Trying to make a pretty book lamp | Hacker News Reader

Trying to make a pretty book lamp

sam.town

85 pointszecken25 comments

You are placing a burden on people you gift things to that diminishes the value of receiving gifts from you. It's like giving a friend a painting and then holding the friendship hostage unless they hang it up as their living room centerpiece.

I find it rewarding to give people things. I find joy in the act of giving and how the other person might feel by receiving the item. If they use the thing for a week and then and throw it away, it doesn't diminish the act of having given it to them. If anything it makes me briefly reflect on how I can give a more useful gift next time.

So you've now given your dad a gift, he lost it and feels terrible about it, and you're chastising him in iMessage and on the internet, ensuring that he feels even more awful. The next time you give him something it'll be accompanied by a sense of anxiety and dread.

Unless you think he was intentionally careless with the gift out of malice, why don't you stop being an asshole for a second and console him instead.

The author shares one snapshot of one brief interaction with someone, for the purpose of humor, and you think that entitles you to judge the entire relationship?

I feel like your reaction reflects more on you than the author.

How do you think his dad would feel if he saw this article?

A quick observation: The reed switch might have been "sticky" not because of the strength of the magnet, but because of the current all those lights required. For any given reed switch, there's a current that will keep it from disengaging once it engages. Reed switches are generally considered signal devices, not current switches for this reason.

"electrical engineers seem to be in the biz basically only to make lights turn on or blink." or for writing about the build process :)

> or writing about the build process

Those are for EE engineers turn SW engineers...

I'm a software engineer trying to learn hardware. I noticed in the article, the author drew some schematics.

These days, I don't use UML to write apps (everything in my head as I do everything myself anyway, and sometimes I write comments and unit tests), but I remember it being useful during my early days of programming.

I'm thinking, since this is my early days of hardware, I should use write schematics (just like I did with UML). Is that a good idea? Where to get started?

The http://fritzing.org/ application has helped me diagram how to make some simple projects. The mix of physical and logical was useful for me as the circuit boards I used comprised part of the physical design.

I find sketching schematics for hardware is a lot more natural than sketching UML, and they're super helpful for making sense of a rat's nest of wires. I can't recommend them enough! I'm a big fan of using paper, it's quite efficient and easy to edit. I only use a design app to present the schematic.

Most electronics books will teach you the basics, but this StackExchange answer is a good summary too: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/28251/rules-...

I started university as EE, and wound up graduating with Computer Engineering (basically 50/50 EE and CS). 95% of my professional work has been nothing but software, but I've got some (laughably simple) professional hardware experience.

I literally can't keep my head straight without sketching some schematics. It's also super helpful when I'm prototyping and tear down a component to build something else (say, to reuse a microprocessor or expensive component like a GSM module) but then I want to go back to that first setup I had previously.

Try asking someone who really knows what they're doing for some non-trivial help and show them your rat's nest and no diagram and watch smoke pour from their ears as they try and remain calm and helpful.

I think you're on to a good idea though, the UML you practiced provided value (likely not because we all love UML) but it forced you to meditate (for lack of a better word) on design choices and decisions. You began iterating in your head and built some good reflexes. You were practicing your craft in a more robust fashion. I can't imagine spending time with schematics won't be helpful.

Travelling to SFMOMA (from Sydney) I came across the Lumio books and I found them absolutely gorgeous. As a poor college student the price was very steep though.

That article definitely inspired me to have a crack at making my own!

An open-source PCB/laser cut paper book light project like the Lumio sounds like a great idea - if anyone knows of other builds I'd love to see.

I don't understand why he went though all the trouble of designing and printing that 3d box but didn't make a professional PCB. If it were me I would have done a PCB before even considering that box and just mounted the PCB directly in the book.

Making a custom PCB is much more difficult than printing up an enclosure. And more costly if you don't have all the tooling already. For a small one-off DIY project like this, it completely makes sense.

Not really. A board for the book spine would have been like 4 square inches. You can get three copies of a board for $5 per square inch from OSHpark so $20 total. I doubt 3d printing something of that size is any cheaper.

I think you misunderstand 3d printing costs and time. $20 gets you an entire kilo of standard plastic for printing. I highly doubt his enclosure setup took more than 50 grams to print, or about $1 total. Total printing time was likely under 5 hours.

PCBs are over an order of magnitude more expensive and generally have a two week lead time unless you fab them yourself on a cnc or laser setup. Also, what do you do if you realize you messed up something in your PCB setup? You have to wait for a whole new batch or else toss it and wire manually anyway. With 3D printing, you just modify the model and print a new version in a couple hours.

For one-off prototypes like this a custom PCB is a really iffy proposition.

Only if you already invested several grand in a 3D printer. A service like shapeways is similar cost and time to getting a pcb made. A pcb milling game machine is the same cost as a 3D printer.

You're again overestimating costs. A perfectly capable 3D printer can easily be had for under $500 and serves many more purposes than just fabbing PCBs. Many, many places (including libraries now) have 3D printers available for use at low cost. A mini mill capable of milling a PCB is harder to come by and also not useful for much more than basic engraving.

Check out the OtherMill Pro. You can do a million things with it besides basic engraving and PCB manufacturing.

It looks like in the original the top-bottom of the pages js glued together and the inside of the pages is cut-off. That'd probably make it better at difussing the light.

Nice work, and nice end product. This is exactly the sort of thing I'd not only have in my house, but would be happy to give to others.

Wasn't there a thing like this on Shark Tank?

Yes, the product being cloned in this blog post, Lumio, was pitched on Shark Tank.

Nice idea, interesting project, but repeated dad bashing is a bit off-putting.

I don't know if eps is your dad, but I thought it was not too bad. :-) You probably have a good relationship with him from my interpretation of the situation.

As a "standing lamp" to have a wireless charging option would be cool. Or the USB cable should be used to make it hang from the ceiling.

Nice work!

give your dad a break!

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