brainwagon

A couple of days ago, I found out about thecavepearlproject.org through a link on hackaday, and an article which gave an interesting idea about how to do temperature sensing using an Arduino and no additional parts. I didn’t really recap the actual underlying technique. The idea was a fairly interesting one. The watch dog timer […]

Last night I began dusting off my solar project a bit. It still seems like we are at the bottom of the atmospheric river, so I don’t think it will be going outside any time in the near future, but I wanted to make some software changes. It uses a pair of temperature sensors and […]

I’m still heading toward changing my Creality CR-10 over to use a BLTouch bed leveling sensor, but I still need a few parts that I’m waiting on. I thought it might be a good time to try some prints with a filament that I never used before: namely a roll of Sainsmart TPU filament that […]

I’ve had my Creality CR-10 for quite some time, and fairly early on I decided that I needed a bed leveling sensor. It wasn’t just because it was difficult to level the bed. The bed itself isn’t anywhere close to flat. Since the printer doesn’t know that, you have all sorts of problems with adhesion. To be honest, I’m […]

Back in October, I attended Pacificon, the local ham radio convention. While I was there I picked up a couple of wacky things that were super cheap on the vendor’s tables, and among them was a super inexpensive battery charger along with an 18650 3.7V Li-Ion battery. If you’re like me, you are probably used […]

Over the last couple days, I’ve been pondering my journey through 3D printing. After having taken a three month break from it (more on that below) I’ve managed to get my Creality CR-10 back up and running in a reasonable way, and have donated my Anet A8 (my gateway drug to the world of 3D […]

I’ve been wanting to make a computer-controlled mechanical gadget for quite some time. When I finally got a 3D printer a little more than a year ago, I began to think of how I might make a device that could direct a pen under computer control. I even took the time to order a CNC […]

Okay, as per the previous installment, I carted my new current transformer tap upstairs, and plugged in the Litter Robot. It entered its startup sequence, which ran the motors back and forth, and I was able to grab some data. It looked like the following: Using the built in ADC of an Arduino would give […]

Okay, here’s a strange little project that is pushing the limits of what I understand in a couple of ways, and I thought I might write it up and also ask a question from those more knowledgeable than me. Here’s the idea: in our upstairs bathroom, we have a Litter Robot. This is a commercial […]

Back around 2016 I had a tough time. A vertebrae in my neck began to pinch on the nerves that run down my left arm and began to cause pain and weakness. In the end, I had to have an injection into my spine to calm the pain, and spent months in physical therapy. I […]

I didn’t accomplish much in the garage on Sunday, but I did manage to take down some old, flickery and generally unreliable flourescent lights and replace them with some very inexpensive LED lights. I had previously tried to continue to use two of the old fixtures, including their old fluorescent ballasts, but in general that […]

So, today I had a list of a few simple tasks in my garage that I thought would be good to get to. It’s now 2:30 in the afternoon, and I’ve… gotten some of them accomplished. Just to the left of my door as I enter my garage, I had assembled a fairly rickety looking […]

I think maybe twenty years ago when I was in the height of my telescope-building mania I started acquiring books about lathe work and machining from Lindsay Books. Lindsay Books made a business out of finding old out-of-print books in the public domain and republishing them cheaply. Such books were usually centered around machining and […]

When I was a kid, I went through a phase where I was really interested in model railroading. Like most boys, I had an inexpensive toy train set that ran around on the carpet until someone stepped on it, swore, and then I had to pack it away, perhaps making another appearance around Christmas. But […]

Previously I had written up a bit on my project that I have called my “solar satellite station.” I used quotes around the word “solar” in the title because for the past couple of months, it has mostly been sitting on my workbench in my garage, occasionally powered up by a 12V charger rather than […]