brainwagon

Okay, minor lesson learned about AREDN. I had tried creating a couple of additional services and reserved a couple of DHCP devices on my node K6HX-GLUSB150, but then decided to move the hardware to a new location and wire it to different hardware. So I did, and then tried to delete those services. On the […]

I didn’t have a lot of time to do further experiments with my tiny AREDN network, but I did figure out a few things. To recap: I currently have three devices which have been flashed with AREDN firmware: a Microtik hAP ac lite (which serves as the indoor hub and wireless access point), a TP-LINK […]

For anyone reading this from some more distant point in the future, I’m in my fourth week of self-isolation to help halt the spread of the coronavirus. I’m exceptionally lucky: I’ve continued my job from home, working surprisingly effectively with a reasonably fast network connection as we try to put our next movie release in […]

I’ve got an opportunity to potentially loft a small camera module on a high altitude balloon launch next month. I had written some very simple code for an ESP32-CAM module which can be had for about $7 direct from China, or 2 for $10 from Amazon with Prime. The other day I decided to see […]

Okay, I had some scrap 1/4″ plywood in the shop, so I decided to go ahead and see if I could make a T-Trak module. I went ahead and ordered some additional Kato Unitrack via Amazon Prime, as well as some really cheap budget scale trees, and set to work. I set the dimensions for […]

Okay, I’m super busy at work these days at work, but I do still have time to muse about projects that I’ll be getting to once my current project wraps up sometime in about 12 weeks. If you were following my blog, you saw that my intention was to get a couple of very small […]

So, I earlier this week I was working on making a wooden box as part of my skill building in woodworking. Actually I made two boxes, but that’s a different story. Here is the better of the two, made from some scrap cedar fence posts: Rabbeted the sides into the front and the back, and […]

Over the holiday I was watching my usual raft of videos on Youtube, and got interested in the circuitry that is inside the common garden light. I have a number of super cheap $1, and if you watch any teardown videos of them, you’ll find that there is almost nothing inside them: typically a solar […]

Readers might recall that I’ve been interested in small solar energy projects. In the past, I’ve played with a 25w solar panel, a Chinese PWM solar charge controller and a 7Ah battery, and I used it as the power source for a WSPR radio beacon that I ran for a few months in my back […]

In my garage, I’m trying to do some simple skill building exercises to increase my precision and knowledge about how to construct useful objects. The recent kerfmaker and half lap projects that I’ve tweeted about were part of this attempt. Last night, after a full day of chasing pixel problems, I thought it would be […]

On one of the Facebook model train groups I was in, I read an article about someone who was building a transistorized throttle based upon a design called the “Pacematic”. I did a bit of googling, and found this description. It seems like a relatively simple circuit based upon the 555 timer. I started digging […]

I am still an absolute rookie woodworker, which means that time spent in the shop doing the most basic skill building exercises can be fun. My previously mentioned “skill building” exercise of making a pair of simple boxes had met with the approval of our supurrvisor. I cut all the rabbets for these on the […]

A friend of mine pointed out an interesting website today: applesearch.org. This is well and truly off my normal set of blog topics (as ill defined as those might seem) but I must admit that I find it fascinating. See, apples are fascinating. Most people can name five or six varieties of apples, and if […]

I’ve had a couple of DC motor control modules lying around unused for quite a while. I think that I bought them for a simple robot project back in 2013 that apparently wasn’t quite simple enough: I got distracted and never went anywhere with it. But I was watching some videos as part of my […]

Carmen thought I should spend a little more time in the shop today. I didn’t have anything in mind, but while poking around we found a chunk of cedar fencing that I had used as a test for my jointer. We had jointed it down to around 0.47″ thick, although it wasn’t particularly uniform: I […]