thisisitselfaproject

[thisisitselfaproject]

Two completed works?!

First, the kids and I made a "plant propagation station" for Mary's birthday, using scrap wood and some glass test tubes I bought. Right now it's doubling as a vase, which I enjoy.

Second, I built an arcade stick! This, again, is made from scraps, including some random plywood I was lucky enough to pick up from a neighbor. The buttons and joystick are cheap Amazon pickups -- I didn't want to buy real Sanwa parts until I could prove I could do it and it was worth doing. I can always add new hardware later and save these buttons for non-twitch purposes or other projects.

It's definitely not perfect. The button holes ended up spintering the plywood a bit, and I didn't bother to do anything fancy to attach the joystick from the bottom, opting instead for just dealing with a couple screws in the top. But if I wanted perfect I'd never built anything. This was a learning experience, and a proof of concept, and I can use it on Switch!

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Keybow Mini

The project continues! This little three-key mechanical keyboard will be the interface for the Raspberry Pi busy light. I am currently stuck figuring out how to do that. I have three different busy light templates to follow, and I'm basically baffled at some point in all of them.

But I shouldn't get too overwhelmed by what is left to figure out. Emily and I successfully soldered another Raspberry Pi Zero W header, assembled this keyboard, and got its OS installed. That's something! That could be a whole project! Right????

I'm mostly telling myself this. I'm in a mood right now where I feel like I'm not actually finishing everything and I'm just spending money on more things I don't understand and why am I bothering with anything. But look, there's something I made and it works.

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Success!

After months of failure, obsessive research, intense being-busy-with-other-things, and general anxiety about taking this step, I have now soldered for the first time. And, actually, so did the kids. It looks like a gloopy mess but now this Unicorn pHAT works when connected to a Raspberry Pi Zero W. I can remotely change the colors of the LEDs. Presumably I could also write a Python program to dynamically change them.

But that's for a different time. Now, this LED array is bound to be connected to a Microsoft Azure logic app to automatically indicate whether my wife is in a meeting or not. I'm not sure how that's going to go, but for the first time I have forward momentum!

[thisisitselfaproject]

Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death repair

Here’s perhaps the least likely project yet. Years ago, I inherited an Xbox 360 from a coworker. I reviewed a few games on it, bought a Kinect camera, and then... the console died. 

I’ve since sold off all my Xbox games, but it occurred to me that I could try to repair it as a sort of practical electronics tutorial. Aaaaand then I can power it on and wipe my profile off of it to sell or give away.

I’ve just barely looked up how involved these repairs are, and even the very first step -- trying to hook the thing back up to verify what kind of error lights pop up --sounds kind of exhausting.

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Ambient TV light

I haven’t been posting new projects here lately because I have been busy with the ongoing project of “normal life” and out of a hope of addressing some ideas I already had before coming up with more.

And yet, here! Cool LEDs that light up behind the TV and match the colors on screen! Philips makes its Ambilight system for this, but it’s possible to DIY with a Raspberry Pi. There’s even a whole kit that comes with all the non-Pi components.

We have Christmas lights strung around the living room ceiling, and they’re slowly blinking out. Maybe that’s enough of a reason to do a cool LED thing in the living room.

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Microsoft Teams busy light

This tutorial by Jim Bennett is one of the first Raspberry Pi projects I started... a long time ago... and I haven’t finished. This one project, intended to let the family know when Mary is in a meeting and thus should not be bothered, has been an ongoing education in all kinds of software and hardware technology, none of which I would say I “know” at all.

First I got a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a Unicorn PHAT light thing, but without knowing how to solder, I opted for pogo pins instead... which don’t seem to connect well enough for a consistent light. So I got a soldering iron and I’m going to learn how to do that! Then if that works, all I’ll have to do is... learn the Microsoft Azure platform and IoT Central.

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Raspberry Pi in a Dreamcast shell

I have a non-functioning Dreamcast (RIP). I have a Raspberry Pi 4. I have... no idea how I would combine them. My low-tech thought is to just stick the board in there and use a USB hub in place of the controller slots, or maybe USB extension cables into the four controller bays (after taking out the Dreamcast connectors). But who knows if I’d be able to secure any of it?

Furthermore -- and most importantly -- how long can I tinker with the computer my kid uses for school every day, and what happens when I return to her a computer that is now bigger and probably harder to use?

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DIY arcade stick

I have a long-term goal/wish/desire/dream/fantasy/delusion of building an arcade cabinet out of wood. I feel like building a stick would be good practice in both wiring and woodworking, and I’d be able to reuse the parts later in a larger project.

Put that way, it’s a very practical decision.

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Digital Free Library

My neighborhood is already pretty dense in Little Free Libraries, but I haven’t seen any sign of a digital version, and I think this is a project I could take on fairly easily. It’s a Raspberry Pi to which passersby can connect wirelessly and download free PDFs or ebooks. 

The main obstacle here is curating a collection of books that I want to share with all the people on my street.

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IKEA wireless charging

I really like the idea of drilling a hole in my desk (with an IKEA hole saw, at that!) to make a wireless charging cyborg desk! Except... I don’t actually work at a desk right now. And my phone doesn’t support wireless charging! Otherwise it’s a totally flawless plan. 

Maybe I’ll convince other people in my home that this would be very good for them.

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Tiny Japanese trucks

I was just listening to the Cool Tools podcast where, after espousing the apparently endless utility of the Mazda Miata (???), Todd Lappin mentioned the Japanese kei fire truck he purchased. It has its own Instagram.

I don’t think I’d actually research buying a tiny Japanese car, nor would I actually be able to learn how to maintain one, but for that brief moment I was in a talking-myself-into-it frenzy. Tiny cars! Tiny trucks!

(This is a blog where I will collect all the cool ideas I find that I want to build, make, or just read more about. I realized I was doing a lot of reading about things and not all that much doing of said things, and then had the epiphany that curation is, in fact, a thing that one does.)