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 […]
Geeky
110 posts
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 […]
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 […]
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.
A while ago I picked up these buttons for my Dr Who’s K-9 robot from AliExpress, Hobby Components have similar available online, The ones I purchased are SPDT with a 24 V DC incandescent bulb in them, regardless of the button colour they are all illuminated with a white incandescent […]
Every so often I try to bin WordPress, and move away from it. I have most recently tried to use DokuWiki to try and get away from WordPress, this can still be seen on labbook.skippy.org.uk, where the some of my notes are now going to live. Things I don’t like […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
Silly PHP upload limits One of the things that I find really unhelpful is that PHP by default has a silly small upload limit, normally I get around this on a per site basis by editing .htaccess with the following, However I can add some stuff to the end of […]
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 Setting up Sentora and setting up HTTPS on domains, it is now time to do something about the encryption of emails between clients and the server (I have written about end to end encryption on macs before). I hate playing about Postfix and Dovecot, Paul commented on Twitter that he had managed […]
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 […]
Following on from the Mac instructions, I have also set up MediaTek’s LinkIt™ ONE on a Window Machine, Setup Download the MediaTek LinkIt SDK for Arduino Windows. Unzip the downloaded zip, right click on the installer “mediatek_linkit_sdk_(for_arduino)-1.1.05.exe” and “Run as administrator” Change the location on Screen two to the location […]
A few weekends ago, HACMan, Tas and I were at MakerFaire New Castle. One of the exhibitors there was MediaTek, showing off their range of LinkIt Wearables / IoT (Tnternet of Things) development boards. I have managed to snag myself a LinkIt One development board kit: Optimized performance and power […]
I have finally got round to trying to Automate the hot water pump on the boat, using what I found out about the DS18B20 one wire Waterproof Temperature sensors from the Arduino Data logger I wanted to try out controlling the pump, (the same PCB will be used for other automation […]
It looks like MyHeritage now has a “Mac Version” of their software (this should reduce my dad’s number of computers down to one). Historicity they recommended all kinds of horrible things (running virtual machines etc.), but there application could not be run in Wine (or equiv). So this mac version […]
A while ago I tried to design a 3D printed ROV hull, one of the problems of OpenSCAD is the difficulty of making cool organic or rounded shapes, while you do have access to both the Minkowski, and hull commands to make nice organic shapes. The use of linear_extrude to […]
Similer to how I deal with keeping Eagle in sync between multiple machines, I try to do the same with the Arduino IDE and Processing. In my dropbox folder I store my projects in a sub folder called Projects, and in there I have a folder called “_Vitamins” (the _ […]
Running a hosting business, I frequently chat with folks making the decision on where to host their sites. Other times, people are evaluating existing services and expenditures, wanting to make sure they are getting the best value for their hosting investment. This makes good sense. But almost without fail, people […]
I have been looking to build an ROV (underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle) for a while, There will be other blog posts on this in my blog some where. I have been looking over the designs for the OpenROV and have signed up on the forums. there is one guy on […]
As part of my R-Pi K-9 I want to have a web browser interface, (also because I want to build an ROV) I don’t have a beaglebone black. Using a web browser as my interface will allow me to use my recently acquired iPad to control it, I want to […]
As some of you know I may be a bit of a geek, one of the tools I use is the Teensy, it is very smiler in use and specification to an Arduino while not being a pure clone unlike the Diavolino. My preferred member of the family is the […]
A while ago I wrote about some offline WordPress editors, recently I managed to get my hands on a copy of Blogo (available via the App Store). My Previouse nice to have list was: Presented the WYSIWYG more like that in the edit screen for posts (the images and captions being sorted […]