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Sep. 29th, 2019 07:03 amProgress on the HO-scale camera car: I opted to make this in brass, so it would have some good weight to it. While brass is certainly one of the easiest metals to work in, it's still more challenging than something like wood, styrene, or chipboard. As it turns out, brass is more robust too, as I accidentally dropped the thing onto a cement floor from about 1 meter, and it didn't take any damage. Currently I have a working version of it, although without the lights.
In retrospect, I could have built something around a Raspberry Pi Zero that would do the same thing and would not have resulted in me wrecking one soldering iron and severely abusing another. Then again for what I've been doing with my creation, maybe I'm better off doing it this way, as it's enabled some footage that Gomez Addams would be proud of.
Originally I thought about setting up the layout in one of the spare rooms, then decided against that; I think the basement would be a better place for that. Now I just have to clear the space for it, which involves moving stuff to the spare room in question. There's a lot of stuff in the basement because when I was emptying out the storage unit and the last bits in the trailer, and pull into the garage to unload, the basement was right there.
Having a full computer stationed at the workbench has proved more useful than I could have imagined. On top of having something there to program things like Arduino or Raspberry Pi, it can also communicate with my Hioki meter, can play how-to videos as I'm working on something, do research on parts and buy them, and so on. Oh, and play some music as I see fit.
Lego has taken something of a backseat to all that's been going on lately, save for that 6-gallon find from a few weeks ago. Sooner or later my focus will rotate back to it. That's how I roll.
Got another Airport Express, this time from Ebay. I think I have enough but I'm tempted to get one or two more. I think ebay is the only real way to get these from here on out, as Amazaawwn is charging way too much. Last year, I was able to find a bunch in Target's depletion stock, often getting the last one at a particular store, and Target was the last place carrying them. In hindsight, I really wish I went in on these back in 2016 or 2017.
I think I'll give up on the 1TB Ipod project for now. I found a used Ipod hard drive, pulled from a unit with a busted screen, plugged that in, and after running restore a few times, it's back to 160GB. The SMART parameters on the hard drive are a bit worrisome, but I figure by the time that fizzles out, the rest of the device might be broken and worn out too. I have some ideas on what to do with the 1TB mSATA drive though. Plans, even.
In retrospect, I could have built something around a Raspberry Pi Zero that would do the same thing and would not have resulted in me wrecking one soldering iron and severely abusing another. Then again for what I've been doing with my creation, maybe I'm better off doing it this way, as it's enabled some footage that Gomez Addams would be proud of.
Originally I thought about setting up the layout in one of the spare rooms, then decided against that; I think the basement would be a better place for that. Now I just have to clear the space for it, which involves moving stuff to the spare room in question. There's a lot of stuff in the basement because when I was emptying out the storage unit and the last bits in the trailer, and pull into the garage to unload, the basement was right there.
Having a full computer stationed at the workbench has proved more useful than I could have imagined. On top of having something there to program things like Arduino or Raspberry Pi, it can also communicate with my Hioki meter, can play how-to videos as I'm working on something, do research on parts and buy them, and so on. Oh, and play some music as I see fit.
Lego has taken something of a backseat to all that's been going on lately, save for that 6-gallon find from a few weeks ago. Sooner or later my focus will rotate back to it. That's how I roll.
Got another Airport Express, this time from Ebay. I think I have enough but I'm tempted to get one or two more. I think ebay is the only real way to get these from here on out, as Amazaawwn is charging way too much. Last year, I was able to find a bunch in Target's depletion stock, often getting the last one at a particular store, and Target was the last place carrying them. In hindsight, I really wish I went in on these back in 2016 or 2017.
I think I'll give up on the 1TB Ipod project for now. I found a used Ipod hard drive, pulled from a unit with a busted screen, plugged that in, and after running restore a few times, it's back to 160GB. The SMART parameters on the hard drive are a bit worrisome, but I figure by the time that fizzles out, the rest of the device might be broken and worn out too. I have some ideas on what to do with the 1TB mSATA drive though. Plans, even.
