Category Archives: Electronics

Started the CNC machine this week - so far I've got the rolling base and the table bed complete. The stand is built so that the bed (and the machine attached to it) can be pivoted down into the body of the stand, so that it takes up less space when stored - and also that it can fit through standard interior doorways. Next up are the X-axis rails, which are built from black iron gas pipe supported on 2x4s - I'm guessing getting them exactly parallel will be the tricky part.

The next project I plan to tackle is a CNC machine, with a trim router as the cutter head. The laser engraver that I built last year was a sort of "trial run" for this project, as the laser engraver was smaller scale and cheaper, and only had two axes (compared to the three that the CNC machine will have). The plans I am following come from Solsylva, and are quite detailed. Excited to get started!

Sean and I had a deal - if he saved up half the money for a Lego Mindstorms robotics set, we would pay the other half. Surprisingly, he did it! Which is strange because the joke is that whenever he has two nickels to rub together, he spends them. But somehow he did it. He was in a summer camp this year (and one last year) that was based around Lego Mindstorms, so he knew what he was getting into and couldn't wait to have his own set. He's been building all kinds of stuff ever since it arrived. The picture here is what he calls the R-Pet v2.0 ('R-Pet', as in 'Robotic Pet'). It can play fetch, detect different colors and has a 'favorite' color, wag its tail, respond to touch (pat it too many times and it will growl), and dance. He's been brainstorming what to add to it next!

While noodling around with my laser engraver to make the front panel for the photobooth enclosure, I finally got to the point where the old shoebox I tacked up in front of it to prevent people from going blind just didn't seem good enough. So I made a wooden drop-down shield to block the view, and laser-engraved this little plaque for the front of the shield. They aren't wired up yet, but the idea is that the two red lamps will be lit up when the engraver is running.

For this year's Father's Day cookout, I rebuilt the Raspberry Pi Photobooth from the ground up. This time I built a nicer enclosure too - one with a laser engraved front panel (using my homebuilt laser engraver!) and the RPi camera module. It worked out great - it was light enough to mount on a tripod, which made the whole thing a bit more functional and polished. Soon I plan to post a bunch of the photos we captured with it!

Started experimenting with the Adafruit Trinket, and their RGB Neopixels. I'm starting with one of their example projects - a color organ using a Trinket, a few Neopixels, and a small microphone with integrated AGC. Once it's working, I think I may put it inside the Pandora radio to add a little bling to that project.

I built a bench power supply from an old AT computer power supply I had laying around in the attic. I also made a custom enclosure for it. I let Sean pick what we would use to decorate the front of the supply - he chose Pikachu. The front panel was done on my laser engraver.

I converted that Christmas countdown clock into a desk clock for my desk at work. The enclosure is made of some scraps of black walnut that I had laying around that were too small to make anything with, but too pretty to throw away. I also included a photo of the guts of the thing for the geeks among you.

I built a Christmas countdown clock for the kids out of an Arduino, an RTC, and some seven-segment displays from Adafruit. It counts down to Christmas in "months.days.hours.minutes.seconds". It's also got some other modes - a countdown to Christmas in seconds, the current time in "year.month.day.hour.minute.second", the current time in Unix epoch seconds, and a "Chuck Norris" mode that occasionally spits out random Chuck Norris "quotes". After Christmas I am going to make a better looking wooden enclosure for this, and bring it to work to use as my desk clock.

I tried some other materials with the laser engraver this past weekend. I tried making some stickers out of some re-positionable sticker vinyl, and I also tried cutting some paper. Lighter colors of paper and any color of cardstock wouldn't cut, but darker colors cut just fine.