On LinkedIn a while ago Glen one of the reps at Würth Elektronik offered free PCB fidget spinners. I asked nicely if MiniBoyGeek could have one, and as such one was delivered, I am glad I opened the bag before giving it to him. A fun little build of 9 […]
Tech
81 posts
On Facebook a friend of mine put out the following request: Calling all 3D printer friends. Can you print up some visors for the doctors and nurses. There’s a plan somewhere of how to do it using a 2l bottle as the visor and the 3D printer bit as the […]
I have got my PCB rule business card PCBs back from JLCPCB, so now to check everything works and build one up
I downloaded Notability to give it a try, back to back with Goodnotes, both are about the same price from the App and iPhone/iPad stores, I bought both the Desktop and the iPad app to test on my iPad mini, with my apple pencil, and the desktop app to test […]
One of the things I use my iPad mini and Apple Pencil is taking notes on components from the data sheets. I also have a iPad keyboard case that allows me to use my iPad as a very small laptop, or have the screen propped up for use as a […]
I just realised that in Part 1 and Part 2 that I didnt discuse how to go from Datasheet to Fusion 360, While I am not going to cover how to do the drawing in great detail, there are plenty of sites which tell you how to make drawings in […]
Following on from From Datasheet to KiCad Component – Part One, I had got as far as making the footprint in KiCad the Footprint Editor, The layers I have built it out of look like this: Now we have the footprint finished for Type C (I also did Type A […]
Recently the BBC wrote an article online with the headline “Does 5G pose health risks?”, the first section was: The 5G mobile network has been switched on in some UK cities and has led to questions about whether the new technology poses health risks. So what are the concerns, and […]
I found the ‘Picktor’ Pick and Place head for retrofitting on a 3D printer on Thingiverse (GitHub) As designed it uses a Nema 17 stepper motor, however I suspect that will be too big for my design. I got 3 x Nema 14 stepper motors from an old RepRap Huxley, […]
…and other lies adults who should know better spread! On Facebook a friend of mine has joined the crazy Electrosmog people; I was first made aware of it when she posted outrage at an article in a small paper with the headline “Glastonbury Festival 2019 to be first ever music […]
A fair while ago Swindon Makerspace started a group project called LogoBot, a cheap, expendable and extendable easy to build robot for playing with. Even longer ago I bought a MiroBot from kick-starter, it had lived in a box, and parts of it had got damaged. Tamarisk showed me and […]
I have now been to Bletchley Park twice. In the gift shop they have a Build your own Enigma-E Kit: The Enigma machine was the German cipher machine used to encrypt their WW2 communications and systematically cracked by the Bletchley Park Codebreakers. This highly detailed replica design gives you the […]
Most of the stuff you will need to do the electronic projects I do on this site can be got by going to Amazon (I have affiliate links), I know I have mentioned the Oomlout Starter Kit for Arduino, However I fear that this is discontinued 🙁 The Oomlout Starter […]
A while back, I went on a Geek Walk to Bletchley Park, This time Tamarisk’s Uni Computing Society went for a Social. We didn’t catch up with them, but we went as a group anyway 🙂 Last time I thought it would be cool to make an Enigma Machine, this […]
Libvirt has finally been fixed to work on OS X, LibVirt Manager is what I use to manage the Virtual machines on Sandraudiga. libvirt is an open-source API, daemon and management tool for managing platform virtualization. It can be used to manage KVM, Xen, VMware ESXi, QEMU and other virtualization […]
Today’s Makevember There seems to be very little consensus on the arangement of the colours of the buttons on the back of K-9, K9 has a 4 x 3 array of buttons on his back, I am using this image Binary kitten got me from the k9 at the Doctor […]
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 […]
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 […]
A LONG time ago I disassembled a Cheep Chinese Camera, I may have accidental blown it up by over volting it (apparently 12V DC was the wrong voltage). since then it has been sat in my desk in parts, for a while I had been pondering what the thing between […]
At CASS Industries we moved it from our old site to our new site, over a year ago, yes this post has been sat ‘in draft’ almost that long! While we were moving it across, we added the additional KX-T30865 Door phone card, (The building had a Videx DK8K-1/2 Door Intercom and […]
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 […]
This is the quickest I have got a camera onto my desk and working, This camera is a ‘Dahua DH-SD29204T-GN 2Mp Network Mini IP Speed Dome 4x optical zoom PTZ ip camera built-in MIC SD29204T-GN’ I can’t see it on Amazon, but it is on Aliexpress (SD29204T-GN-W Data sheet). Powering […]
This job has been sat on my desk at work for about 7 months, looking at Amazon it may be one of these (available in black too). After my luck with the last camera, I was hoping to get into this one too. Yep The CD is standard Chinese quality […]
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 […]
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, […]
Book 11 – Giles Andreae’s “Giraffes Can’t Dance“ Book 12 – Don Hale’s “Mallard: How the Blue Streak Broke the World Steam Speed Record” (book crossing ID 609-14374962) On 3rd July 1938 A4 LNER Pacific ‘Mallard’ achieved the world speed record for a steam locomotive of 126mph and in this […]
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 […]