Independence Hall and the Second Bank of the United States

This is the view from our hotel room of Independence Hall.

The Second Bank of the United States houses a portrait gallery, as well as being architecturally interesting.

Crocuses signal spring is coming at Wintherthur

These crocuses are one of the many signs that Spring is coming at Wintherthur. Time to check my own yard.

Koi at Wintherthur

These koi are ready for spring at Wintherhur.

Last week of frozen Shellpot Creek?

It's freezing cold this week and the snow fell yesterday. Is this the last week of frozen and snowy Shellpot creek?

This is how it looked this morning when it was 11F.

Building a control panel

Linus' wanted me to build him a "control panel" to pretend to launch rockets or control something. I looked at Radio Shack online and then went and bought a bunch of lighted switches, lights, buzzers, sirens and a breadboard to test and hook it all together. It was pretty cool.

I'll need to find a good box to put it in. They even had the cool guarded switches where you must lift the red guard to then be able to flip the switch, which is also lighted. We can use those as "arming" switches for the noisemakers.

I had showed Linus some of the basics of connecting a circuit, showing how the power starts the circuit and then through the light or switch and that it must make a circle to work. I hooked up a little fan and described how the red wire goes to red and the black to black. Then I was out of the room for a while and I heard a loud beep. He had been listening and paying attention enough that he figured out how to take out the fan and put in the beeping buzzer and have it work on the switch. I think he gets it!

After some experimenting I will eventually have to make something more permanent.

I was inspired by this post at MAKE of a father creating a Mission Control Desk for his son (via BoingBoing).  This one is more elaborate than I am capable of.

A search produced this one at Instructables as well.

That one is more my speed and ability.

Now I am on the hunt for videos explaining breadboards and soldering as well.