Sunday, 11th June 2017 - 18:23:07

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The new circular 7 way WS2812 boards arrived from eBay and they fit perfectly in the top of these solar lights with some small modifications. Click the image to see the other photos.

Wednesday, 24th May 2017 - 21:34:32

Roadrunner Coloured Wire

My Element14 order turned up with my Roadrunner pencil wire. RRW-A-105 0.19mm solderable enamel wire. The colours will help distinguish some different lines in some upcoming projects (garden lights) where I need to run vcc, gnd and a data line. They need to be fine so as not to obstruct the light.

Saturday, 20th May 2017 - 18:23:40

2gig LAG to Shed

2gig LAG established from the Cisco 2960G-48 in the house to the Juniper EX3200 switch in the shed where the servers are.

Friday, 19th May 2017 - 08:11:42

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Sonoffs have arrived from itead.cc to play with!

Saturday, 6th May 2017 - 19:30:32

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At last the finished product! Fully soldered with paste and hot air, with terminals mounted and mounted in it's DIN rail enclosure ready to go.

Friday, 5th May 2017 - 10:07:51

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I came across these cheap solar LED garden lights and immediately knew what I needed to do. They needed to be individually addressable, RGB and controllable from IOT and from an app! =) Probably ESP8266 at this stage with ws2812 LEDs.

Monday, 17th April 2017 - 18:52:28

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FINALLY assembled and tested that bbq that I bought and refurbished back in December 2015...

Friday, 14th April 2017 - 14:04:00

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I have upgraded the firmware and buck converter in the PIR plugpack project. The new code makes use of a ws2812 to display it's status. I have run the LED out on a very thin enamelled copper flywire so that I can use the inside of the PIR dome as a diffuser. It sits out of the line of sight of the pyroelectric sensor.

Thursday, 6th April 2017 - 19:42:59

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Had a crack at doing some special fried rice at home. It came out awesome. Click the image to see the gallery.

Friday, 31st March 2017 - 09:00:51

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Level shifter powers up. No smoke. Unfortunately it doesn't work correctly because there is more current coming into the base of each transistor than I anticipated. It's enough to hold all transistors on. So I'll try getting some mosfets with the same pinout and seeing how they do.

Sunday, 26th March 2017 - 15:06:48

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Playing with the battery powered ESP8266 project again. I've got it down to 9mA. Unfortunately the minium current draw is raised a long way by the buck converter board I have which is rated for 3A - it's much heavier duty than it needs to be and isn't very efficient.

Friday, 24th March 2017 - 22:29:56

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Been prototyping some new esp8266 boards to have them run on a pair of 18650s. The current draw when asleep is down to 0.7mA which is pretty nice. Unfortunately it goes up to 70mA when hooked to wifi and transmitting. This is usually only for a few seconds every five minutes or so.

Friday, 17th March 2017 - 09:10:47

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I had a go at some SMD soldering with solder paste for the level converter board. It came out OK.

Wednesday, 8th March 2017 - 22:46:11

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So I scored a failed Juniper SRX210 off eBay for $1. I figured it was worth a gamble. Well it paid off. After some testing I found that the system was not getting any juice. The input protection diode had failed short. My guess is that someone has plugged in the PSU for the POE version of this firewall (48VDC) into this non-POE firewall (should be 12VDC) and nuked it. I removed it temporarily and powered the unit up on a lab power supply to limit the current. It booted! Score!

Wednesday, 8th March 2017 - 10:49:17

12V to 24V Level Shifter PCB

The PCB for the 12V to 24V has arrived.

Friday, 3rd March 2017 - 09:05:33

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Ebay score: Cisco 1230G access points which will be used to create a wireless bridge.

Sunday, 26th February 2017 - 17:49:57

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Cooked up some super yummy pork spare ribs with some honey soy sauce. Had it with some "crunchy" salad.

Wednesday, 8th February 2017 - 21:03:15

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Prototype 12V to 24V level shifter.

Wednesday, 8th February 2017 - 11:43:08

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Fabricated some brackets to hold the PIR sensors.

Tuesday, 31st January 2017 - 07:38:29

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Ebay score. A set of drifts, punches and chisels. Also a small block plane.