Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
Could be a painting, or a boat. I'm interested in what HN'ers are building that isn't software-related.
†OK fine, it broke at a few points and I had to knot the ends together, but it's the principle that counts.
https://imgur.com/gallery/ljoJeal
I really wanted to make something creative for her, but I'm pretty terrible as an artist, so I instead applied a talent I do have: making 200 line Python scripts. Apparently the first to do this was an artist named Petros Vrellis, though I did come up with it independently.
Sadly, we've broken up since then, and we didn't remain friends. I do wonder what happened to it, I can't imagine she'd've thrown it out, but on the other hand it would be odd to have a physically quite large memento to a previous relationship hanging from your wall.
Also, love is an intense thing and it doesn’t always work out… just don’t lose that love of love
https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/781f0137b361b51224dcab7...
https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/b6f158b1278de307e48a200...
I just hacked it together, but I do think it's not unreadable code
hopefully your boolean conditionals are easier to read than that
In a closer analogy to a CAT scan, each nail would have a string connecting it to a ~10 degree spread of nails on the opposite side, and each string would be grayscale.
The real physics is quite tricky, because you actually emit a variety of x-ray energies at once, each with different penetrating power, and xray flux varies spatially as well. this means each of your angular strings has its own grayscale response curve.
heres a simple rundown: https://radiologykey.com/computed-tomography-16/
Similarly, assuming the average loop took me 10 seconds to do, that amounts to about 10 hours, and I do remember that the final step only took a day or 4, with a few hours of work every evening.
https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/781f0137b361b51224dcab7...
https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/b6f158b1278de307e48a200...
Haven't looked at it in five years, but it should probably still work if you update the variables at the top.
I'm sorry the relationship didn't work out. I can completely relate, though. I think just about every "coolest physical thing" I've made ended up going to an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend.
I guess I'm just not motivated to make cool physical things for myself.
The thing I think you do so well is you take a statement like a little kid would make- I want to only hit home runs or, I want to sink a basket every time. And then you break down the problem and solve it. It's incredibly inspirational!
My girlfriend's son was struggling in school with math and science and he just didn't see how they could be cool or why they were important or something. I showed in the videos from your channel and it was so incredible where I was like hey look. Here's something that seems like total fantasy or like something like a six-year-old would say, but look with science and engineering you can make it happen.
Anyway, thank you very much Shane for what you do and how are you inspire people
I joined a 5 year electrical apprenticeship after highschool. I spent many days between 2006 and 2012 building out crazy electrical systems in these giant warehouse looking buildings in Northern Virginia, for DuPont Fabros and Digital Reality.
I had no idea exactly what the purpose of these server farms were for, but they just told us “if we build it they will come” lol.
I had always wondered who “they” was, and who was renting so much server space.
Eventually we heard that Amazon was leasing some of these buildings, but it was crazy to think that an online bookstore needed such crazy infrastructure.
Flash forward to today and these buildings are called “us-east-1” lol..
It’s pedantic but colo existed for decades before AWS.
It’s the software layer from AWS that made it “The Cloud” (quicker access to hardware & billing by the second, not month)
My understanding later on in my career shift to computer engineering was that Amazon is renting out the whole colo, and just owns their equipment.
Amazon isn’t maintaining the datacenter infrastructure such as cooling and power, but instead it’s covered in their bill.
This is like saying “I sell cardboard boxes to Amazon, who uses my cardboard boxes to ship packages” … and then claim you built the logistics and online behemoth of Amazon.com
I’m not trying to be a hater. But this story sounds more like you were a supplier to something Amazon built, not something you built.
No, because it says "without really knowing it" right in the first sentence.
When you’re building data centers, you are fully aware you are building “The Cloud” (even before that term was coined), because that’s literally the business you’re in … regardless of who you’re customer (AWS) is or not.
This story is basically akin to someone who works at a restaurant saying that one day a celebrity came in and ordered a hamburger, and a photo was taken with the hamburger that ended up becoming famous, and them saying that they made that hamburger. It's just an interesting "I was a small part of something that became big" story. But thank god we have you here to make sure that that person doesn't go around telling people they built AWS.
Prologis controls roughly 1 billion square feet of warehouses and distribution centers used by companies including Amazon, Home Depot and FedEx.
Probably there are others as well that rent warehouses to Anazon.
Having a sign with the name of a business on a building does not mean that the business owns the building itself.
Many companies rent offices for example, and put their logo on the building where they are renting offices.
Are you certain they don't own at least a fraction of the facilities they use? Amazon has very good credit (AA or AA-), which in a lot of cases probably means they have access to cheaper money than their landlord does. When you factor in the landlord's profit margin, it just doesn't make sense for Amazon to rent rather than to issue bonds and buy.
I imagine that they do rent as well, since it lets them respond more quickly to demand / business needs, but it would just be really weird for them not to own any of their own critical infrastructure.
Edit: Looks like it's a mix of leased and owned, on both counts
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/amazon-web-servic...
https://therealdeal.com/national/2023/02/07/amazon-slams-bra...
DuPont had been building in Datacenter Alley for a number of years already, but the buildings were way smaller; and the systems less complex. ACC1, 2 and 3 are all still there in operation today and have been retrofitted a number of times since 2000. Today, those tiny DC’s are apart of the bigger network in the area; and are just connected together via private fiber loops.
https://maps.apple.com/?ll=39.022237,-77.457433&q=Dropped%20...
That's one way of looking at it, but no one would have used that software if OP had done a sloppy job with the electrical system.
I'm sure there was plenty of boilerplate code in that software (and some very innovative code) and plenty of sophisticated work done to create the physical datacenter.
Everyone always wonders why us-east-1 shits the bed more than others. Now we know why.
/s obviously.
I’m a full stack engineer now professionally, and work on open source code on the side.
The career path hasn’t been so bad. Applied my understanding of electrons to computer science, and have launched a number of apps and services since.
Currently working on a side project that’s a WordPress alternative built with Next.js and Tailwind :)
ACC4 was the most state of the art data center in the world when it opened, and it was like 10 times the scale as the previous 3.. Construction halted on ACC5 when the 2008 recession hit. They said the funds dried up to continue construction, and laid thousands of workers off one morning.
Things picked back up a number of years later, and I believe they are past ACC12 now lol..
Here is ACC4, and 5 is right next to it..
https://maps.apple.com/?ll=39.018565,-77.461943&q=Dropped%20...
The newer generation data centers with 2 floors right down the street eclipse the ACC’s of the past and make them look child’s play.
IIRC, these things were like 18U beasts. I think 4 of them fit on a standard rack? One of the reasons we employed interns was so we'd have people to plug the damn things into the calibration and diagnostic rigs if necessary. Think about it: each LC connector has to be cleaned, then plugged into the correct port, for over 500 ports. If cleaning and plugging in the connector takes, say, 2 seconds in total, that's 30 minutes just to get it hooked up to get checked out.
Besides getting to play with high powered lasers and work on exotic hardware pretty much nobody has ever seen (which also sold for more than my annual salary at the time), I frequently got to work in one of our clean rooms (my sinuses loved me at that job lol), work with hardware and mechanical engineers, and usually had to figure things out on my own, because nobody else was building these things at that scale and there were no fine manuals to read.
Fun times.
It's a very rewarding hobby, from making the mirror (manual labor + measurements with interferometry), silvering it (a bit of chemistry), designing in CAD and building the actual usable telescope, there are a lot of moving parts to design, and steps that you can either do or delegate. I think anyone who likes manual work can find a piece of a telescope that's enjoyable to work on.
The feeling you get after a few nights of hardware debugging, when everything properly works and you get a sharp focus in a clear night, that's quite a step above any of my other hobby projects to this day (:
Plus, you can always improve it with ergonomic modifications or additions to make observing sessions smoother.
Edit : here's a pic at first light of my last one (8" f/3.52)
https://camo.githubusercontent.com/5939ba170acf1e9d6462d8268...
Now moving on to do twins 16.5" and 16" mirrors and scopes with a friend who is joining me into this adventure :-)
It works well enough for the moon etc, and, as I'm based in a developing country, many people have never seen the sky except with the naked eye, so the gasps and oohs, etc are priceless.
I had intended to document and open-source the whole thing, but was busy at the time, and the PLA prints have since completely disintegrated in the hot humidity, lol. Maybe I'll get back to it again, with PET or nylon this time.
https://miscdotgeek.com/3d-printing-the-hadley-114mm-newtoni...
It's done now, and has produced some nice images, but I need to spend more time with it to get planetary images etc.
I'm building public-compatible stuff now that I have my own stuff that is quite delicate to handle, after a few public nights where children grab onto a high-end eyepiece...
The 16.5" will be a very rugged scope to fulfill this purpose. I think John Dobson's approach to telescopes is the ultimate one, that is, the value of a scope is the number of people who looked through it
A cool thing about DIY telescopes: You can get better results than a commercial mirror, because you can turn your time into quality at a rate which is not economically feasible for manufacturing.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/03/child-la...
Well ok, my wife did most of it, but I was definitely a contributing maker.
1. three small creek-fed ponds (bonus: one has an island),
2. numerous outbuildings for various kinds of livestock,
3. a pair of portable outhouses,
4. several miles of perimeter and cross fencing,
5. two large greenhouses (20x50 and 30x90),
6. a built-in oak storage bench for the farmhouse entryway,
7. a portable covered milking stanchion that can service a cow or two goats,
8. a semi-permanent lumber mill capable of milling logs up to 30" around and 24' long,
In addition, I have performed endless upgrades and repairs to existing structures and equipment:
1. rewired and plumbed the wellhouse, adding new storage tanks,
2. maintained my fleet of trucks, heavy equipment, and dozens of other machines that contain small engines,
3. finished out the farmhouse basement to use as a dairy parlor,
I still have a few projects on my TODO list:
1. more outbuildings,
2. a 20' wood bridge across to the island in the lower pond,
3. hot tub (made from cedar that will be cut and milled here on the property), and
4. so much more....
It will never be "done".
I have small foundry capable of casting aluminum, and I have plans to find a spot to build a proper cupola furnace that enables casting iron.
I have thousands of board feet waiting to be milled, so I plan on building a larger lumber drying "shed" at some point with some of the resulting boards.
I think you should carefully consider your goals and what you want out of a location (must haves vs nice to haves and a list of dealbreakers).
There are a few things you probably take for granted. If your are considering an off grid or at least remote location, some things you should keep in mind:
- More than ten miles is a long way to get groceries, especially if primitive roads make part of the drive.
- It gets dark when you’re outside of civilization, don’t leave lit areas unless you must.
- Carry extra fuel at all times, you should also have a working, spare vehicle that you actively maintain.
- If you are settling in an area with snow, both your vehicles need to be AWD with snow tires and you should carry chains at all times when it’s season for snow.
- The spare vehicle should have a full tank of gas and spare fuel treated with an enzyme to keep it stable.
- You should have spare parts for your home and car, be comfortable with doing a lot of stuff yourself.
- Know the fastest and slower but more reliable route to the nearest hospital.
- Get a cell phone repeater from your cell company (they often even do it for free if you power it).
- Make sure your house has a power inlet so you can use a portable generator in case your permanent one fails or have a very beefy car inverter so your spare card can power your house.
- Have backup fuel for your generator.
- You should have one week of food, water, and generator fuel on reserve at all time.
- Your firewood pile should be sheltered, covered from the elements, and easy to get to from your home.
- Maintain a sat phone (one with minimal minutes is fine, this is backup comms).
And be sure to remember that shit gets or feels weird for us when we live in remote locations. You will start to see things if you let it get to you. If you plan on exploring, be prepared to come across (and avoid) carcasses, wild animals, poison oak or ivy, strange or out of place structures, people walking around who don’t answer or acknowledge you when you call out, trust your gut and fucking bolt when things are just not right even if you can’t put your finger on it.
I have hallucinated people that disappear when you try to approach them, full and partial structures that seem to dilapidate when I approach them. I’ve seen brand new cars driven out miles off the highway left with their door open as if someone just got out and walked away never to return, burnt out cars miles out in the wilderness, heard children laughing in the distance at midnight in the pitch black, heard the moaning of someone in pain but nobody to be found.
Maybe the most unsettling thing is when you walk into a specific area of the forest and, as if all the air is sucked out, it goes so quiet enough that you can hear your own pulse and rumbling of blood flowing through your ear. You feel, not hear, this low, intense hum, a sense of dread falls over you, as if you are being watched or hunted. This happened to me back in May when I ran across a set of poured, concrete stairs in a clearing as if built for a porch, but no foundation where the house should have been.
Nobody told me this lifestyle would cause me to become afraid of the dark again. I used to camp up there but now I don’t go up there unless it’s light and I can be back on the highway well before nightfall. Honestly, this experience has given me a huge appreciation for the game Don’t Starve.
The site linked looks like one of those stupid content farms that analyzes popular crap on Reddit. The stairs in the woods thing got popular because they are out there, but the is not supernatural - people just abandon or recycle material within structures in remote places if it no longer suits their purpose. Decking and stairs are often made of pressure treated wood which does not burn or decay as quickly and if they are concrete, they most definitely will not decay in a hurry. So once the combustible tinderbox of a log cabin is consumed or is recycled (via dismantling) all that is left is often just stairs.
Your post overall was not written in that manner, but the tangent into the stairs thing was unexpected and borderline supernatural, actually would have been an interesting segue into a ghost story.
@influx post is so low effort it's hard to tell if they're the one profiting from the content farm or just posted up the first result he found on a quick google search.
I also do not want to highlight the creepy side of remote living because that just attracts the wrong type of attention.
I never appreciated how easy it is for me to find very remote wilderness until I started traveling to other places both in and outside the US. I can take a major US highway over Donner pass, a place that 175 years ago, people were eating each other because they got stuck without food. Now, CalTrans has a fleet of equipment and staff that work 24/7 to keep the road clear 99.9% of the time.
[0]: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/711010main1_...
I feel your pain, every US "prepper" related material I've read or watched leaves me with a hanging "and ...?" or "so... ?"
I'm 60, my father, still alive and splitting wood, was born in 1935 - we're both from the remote corners of western australia, a state 3x the size of Texas with a 2023 population of ~ 2 million most of whom are concentrated about the single large city.
In the mid 1980s a group of people came in from the western desert and were suprised to find that Europeans had landed in Australia and over run the continent ... it was the first they'd heard of such a thing although they had wondered about the contrails across the sky.
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=4.77&lat=-24.5320&l...
Vs: https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=3.87&lat=37.8390&lo...
As of 2019, about 10k (more if you needed extra time).
* Also, I eventually decided that I don't have what it takes to be a competent pilot anyway. I'm sure I could handle rural VFR just fine but my brain is not good at holding and computing multiple values. Anything that requires me to juggle a dozen or more numbers in my brain in order to avoid dying is a no-go unfortunately.) I took up an interest in motorcycles instead.
Can you expand on this? I am a motorcyclist with an interest in flying and based on my idea of what flying involves (at least in not very busy areas) it seems a lot more chill and probably less dangerous than motorcycling. Multiple people try to kill me every day the mental load involved in managing all the hazards is quite high.
It depends on where you ride but the mortality of private pilots is comparable to riding when messuring risk vs hours of exposure. I don't have time to fetch the data right now but I recall that from when I was looking into getting a bike.
The risks are very different, pilots die from lack of preparedness, riders are at the whim of traffic and their moment to moment risk taking behavior.
Flying VFR is probably similar in a lot of ways. You have lots of visual references to go by and with experience can tell if you're on the right heading, too high, too low, too fast, etc. This is why I haven't ruled out buying an ultralight some day when I'm retired.
But in lots of cases, and especially when flying IFR, you have to juggle a lot of things all at once just to keep from dying. A GA aircraft might have dozen gauges and those are only the most immediately important things to worry about. Altitude, heading, air speed, engine RPMs, hours of fuel, ATC frequencies, etc. Many flight parameters have a current value, but most also have safe minimum and safe maximum values which change dramatically depending on the phase of flight.
Lots of people have the ability to mentally manage all the parameters of the airplane itself and its position in the sky, and also be able to do it consistently and safely. But my brain just doesn't work like that. I have trouble holding one or two numbers in my head for more than a minute. It would be incredibly stressful if I had to hold dozens of them in my head at once and my LIFE depended on not forgetting or accidentally swapping them around. I know my limits and for better or worse, this is one of them.
The easiest way is the slowest way, two hours a weekend or so over a year or so, you'll end up with many more flight hours before your license, but arguably more prepared.
Also, support the EAA! They're basically the EFF/FSF of aviation, AOPA/NBAA/ALPA etc are all shitty industry groups that want to make aviation as inaccessible to the ordinary person as possible.
1. Two years ago our basement flooded a week after we bought the house. I ended up tearing out the now-saturated carpet and put in vinyl plank flooring. Mainly straight forward but requires planning and at some points tricky sawing. It's cool when people come in and un-prompted say "wow that's a great floor you have here"
2. Maybe 4 years ago, I completely disassembled and repaired a through-wall heating and cooling unit in our NYC apartment because it wasn't producing a lot of air. Previously, repairmen came out and said it was working as normal and just wasn't meant to produce more air. This taught me a lot about electronics, HVAC, testing, and shopping at vendor-supply stores. People are shocked that a civilian was able to do this repair.
EDIT: I'll add one more:
3. Replacing the screen on my Pixel 6 Pro. It fell out of my pocket while biking, and although it wouldn't have been the end of the world to just get a replacement, I thought it would be fun to try and repair. I normally stayed away from stuff like that because I didn't want to deal with removing/applying adhesives but it was really not a big dea.
I remember Citi-biking over the 59th street bridge to pick up stuff ~ first capacitors, eventually a motor - which is what ended up being the real issue.
The store got a kick out of working w me at first but I think they eventually found it annoying. I suspect repair-folks don't do a lot of returns. EG - if they buy a capacitor and then it's not what was wrong, they end up keeping it for another job whereas I retired it. Also, when I bought the motor that was the manufacturer specified replacement, it wasn't a perfect match for some other part of the unit. I had to bike back to the store and the guy gave me some bushings (which solved the issue) but real repair people would probably know that the shaft thickness changed on that motor and carry some bushings around anyway.
So yeah they were fine to do business with me but they normally deal with large-size orders probably, so my stuff was "cute" but most certainly not a priority for them.
When you own a home and have the time, there are some tasks that will save you a bunch because they are labor intensive but material costs are low. Also if you live in an area where people hire everything out you'll find shortages of contractors and high prices.
Aside: I wish I could smack whoever did the wiring in my home. They saved a few dollars on a breaker, but if I run my AVR/TV + Microwave (in adjacent kitchen) and the lights are on in the summer, it blows the breaker. And there's a dozen spaces on the box still available even.
At the end of the day the problem was the evaporator blower motor. It was insidious because it certainly worked and moved air around, but it was something like a 3 speed motor and the 2nd speed was failing and not moving enough air around, hence the icing and not producing enough air, something like that.
I don't know if the EPA test has changed in the decade since I took it, but it was very easy for me to get the cert needed to buy refrigerants myself. I found an A/C supply store that administered the tests, found a study guide on the internet, ready the study guide in half an hour, took the test. Now apparently you can do the test online whereas I had to go to the store.
Police in the US are not governed by the UCMJ and have no affirmative obligations in the way military do. They are also civilians under the Geneva convention.
A professional police force only goes back about 200 years.
I read this like a joke that the far right of his touchscreen doesn't work anymore and can't type the letter "L"
Also enclosed a garage at a prior house, turning it into an office. Sub-breaker, lighting, etc.
Haven't been able to do much at my current house since the fireplace as my physical health is less than stellar. On the small repairs, I just can't handle those, I had trouble reading small text and not much dexterity before the tiny ribbon cables in modern laptops and phones. If it's beyond a sodimm or m2 slot, I'm out.
It took about 5 years to build (on and off) and I say "built" but I actually bought a large part of the hull of the boat to start; however, somewhere around 90% of the boat by mass is stuff that I've made entirely myself or worked on significantly, so I'd still say I built it.
Because the title specifically asked for cool: I've built a lot of other serious physical things in my life but the boat somehow has some serious cool power. When I started throwing parties on it I expected a somewhat modest reception - it's a medium sized steel boat, not a superyacht - but for some reason it's attracted the coolest other people: composers, neuroscientists, filmmakers, martial artists, costume designers, makeup artists for movies, a super unique crowd. Obviously you can't fit that many people on a boat the size of mine, so we're talking 10-25 people per party, but each one is unique and some nights when the music, liquor and conversations are flowing I feel as if I have constructed the International Prototype of the Cool.
Anyway, if anyone wants to come see it in person, my final boat party of the summer is this Friday-Saturday the 11th-12th in Rotterdam, my email's in my bio :)
Inside (excluding cockpit): http://owenversteeg.com/boatinterior1.jpg
Inside 2 (again cockpit invisible): http://owenversteeg.com/boatinterior2.jpg
Party photos are only for the guests, although with five thousand addressable LEDs, over 100 lasers, multiple underwater lights, moving programmable head lights, a fog machine and more it looks amazing, certainly wish I could share!
Videos:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Stanko/retro-frame/dev/ret...
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Stanko/retro-frame/dev/ret...
I wanted something that has a feel of an art object and sits on the shelf, rather than being a smart object that you can control with an app.
The whole thing is open source and you can make it yourself:
https://github.com/Stanko/retro-frame
Disclaimer - This was my first ever python project and I just made it work. ATM a friend of mine is helping me refactor everything. Repo also needs images of a new wooden frame I made.
Edit: Formatting.
I've since moved on from that job, but it's a very cool resume item. It's also a pretty cool shameless self promotion thing to point out when I need to.
Was asked by an executive why I should run a hardware development effort at my current company and my pitch was: "Because I've designed and shipped more circuit boards than everyone else at this 500 person company combined. You probably own some of them." Turns out that said executive just got his new house wired with Sonos Amps.
Since I mostly work from home these days, I've done some fun little projects around radio just to prove that I can. I made a little AM receiver with 74xx series logic inspired by a post I saw on HN, and now I'm working on a digitally tuned FM receiver with a Si5351 as LO and an STM32 as controller/HMI.
It's fun to drive around and see F150 doors and Subaru seats and Toyota mirrors and BMW center consoles and on and on that I assembled.
Or rather, that machines running code I wrote assembled a small part of. It's definitely a different feeling of satisfaction when a machine I was a critical part of for a few weeks years ago churns out value while I sleep versus something I made with my hands and hand tools which would take an identical amount of time to repeat.
The ecosystem is nice _currently_ but do you think the hardware+software will be useable in 5,10,15 years from now? Do you think it could be liberated software wise. Thinking about this because I am contemplating moving my vinyl setup to Sonos as well.
I suspect it was a lot of fairly self-interested resume padding for some PM resumes. Nobody there was going to make their next career move as "innovators" shipping a technology that'd been perfected for fortyish years before them.
I think you'd be out of luck in most cases anyway, as we almost always used I2S as our audio interface of choice. If we didn't have a use for the RX line (i.e. The audio input line) of the I2S interface, it generally wasn't broken out of the SoC fanout.
What's more: we didn't generally enable driver support for I2S receive in products that didn't use it. There simply isn't a use for it.
Furthermore, you probably wouldn't be able to modify the app stack to use that data if you somehow did figure out all the needed kernel mods. Sonos deployed Secure Boot and signed app updates starting in 2013, because they realized they were potentially selling a botnet for hire if they didn't have a good way to secure their players.
I think there was a dedicated Sonos line-in unit that was cheaper than the Amp, but I can’t recall its name.
https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/use-line-in-on-sonos
Our app usability sucked then (and still does now), but plenty of our products met and exceeded ten or fifteen year lifetimes.
One of the biggest issues we faced when I was there was trying to support devices shipped in 2002 that didn't have enough RAM to run features being shipped in 2016! Newer products shouldn't have that issue. They ship with tooooons of RAM for fear of that situation popping up again.
https://www.instructables.com/Cheaper-Sonos-Architectural-Wi...
https://news.ohsu.edu/2018/03/08/have-an-artificial-heart
I've also been part of (or lead) the design teams of several LVADS (one of which is in the Smithsonian), a dialysis machine (Outset), a surgical navigation camera for NuVasive, and most recently a couple soft tissue surgical robotics systems. First, Ottava from Auris/Verb/J&J, and most recently the Maestro from Moon Surgical: https://www.moonsurgical.com/
I can't decide which is coolest, Oregon Heart or Moon Surgical. What do you think?
P.S. I also completely re-plumbed our old home in Golden, CO both fresh and black. Including personally jackhammering up the basement floor, digging a 5ft trench across the whole basement and replaced the sewer pipe and roughing in a full bath I the basement before covering it all back up.
Unfortunately the CEO was a career academia finance guy and this was his first startup. He wasn't good with their money, and spent it all, much on "side projects" and other stuff not directly related to the development and financing of the pump, before he was able to raise more. The project was also heavily associated with and funded in part by OHSU's Heart Transplant program which has had its own problems over the last few years: https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2019/07/deaths-at-ohsu-hea...
The architect of it, the guy who just thought it up, is brilliant. I chose to work at OregonHeart to have the opportunity to work with, and learn from him. Dr Richard Wampler is wonderful, one of those old school American treasures. When he was a kid he took apart his families car engine because he was curious, his mom got upset and he put it all back together before his dad got home.
He first envisioned, architected and got going: What eventually became the HeartWare HVAD, way before it was heartwarming (it was Kriton). Some crazy business history here if you want to read more, it's like a soap opera. Thoratec HM II (he helped but didnt architect it I believe) Oregon Heart VADovations And the first one, the Hemopump which J&J bought and threw in the trash, only to buy what is essentially the same device 30 years later in their acquisition of Abiomed and their impella devices.
There is so much fascinating history in this field. They even made a totally mechanical (no electronics whatsoever) artificial heart using the thermal decay of plutonium to power a sterling engine.
P.P.S. I have more info about these, and all the other projects I've worked on on my website at www.iancollmceachern.com
I know, sounds lame but this is all I can remember. :D
Sounds kind of cool listed out like that but it was a shit ton of work, it's still not fully done and as I was an absolute beginner with limited time a lot of things are half-assed or have to be redone at some point. I quit my job shortly after buying the house (for unrelated reasons) and took a year long sabbatical but it still wasn't long enough enough time. People warning you about renovations like this should be taken seriously.
If instead of buying this house cheap and doing this renovation, I probably could've just taken a job at a bank or some big tech co in Amsterdam and afforded the same or even nicer a year or two later. Though, with the housing market being as it is the timing was super favourable for me financially. It's also kind of neat to live in a turn of the century house with all sorts of modern amenities like radiant heating, thick insulation and HRE balanced ventilation.
But if you're uncertain, find a trusted friend or hire someone.
Plumbing waste water is the one that skeeves me out.
Being very smart, he was sure he was in the right, so I hear he fought with the city for years over it, in the meantime layering on his home-grown solar and biomass gasification generator. I'm not sure if he ever got back in compliance.
I would encourage anybody going this route to have early discussions with a licensed electrician. A lot of code compliance stuff is non-obvious. It's what you get when you start with smart people and then add a hundred years of experience.
I do my own wiring too; it's not hard to do this safely in most of Europe.
The electrical wiring you shouldn't do if you're not serious about electrical safety, and not reverent to the industry standards. I read the Dutch standards for electrical wiring, but it's actually hard to do it wrong if you have a small house and no complications like solar panels because building stores don't even sell wrong materials.
I agree with the other person, the plumbing was definitely more error prone. Who knew that PVC glue has a (very) limited shelf life after opening?
Aside: Do you have a handy link to those standards?
> it's actually hard to do it wrong [...] building stores don't even sell wrong materials.
It's quite easy to get it wrong, e.g. buy stranded instead of solid wire, then plug it into a wago connector.
I don't think I've seen stranded wire at the Hornbach. Of course you could do it wrong if you buy your wire in entirely the wrong section, and don't even bother to read the instructions of the wago connectors. I meant it's hard to do it wrong if you're trying to do it right. Hopefully that makes sense :p
If you still have it & don't mind sharing my email's in my profile... :-)
> I meant it's hard to do it wrong if you're trying to do it right[...]
This example came to mind because a friend of mine (we're also both in Amsterdam) got this specific thing wrong, then asked me and a couple of others about melted connectors.
I agree it's generally quite easy, and yeah the "installation" section tends to be separate from where you buy bulk extension cables.
But there's a bunch of small things like that, another common one (which even professional electricians seem to screw up half the time) is reversing which side of the socket live and neutral are on.
For plumbing probably the most common pitfall is knowing which types of connectors should or should not get teflon tape applied.
What do you mean? Like mid way through an install? As far as I'm aware there's no rules about which side the phase should be on, and googling only shows some electricians prefer to have phase on the left side because it's easy to remember and consistency helps with debugging.
Partly this is compatibility between CEE 7/3 and 7/5 and 7/7[1], The Netherlands almost universally using the first.
I have a socket tester designed for Schuko (similar to, but not exactly [2]), it (and AFAICT this is universal among them) enforces "live on the right".
What is definitely standardized us that the wires in your wall should be brown=live and blue=neutral (in the UK and European continent, other places may differ).
Once you start mixing up neutral and live in sockets it'll often lead to a mixup in the wall wiring, as sockets are often used as a starting point to extend wiring. I partially rewired my house to fix that issue, left by an electrician.
As an extra data point, e.g. Jung sells pre-wired sockets which assume that you follow this convention[3]. If you don't you'll end up with reversed wires in your wall, i. e. wires mixed up by color, not just the socket itself violating some convention of live=right.
The photo in [3] is low resolution, so you can't see the tiny "Jung" logo on the inner part of the socket, which indicates which side is up.
1. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:European_plug_and_...
3. https://www.elektramat.nl/jung-dubbel-stopcontact-met-randaa...
Yes, but now you know how to fully renovate a previously-deemed-uninhabitable house.
Many, especially people that make large $ in tech may disagree, but I find this to be extremely valuable knowledge & experience. Tangent, but I experience second hand humiliation & embarrassment when I see an adult paying hundreds into thousands of dollars for something that can be fixed in well under an hour with basic tools.
Here's the clock's homepage, which has some pictures: https://vonnieda.org/tc18, and more pictures on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vonnieda/sets/7215762293577593...
And a blog post that goes into excruciating detail about the entire process: https://vonnieda.org/archives/1406
I built a total of five of them. I sent one to the person who designed the enclosure, one to my brother, one to a friend, one to eBay for sale (which ended up in Germany), and kept one for myself. It still sits on my desk ticking along quite happily. I've changed the backup battery once in 14 years and have made little tweaks to the firmware over the years.
I went to a few audio stores and jerryrigged a portable mic-speaker setup that could attach to his wheelchair. No software, just the right series of devices and adapters. It worked well and provided a huge relief for him and our family. Nothing impressive technically, but definitely the physical thing I'm most proud of making.
His blog, for any curious about his ALS journey: http://cheeseaisle.blogspot.com/
“My statue will be made of guano, highly compressed and polished to resemble marble, commemorating the victory of Bad Taste over Common Sense and Decency.”
Sounds like another great project for this thread!
[0]: https://clcboats.com/shop/boats/kayak-kits/petrel/stitch-and...
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Aleutian-Kayak-Construction-Tradition...
Also, do you find yourself using one or the other of the boats more or less?
Either way/no matter what, fun to see this answer on HN! Thanks!
The Cape Falcon canoe that I built deviates a bit from the design pattern because I wanted a wide and flat bottom with harder edges, similar to a lot of modern Royalex tandem canoes. It's a 16' tandem I think, and even though it is pretty wide, it is still less stable than most canoes. However it is fast and extremely maneuverable in Class III.
Skin on frame is also awesome because when you are loading or unloading a 17' boat in a crowded beach parking lot and smack the bow into the car next to yours, it doesn't do any damage to either car or boat, or so I hear.
Stitch and glue is straightforward but the woodworking part goes fast and then it's just a ton of fiberglass work, i.e. cycles of epoxy and sanding, which is not that enjoyable for its own sake. On the other hand, one of the great parts of skin on frame construction is that other than a short amount of time ripping the ribs on a table saw, the rest is basically quiet and without harsh chemicals, so you don't need earmuffs or a respirator and can listen to music and have a snack/drink.
Stitch and glue will last forever if you protect it from UV, however skin on frame will most likely need to be reskinned in 5-10 years or so.
In a world full of beeping and booping, working with wood, even plywood, is a welcome relief.
a belt-driven windmill to an auto alternator, complete with a household DC circuit providing switchable lights. (thanks Popular Mechanic magazine!)
a 6' multi-stage magnetic-driven projectile launcher complete with a horkage of old TV capacitors.
An amplified passive Ultrasonic sniffer with earphone.
An alarm trip sensor comprised of mirrored lightbeams.
And created/deployed "THE" original credit card reader for a set of gas pumps, later sold to Gasboy, Inc.
Then got wisked away for many other things for a long time.
Now, I am back to experimenting on a portable unidirectional EMP phase.
I'm assuming that these days, and such device would use a generic microcontroller, with most of the interesting logic in the software.
(Insert snarky joke about it also requiring Electron and 16GB of RAM.)
That’s the primary set of part for this card reader as it came from the AKAI M-7 reel-to-reel tape deck that my dad vet sent from Thailand (that I ripped apart).
The rest is machining the new box to hold together the mechanicals and gears. It was big, something like 13”x8”x18”.
Then came the hacking part, which included plenty of social engineering to obtain its data format and then garage-based pattern construction of data bits.
Then came an Intel MCS-48 (8048) …. old, old, but big ICs approach with ADC capability.
Featured it at a Pacific Oil and Gas Conference booth, sold that day in its entirety,
The computer was that selling tippingpoint with this vaunted homemade peripheral part.
I'm not sure what OP means about creating the "original" credit card reader, unless he was working for one the credit card companies rolling out the technology. (Doesn't make any sense to me that they would put magstripes on their cards without selling the readers to merchants too.)
Philips started making compact tape recorder heads in 1963.
Magstrip on credit card has been around since 1969 (American Express) and on bank ATM card since 1971. I got my First Interstate ATM card in 1977 and got to hacking then.
Also, we sold accompanied magnetic cards then as well.
Now that I've scratched the itch I've found that there's a bit of a market for a product like this so I have started a side business to start selling them:
https://www.tesotaoverland.com/product/apds
Feedback so far has been enormously positive. They're not a great fit if you have a ton of equipment or high-current devices but for smaller setups in vans, 4wd vehicles, off-road trailers, etc it really simplifies the installation process.
Speaking as part of your likely market, I'm really not surprised that there is a market. The mainstream RV market seems to be most focused on the kind of person who wants to run their generator every day so they can watch satellite HBO on their big screen TV in a KOA campground every night. The interior design is locked into what a person retiring right now wanted their very first kitchen to look like. So things like off-the-lot solar, or effective laptop connections, or modern interior design is not really a thing.
My main hesitation on starting down your road myself is that I already have a job building things like this, just not on projects of my own choosing.
Its super annoying, and sets you up for an extra couple thousand dollar NRE per product, mandatory minimum cost to be 100% compliant. That cost is the other side of why I'm hesitant. I've got access to tens of thousands of dollars of test equipment at my employer; I don't really have those resources in my basement.
Its a shame that there doesn't appear to be much real testing to see if a device is operating on bluetooth/wifi responsibly, because it is possible to be completely compliant with relevant FCC standards, but then have such a shoddy bluetooth implementation that its still disruptive to everything around.
The top is made out of concrete, and the rest is wood. The propane tank fits inside so it is out of view. I did buy the piping and the grill from where the fire comes out of, but other wise all done in my basement.
Other builds include a kitchen island, a coffee table, and a live-edge standing desk. I think the next thing I want to build is outdoor seating that goes with the firepit.
[0] https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPUzkh4ukWZ7XPD5cPvE1D6...
It's mandated in many places (and for good reason) for indoor fireplaces, chimneys etc.
That's because regular mortar will crack when subjected to roaring fires, and you don't want the heat, fumes or fire itself to escape the chimney.
But e.g. for a fire pit it's usually no big deal, as the outside of the pit is presumably soil, or the open air.
We're talking about mortar here, not concrete. I.e. the "paste" that's put between bricks and other stone work to "glue" it together.
But of course normal bricks are also subject to spalling, but it's very rare that they'll Gail catastrophically, mostly you'll get a crack or two.
Europe's full of old brick houses that cone chimneys that were made before using specialized materials for them was mandated.
You can safely build such structures, they just require building and usage techniques that go along with them, e.g. using a double layer of brick, or gradually heating up the chimney to get the humidity out of the bricks and mortar.
But I think my favorite moment came from the trim I did in the basement. We have been re-doing a lot of our basement and I did all of the trim that is in there now. There is a transition in floor from carpet to tile right near a corner. Looked kind of like this [0] Lots of angles to make everything match up and tiny cuts to finally get it to match up correctly (made more difficult because of course the wall isn't a true 90 degree angle). Turned out really well and looks seamless, but not something most people would ever notice. But one of my friends who is also an avid home DIYer was in my house saw it and said "dude, that trim is fire!". Felt good to have someone recognize the work that went into it.
[0] https://kyimages.kyinbridges.com/baseboard_different_heights...
Some pictures and more details: https://map.simonsarris.com/p/building-the-goose-palace
Late this year I will plant 2000 tulips and daffodils as part of a rose garden I am planning, that begins in earnest next year. I hope it will look nice enough to turn some heads.
I'm currently sitting comfortably inside the structure which I have almost finished enclosing this summer and fitting with some of today's less traditional amenities.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/06/building-a-minimum-viable-l...
First time I've ever built and sold something physical. Amazed at how many people liked them.
My absolute favorite was using the data to project a 3d model of the interior of the welds. Had to learn quaternions which was nearly the death of me, but I'm just glad it worked.
Also agree quaternions are the worst. You should check out n-vectors. Solves most of the same problems and way easier to work with.
They still have the link apparently. The system used traditional manual scanning system with a VGA capture card on the back. I synced that with an off the shelf IR capture system and was able to record the ultrasonic scan into a video file using opencv. I would also record a USB cam at the same time as a sanity check. I could generate point clouds of data by reading the video file and the synced position data to project where the ultrasound was going and the linear response of the scanner. Was a ton of fun to develop and it was nice that I pretty much only had myself to blame when things went wrong. I also had to write the procedure for operation in case someone else had to use it.
This correctly listed the parents. Hard part was linking all the systems together and keeping sync. Did it all in C++ way back when I actually programmed for work. Now I am a PM and code on the side for fun. I'm almost glad I cannot go back and see my code. It produced good data but damn was I a novice.
Well, it was mobile until the axles ripped off on its maiden voyage. Now it's up on skids until I get the courage to throw another $4,000 at new axles (and wheels, tires and leaf springs since I have to go up to the next class).
Some photos at: https://imgur.com/a/em9gBDj
During the build I blogged a bit about the project at: http://seekingsauna.com
My brothers and my dad helped me disassemble a tiny house in someone's backyard in Cambridge in June 2021 during a heat wave: http://seekingsauna.com/building
There were quite a few gotchas, one being that once I installed the rafters I realized I had to reduce the pitch in order to be able to get under New England highway bridges (14 feet): http://seekingsauna.com/roof-snafu
I've been meaning to write about the accident (the axles completely sheared off one side of the trailer) that happened a bit over a year ago but have been too busy enjoying the sauna and working on some other projects!
I was a software dev on one floor of a building working on the platform, and on the floor below us there was a fleet of about 100 of these machines that were producing the notes. Edit: There was a team of folks that maintained and operated these machines. They didn't write the software but without them the API would not have been able to function.
I really enjoyed interacting with these folks when I could. I got to build some QA UIs for them, and I took a lot of satisfaction out of using my knowledge of the platform to make a nice and efficient tool for them. You don't get to talk directly to your users often and it was a very enjoyable project for that reason.
Anyway, for a holiday party, I thought it would be cooler than a photo booth if we could find a way to make the robots draw the people that operated them. "Yeah sure, that would be cool good luck!"
Well, I actually made it work. With grit, determination, duct tape and jQuery I created a UI for generating vector path data from bitmap images so my "robot" could draw them. I hung out in a room and operated the photo booth all night and it was really fun. Nobody at work actually cared in a meaningful way but it was an extremely satisfying project for more than its aesthetic value.
https://facetrace-party.vercel.app
I've figured out multi-pen workflows to do things like maps and really cool repeating pattern geometric artwork, but the project is kind of stuck because my career has been a struggle. I have my own dedicated machine / hardware to free me from the tyranny of the cloud, but turns out the "I'm gonna build it myself" path takes longer than expected. Who would have known?
I love it so much. I can't give up on it, but it really needs more attention than I can dedicate to it. If you think this is cool and you'd like to commission some artwork please get in touch I'd really like to make this happen.
https://www.instagram.com/robotdrawsyou
Re: "Wedding events" Yes! But, the cloud. (see below).
One of the problems with my current workflow is its dependent on not only 1. an internet connection but 2. there is a "cloud" i have to interact with to use my off-the-shelf machine.
I have hardware for a new machine, it will need zero internet and work off the grid with nothing but 110 (maybe 12v?) power.
I haven't spent the time to "put the pieces together" so to speak. It needs a UI that allows control over the execution of the plotter artwork. Stuff that pesky "cloud" sort of does, but separates me enough from that I need to make my own version that allows for necessary control.
I think if I was given the time and space to do the deep work necessary I could get a functional MVP working in 2-3 weeks. The constraints of life mean that I can only give it 30min to 1 hour spurts, and even then those are not consistent at all.
Photographing the artwork has also been a challenge for me. I finally bought a pre-made template that I like so hopefully I can get past all the emotional hangups with my past failures and just move forward with what I have instead of trying to "perfect" it all before launch.
I do a LOT of custom stuff (mechanics, woodworking, house rebuilding, electronics, ...) but this is my favorite one yet, kind of sad I'm bad at showing the stuff I make :D
If you have any idea of what kind of job I could do to make use of all these skills I would be happy to have your thoughts !
The most rewarding part was creating various tools out of wood to build the thing. In the same way that we build tools to make programming easier. I made a little jig so that I could cut all the upright pieces the same dimensions using a circular saw.
Here is an album of photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/whalesalad/albums/721777203103...
I've built a few things out of wood at this point, and my process is largely the same as yours... I start with an idea and a _very_ rough sketch and then just start building. I watch YouTube videos of these people who design every feature and facet in CAD before stepping foot in the workshop and I always wonder where they find the time to do that, and what they do when their plans don't match up with reality.
A full sheet pan cart, like used in bakeries. Eight full sheet pans, lined with silpat nonstick sheets. A 1500 watt wall heater, a home brewing temperature controller, and a crawl space fan controller that looks like it belongs in a stereo stack. Build a plywood box around the whole thing. I had to swap in a less sensitive thermal cutoff to keep the heater from shutting off. Now we can process 60 lbs of tomatoes at a go.
There was a lot to figure out, no equations to help guess scale. I should really document this on a web site, the plans out there are very sketchy and wouldn't accommodate our scale.
- Do you have any pictures? - How do you store the dehydrated tomatoes? - How do you use the dehydrated tomatoes in meals?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip641WmY4pA
It's got a round LCD on the front of the knob (wired and supported via the hollow shaft of the motor) and uses the flex of the PCB and strain gauge sensors (in the latest revision, simply SMD resistors whose resistance changes when stretched) to detect when the knob is pressed down.
It's open source hardware and software - https://github.com/scottbez1/smartknob
HN folks might appreciate that it communicates with host software on the computer via protobuf-encoded USB serial messages -- nanopb is awesome for embedded C protobuf support, and having the defined schema, autogenerated serialization code, and compile-time type safety is so much nicer than ArduinoJson or hand-written binary protocols!
I'd love to get it hooked up to some real software eventually (video editors or home-assistant control are my 2 main ideas), but it's really just been a fun project to tinker with and try out some new ideas and parts I've never used before.
I also roast coffee. I exclusively buy green to roast for myself and friends and haven't bought roasted coffee in over a year!
I learned to sew and made a frame bag or two for my bike, and have made some shorts, pants, working on some skirts.
I keep fresh water planted aquariums and have learned to set those up. they are fun and very pretty.
I struggle with creative projects, so these types of things above - skilled, short projects, I guess - are my bread and butter. I'm learning guitar again but I'm not very musically creative either so we'll see how it goes this time.
https://bikepacking.com/gear/how-to-make-a-bikepacking-frame...
honestly I think just getting stuff like corners and seam allowances dialed, frame bags (with minimal features) are super fun and easy. I order my tech fabric from seattlefabrics but ripstop by the roll is pretty popular too. it's worth getting a nylon swatch to see all the fabrics next to each other because of all the fabric stores I've been to, almost none have tech fabric.
if you don't have a machine, it's worth going to a store. I tried the thrift store and got one running but the feed dogs were broken. I've only ever had amazing experiences at sewing stores asking for help or guidance.
I built a Galton Board to demonstrate the Central Limit Theorem, I want to re-do it in all-acrylic and aluminum at some point and add an automated mechanism.
These days I build small motorized microscopes and use them to track tardigrades using an object detector. When the tardigrade moves, the detector detects the center of the tardigrade and moves it to the center of the image. This tracks tardigrades for hours at a time!
Ultimately, I'd like to make interesting nanoscale systems but the scope is as far as I've got.
It was a huge labor of love and took a lot of faith from the owners of the space - faith I feel was rewarded, because it's been running for almost 3 years now and it still gets a cheer from the crowd when it kicks over into party mode.
- stencil: https://github.com/azriel91/dove_stencil/
- wings tucked: https://github.com/azriel91/dove_stencil/blob/main/photos/20...
Made this because one of my friends said she liked things with character, and I knew that a handmade soft toy wasn't "enough", and so letting it tuck its wings was that character.
2. Many ambigrams (words that when rotated upside down, read as the word). These ones are names for friends / acquaintances
- blog: https://cards.azriel.im/
- different names: https://cards.azriel.im/2018/09/kevin-fiona.html
- colour inversion: https://cards.azriel.im/2018/01/carlo.html
I still make them occasionally, just haven't updated the blog
edit: ah it's not markdown, links were codified
I created what I think is a novel painting technique that I have now made significant iterative improvement on over the last 4 or so years. I now have a large portfolio of medium-large scale paintings using this technique.
https://www.instagram.com/kemendoart/
The technique is a variation of a "fresco" which is applying watercolor to fresh plaster. This is a very old method that tends to survive long periods because it is making a material/mineral change in the composite medium in a way that embeds pigments into plaster - making it durable to degradation in ways that other methods aren't.
I take this further by blending the pigment into water and then adding lime plaster so that the plaster itself is pigmented, and then you work with the pigmented plaster much like you would work with oil on canvas. I make my own wooden frame "canvases" by hand and have had to deal with warping and cracking.
The challenges are numerous and there's nobody to follow or ask for help or advice because as far as I'm aware nobody has developed a practice for this. In many cases I've had to make my own pigment (For example I ground up Kingsford Charcoal for black pigment on "Untitled 7" which gave it more of a concrete texture)
The biggest challenge however is with pigments - not only are they hard to make and expensive to buy - but when mixing with lime plaster they get IMMEDIATELY washed out so that bright and bold colors are extremely hard to make.
I am currently working on my latest piece and this thread made me upload my latest progress to show: https://www.instagram.com/p/CvptIU1urzD/
In order to get the depth of pigment I want I am experimenting with soaking my unset plaster with tons of pigmented water. So far it's working!
My next set of experiments is to figure out a new frame material that will not decompose faster than the plaster. My fear is that in a 100 years the wood will have degraded and that will cause the whole thing to fall apart, so I need to figure out how to get the plaster to adhere to stone somehow.
These kind of artists seem to only use quartz or other "smooth" acrylic plasters and pigments that don't have the same structure and are generally thin and temporary (less than 20 years expected age) - so not limestone the same kind of lime aggregates like tadelakt which is what I use.
I'm attempting to make something that can last 2000+ years - somewhere between an oil painting and a marble sculpture.
If you cut into it then you may or may not get different colors depending on where you slice. In that sense it’s not much different mechanically than oils, just with way more depth.
Thanks for asking!
What's great is not only that you get to eat the results, but whether it turns out well or badly, you get to repeat it all over again--and again, and again, and again.
Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35961590
Croissants are damn hard.
How does it work exactly? Does the use pluck the strings while the machine turns the knobs?
It might raise from the dead with a non-traditional guitar design like a headless guitar where the mass of the automatic tuners could be hidden inside the guitar body.
Many details in the house use reclaimed/salvaged lumber (fake box beams on the ceiling, deep window sills in every window, wood paneling, fireplace mantel, pantry shelves, etc).
I had construction skills at the start of the project due to my dad who is a contractor. But through the project I started doing some finer woodworking and ended up with some hand tool woodworking skills and was able to all the trim: recessed baseboard (bent around curves some places), door casings, window details, some custom cabinetry, etc.
I watched some YT series about dirt buildings covered with plaster and that was fascinating.
Also an e-ink display that shows my calendar (and home power usage):
https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-the-timeframe/
Also a LED stick that lets you add images to photos in the real world:
https://www.stavros.io/posts/behold-ledonardo/
And a toy bus that shows you when the next real bus is coming:
https://www.stavros.io/posts/bus-stop-bus/
A 3D-printer-etched PCB: https://www.stavros.io/posts/make-pcbs-at-home/
Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CrT5HqKP2ts/?utm_source=ig_web_c...
Bonus: Built a new set of tweeter for my old pair of speakers, and look and sound beautiful! https://www.printables.com/model/518598-bw-cdm-7nt-tweeter-a...
https://ibb.co/PQ38tcG https://ibb.co/tXv9dsy https://ibb.co/3FXR4Vn
Also, congratulations!
Congratulations on your impending arrival!
* 2-axis camera gimbal - my first fully 3d-printed design. I will try to use this for astrophotograhy target tracking when the weather permits but I haven't been able to actually field test this yet: https://photos.app.goo.gl/a7VxYy77NaH48XP56
A work in progress but I'm building a modular synthesizer. I've built the power supply and have the VCO started on a strip board. Planning on adding some bits to that, making a step sequencer, and some filters.
Yes, absolutely! :)
I ended up taking the semester class that met twice a week for an evening. Had an overview of bike design, light overview of drafting, and used a 1:1 frame drawing on paper. Handy to be able to hold up the frame you are working on up to the paper. It was fun to go from a pile of bike tubes to a usable bike frame. The meeting of 4 tubes at the bottom bracket had a surprisingly complicated interface. I'm glad I sprung for the powder coating at some bike frame aware place, maybe Cycle Art?
Recommended if you get the chance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHrWllxRLgQ
Wrote the step-by-step and uploaded the code onto Instructables, it's still there ~15 years later:
https://www.instructables.com/How-To-Make-Two-Daft-Punk-Outf...
I made them with my girlfriend (now wife/co-founder) for my 30th, was lots of fun.
- Most of the furniture and art [1] that I've made. I'm a very analytical person and physical creative outlets where I just create things that "feel good" really help me unwind... Even if those projects are pretty difficult for my often times rudimentary skills. There's a small gallery on my personal website.
- My own company [2] that makes titanium hand-blown glassware for whisky and spirits. They're made in Europe, so I don't personally craft them, but the glasses are my design and I learned how to 3D print prototypes - so "made" might vary based on your definition. Tangible things are just really cool and grounding.
It's interesting because rally involves a large rule set for safety, and you also have to make the car survive harsh conditions.
Had to do body work, replaced and rebuilt a couple engines, and redid a lot of the wiring. I did it in a rented RV parking lot. I would take the engine hoist out of storage, assemble it at the lot, and then tear down everything at the end of the day and do it again.
Did a lot of rallycrosses, rally sprints, and a couple stage rallies that it DNFd due to mechanical failures on the last stage on both events. Very frustrating, but that's rally :)
At one point it did a stage with the temp gauge pegged at 400F. The co-driver and I were standing around in start control for the next stage while it idled, and I looked down at the temp gauge (mounted bottom center console) and saw the reading and was concerned - do I shut it off? Will it start back up? This was 12hrs into the event, so I was super tired.
The answer was surprisingly yes, and we fixed the cooling system for the next stage, but it broke halfway and eventually the freeze plugs blew out and we stopped due to concerns of hot steam coming into the cabin.
It drove off the trailer the next day! Headgasket blew across every cylinder.
New head and we entered in HDT. It did okay, but then the rear suspension fell out (!) On the last stage of 1st day. We spent so much time on the front it never occurred to us to check the rear suspension mounts...
When I entered that event I asked the co-driver what he thought and then tried to close his door, but it would not latch. Had to rebuild the mechanism before tech that morning. Foreshadowing at its best.
I think I'll stick to cars made in this century.
I built all modules from scratch with my own circuit designs too. Mostly novel designs, especially in oscillators and filters. A lot of JFETs being used to control voltages, amplitudes, etc. It was unstable and non-linear but had its charm :)
I designed and 3D printed everything myself including the circuit board, and overall it was a really fun project to work on. There were some areas I could have been more accurate to what the in game model looks like but maybe in a version 2.
It’s a cool thing that sits on my desk and does not leave the house.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/csgo/comments/10vvupj/i_made_a_repl...
The idea was simple: when the sun comes up, chime.
It would charge up the battery during the day, lose current over night, and when current came back in the morning it would spin up a magnet using the motor (hidden under a platform) which would then cause the chime to activate (after attaching a magnet to the central chime string).
The whole thing resembled a flower in a pot, with a wind chime hanging off it.
After I finished, a guy came up to ask what it was. He and I were both a bit delirious as it was 6 or 7am after a long night of hacking. I demoed the solar chime and he exclaimed: “wow, it’s like analog to digital to analog!”
I now thing about most things that way.
1. I'm a bit of a klutz
2. I'm somewhat of a perfectionist-closeted-as-a-realist-for-money kind of person, so physical things that I make/do never scratch that "must be perfect" itch.
...I almost never make anything physical (other than food? Is that cheating?). However!
First tiny backstory: Around 5 years ago I had a Clevo shitbox laptop for gaming (all I could afford then). It was loud and overheated (obviously). It was back in the "desktop replacement" days when there was a weird trend craze of putting desktop GPUs and CPUs into huge laptops, at the peril of...everyone?
So after a few months of having it, I decided to integrate an AIO water cooler "onto" (into?) it.
From a Youtube videos I learned the ins-and-outs of molex, lapping copper (how to not breath in ultra toxic metal dust was a welcome bonus), 12V and 24V switching power supplies, soldering, wire stripping, etc., then I just stuck the AIO cooler on with thermal adhesive, hooked it all up with a nice rocker switch and electric wizbangs, and I had a cute little switchable AIO cooler for my gaming laptop.
It looked gross, but actually resulted in a ~10% gaming perf boost and made it a lot more quiet (the AIO was taking a tonne of heat from the CPU where most of the heat and gaming bottlenecks came from.
It really did look hilarious. It was a fun story when guests came round for food/drinks/whatever; I would often get asked about what the heck it even is, as it just looked like some kid hot-glue-gunned a bunch of random wires, fans, and boxes to the back and under-side of a laptop.
Another other one would be a split keyboard, for which I designed and built everything (case, pcb, plate, software) from scratch.
which style keeb did you make? :D
As for the keyboard, it is a split arisu style keyboard: https://fosstodon.org/@TT_392/109920314230277590
With each new product, I try to add a new skill to it. So for my stash boxes [1] (I've only made 3 so far -- all prototypes), I have an "air-tight" lid that requires being within 0.001-inches, and the lid incorporates a rolling tray on the underside, so you open it, flip it over, it reseats inside the box, and you have a stable tray to grind you herbs and roll a joint. I haven't figured out mass production on it yet, though, so each one takes me about 2 hours of work, and none of them are perfect, but that is the fun part of it. Figuring out how to make something is easy, figuring out how to make it more than once and quickly is a challenge.
How I keep my wood from over expanding and shrinking is by using aged woods. My red cedar (what my stash box is made of) was cut down multiple years ago and stored at my grandfathers sawmill, it was then milled 2 years ago to 3/4 rough. I hold them in my shop for over a year before I plane them, then another 6+ months before I use them. All that time, the moisture has stabilized (theoretically), so the only expansion and contraction would be through temperature, which has a much smaller effect than moisture.
I have had some of my wood products expand in shipping, but after a week of them sitting in a person's home, they will be back to normal. That was my vape cart holders. So after a few people said when they arrived they couldn't use them. I started milling them a little looser.
I'd be super impressed if anyone knew my name ;-) (Fred Jiran would know me) (plus, I was hired by Boeing in 1985 and worked in MR&D Composite Primary Structures)
P.S. G. Michael Huffman is a BFL (big fat liar). He came on after Dave and I completed the aircraft, INCLUDING the landing dolly. Actually, I give 95% credit to Dave there, he did most of the final work, since he was a registered A&P.
Being young I thought I had discovered free energy, so I set about making this. I carefully setup an experiment in the school fume cupboard, and then experimented with different container radius until I was able to setup an oscillating standing wave. I then put styrofoam that had magnitized nails on the surface, held in place by copper coils wrapped around plastic hollowed out pens, and the vertical motion of the floating styrofoam magnetized nails induced a small current in the coils.
My chemistry teacher then spent a good few days explaining to me why the chemical reaction runs out eventually and how the laws of conservation of energy worked. It was an amazing learning experience and sparked a lifelong interest in chemistry.
The virus was specifically missing the ability to replicate, but it did have the ability to infect cells in a dish. That means it was just BSL-2 stuff. Our lab studied cancer, so we'd mostly infect them with cancer-causing things like a mutated PI3K that would fluoresce so we could track it in the cell with a microscope. If people are curious, we'd mostly work with lentivirus.
It's a dream of mind to make some of the cool sorts of mechanical things people are posting here. I have multiple drawers with arduinos and components, but so far my projects hit a wall because of my lack of skill hehe. Practice makes perfect!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBo1DvKzRJ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLU4RPWjTY8
(we'd never tested it before the day, so we didn't realize the train wheels wouldn't fit over the brake calipers... so no brakes lol)
It was very simple to use, completely automated, took no maintenance other than loading some paper every few hours, and people were free to print as many high-quality 10x15cm photos as they wanted, and if I recall correct, that number was somewhere in the region of 200. There's something special about a physical print compared to seeing a picture on a screen.
The reason I think it's cool is because even 5 years later, I still visit friends and family and see photos printed from the photobooth framed on their walls, and I've had multiple friends use it for their weddings too!
I think the advantage of keeping it unmanned and simple was that older couples had a bit more confidence to get up, press one big button, and get a photo without any fuss. We had an actual wedding photographer there too, and they got plenty of wonderful photos, but mostly of the wedding party. It's only been a few years since my wedding, but unfortunately, some older guests are no longer with us, and the photobooth has left us with some wonderful photos to remember them by, which otherwise I don't think we'd have.
Very DIY, bit in my rather biased option, very cool.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/ONFa9AU.jpg (the photobooth in action)
[2] https://i.imgur.com/DcldyHV.jpg (my wife and I taken using photobooth - we still have the damn ring of ivy floating round the house!)
One of my neighbors recently had their move away to college and him and his wife were finally throwing out some of his old things. There was enough things to make them a nice three string using bits of an old desk and a metal arts and craft box.
Gave them them the completed guitar around Thanksgiving and they ended up giving it to their son, who had started playing guitar while at away at school, for a Christmas gift.
I like to think he'll continue to own, and use, those small bits of his childhood as he moves further into adulthood.
(Credit goes mostly to my friend for the construction, though it was my idea and I placed the lettering by hand.)
My family uses it everyday.
No seriously, it was a model suspended above a maglev bed. I then added an Arduino, MP3 player IC, and IR detector so that it played BTTF quotes as you walk past.
I've also repurposed an old 2.1 gaming chair hifi into an all in 1, custom "T" shape 3d printed gun metal/copper case, base speaker underneath, left right on top, controls in middle.
Or maybe making a traditional bow. Identifying types of wood, reading the grain, and turning it into a bow is interesting. I think most people have this concept that wood is this rigid thing, but seeing a traditional bow on a tillering tree is something else.
It's so satisfying to watch them grow and to show progress... even if I have killed a few on accident.
>Any stick will do for a bow, but an arrow must be perfect.
I've made a couple --- one of my most successful was a Decurve-reflex hickory-backed hickory Flatbow:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/paleoplanet69529/decurve-ref...
I also documented the process on this 'Shoes from scratch'series on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1gv5yv3DoZNdz-LJFykg6mMf...
It's just not that particular one that's biblically famous.
On of the nicest switches out there are worn in with time, so I created a machine that wore them in by pressing them multiple times. Never got to finish it but used it quite a bit:
Software may become involved. i'm playing with ideas for adding temp / humidity sensors and putting the fan's speed under the control of something that switches it based on time and those sensor readings. The in/out vent baffles could be actuated by servos. It completely lacks blinkenlights, which deficiency keeps me from showing it off more.
At first I was making software while selling my device on the side. The feedback from patients and practitioners was so encouraging that I couldn’t bear to keep making software despite the generous compensation.
The majority of the device is 3D-printed and the remainder is formed in 3D-printed molds. I have over a dozen printers and one full-time employee keeping them going. Hoping the business will make enough to start paying me, too!
Watching her deploy her code to production for the first time...absolutely the most incredible feeling I've ever had. Way cooler than when I deployed my own code to production for the first time.
I'd be proud of her no matter what career she chose. But there's something absolutely amazing about being a part of your child's journey from crawling to coding.
Made only from components locally available in Zambia.
I feel like I got to split and parallelize my life four ways (I still count!) so I can do more of the things I always wanted to do.
I did have a co-maker, wasn’t all me!
In middle school we had an egg drop competition where we needed to make a device that would allow a raw egg to survive a fall from the ladder on the back of a fire truck. The device was subject to various limitations like not having a parachute or an engine.
Everyone else had these elaborate contraptions with springs and whatnot. My solution was a bunch of egg cartons bound together with twine. I made it in half an hour. It was the only one that survived the first round.
I think you could have dropped it out of a plane.
Survived the initial 2 story drop, then a 5 story drop. Then being heaved as high as possible by the athletics coach off the 5 story drop.
Only broke when it got slung around so hard that the tape came off and the egg came out midair.
Long story short - Eggs like being compressed on all sides. You will win drop tests this way.
A few years ago, I launched Bedtime Bulb [0], a light bulb meant to be used before sleep. Since then, my team has reached 10s of thousands of customers, and the reception has been overwhelmingly positive.
It hasn't all been rosy, however. We learned a lot from customers about where the product fell short and what features were missing. We had to pull the product from some markets due to performance issues. We learned the hard way about customs issues, damage in shipping, and much more.
Unfortunately, hardware has long and expensive iteration cycles. But my biggest advice would be to stick with it and continue to learn if you have some feedback from the market that this could be successful. My biggest role models both went through long periods of failure: James Dyson's 5,000+ prototypes and Tony Fadell's years of building ahead-of-their-time products.
And stick with it we did. We are going to release a new version of the bulb in coming months that fix all the issues of the previous product, as well as introduce some new features we think will move the lighting space forward. And we are combining our vision and additional feature requests to release even more advanced products.
It's been around more than 15 years in various forms now, but people still love playing it. If you're in London it is at https://www.novelty-automation.com/
But I like yours better, it's more fun.
Embrace Octopus Sweater https://www.ravelry.com/projects/cristoperb/embrace-octopus-...
Handsome Chris Pullover https://www.ravelry.com/projects/cristoperb/the-handsome-chr...
Some day, I look forward to building a guitar and a telescope, either of which have the potential to take that title away from my dining table, but that will be several years down the road for me.
This minimalist "speaker table" has integrated full-range drivers and subwoofer:
A Raspberry Pi running a Mac emulator:
It's really cool to see your work improve an instrument. That's now my favourite guitar to play. Pretty low action with zero buzz, pickups can give me everything from full dynamics and great range, to easily distortable power solos.
I'm now in the process of building a new guitar with a 3D printed body. I bought an unfinished neck, so I'm also learning about applying lacquer which is interesting.
Turns out making a bunch of nanometer-scale straight metal lines one a flat surface is a lot harder than you would think.
The other thing I built is more of a lifehack living with sleep apnea. My CPAP's humidifier failed, and instead of replacing it with another proprietary humidifier, I bought an external CPAP humidifier[1] and then realized I could, with some clever plumbing, rig up a water pump from an external gallon jug of water to automatically re-fill my humidifier in the morning at the push (and hold) of a button. I took an oxygen-insertion tee, 12v pump, and some tubing and a check valve and attached the pump to the oxygen line on one of the inlets of the humidifier chamber. When you push the button, water flows through, through the check valve, and immediately down into the chamber.
Here's a snapshot of an early test: https://i.imgur.com/vund22E.png
It's been tweaked a little bit since then but it's my FAVORITE thing on my nightstand now. (And yes - that is a recalled DreamStation 1 - I personally opened it and repaired the defect foam myself. I don't trust the replacement device they sent me any farther than harvesting the motor from it when my old machine fails.)
[1] https://www.fphcare.com/us/homecare/sleep-apnea/cpap-devices...
My girlfriend used to do research with rats — she asked for a "Spliter" Clanrat.
Besides of a few smaller crafts, I did most of it myself A and with some help of the family and friends.
But I'm still pretty proud of it. This was my corona project.
It worked. The rocket actually launched from underwater! But by the time it reached the surface, the drag of the water had ripped two of the fins off, so the in-air portion was pretty wild. We even caught the whole thing on 8mm film (this was in the early 90s).
* a bowl made out of copper, with a fitting lid
* a three-legged stool
* a very fine pair of salad servers, plus a wooden letter opener
* my own apron (sewn on a mechanical sewing machine)
* a bowl made out of cherry tree
If you count perishable items, probably my semolina soufflee :-)
* long hours
* since the school didn't believe in failing students, everybody was kept in class, and the teachers had to do lots of repetitions to accommodate unmotivated students who remembered nothing from the past two years of classes. Very boring and demotivating for others.
Ultimately I'm going to live in this RV and work remotely as I travel.
* Got and learned how to use a 3D printer
* Learned parametric CAD in Fusion 360 to design the main assemblies that the motors, slip rings, and propeller attaches to.
* Learned how to design PCBs and had them made
* Re-learned soldering and did SMD soldering for the first time
* Learned some ESP32 programming to control it with bluetooth (I have plans to have a robust live-editor so you can control the light patterns from a tablet - currently on pause)
System to monitor crystallization/freezing of ice in 2-5nm diameter pores within silica (coated on molybdenum mirror) by infrared absorption (https://lylegordon.ca/researchoverview.jpg).
Micro-rheometer to measure viscosity of samples as small of 3uL of liquid (this was an improvement on a NIST design that didn't require calibration of capillary diameter)
Porosimeter to measure active (flow through) pore size (5-50nm) in tiny membranes that only flow a few microliters per minute of helium (gas).
Custom time-resolved pycnometer to measure flow rates of membranes attached to a closed volume, detect leaks, and measure the internal volume.
I made a bed-desk combo when I was 16 which was similarly robust but that time modulated through my dad's sense of 'less would be more here'
I used Victor Papanek's books to get plywood "H" sections made which formed a modular bookcase I continue to use, which has been through 5 houses across 30 years now. The unit scale included a cassette tape minimum size alongside standard paperback and large format/LP scale.
I made another nuclear bomb proof wooden thing, a cassette storage case which doubled as a suitcase to move the entire collection around and then hang it on the wall. in hindsight, 90 tapes of cajun music and "my mix tape" was less in need of portability than I thought.
A rather similar official piece has recently been released.
I was incredibly proud to have copies in my hand, and it's sold around 100 copies, which is more than the 5 I expected.
You can buy it here (and read reviews):
You can download for free (bc I care about freedom of information):
https://blog.bityard.net/articles/2019/January/i-built-a-ban...
(I purchased the plans for it, though. It was not my design.)
For many of them there's usually multiple images or ideas expressed within, but it's difficult to get people to share their thoughts or feedback beyond a simple comment that they think it looks cool. The most rewarding feedback is when someone spots an unintended detail or interpretation which I hadn't considered during their creation. I think a key aspect of art is in the act of interpretation by part of the viewer. The creation of beauty in the interaction between art and a mind.
The company didn't go anywhere because it turns out that business is hard when you don't like to self promote, but I am incredibly proud of the end result. It has high bandwidth, <100nm RMS jitter, a nice network interface, and incorporates reinforcement learning-based controller tuning
Check it out here if you'd like: https://www.rockymountainservo.com
We're still happily married six years later. :)
As an adult, I built a clone of a Fender Champ guitar amp, completely handwired with an eyelet board like they did back in the day. It sounds amazing for such a simple circuit and is actually an object I enjoy using as opposed to a toy like the FM transmitter was.
I made a couple of eyes and ears, and kept some of the discarded ones we used during testing. I still show people for fun every now and then because they look extremely realistic.
I don't have any pictures available but I do a link to some of my old artwork (I don't really make art anymore):
I'm also pretty happy with some of the cutting boards I've made: https://www.longtailwoodcraft.com/images/cube-board.jpg
2 years in and I haven't burned down the house... yet. I've since added more ceramic around the pot so burning myself would be very difficult.
(Reference to my post from the last time this article was posted on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28495062 )
Don't even have a name for it, but I trapped a bunch of small bearing balls between a couple sheets of acrylic, so they are free to move but only in 2 dimensions.
It is so relaxing to handle, it's a hefty thing with around 4500 2mm balls in it. I like holding it on my lap and swishing around until I manage to form them into a single lattice. As the thousands of little balls roll, they make a sound that is the mix of raining, a stream, or a million Lego pieces being dug through.
There is a video of it here: https://twitter.com/kroltan/status/1385386058913832963
While building it with my dad, we weren't sure how to fix the acrylic plates together, so we used some double-sided tape. My dad raised the board before his eyes, but a terrifying crack was heard, and the smile that was on his face turned into a frown at the exact same rate the level of the balls dropped from the frame.
We spent the next 2 hours sweeping his workshop to retrieve all the balls, and then fixed it with double sided tape, glue, and an outer "framing" of a fabric tape which is really good under tension.
Video of the device in action: https://youtu.be/F_gTlU9w7dQ
Image documentation of the build: https://imgur.io/gallery/y1dB4zr
More recently I've: put an entire exhaust on my car due to manufacturer telling me it would be 2k to replace, rebuilt my garage door frame, reroofed part of my garage, and repointed my historic brick garage wall.
For the repointing, I had to get lime mortar which is rare in the US but here in PA we have a lot of old stone. DeGruchy's NHS to the rescue, color matched and everything. The labor is over the top, but the tools are cheap. I paid for this once and they did it so badly I decided it's simply not worth it. It should last another 50-100y!
I'd say my son, but really my wife is the one that built him ;)
Have a look - https://funhouse.house
My ex and I built a large physical love note to each other by way of turning what started as her boring studio apartment into an interactive art installation we would live together in and build.
It’s now an exhibit in Manhattan and over 100k people have moved through the whimsy and magic at a huge scale… and yet, it started with a huge crush between a nerd and an artist.
When I bought my remote controlled juggling equipment I thought I had everything, then I found out about Pixel Poi(TM) - which at the time were unobtainable for the kind of budget I was on. I actaully cried. For real.
Video that made me cry -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWeUQowxVlM - the good stuff starts about halfway.
I knew I had to have them, so this set me on a 10 year journey over 5 prototypes (including an early one on stripboard with 120 hand soldered LED's!) where I taught myself to program, 3d CAD, design circuit boards - even did a full Stanford U course on networking. It gave me the skills to survive the pandemic financially by making a living doing remote coding jobs (I'm a professional juggler and magician).
The project lives on today in my show and in the future at http://magicpoi.circusscientist.com - where I am bulding it out to be a full platform for IOT flashy light equipment.
Details here: https://dantonio.info/projects/the-buttons/
You can buy them here: https://www.songbirdocarina.com/collections/synesthesia-ocar...
P.S. I did something way fancier than a Fourier here.
And I recorded the process in an attempt to show that it's not even that hard in this 'Shoes from scratch' series on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1gv5yv3DoZNdz-LJFykg6mMf...
I like visual astronomy and manual pointing (star hopping). Build a 12.5" Dobsonian (with Dobson) and it was great.
I also love doing public outreach (sidewalk astronomy). Wanted robust, portable, mount for larger mirrors. Ball scopes tick many of the desirable trade offs for me I put a 16" mirror in one and it was a favorite for years.
but balls do have drawbacks, lack of physical access to back of mirror, poor ventilation, how to lift into vehicle ... and they can be stunningly expensive to buy.
Sudiballs are my answer to how to easily construct precise light weight spherical analogs in the comfort of your own home with materials lying around.
HN crowd could likely think of them as wire frames of spheres in meat space.
There are of course many (infinite) ways to choose a wire frame representation of a sphere. So we choose one that provides convenience IRL.
The "wires" in the wire frame are the edges of some sheet material such as plywood cut into arcs.
By following the geometry of an octahedron, three planes (sheet material) intersect at right angles which (surprise) is exactly what our household tools saws, drills, routers, lasers etc, are designed to cut.
There are other details to make it work, ensuring the wire frame is always touching the base at least three points. Eroding the edges of the edges to be one with the sphere ...
But all doable by you.
[] https://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~tomc/Hobbies/Astronomy/ATM/index....
I make small gametes, and I found someone who makes large gametes. We put them together and made mutated replicas of ourselves. The first experiment has been running over 3,500 days. The second experiment has been running almost 1,400 days, but it's currently significantly louder and more prone to violence. We're very proud of them both.
(I designed all the mechanical hardware and the current electrical design & software used in the video, but other people have helped over the years, too)
Here's a good YouTube channel with a father/son (experienced) team doing just that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiOwwhoiKug
Note that they're doing a rebuild of an existing house, but the general idea is the same - live in a trailer/old house while you build a garage with an apartment above it, and then move into that apartment and build the main house. This is quite common in more rural areas, such that you can see it even 40 years later; the garage will have an apartment above it, or the barn will have some rooms.
https://sites.google.com/site/randyelwin/home/projects/build...
[1] https://1drv.ms/f/s!AppXGHhkkRjCk6lHhMAbkiMTE7lzlw?e=IdsZdw
The chassis is 3D printed and a Raspberry Pi is hiding, with a couple of speakers, in the base. The Pi connects via WiFi to the local network and checks ESPN’s publicly available JSON for that day’s game to determine if the score has changed.
I gifted it to a friend that owns a bar and wanted him to be able to move to new networks and reconfigure without using a computer. So, I wrote some python scripts that interface with the GPIO pins on the Pi to reset the device and broadcast a WiFi network and web interface that can be used to connect to other networks.
That last bit now has over 500 stars on GitHub!
The other physical thing I built was a IR remote with a raspberry pi zero w for my Cambridge Audio CXA81 amp. I just recently put together and Android app with a couple buttons to interface to the API I wrote. https://github.com/ozfive/CXA81-IR-Remote-Server.
Both projects are mostly written in Go.
Don't get me started on the 2.5 years that I worked on custom AVOD systems for private jets and helicopters. I probably was the first person to integrate an Amazon Echo into a aircraft cabin to control the lighting/audio/video through voice over a satellite connection.
A Super Mario Question Block (wood, brass, copper) https://wittman.org/blog/mario-question-block/
Anyway, I got a basic set of tabla drums that came with a pair of supporting rings and covers. But the rings and covers weren't very good quality. So I went to hobby lobby and my hardware store and bought some piping, plywood, fabric, and lace and made a very nice set of rings and covers by hand. Was a really fun project and came out very nicely. My teacher couldn't believe I went to all the trouble.
Another honorable mention is that I did Ben Eater's 8-bit breadboard computer project. Took a long time and I learned a lot about EE.
The viewfinder isn't mounted in that picture. The two knobs on the right are from the lens to control the speed (125, 250, 500) and the aperture. The knob on the left is the shutter trigger. Shutter cocking is done by removing the ground glass from the back (which is how you preview focusing). Focusing is done by rotating the front side which is actually a giant hollow screw. The indentations are finger grips for rotating.
I have details for all my 3D printed cameras, unfortunately they're under my real name.
- Pickups: Upgraded to Fleor's pickups, which are both excellent and budget-friendly. - Blender Knob: Replaced the traditional pickup selector switch with a blender knob. Most blender knobs aren’t designed effectively. I've found using a dual potentiometer (stereo fader) with a center detent to be the only way that sounds really good. I’m currently exploring slider pots that can be seamlessly integrated into the pickup selector's position. - Configuration: Transitioned to SS or HS configurations on my Strats. The middle pickup tone falls short, but blending the neck/bridge results in a phenomenal sound. - Noise Reduction: Lined the electronic compartments with copper tape. This ensures the guitar remains silent, even when utilizing high-output pickups. - Tone Knob: Modified the typical frequency-adjustable low-pass filter to be a push-pull between low-pass and high-pass. This results in a crisp, punchy funk sound. - Bridge: Converted my Strat's tremolo system to a hardtail using wood epoxy and by repurposing the existing bridge components. - Luthier Skills: I've been enriching my knowledge via Stew Mac videos on YouTube, especially on *expertly* setting truss rods. This expertise has significantly enhanced the playability of my guitars, eliminating any fret buzz. - Design: Ventured into laser engraving on headstocks, pickguards, and bodies, which adds distinct details to the look of each guitar.
Regarding tone, the type of wood in an electric guitar plays an extremely minor role. The primary influencers are the electronics and components in contact with the strings (e.g., nut, frets, bridge). Currently, my go-to instrument is a $65 Monoprice Tele, spruced up with roughly $130 worth of parts and an old Seymour Duncan pickup. Some additional upgrades include a Fleor hotrail tele bridge pickup, engraved bridge with roller saddles, and locking tuners. It plays and sounds incredible. Basically, any electric guitar with a neck that plays well can be made to sound good with improved electronics.
It such a fun activity, especially if you are an engineer+creative type since its involves reading circuit wiring, planning the tones and the sounds that you actually like in the guitar, buying and testing cheap(ish) parts, soldering them and finally playing the guitar with all the mods.
I recently changed the 5 way switch in my Harley Benton Fusion and now the guitar sounds so crisp and bright. All the buzzing and honkyness in the pickups disappeared. The pickups circuit with a 5Eur mod sounds as clear and bright as my EMG retroactives.
Next I want to buy a kit-guitar and learn to stain them for custom finishes. Want to try some of the beautiful bursts that ~10k$ PRS custom shop does.
Might post it on Show HN one of these days. Still needs some work though.
Because the volume should track how hard you play and stopping to change/recharge batteries takes away the fun!
The coolest physical thing I tried to make (though it was mostly a failure) was a USB powered fan from scratch. I also tried to make the plastic casing from scratch using resins. I had made a mold for the casing but I had made it out of soft clay (if I remember right) and although the resulting plastic casing did solidify inside the mold and somewhat took the form of the mold, it was too brittle and the two halves of the casing didn't quite line up so they could not interlock neatly around the electronics. I didn't complete the project. I just did it out of curiosity.
[1] https://devanthro.com/story/ [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-022-00004-9
It's amazing how crafting something tangible can provide a sense of accomplishment and connection with your space.
Turns out it was for a build-your-own MP3 player kit. It had slots for old SDR RAM, an IDE hard drive, and power connections for an ATX PSU. Turns out, I had the parts I needed from some old pcs I had gotten from my uncle. I inserted the RAM, copied some MP3s onto the IDE hard drive, put it all in a shoebox, figured out how to short a connector on the PSU to start it - and it worked!
It wasn't pretty, and the sound was noisy as heck, but it was a fun adventure. :)
The fairly irony is I now pretty much have to eat very simply, Diabetes, FODMAP and Histamine Intolerance. I eat something I shouldn't at least once a week and usually pay for it for at least a day after.
I still have photos of sourdough bread, pizza, croissants, cakes, elaborate dishes...
And then I started having weird health issues (auto immune crap, aka doctor speech for "we have no clue what we're talking about but you're screwed") and debilitating stomach pain. I was on a 95% vegan diet and I switched to paleo, which seemed to help a bit but still caused occasional pain. After suffering for 2 years and tired of doctors not finding a solution, I tried the carnivore diet.
I pretty much cook the same steak every day and then some eggs or some more meat.
If I eat vegetables I get the taco-bell treatment. If I eat too many carbs over a short period of time I feel bloated and my gallbladder is not happy. Fruit is ok but I'm not a fan of getting too much sugar into me.
Goodbye croissants.
The feeling of elation I felt when I first chucked it into the sky and off it flew .. can't be explained. I've been making planes for 30 years, but this was my first KFM airfoil, and it was just so neat to see it fly around.
I painted a pane of glass white, then black, and created the file for all the letter to say the time as well as happy birthday. Took it to a laser cutter to etch it into the glass.
Made a backing with leds programmed to display correctly the date and time, iterate through colors, modes, etc.
I also made it in Hebrew too. I have the code somewhere if others are interested in making it.
Edit: Here is the code in case anyone else wants to use it https://github.com/imlasky/wordclock
I did something similar...
I made a musical automatic Hanukkah Menorah using an Arduino (Seeeduino XIAO SAMD21), MDF, birch veneer, melamine edge banding, a GPS module, tiny speaker, LED strip, and a CNC machine.
Check it out: http://HanuKron.com
My other clocks: https://DigitalHorology.com
I love the simple wood look of your pieces! Really elegant looking.
https://www.lumberjocks.com/showcase/archery-case-ascham-of-...
Holds my Bear Custom Kodiak Takedown, half-a-dozen arrows, armguard, tassel for cleaning arrows, belt, and various other accouterments --- everything but the quiver (which I attach to the case using a leather strap).
I need to revisit it to have better proportions for the arrow holder and to work up a quiver option which I both like, and which fits inside the next version.
https://www.instapainting.com/blog/research/2015/09/10/robot...
A 3-D chess board. No, not one of those lame ones that you can put on your desk with 3 boards. And no, not like the one on Star Trek either.
It was a full cube (8 x 8 x 8). Major pieces on boards 1 and 8, pawns on 2 and 7. The moves for the pieces project to three dimensions in a fairly straight-forward manner. Pawns can only queen on the farthest board from their start, on the farthest row.
The whole thing stood five feet tall, and you were constantly squatting to see what was going on across the boards.
I even once convinced a friend to play a game with me. Once.
I found a half-inch thick HDPE cutting board at a restaurant supply store, cut it to fit my drawer, then drilled holes in it and inserted short wooden dowels to hold the stacks of silverware in place. To position the dowels, I wrapped a nail in tape to match the diameter of the dowels, then placed my silverware on the board, slid the nail up next to it, and gave it a tap to mark the board where the holes needed to be drilled.
It worked really well and was quite easy to do. I highly recommend it.
[1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10820839B2/en
[2]: https://alexshroyer.com/posts/2023-01-01-Low-Impedance-Picku...
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/04/28/arts/22a24-item1/...
But now I watched your video I want a ChatGPT Furby!
It's got a 6.5 HP Honda GX200 engine, a Comet torque converter and top speed of around 35-40 mph. More about cyclekarts: https://www.cyclekarts.com/
For some reason, the thing that still feels the coolest was the RC hovercraft (converted from RC airplane parts) that a friend and I made for a science fair. It was a bit silly because it wasn't cordless, but that attribute doubled as a nice safety feature given that this was being piloted in a gymnasium full of kids.
I wish I had the patience to do something like that today, but there are so many other distractions.
I bought a Miyota movement, a case, hands, a face, a leather strap and a bunch of tools. It wasn't easy to assemble it and there is definitely not a lot of documentation online, but it wasn't impossible either.
It looks great, it's exactly how I wanted my automatic watch to look like. Highly recommend the experience.
Rather than each player attempting to answer questions as individuals, players need to come up with their own questions, and are rewarded when they can demonstrate some piece of trivia that nobody else in the room knows.
The fun thing about wood projects is you can cover up mistakes pretty easily and for big mistakes just make the project smaller.
While focusing on the digital realm all my life, it's nice to have something tangible that I know people will enjoy for a long time.
It's in Puerto Rico if you want to visit:
https://www.mountainproject.com/area/124580883/el-semil-vill...
---
I worked in a shop making gears for a few years... I made most of the drive gears for the Marvel 8 bandsaw between 2016 and 2020. I also made lots of other gears. I'm sure that most of them will be in use for decades.
Next up this fall: a kinetic wooden sculpture that destroys itself with fire
This is a picture of my co-founder Karol and me, holding the first prototype of Aidlab : https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-44d4794da932b128c2bf6...
(plot twist - it wasn't a chest strap at first haha)
My startup builds (friendly) security guard robots, and now has a fleet of >100 deployed around the world.
Long ago when we were seed stage I spent Christmas morning finishing soldering in the first unit to hit our first customer delivery a few weeks later. Was a good time :)
Lots of blood sweat and tears scaling from there...
Started with a single detector: https://www.instagram.com/p/BSz_rZ1h_sN/
I made doohickeys to add homekit controlled dimming and convenient physical switching to my bedside reading lamps.
I am in the middle of making a farmhouse table out of walnut. It is very precise work that I am not used to.
This is already by far the coolest thing I've ever done, and I haven't even started with the light show.
https://blog.ty-porter.dev/3d%20printing/mechanical%20engine...
It worked pretty well. I guess it could drive s.th. like 35 km/h for 10 km. It even had brake energy recouperation. A higher topspeed would be no problem, but its already very dangerous^^
It was a very simple design. Just a brushless outrunner attached with friction to one of the wheels.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST_Robotics_Competition
https://antipaucity.com/2021/11/19/the-coop-with-lots-of-in-...
Was really happy with the design, considering I just made it up on the spot. I had previously carved a few chess sets before though out of wood.
Rather more modestly - made a esp32 PWM fan controller that hooks into home assistant. Nothing wild, but it did open my eyes to the fact that I can duplicate most IoT stuff on my own terms despite being an amateur. And that in turn has takes it from "IoT - not in my house" to "yes lets do more IoT".
Here's me playing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgH-WU-9CZA
https://luxurylandyacht.wordpress.com/
I've built some small boats and stuff, but this was a whole-nuther dimension Took about 11 months of pretty intense almost-every-day work by two people.
Ps: it is a failed project, but enjoyable.
Would also like to become better versed in the operation of outboards. I am looking at finding an old carbonated 2-stroke to rebuild.
Also built a sauna recently. Love it!
(Inspired by mohit bhoite who does stuff like this... Just 1000x better)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-aileen-cannon-comes-out-...
Some code was involved to optimize the layout of the pieces on the sheets of plywood they were cut out of, but that was maybe one percent of the project.
It looks amazing and feels really good to have completed. Might do a write-up on it.
Though I guess technically the PCB fan made them.
Cheers Arno, hope your Halloween adventures are still going strong!
EDIT: if you're in London and you want it, I'm giving it away as I'm moving to a smaller flat. Just message me and come pick it up.
I had no idea what I was doing and never done any woodworking before.
https://imgur.com/gallery/TTEPVLw
Today it's covered in Lego from the kids...
Then I wrote a 3D engine that could render to it and took the whole thing to Burning Man. Worked pretty well, though contrast was crappy.
- a mini trailer for camping. It has drawers with cutlery and camping stuff and a roof top tent on top. It's lightweight so I can move it easily in the campgrounds far from my car.
- a guitar from a kit
- fixed my garage sagging roof by lifting it up and rebuilding trusses
https://foundrytechnologies.com/relay.php
About 50% of the work on this was software, to be clear.
Took me four years of evenings and weekends while working full-time to fund it.
Still...
The thing I'm the proudest about...
Is that time I opened a jammed coaxial cable with nothing but two butter knives.
Came out very nice, learned a lot of woodworking skills.
I also built a betatron.
unix.date
The "tanks" had shields for front, rear, and each side that took damage separately. A main cannon with switchable weapons did different amounts of damage based on how much energy the weapon used.
Different weapons had different types of simulated kick-back ... the rapid fire machine-gun type weapon had a rapid shaking kick back while the mega-super-weapon was a super whomp kick-back. I don't recall if I got around to implementing physical effects when your tank was hit.
Control was using hacked up thrift store-sourced PC joysticks. (and by hacked-up, I do mean hacked-up. Soldered directly to potentiometers and spliced into a controlling arduino that tracked tank status etc)
All controllers and tanks were mesh-networked using cheap 2.4ghz nrf24L01+ wireless (but not wifi) chips. My idealistic final vision was massive multi-player games with selectable features.
- large games with selectable friendly fire
- different damage consequences
- scrambling opponents weapons or drive systems, drive systems degrading as they took fire, flakey shields
- communicating with a central computer for viewing game progress and tracking stats
- vastly improved system information displays (vs the cheap LCDs)
- fpv camera with a HUD woulda been sooo cool.
I knew it was going to be a huge learning curve - I was familiar with basic arduino functionality but hadn't done much beyond basic sensor reading and light blinking. I had to learn how to integrate a LOT of hardware and deal with real world complications. (sunlight plays merry havoc when using IR as your weapon-shooting and shield-receiving) I started 3-4 months before the presentation date and (of course) was still swapping out hardware and tweaking software the night before.
"trailer": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7uAQrak1iA&ab_channel=Aaron...
presentation notes: https://github.com/adbacker/duinobattletanks/blob/master/doc...
code: https://github.com/adbacker/duinobattletanks/tree/master
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory
Although if you ask my kids, the answer would be their treehouse.