Monthly Archives: September 2014

Sandwich Dome

Posted on September 28, 2014 by joel
Hiked Sandwich Dome on Saturday with a group of friends from work. It was unseasonably warm for late September - it climbed above 80 at times! We saw surprisingly few people on the trail. We were still a week or two out from peak foliage, but it was a nice trip regardless.


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Laser Engraver – Part 1

Posted on September 21, 2014 by joel
I started working on a home-built CNC laser engraver this weekend. I ordered some parts weeks ago - stepper motors, shaft couplers, etc. I've been doodling plans for the machine for the last week, trying to get the dimensions down. This weekend I got over the mental roadblock keeping me from starting, and finally started building. I got the base built, and started the y-axis sled. I need to add the center section that will house the nut for the threaded rod that will move the sled. Then it's on to the gantry!


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Caliper Holder

Posted on September 21, 2014 by joel

3D-printed a wall-mounted holder for my digital calipers today. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done and keeps them in easy reach. You can't see it, but it's in even got a little cutout for the caliper's micro-adjustment wheel.

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New Microscope

Posted on September 14, 2014 by joel
I got a new small USB microscope for checking solder joints and such. But Sean and I have been playing with it for other stuff too. For fun, we took a bunch of photos of different areas of his skin, and he wanted to quiz you guys and see if you could guess which part of his body each picture came from. The answers are after the photos, so don't look if you want to guess first!




A: Back of the hand.
B: Fingertip.
C: Fingernail.
D: Elbow.
E: Tongue.

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Random 3D Prints

Posted on September 14, 2014 by joel
I printed a random things recently. The red keys on the right are for getting the all of the toothpaste out of a tube - you just twist up the tube on the key as you go. The print on the right is a small puzzle box I designed on paper years ago. I found it in an old notebook and decided to try to model in SketchUp and print it. Both of the green keys ride in dovetail channels, so they can both slide along their respective axis. A channel along the bottom of the smaller key engages with a pin on the blue box's body. You have to slide the two green keys in the correct pattern to move the pin through the channel until the keys can be freed and you can get access to the interior of the box. Maybe sometime soon I can make a short video showing how the box opens.


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Pandora Radio – Final

Posted on September 14, 2014 by joel
Finished up the Pandora radio yesterday - I installed a clear plexiglass back, and finished up the software changes I needed to make. Now I just need to find a permanent spot for it down in the shop! I might need to add another shelf somewhere.


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Wildcat / Carter Range – Extra Pics

Posted on September 14, 2014 by joel
Found these two panoramas on my camera this morning. They're both from the summit of Mt. Hight.



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Wildcat / Carter Range Hut Hike

Posted on September 12, 2014 by joel
Last weekend I was on an overnight hike to the Carter Notch Hut with a bunch of friends from work. We hiked in over the Wildcat range, and on day two we hiked out over the southern half of the Carter-Moriah ridge. All in all, it was almost 16 miles and 10 peaks (11 if you count the Imp). Five of those peaks are on the NH 4000-footer list - although I've already climbed one of them. But it was still four new ones for me, which brings me to the 50% completion point on the list. I haven't been actively pursuing the list, but it's starting to acquire some momentum on it's own now!



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Pandora Radio – Part 7

Posted on September 2, 2014 by joel
Here's a shot of the final hardware configuration of the radio - from a hardware perspective, I'm nearly done! Still to do is to make some retaining pins for the knobs, and to make a clear plexiglass back for the radio - so that anyone interested can get a look inside at all the gadget-y guts! I've still got some software work to do - I need to get the scripts I've written to start at bootup. But I'm also having a slight problem with pianobar - the current tip version of pianobar fails after playing one complete song. If I skip songs before one finishes, it keeps playing fine. But if I let one completely finish, the stream just stalls. Luckily for me pianobar is open source, and not a huge codebase - so hopefully I can figure out what's going wrong on my own.


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Pandora Radio – Part 6

Posted on September 2, 2014 by joel
I recently got the radio's original buttons working with the Pandora radio. I built a little board to go below the switch assembly, with some microswitches located under each of the steel legs of the button assemblies, and then wired everything up to a 26 header so that I could connect it up to the Pi. I forgot to take a picture of the top side of the board before I permanently mounted it inside the radio, so you'll have to live with only a bottom-side photo. :)


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