Archives 2016

Wednesday, 14th December 2016 - 11:38:13

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I built a set of giant Jenga for the work christmas party. Lots of sanding involved! They were a great hit.

Sunday, 11th December 2016 - 14:21:19

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The shelves I built about two years ago received a coat of clear poly to make them look the part for their new home inside the house. They came up really nice and it also gave me the opportunity to redo some of the edge banding which was loose and allowing the shelf to sag (they are only mdf).

Saturday, 26th November 2016 - 18:16:46

Building Kitchen Counter at New Place

Today we built a kitchen counter for the new place. The bench space in the kitchen is a bit small so this will help a bunch.

Friday, 25th November 2016 - 21:46:51

HTPC Lost PSU

Lost or misplaced the the power supply for your HTPC? No worries, just fire it up on a lab power supply =)

Sunday, 16th October 2016 - 11:18:55

Blue Berry Pancakes with Bacon

Blueberry Pancakes with Bacon! =)

Sunday, 9th October 2016 - 14:02:08

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I decided to unwrap these old BP Solar panels and see what they could do. I built a basic SLA charging circuit that would allow an SLA battery to be charged and to supply power to an ESP8266. This will be for use outdoors as a weather station "or something". I haven't decided yet. Mostly I just wanted to see if the solar panels that I've had for over a decade still worked.

Sunday, 18th September 2016 - 17:31:49

Grilled Chicken Breast

Grilled Chicken Breast ready to go on burgers. Sometimes the most simple recipies are the most popular with the kids. Just lemon juice, olive oil, minced garlic and some parsley. Easy.

Wednesday, 24th August 2016 - 01:24:12

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What's a Loxone and why does the stupid thing have such a low input impedance? The reason is this chip. HVS882. It's an industrial input serializer chip. The input impedance is only 10k. This chip operates in a "window" mode for detecting "on" vs "off". With the recommended 4.7k pullup on a 24V supply, this leaves things very close to the 16V threshold that the chip requires for an "on" state. So I've started using 3.9k pullups which gives a little more room for movement on longer cable runs where a few volts can potentially be lost bringing it under the required 16V.

Sunday, 7th August 2016 - 16:29:50

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I built an aircon mount today. It is a cantilevered design that holds the AC in and is secure, but does not screw into the house or into the window frames at all. The house is rented, so there are rules preventing us from fixing it permanently to the structure.

Thursday, 14th July 2016 - 20:01:18

Gnocchi and Chorizo with Grilled Capsicum

Gnocchi and Chorizo with grilled peppers. I've seen this before but never tried making it. It was delicious.

Monday, 20th June 2016 - 11:38:01

Baby 200kW load bank

Toured the DC facilities today. We walked past one of the "smaller" load banks at 200kW.

Wednesday, 1st June 2016 - 12:18:48

PIR with Pullup Resistor Fitted

Having some fun with some PIRs for lighting. I'm using CAT-5 flex. The sensors are daisy chained allowing for six sensors per run.

Sunday, 24th April 2016 - 22:46:46

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Internet Enabled Night Light. I made this out of an old wall wart and an ESP8266 SOC module. Basically took the guts out of the wall wart and replaced them with the contents of a much more modern wall wart (smaller) which left space for the ESP8266 module, the PIR sensor and other bits. The device uses MQTT to communicate trigger events and periodic measurements to a custom cloud service.

  • Temperature - DHT11
  • Humidity - DHT11
  • Brightness - LDR (Light Dependent Resistor)
  • Movement - PIR Module (DSN-FIR800)

Gallery

Monday, 11th April 2016 - 09:01:21

ESP8266 Prototype Breadboard

Here is a small ESP8266 prototype using a DHT11 and an LDR for light level sensing. This module is super convenient; it has USB to RS232 integrated and also has standard spacing so it can be put into a bread board.

Monday, 4th April 2016 - 18:00:10

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Running a bunch of aqua noodles at the DC =)

Saturday, 2nd April 2016 - 11:42:45

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The kids broke their iPad charge cable. They are not too hard to repair. I backed up the connector with a piece of cable tie as strain relief and heat shrunk it all together.

Friday, 25th March 2016 - 20:02:38

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BBQ Salmon. Turned out great.

Saturday, 5th March 2016 - 17:09:49

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Scored a head unit that had AUX input, so I installed it in the car with a special IP-BUS cable.

Tuesday, 9th February 2016 - 09:54:04

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LED Lighting control box mounted and installed.

Sunday, 7th February 2016 - 18:52:15

Ribs! Nom Nom

Finn helped me out putting the rub on these ribs. Ready for bbq!

Sunday, 7th February 2016 - 10:08:15

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Drilling and tapping the insert board for the control box for mounting DIN rails and ducts.

Monday, 25th January 2016 - 07:36:15

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Alternate power supply box design.

Thursday, 21st January 2016 - 19:09:58

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First LED power supply box installed and cabled.

Sunday, 17th January 2016 - 15:16:17

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Installed the last parts of the fiber duct today.

Saturday, 16th January 2016 - 17:28:20

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Making brackes for the DMX modules to bolt onto unistrut runners.

Tuesday, 12th January 2016 - 20:00:00

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Lots and lots of pigtails soldered onto LED strips!

Monday, 4th January 2016 - 19:06:55

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I am helping out with a project at work to install LED lighting in our DC. Should be awesome.

Sunday, 3rd January 2016 - 20:37:10

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Had a mate around today for a BBQ and we built some sensors and wrote some code for the ESP8266.

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