Archives January 2018

Saturday, 20th January 2018 - 20:54:34

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This is the "Fairy Jar" night light that I created for my Daughter's birthday. I used some nichrome wire to make a hot wire cutter which allows styrofoam to be easily cut leaving a smooth(ish) edge. On top of that went some artificial grass. The foam and grass was banded with some unicorn ribbon to make it look neat and hide the edges. The mushrooms and lillypads came from an eBay China night light (that you'd never in your right mind actually plug into mains!).  There are also some strings of copper wire with LEDs on them. The fairy and the mushrooms came from eBay. I drilled some 1mm holes in the bottoms of those (they are resin) - Into there I epoxied some pins with the heads cut off. This secures them into the grass/foam. It's all electrically joined up under the foam in the middle. There is a hole which goes through the base and pops up in the middle for the cord. More pics in the gallery.

Monday, 15th January 2018 - 20:37:46

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Today I built a prototype relay controller which can be controlled via MQTT, but also has built in temperature and humidity sensors. It uses the temperature data to act as a thermostat turning one of the relays on and off at a temperature set point with a few degrees hysteresis (so that it doesn't go nuts switching on and off if it's fluctuating over the set point). Hysteresis "time" can also be added so that I can use the same code for another controller which will control a fridge. You don't want to be turning the compressor on and off rapidly. To get the temperature, the values from two ds18b20s and a dht22 (not pictured) are averaged.

Friday, 12th January 2018 - 11:27:34

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About time for a new cabin air filter on the Barina. I don't think it's supposed to be black like that!

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