Skip to content

Domain transferal

Yeah it’s that time again, I’ve had to change domain hosting companies again, please bare with me, it’s complete, although DNS is still flapping from the old to the new provider every couple of seconds – so results may be mixed. UPDATE DNS has been working fine for a few weeks – Transfer complete! To my old provider – your helpdesk is shamefully un-trained. UPDATE 16-12-2015 It appears that there are a few files that didn’t transfer during the last backup I made before migrating servers – mostly zip files, so some attachments may be missing. I’ll be updating these tonight, apologies. Cheers  

Hot End Failure

While trying to print out the LCD mount for the “Internet Radio” project. I returned later to check the progress on the print after it finally starting due to temperature issues. I found this: The temperature sensor had pulled free and had a piece of plastic lodged between it and the hot end. When I removed the hot end for inspection, the sensor broke apart. Clearly it was time to replace the entire hot end. It has served me well and is only the second one used in my Prusa Mendel i2. The new hot end is 95% metal with a short piece of PTFE tube in the centre. I’ve used it twice and it had already jammed. Pulling it apart, I found the PTFE tube had been damaged preventing the filament from being pushed… Read More »Hot End Failure

Smoker/Kettle BBQ Controller

After tasting some awesome BBQ offered in the US, I wanted to try making it myself. I’ve tried to use a gas BBQ, but it always turned out dry and tough. I moved to a charcoal kettle grill and wanted to be able to have more control of the temperature. Options: manual control – Continuously checking the temperature on the gauge that came with the BBQ. Buying a professional smoker – big $$. Make my own controller – When researching I found a professional BBQ team that used a controller that adjusted the temperature using a fan and temperature probes. I was kindly given a European Outdoorchef BBQ (cheers Chris), and I’ve been using it to smoke a few cuts of meat, the largest and latest was a 4kg pork leg roast. When I get… Read More »Smoker/Kettle BBQ Controller

Bakelite Internet Radio

NOTE: If your a vintage radio purest you may want to look away now, as I never had any intention of restoring the radio back to its original glory due to the damage of the insides and the custom speaker. I wanted to give it a fresh lease of life while hopefully doing it justice. The radio is a Stromberg Carlson Ovaltone (model number:5A29), manufactured around 1949. I was unable to find much information on it, and I’d guessed the model number by comparing it against other online pictures. What I’m going to do is make it into an internet radio powered with a raspberry pi, using WiFi, a small powered amp, 2 rotary encoders, LCD, and stereo speakers. If you’d like to split hairs, technically WiFi is digitally encrypted ‘radio’ waves… So it’s kind… Read More »Bakelite Internet Radio

Netgear EX6200

I went against my hatred for Netgear and bought an EX6200 as a replacement for the wireless access points I’ve been using. Having not bought any wireless gear for a while, I figured might as well check out 802.11AC equipment. After the purchase, I found the hardware to be well over spec: dual core 800Mhz processor, 128MB RAM, but the firmware was crippled by rubbish “end-user friendly” features, and only allowed external connections from the existing LAN via wireless sources. To Netgears credit, it does state the following in the manual: “Can I plug it directly to my main wireless router using ethernet? No…” After 40 minutes of stubbornly trying to get it to connect to my LAN using ethernet, I gave up and found this post: Transform the NETGEAR EX6200 into a Wi-Fi Router… Read More »Netgear EX6200

Prusa Mendel i2 to CNC Engraver Conversion – In progress

I’ve been checking out parts lists and prices for DIY CNC routers. After some research, I’ve decided to convert my Prusa Mendel i2 to a small, very cheap CNC engraver, So I could get a feel for them and work out if it would be worth making a full size one. Below is what I had to work with. You may notice the extra braces on the top corners – the green parts. There is other extra supports on the board it’s screwed on to, to make it more ridged than usual. I found a few mounts on thingyverse, but I have an old Ozito rotary tool. The flexi shaft has different dimensions than the Dremel, so I created my own mount for it: Ozito_FlexMount I did a test print @ 20% fill and 1… Read More »Prusa Mendel i2 to CNC Engraver Conversion – In progress

Cheap Pickups – Box of Server Parts

Found a shoe box sized box of random PC parts for $10. I wasn’t able to see the entire contents, but was assured it was all related. I’m always looking for cheap cables and assortment. Cut the tape on the box when I got home and found: 1x Supermicro X7SBE motherboard. 8GB of DDR2/677mhz ECC RAM (2GB sticks). 1x  Dedicated IPMI card for the board. 1x Quad core Xeon X3360 @ 2.83GHz. 1x rear Double USB motherboard extender. I also bought from the same seller for an extra $10:  Low profile dual 36pin SAS card – cant find the model number yet, but compared it to images online and I think It’s an LSI MegaRAID 9261-8i. I assume the model is under the battery pack. Plugged it all (except the SAS controller) in and found… Read More »Cheap Pickups – Box of Server Parts

Ambient Light with Arduino and WS2811

The ambient lighting on this project turned out so well I wanted to try it on a normal TV. When making the back light for a second time, I used an Arduino Mini Pro with mini USB port. I did find a small hiccup, the baud rate needed to be changed to 115200 most likely due to limitations in the USB to serial chipset on the Mini Pro (CH-340). The refresh rates are still very good. I am also using less LEDs which may contribute:         “device” : { “name”       : “MyPi”, “type”       : “adalight”, “output”     : “/dev/ttyUSB0”, “rate”       : 115200, “colorOrder” : “grb” }, In typical fashion, I’ve taken a pretty slap-`dash approach to the finish – the vertical LED’s are only tacked on using plastic tape which will most likely fall off when… Read More »Ambient Light with Arduino and WS2811

LCD TV Table – Inprogress

Having a coffee table with a TV screen in it doesn’t serve any real purpose, but if you have an unused, trashed, coffee table and 80cm LCD TV, it cant hurt to merge the two. The table is a brown Ikea coffee table from the Markor range. I haven’t got any product links for it. I’m assuming it’s discontinued. The TV/monitor is an Panasonic 80cm LCD with 2x HDMI inputs. The media player is a 512MB Raspberry Pi running Openelec (Kodi). The table was in the Mancave for a while and had oil and glue over it. It was roughly sanded with a belt sander (quickest option). Next I took measurements of the bottom inner space under the table to correctly center the TV screen to table top. Beige: Area available for the TV on… Read More »LCD TV Table – Inprogress

Wireless Touchscreen LED Strip Controller

For Christmas I installed 20M (4 x 5M) of RGB LED strips, and 1 RGB spotlight under our patio, I then used the WIFI to 2.4GHz bridge (V4) (same used here) to connect them to the network in 2 groups. Now they can be turned on using our phones, etc… But I don’t carry my phone with me everywhere so this seemed fun but short sighted… With the ESP8266, a Touch screen, and 3.3v Arduino mini pro, I was able to create a wireless touch screen controller for the Christmas lights. Note: There is one caveat; it’s slow. This is due to the long delays I’ve had to add to the code to make sure the ESP8266 module actually does what it’s told to do, rather than replying “busy s…”. When it’s finally finished loading,… Read More »Wireless Touchscreen LED Strip Controller