A journal of hobbies
Over the years I’ve tinkered with a handful of those inexpensive solar garden lights. One of my earlier experiments involved swapping the standard white LED for a red one, that ended up producing a surprisingly pleasing effect. This prompted me to revisit an old challenge, getting one to run a colour changing LED without instantly... Continue Reading →
A few weeks ago I went to our local Tip shop. This is a small shop run by our local council at our waste transfer station. They have donated junk and items they retrieve from waste waiting to be sold to new victims. I was surprised when I went up the back and there sitting... Continue Reading →
I have a soft spot for rotary encoders. They are so simple, yet work so well as an interface. I have mostly used the cheap mechanical quadrature rotary encoders that are sold on modules. However, there are a couple of projects that I'm interested in where these are not ideal. The first is the tuning... Continue Reading →
In a previous post I looked at an anemometer that I bought from AliExpress that was built around a cheap toy motor. I wasn't happy with it so decided to salvage the cups from it for use in a scratch built one using a bicycle hub. It's been an interesting project and had more challenges... Continue Reading →
DFRobot's DFPlayer mini is a small, inexpensive MP3player module and the info page for it lists some of its uses as: Railway station, bus safety inspection voice prompts; The public security border control channel voice prompts; and Multi-channel voice alarm or equipment operating guide voice. Anyway, this post is not about using it for that,... Continue Reading →
I've had an interest in detecting lightning for many years. I remember reading an article about Benjamin Franklins lightning experiments back in the 80's or early 90's. I thought the article was in an issue of Electronics Australia, but I have not been able to locate it. Ben Franklin is fairly well known for flying... Continue Reading →
Choosing an Anemometer I've been considering what to use for an anemometer for my weather station. I was thinking of making my own, but a significant downside would be calibrating it. I checked what was available on AliExpress. Many are plastic and I don't want a plastic one and I don't want to have to... Continue Reading →
Whenever someone pointed out to a work colleague that there was an easier way to do what he was attempting, he’d look confused and then reply, “Well, anyone can do it the easy way.” I seem to find myself avoiding the usual easier way with projects, just to try do it differently. That's how I... Continue Reading →
I've been working on building a weather station over the last few months and while I haven't completed all the sensors, I have a few done including recently a rain gauge. The receiver is based around the "Random Nerd Tutorials ESP-NOW Web Server Sensor Dashboard" in which the data is displayed on a web page.... Continue Reading →
I've wanted to build a weather station for a long time, probably for at least 30 years. Droughts are common here, and we rely on rain for all our household water. Our house is also quite exposed to strong winds. At one point a neighbour a couple of kilometers away had their roof blown off... Continue Reading →
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