tech. People think I'm some kind of computer genius because I build & fix computers & have no idea that all it involves is a Philips screwdriver & plugging in cards like a Nintendo cartridge.

2. Thanks to events like 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, etc., there is a general public fear of explosives, terrorism, and people from the Middle East. This has resulted in racism against people with brown skin. It's unfortunate because I have several good friends who have "the terrorist look" due to their family genetics & they have to deal with comments in jest almost daily. It's hard to realize that fear can cross into racism until you spend a day with someone who looks like that & see all of the crap they have to put up with simply because of how they look.

He unfortunately stepped over a line he probably didn't even know existed...public racism & fear combined with technical ignorance. But on the flip side, if it was malicious, how would a non-technical person know the difference between a clock, which is typically round with numbers & has ticking arms, versus a circuit board, which does look an awful lot like a Hollywood movie prop? So when you put those two things together, people are obviously going to react in a specific, fear-driven way. So either it was an unfortunate set of circumstances, or else he knows exactly what he's doing with Youtube controversies & is going to make bank with advertising. Actually, I hope he does segway this incident into a lucrative Youtube series & makes some money to pay for college & stuff, because if he's bright enough to build a clock from scratch with parts, then he could probably setup a Mr. Wizard type of video series online and make some cash from it.

 

[mmntech]

I've been saying for a decade now that terrorism is the new Red Scare.

 

[CraKaJaX]

o0ohh I misunderstood. How the hell did you take charge of an engine lift being an EE? Sounds pretty sweet though.

Yeah my project was super easy. One team had the grand task of installing an entire generator system into the car, and a controller, lol. Paul McGrath for the freakin win. Best professor there.

Easily. Steal it from snowmobile team, roll into electric car bay, proceed.

and LOL @ McGrath. He was the man. Very easy going and actually taught in a way that you learned it instead of cramming a ton of shit down your throat and being told good luck. I used to call him Eric (Clapton) because he looked identical (and even had the accent). Good times.

 

[waggy]

To be fair:

I give leeway to normal people. but as i said this should have died with the investigation. They had professionals look at it and say it's not a bomb. Yet they are thinking of charging him anyway.


The teacher knew it was a clock. told him he shouldn't show it to people. yet it was still taken to the principal and then he called the cops and SUSPENDED him.

Its amazing the story went this far. Though the good thing is its in the national news so maybe now people will call the school/cops telling them they are idiots.


or maybe the kid is a terrorist mastermind. He bring in his "clock" for a test run. Now everyone thinks he is a "clock" genius. next? 100 lbs of C4 disguised as a grandfather clock! Wich he uses to blow up the school! what a evil plan...

maybe not.



One thing the kid learned. School is not a place to show your knowledge and try to expand it. they don't seem to want that.

 

[Kaido]

Pretty certain if this had been a blonde haired, blue eyed girl named Susie it would have been a non-story.

He was clearly profiled based on name and color. Sucks, but it's what it is. There's just some things you need a situational awareness about. He learned the hard way.

If I'm travelling (public transport), with potentially suspicious looking electronics and/or computer items. I will try and make sure they are well packaged.

E.g. Imagine going to an airport, with a carry on bag, which has lots of (suspicious looking), wires sticking out of it. Then (despite the loudspeakers saying "DON'T LEAVE YOUR LUGGAGE UNATTENDED"). I leave the bag, in a crowded area of the airport. Unattended, for a long period of time.

Potentially security and a bomb alert may take place.

Because he was a youngish School pupil. I accept his lack of experience, in making things NOT look like a potential dangerous bomb/device.

Yeah...I used to travel on planes with a lot of computer parts, which of course looks like 80's action flick explosive controllers with all of the circuit boards & stuff to your average non-nerdy person. I would print out labels for everything & would always pull TSA aside to explain what I had in my bag before it went through so they wouldn't flip out because I didn't want to cause a commotion (never had a problem because of that).

Unfortunately, he learned the hard way about that. There's a biblical saying of "don't cast your pearls before swine" that I think is applicable...basically, don't put the stuff you value in front of people who won't appreciate it. And not just the combination of racism & mistaken hardware identity, but bringing in highly technical projects into a public school system where you may not have the support you're expecting is an eye-opening experience because you can get shot down pretty easily. I'm sure his confidence took a hit & he is now soured against sharing anything neat with his school.

I had similar experiences in high school (obviously never as bad as this kid's problems)...I got burned a couple times and realized that the school is, in fact, a system, which makes finding places like AT all the more better because you have a community of like-minded people to interact with. It's funny to get notices for class reunions, letters asking for donations to the school, and so on, which assumes that you had a good experience & felt welcome there. Maybe if you were in football or on the cheerleading squad, which are acceptable things, but even stuff like shop & tech was dwindling when I was in HS.

 

[z1ggy]

Easily. Steal it from snowmobile team, roll into electric car bay, proceed.

and LOL @ McGrath. He was the man. Very easy going and actually taught in a way that you learned it instead of cramming a ton of shit down your throat and being told good luck. I used to call him Eric (Clapton) because he looked identical (and even had the accent). Good times.

if only all professors were like him, I would have had a 4.0 and probably be working for Tesla or some company that doesn't suck.

 

[Kaido]

I give leeway to normal people. but as i said this should have died with the investigation. They had professionals look at it and say it's not a bomb. Yet they are thinking of charging him anyway.

Well look at what happened in that other thread...some kid kissed a girl on a dare in middle school & ended up with assault charges. Was it right that he did that? No, but I think assault charges from the police is kind of an over-reaction for a kid who doesn't know any better. But this is America and by golly, it's our right to over-react! :awe:

One thing the kid learned. School is not a place to show your knowledge and try to expand it. they don't seem to want that.

Yup. It honestly took me until my senior year of high school to realize that school is a system primarily designed to be crowd control & that knowledge outside of the curriculum is not really welcome. I don't want to generalize & say it's all bad because it's definitely not, especially since there are a lot of awesome teachers trying really hard to give kids a good education, but it's a controlled system that has to handle everyone from the brightest kids to the ones who struggle, and that's a great formula for a mediocre experience (which of course is ultimately up to you if you want to take more away from it, because you can make it better by trying harder!).

I'm always impressed when kids like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerburg buck the system to go do their own thing. I think that's why capitalism works so well in America...once you get out of school, you're suddenly rewarded for your efforts rather than just being lumped in with the crowd, and certain people respond really well to that & become millionaries, billionaries, captains of industry, etc. With tools like Youtube, Kickstarter, Mouser, Sparkfun, etc., the kid from the article can become really successful if he wants to, especially now that it's sinking in that public school is not really the place for showcasing advanced, creative projects, especially when combined with a national fear of how certain people look. I feel bad for him, but at the same time, he's getting a pretty solid lesson in the way the world works, which will be useful for him in the future.

I remember taking business classes in college & getting it pounded into my head that businesses had to be honest & reliable in order to function because otherwise business relations would fall apart...man, those teachers had NO CLUE! Just say the word "vendors" around any manufacturing company & they all just start cracking up. People lie, cheat, and steal in the world of business & do everything and anything they can to get away with stuff. Just look at our crazy food production system with preservatives, GMO's, lobbyists, and all that kind of stuff. The real world pretty much boils down to what Jack Sparrow said: "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do." Couple that with how much you have to do to get caught by the government (or the mob) & that's group systems for you - schools, businesses, etc.

 

[Ichinisan]

There's entirely not enough cynicism in this thread (and the Internet in general).

Remember Balloon Boy?

Remember Tahera Ahmad?

What if the kid's parents are some attention-seeking social justice warriors and it was their idea to make the thing beep constantly and draw attention to itself? What if it was their idea to bring it to school around 9/11?

Even when I was his age in 1994 and I was doing Heathkit electronics and taking classes, a clock / timer was a single, boring electronic component. I was more interested in the "build your own PAPER clock!" magazine ads.

 

[Raduque]

And once again, zero tolerance becomes zero intelligence. Hopefully, his parents sue the shit out of everybody involved, from the teacher to the police chief to the mayor. A dark brown kid named Ahmed Mohamed carrying a clock, this was clearly racial profiling.

I would prefer to be safe.

You don't deserve to be safe with that way of thinking.

Disclaimer: I'm NOT American

Oh. THEN SHUT UP.

 

[Kaido]

Remember Balloon Boy?

Oh my gosh, I had forgotten about that story :biggrin:

We did it for the show!

 

[unokitty]

Pretty certain if this had been a blonde haired, blue eyed girl named Susie it would have been a non-story....

Don't know if her eyes are blue...

MIT Sophomore Arrested at Logan For Wearing LED Device

Star A. Simpson ’10, wearing a circuit board that lit up and was connected to a battery, was arrested at gunpoint at Logan International Airport this morning and was charged with disorderly conduct and possession of a hoax device. Simpson was released on $750 bail earlier today; her pre-trial hearing is scheduled for Oct. 29, 2007 at 9 a.m. in East Boston District Court.

Simpson (a former Tech photographer) was wearing the device, which included green light-emitting diodes arranged in the shape of a star, during yesterday’s MIT Career Fair. Her defense attorney said she was at the airport to pick up her boyfriend who arrived at Logan this morning.

$38.2 billion dollar Federal Homeland Security Budget. Of course, Homeland Security is less security and more

... a system primarily designed to be crowd control ...

And it doesn't matter whether you're in Texas, Massachusetts, or wherever USA...

Uno

 

[KeithP]

As a general rule, if the Council on American-Islamic Relations is on your side, you are wrong. Therefore, he is wrong.

-KeithP

 

[vi edit]

Don't know if her eyes are blue...

MIT Sophomore Arrested at Logan For Wearing LED Device
$38.2 billion dollar Federal Homeland Security Budget. Of course, Homeland Security is less security and more

And it doesn't matter whether you're in Texas, Massachusetts, or wherever USA...

Uno

You missed this part:

Simpson had five to six ounces of Play-Doh in her hands, State Police Maj. Scott Pare said in a press conference this morning. The Play-Doh could have been mistaken for plastic explosives.

Chick was an attention whore. She got what she wanted.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

And once again, zero tolerance becomes zero intelligence. Hopefully, his parents sue the shit out of everybody involved, from the teacher to the police chief to the mayor. A dark brown kid named Ahmed Mohamed carrying a clock, this was clearly racial profiling.



You don't deserve to be safe with that way of thinking.



Oh. THEN SHUT UP.

The school has a right and duty (of care), to protect the pupils/staff and others from harm.

If much of the world was at war with Germany, again.

Would I/we be racist, if we were extra careful around German looking/speaking people, until the war is over ?

 

[waggy]

The school has a right and duty (of care), to protect the pupils/staff and others from harm.

If much of the world was at war with Germany, again.

Would I/we be racist, if we were extra careful around German looking/speaking people, until the war is over ?

wich they did. but they let common sense fly out the window. Once he said it was a clock and confirmed. they should have laughed and let it go.

but again they went to far. they arrested him and suspended him from school.

Over a clock. that they knew was a clock from the start.