A while ago I made some videos of writing a Raspbian to a SD card for use with a Raspberry Pi, I am on a mac, which makes my life much easer as there is now an awesome tool called ApplePi-Baker that makes making SD cards much easer than DD […]
HackSpace
77 posts
Bob found these ESP8266 based Wi-Fi Relays from china, the “Sonoff – WiFi Wireless Smart Switch For MQTT COAP Smart Home” and being that he is is kind of a geek he bought some, now in typical China fashion the difference between 3 and 5 was not all that much, so […]
A while ago I looked at the HLK-PM01, and amazingly it turned into a very well read post… (do not even touch the cheaper crap!) with a lot of people asking how to make it work properly. I also got an email from Tom at smart-sense.hr saying that he had […]
Every so often we see on line storeys of fake chargers burning down houses, and electric shocks. Normally these chargers are refereed to as ‘Apple’ or ‘iPhone’ chargers, however that is just because the small triangle chargers (in a variety of colours) are so prevalent. An official Apple 5W USB […]
Tas, MiniBoyGeek and I had a quick walk round the Steam Punk Spectacular at the Swindon Steam Museum (will have to do Photos of that some other time). Podpad Studios were there with some of their cool steampunk stuff, and some one (not sure who) brought a Caravan. The rest […]
I have been playing about with Fusion 360, one of thrings you will need to include before very long is a fixing, even if you can 3D print everything in your design at some point you will want to stick two parts together at which point you will need a […]
I have been playing with Fusion 360 again… and as part of that I have been finding cunning tricks that I am thankful that I now know. Since I think I have a blog or something, I shall share those I find to be useful. And for this I shall […]
Everybody loves a train set and LEGO Duplo tracks make it very easy to build your own set, I have watched YouTube videos of peoples Lego Train Sets, and thought that they were cool however if you look at the price of Lego City Train sets, prepare to cry even […]
Recently there have been people claiming that they can steal money from your pocket (up to £30) by skimming your credit or debit card info using a EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) or PED (Pin Entry Device). It said thieves could exploit a security flaw to steal key data from […]
I picked up a Hantek 6022BE USB Oscilloscope as sometimes its useful to have something more than just a multimeter for seeing what a circuit is doing. While the specification makes it more of a toy than a real instrument, however what can you expect for £46.00? The Hantek 6022BE […]
The soldering of SMD devices is something that no normal person would want to do by hand for fun, I can’t even believe that normal people would do it anyway (it is a cruel and unusual punishment). Hackspace Manchester has recently thanks to Matt bought an Infer Red IC Oven […]
Sometimes I feel that my geek credentials are lacking given the lack of code I write, yes I make cool things occasionally, I work as an EMC Engineer for a small Stockport Company, I am a Director of Squashed Fly a small independent Hosting and General Geeky company with Tas, […]
A lot of Chinese Arduinos come with the ch340 as the replacement for the FTDI or other serial bridge. I have nothing against the CH340 / CH340G however it is a PITA (BREAD – Pain In The Arse) to use under OS X as well there is a fuck ton […]
I found MCN Gerber Viewer, at this site, it is an OS X application for viewing and printing Gerber files, the zip of the app is Mirrored here. I have been working on PCBs more frequently, and along with Eagle this is a useful tool.
Normaly I would use a cheap chineese clone, but I had an official Arduino Uno available, The process should be the same no matter which you use. Now given that an Chineese clone of the Uno is about £3 you may wonder why you would want to use a £1.20 […]
Today like last year I went to Bristol for the mini maker Faire (unlike Manchester and Liverpool Makefest this one still pays the silly amount of money to use the make branding). Unlike last year @Bristol charged at the door (£3 pp which may not sound like a lot, but […]
I downloaded Random Nerd’s Build a Home Automation System for $100 and started testing it out, A while ago I aquired a Fish Dish (not sure where from), It’s a small PCB that fits on the GPIO header of the Raspberry Pi. I set up NodeRed and MQTT on the […]
I picked up this 50H10L (HI3518E_50H10L_S39) based cheap POE CCTV style camera as a test for replacing the cameras we use at work to view EUTs (Equipment Under Test). the cameras we normally use are wired CCTV cameras. The (professionally done) CD comes with a number of applications and PDFs on […]
A while ago I backed the kickstarter campaign for Particle (formerly Spark)’s Electron board, a IOT (internet of things) with a built in 3G modem (2G are available) with global data coverage, recently they shipped, Setup was as easy as getting it out the box, wiring it up and following […]
This is an update from a previous post, since there have been some changes to getting them to work under OSX. I found these Arduino Uno clones (link) on Ali Express for £2.16 each with free shipping from china, I can’t even get Diavolino for that little (Also a Diavolino […]
Following on from playing with the Hi-link HLK-PM01 I got this generic even cheaper board from Ben Dooks, after carefully wiring it up, I shoved it on the Kikusui TOS 8650 Withstand Voltage Tester: This shows the cheap chinese powersupply breaking just below 2 kVac. The following photos are from a Chinese seller […]
There is a Follow-up post to this one here. The Hi-Link HLK PM01 is a 100-230 Vac to 5 Vdc 600 mA converter, Bob gave me one a while ago and asked me what my thoughts were on it, The Manufacturers details are not quite what I would like as a data sheet, […]
I missed out on Day 1 of Makerfest as I was working on Saturday. but here are the photos from Sunday:
More than a few years ago, I bought myself a Remote Control boat, a Kyosho Wave Master: The WaveMaster is a semi scale model of an F-1 tunnel hull racing boat. Tunnel hulls work by trapping a cushion of air between the hull and water to reduce friction which allows […]
If you have ever had to set up, manage, migrate or otherwise look after more than about three WordPress installs you will know it gets more than a little bit dull to look after them manually. Thank you to the people behind wp-cli, as it makes life so so much […]
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) used to be my preferred group messaging app thing, I have IRC running on Vor, using ZNC to bounce IRC to Weechat (in Screen on Vor), Palaver on my iPhone and iPad, and Textual on my MacBook (see irc on the go). IRC is awesome for […]
Following on from Part 1, we now have three of the Norse Goddesses up and running (If you hadn’t guessed what my naming convention is by now…) The site we are going to use for this bit of the up and running is a small site that has a fair […]