If you wanted to build an electronic dice, you might grab an Arduino and a nice OLED display to whip up something fancy. You could even choose an ESP32 and have it log your rolls to the cloud. Or, you could follow the lead of [Axiometa] and do it the old-school way.
Continue reading “Electronic Dice Built The Old Fashioned Way”
[Rick] had a problem. His garage refrigerator was tasked with a critical duty—keeping refreshing beverages at low temperature. Unfortunately, it had failed—the condenser was forever running, or not running at all. The beverages were either frozen, or lukewarm, regardless of the thermostat setting. There was nothing for it—the controller had to be rebuilt from scratch.
Thankfully, [Rick]’s junk drawer was obliging. He was able to find an Arduino Uno R4, complete with WiFi connectivity courtesy of the ESP32 microcontroller onboard. This was paired with a DHT11 sensor, which provided temperature and humidity measurements. [Rick] began testing the hardware by spitting out temperature readings on the Uno’s LED matrix.
Once that was working, the microcontroller had to be given control over the fridge itself. This was achieved by programming it to activate a Kasa brand smart plug, which could switch mains power to the fridge as needed. The Uno simply emulated the action of the Kasa phone app to switch the smart plug on and off to control the fridge’s temperature, with the fridge essentially running flat out whenever it was switched on. The Uno also logs temperature to a server so [Rick] can make sure temperatures remain in the proper range.
We’ve seen some great beverage-cooling hacks over the years. If you’ve mastered your own hacky methods of keeping the colas chilled, don’t hesitate to let us know on the tipsline.
Wi-Fi! It’s everywhere, and yet you can’t really see it, by virtue of the technology relying on the transmission of electromagnetic waves outside the visual spectrum. Never mind, though, because you can always build yourself a Wi-Fi analyzer to get some insight into your radio surroundings, as demonstrated by [moononournation].
The core of the build is the ESP32-C5. The popular microcontroller is well-equipped for this task with its onboard dual-band Wi-Fi hardware, even if the stock antenna on most devboards is a little underwhelming. [moononournation] has paired this with a small rectangular LCD screen running the ILI9341 controller. The graphical interface is drawn with the aid of the Arduino_GFX library. It shows a graph of access points detected in the immediate area, as well as which channels they’re using and their apparent signal strength.
If you’re just trying to get a basic read on the Wi-Fi environment in a given locale, a tool like this can prove pretty useful. If your desires are more advanced, you might leap up to tinkering in the world of software defined radio. Video after the break.
There are lots of switches that you can use with your smarthome. Some might not be compatible with the wiring in your house, while others are battery powered and need attention on the regular. [Willow Herring] came across some nice self-powered versions that were nonetheless locked to a proprietary hub. Reverse engineering ensued!
[Willow] was using a range of smart home products from Quinetic, including the aforementioned self-powered switches. However, she couldn’t stand using them with the Quinetic hub, which was required to get them functioning with the brand’s relays and in-line switch relays. It all came down to the buggy smartphone app that was supposed to lace everything together, but never worked quite right. Instead, she set about deciphering the language the switches speak so they could be paired with other smarthome systems.
[Cameron Gray] had done some work in this area, which proved a useful starting point, though it didn’t enable the use of the switches with the various types of Quinetic relays. [Willow] decided to try and learn more about the system, starting with a CC1101 radio module hooked up to a ESP8266. Some tinkering around with expected message lengths started bearing fruit, and soon enough the format of the messages became clear.
Before long, [Willow] had figured out how to get the whole system talking to MQTT and Home Assistant, without compromising their ability to operate independently. Code is on Github for those eager to tinker further.
We’ve looked at a number of self-powered switches before, too. If you’ve found your own neat way of interfacing these devices, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!
[Thanks to Jess for the tip!]
Wago connectors are somewhat controversial in the electrical world—beloved by some, decried by others. The company knows it has a dedicated user base, though, and has established the Wago Creators site for that very community.
The idea behind the site is simple—it’s a place to discover and share unique little tools and accessories for use with Wago’s line of electrical connectors. Most are 3D printed accessories that make working with Wago connectors easier. There are some fun and innovative ideas up there, like an ESP8266 development kit that has a Wago connector for all the important pins, as well as a tool for easily opening the lever locks. Perhaps most amusing, though, is the project entitled “Hide Your Wago From Americans”—which consists of a 3D-printed wire nut lookalike designed to slide over the connectors to keep them out of view. There’s also a cheerful attempt at Wago art, that doesn’t really look like anything recognizable at all. Oh well, they can’t all be winners.
It’s great to see Wago so openly encouraging creativity among those that use its products. The sharing of ideas has been a big part of the 3D printing movement, and Wago isn’t the first company to jump on the bandwagon in this regard. If you’ve got some neat Wago hacks of your own, you can always let us know on the tipsline!
[Thanks to Niklas for the tip!]
During World War II, as the Allies planned the invasion of Normandy, there was one major hurdle to overcome—logistics. In particular, planners needed to guarantee a solid supply of fuel to keep the mechanized army functional. Tanks, trucks, jeeps, and aircraft all drink petroleum at a prodigious rate. The challenge, then, was to figure out how to get fuel over to France in as great a quantity as possible.
War planners took a diverse approach. A bulk supply of fuel in jerry cans was produced to supply the initial invasion effort, while plans were made to capture port facilities that could handle deliveries from ocean-going tankers. Both had their limitations, so a third method was sought to back them up. Thus was born Operation Pluto—an innovative plan to simply lay fuel pipelines right across the English channel.
Continue reading “How Cross-Channel Plumbing Fuelled The Allied March On Berlin”
Assuming you’re not stuck in a prison cell without windows, you could feasibly keep track of the moon and tides by walking outside and jotting things down in your notebook. Alternatively, you could save a lot of hassle by just building this moon and tide clock from [pjdines1994] instead.
The build is based on a Raspberry Pi Pico W, which is hooked up to a real-time clock module and a Waveshare 3.7-inch e-paper display. Upon this display, the clock draws an image relevant to the current phase of the moon. As the write-up notes, it was a tad fussy to store 24 images for all the different lunar phases within the Pi Pico, but it was achieved nonetheless with a touch of compression. As for tides, it covers those too by pulling in tide information from an online resource.
It’s specifically set up to report the local tides for [pjdines1994], reporting the high tide and low tide times for Whitstable in the United Kingdom. If you’re not in Whitstable, you’d probably want to reconfigure the clock before using it yourself. Unless you really want to know what’s up in Whitstable, of course. If you so wish, you can set the clock up to make its own tide predictions by running local calculations, but [pjdines1994] notes that this is rather more complicated to do. The finished result look quite good, because [pjdines1994] decided to build it inside an old carriage clock that only reveals parts of the display showing the moon and the relevant tide numbers.
We’ve featured some other great tide clocks before, like this grand 3D printed design. If you’ve built your own arcane machine to plot the dances of celestial objects, do be sure to let us know on the tipsline!
