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 […]
HACMan
47 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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Following on from trying to program the LinkIt ONE on Mac, and Windows, I went looking for further information, I managed to find some information on the IDE GitHub page, I will compare how easy it is to program each of them with Blink.ino. My mac is set up as […]
Tamarisk, Bob and I headed over to the National Model Engineering and Modelling Exhibition 2015 in Harrogate.
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, Tamarisk 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 […]
At work we had need for a multiple temperature logging device. Using one of my cheap Chinese Arduino Uno clones, some DS18B20 one wire Waterproof Temperature Transducers (like these ones), a cheap Ethernet / SD card shield (like this), and a DS1307 RTC (Real Time clock) (link). The DS1307 RTC […]
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 […]
A Stevenson screen is an outdoor enclosure to shield meteorological instruments against precipitation and direct heat radiation (sometimes called a radiation screen) from outside sources, while still allowing air to circulate freely around them. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) agreed standard for the height of the screen is between 1.25 […]
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 _ […]
To facilitate remote tech support, we need a server some place safe, like this one. We also need to give the Raspberry Pi a username and password so it can log in (this article was used as a guide). But why would we want to do this? I am looking to […]
My test print of the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) No. 37 profile. The Kort nozzle is based on the one from Tomi Salo put on Thingiverse, I didnt make any alterations to the .dxf file, and a few alterations to the .scad file. I have sized the nozzle to […]
The Raspberry Pi A, and Raspberry Pi B both had a composite video out, on an composite video plug (RCA), the new model B+ uses a 4-pole socket which carries both audio and video signals. This style of connector is sometimes referred to as “TRRS”, which stands for “Tip-Ring-Ring-Sleeve”. The […]