Following on from my recent post about Glastonbury’s fun and exciting 5G report, I have had the chance to review the full report in more detail, the one that was pulled from the website and replaced with the executive summary… The executive summary is a dull document, that has redacted […]
Geeky
140 posts
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 […]
Every so often I update my CV, I am not a huge fan of Microsoft Word, or other Word Processors. Texmaker is a free open source LaTeX editor that works cross platform, on my Mac it makes generating my CV simpler. My CV is now stored in my GitHub account […]
The Mystery of Mc vs. Mac This page will attempt to solve the mystery of Mc versus Mac, the alphabetization of Mc, as well as the mystery of the raised c often used in Mc. Historically, Mac was a surname prefix for Irish or Scottish sons. Many people believe that […]
It has been a while since I have tried getting CARLA to run. After doing fair amount of poking, and prodding including trying to compile Unreal Engine for use on the NVIDIA Jetson Nano; I was unable to get Unreal Engine running on the ARM® A57 architecture. Since then I […]
One of the problems I have when designing PCBs, or working in CAD with a view to 3D printing it is easy to loose sight of how big things on the screen are in real life. A lot of the time when you move away from working with through hole […]
Since I got Pycom working on my Mac, I can now update the firmware on my expansion board, the DFU updater is available in Brew, which we should have installed in the last post. From the Updating Firmware page we can download the correct firmware file; I have the Expansion […]
On Saturday Tamarisk, MiniBoyGeek, Thinkl33t and I went to The MAD Museum in Stoke-on-Trent with Emily and Glen. We also found a nice little vegan coffee shop called Plantarium. Emily made Tamarisk and I a Flappity Bat for Christmas: Go look at her shop!
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 […]
One of the simpler inputs to add to a microcontroller is a switch, I have chosen to use the ones I have added to KiCad for my Swarmbot. Most people who add microswitches normaly use something like the following circuit on a Digital in Pin. When the Switch is open […]
I found some cheap small microswitches on AliExpress, working backwards I found the same switch part numbers, and subsequently found a Switch Data sheet for the same size part. I use a mix of Fusion 360 and KiCAD for design, so I CADDed up the three flavours of microswitches, using […]
This is version one of a set of Left-hand Switches made for MiniBoyGeek’s Duplo Railway Yes there is already a version two waiting to print, with additional check rails and re-designed mechanism: You can find it on ThingiVerse here
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, […]
I have started designing assembles in Fusion 360 using T-Slot, a lot of head scratching on how to make use of it at arbitrary lengths in my designs… I started by making a 20mm length of T-Slot as its own model in Fusion 360; This is model has all of […]
Using a LED and a 560 Ω in most breadboard projects means that you end up with four pins connected for two components, soldering them up like this makes them much easer to handle.
…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 […]
We went to Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker, to be fair it is badly named… its got far too well signposted; the entire place is a maze or exhibit rooms, and displays showing an over view of life during its time as a bunker.
Following on from last week where we drove a motor in one direction with the help of a simple amplifier, this week we are going to have a go at driving a servo. Those of you who read older posts in my blog will know I have done this before […]
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 started putting these on Github so you can also follow along. In Weeks 2, and 3 we were driving LEDs directly from the Arduino, While the Arduino can drive a LED directly from a pin, if you want to power something that draws more power like a motor, […]
I picked up a 37 in 1 box sensor kit from china, it includes basic components and sensors, and is compatible with Arduino and Raspberry Pi The Package Included (their description): Small passive buzzer module KY-006 2-color LED module KY-011 Hit sensor module KY-031 Vibration switch module KY-002 Photo resistor […]
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 […]
Following on from week 1 and week 2, we will be continuing our way through Oomlout’s Arduino Guide, at this point however we hit a snag with using iCircuit. Annoyingly iCircuit is unable to deal with arrays. An array is a cunning way of holding multiple variables inside a single […]
In Week 2 we made a single LED blink using an Arduino, now about 99.9% of the time this would be overkill (the 0.1% of the time is when you are learning); actually tell a lie, There is a VERY good reason to flash a LED with a micro, but […]
Following on from Week 1 and talking about faking it with an Arduino, we will use UnoArduSim.exe and iCircuit to model the first few circuits from the Oomlout.com’s “Experimenter’s Guide for Arduino” (Full kit was available from here). Oomlout have made the ARDX-circuit-sheets available separately to their guide PDF. Circuit […]
If you want to learn Arduino programming, but don’t always have access to a box of physical hardware, there are a number of Arduino Simulators available, however one of the best ones I have found to use, is also free. UnoArduSim Arduino is a great platform, but If you’re trying […]
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 […]