I needed to measure brake rotor wear tonight, but there’s a ridge on the edge where the pads don’t hit preventing an accurate measurement with vernier calipers. I don’t have a micrometer, but I do have a pile of weld nuts. Problem solved.
I wanted to measure battery current on my new HexBright, and it turns out its something I’d like to do on a regular basis. So I made this: a strip of plastic cut from a blister pack, two strips of copper foil tape, and a couple of wires. Works great!
I pulled apart my car’s start/stop button today to redo some chipping paint that was bothering me. Naturally, I couldn’t stop at only the cosmetic plastic once I saw that there was a small PCB inside. There are two interesting things about this picture. First, look at the PCB: there are some electronics (and more than just regulators to drive the LED), an LED to illuminate the button, and nothing else. Continue reading
I’ve been thinking for a while about how I want to go about mounting my iPhone in my car. For a while I had one of those suction cup mounts that gently clamps onto whatever phone or case you have, but it was pretty cruddy and snapped the other day. It got quite in the way as well. Looking around today, I came across Kuda which sells a bunch of custom-fit solutions that look very good though are quite expensive. I thought to myself that something similar wouldn’t be too hard to fabricate myself for a few bucks at home depot.
Being out in LA, I recently bought a car – I ended up with a used BMW. It’s pretty sweet, but I’m me so obviously I’ve moded just about everything I can without actually buying parts. Mostly that means software mods – windows up on key fob lock press, that sort of thing. But I’ve also been trying to mod bluetooth into it, and only recently had success. Tonight I got curious and took the module which controls bluetooth and USB aux-in apart (referred to as a MULF2 High Basis, it lives in the trunk and connects to a USB plug in the center console). Here’s what I found. Continue reading
I’ve amassed a lot of loose surface mount parts and it finally came time to do something about organizing them – digging through piles of little plastic bags in a box gets real old real fast. I considered buying something like Adafruit’s SMD parts kit and just stuffing my extra parts in the corresponding slots, but I don’t currently have a pressing need for all the parts, and I came up with something a little cheaper. Perhaps more interesting, I’ve got a nice recipe for heat sealing plastic (like anti-static bags) with your soldering iron without messing it up. Continue reading
I’ve had this traffic light sitting in the corner of our apartment for a while now – I’ve been meaning to do a traffic light project for a long time and I finally got one as a gift, so naturally it came out to Cali with me when I moved. But until now it’s just sat nicely in the corner, all lights on when plugged in and all lights off when not. Well, I just got my Bluetooth Low Energy shield from Seeed Studio in the other day, so naturally it was time for that to change. Continue reading
I use a Weller WESD51 soldering station and I have a few tips. A LOT of tips. 10, and a few more on the way. Until now, I’ve always used the 3 little holes on the soldering iron holder, but they only fit 3 tips, so I needed something with more room. It had to be metal (so hot tips wouldn’t fry it), wide (so nearby objects wouldn’t brush hot tips) and it had to hold the tips a fair distance off the desk so they wouldn’t scorch that, either. Here’s what I came up with. Continue reading
My PCBs came back from OSH Park! This run had a bunch of copies of the UART and SPI level shifters as well as the RFM12b breakout. I’m getting them cleaned up now, then later on testing!
My brand new pair of Stellaris Launchpads from TI just arrived via FedEx a few minutes ago so I couldn’t resist opening one up. I don’t have time to play with them now, but I noticed a few things right off. Continue reading