During the wildfires of 2020 I saw many instructions for how to quickly duct-tape air filters to a box fan, to remove smoke from household air. Years before that I was interested in buying a woodworking shop air filter that would remove fine sawdust that otherwise floats in the air for days or weeks.
This post describes my experience making a air-filter-box-fan design, using 3D printed clips instead of duct tape to hold the filter to the fan.
Continue reading Adding an Air Filter to a Box FanDON’T DO WHAT I DID! I didn’t realize the dangers until I was done.
A vise’s jaw faces are supposed to be parallel, that is: perfectly flat when they meet. As you can see, this vise’s jaws weren’t.
Continue reading I (Stupidly) Bend the Vise Faces ParallelScore so far: Vise: 1, Me: 0. In this post I tell the sad tale of trying to extract the jaw face screws that are frozen with rust – nothing has worked for me.
Warning: Once again, I don’t know what I’m doing!
Continue reading Trying to Remove Rusted Screws from the ViseI wasn’t happy with how much rust remained after the vinegar treatment, so I decided to give the vise a treatment with Evapo-Rust – my favorite rust remover.
I also decided that so little paint was left, I’d strip the remaining paint off, either with paint stripper or a wire wheel, depending on whether the paint had lead in it.
Continue reading Removing Rust and Paint from the ViseWARNING: I don’t know what I’m doing!
On a whim I bought a rusty, Ace brand 3 1/2″ (say 90 mm) vise at a garage sale. I’ve watched a few vise restoration videos, so I think I have a chance at restoring it…
Continue reading Restoring a Rusty Vise – It BeginsIn my previous post I started the electronics and software for an Arduino Sketch for an ESP8266 WiFi microprocessor and several MAX31820 temperature sensors, that will eventually estimate and upload the level of water in our well water tank.
Since my last post I’ve updated the WellDepthTemperature github repo for the project to read 12 temperature sensors and to do a better job of reporting WiFi errors. That code now successfully identifies and reads the temperature from 12 MAX31820 sensors via a Sparkfun ESP8266 Thing Dev board, all on a breadboard for now.
Continue reading Well Depth Sensing: Measuring the TankFor some time we’ve caught rare glimpses of small, rabbit-like animals who seem to be living under our front porch. We’ve seen little, round ears bobbing past the window, footprints in the snow, and during one hot summer I found a dead chinchilla in the garage – the poor thing couldn’t take the heat.
So I’ve decided to capture photos of the little fellows – or at least try – using a Raspberry Pi, motion-detecting Webcam. The project as it unfolds is stored on my ChinchillaCam Repository on github.
Continue reading Chinchilla Cam: Installing the Raspberry Pi Camera Module and OpenCVIn my previous post, I covered the mechanical construction of the scale. In this post, I finish assembling the scale, calibrating it, and installing it.
After painting I put feet on the scale so it won’t soak in water spilled on the floor.
Continue reading Dog Water Bowl Scale Part 3: Final Assembly and InstallationIn my previous post I changed the uploader app to run when the Raspberry Pi turns on, and installed the scale under Pippa’s dog bed. In this post, I get interesting data from the scale.
The scale has been running for a little over a week now, and has been surprisingly reliable for a first version. There is some sort of bug in which, every few days, the scale stops supplying new data BLE notifications to the gateway. I plan to refactor the scale and gateway to avoid that, but that’s another post.
Today I looked at the data and saw some very interesting things.
Continue reading Dog Weight Scale Part 16: Data!In my previous post I found the center of gravity of the top plywood circle of the Dog Bed Weight Scale. This post goes through the math of calculating the weight W on the scale and the position {X, Y} of that weight’s center of gravity. That is, how much does our dog PIppa weigh when resting on the bed, and what is her position on the bed?
Continue reading Dog Weight Scale Part 6: Calculating the Dog’s Weight and Position
