A journal of hobbies
Water is precious in Australia. Much of Australia is very dry and regularly has droughts. From 2017 to 2019 we had a particularly nasty drought. Where we live, the long-term average rainfall is about 763 mm. 2017 and 2018 had lower rainfall and then in 2019 it dropped to only 314 mm. Everything dried out.... Continue Reading →
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 →
Garry's blog 