My Career As A Spammer, And Other Stories From The Sneakernet

September 13, 2018 by Jenny List 12 Comments

A large hacker camp is in microcosm a city, it has all the services you might expect to find in a larger settlement in the wider world. There is a telecommunication system, shops, bars, a health centre, waste disposal services, a power grid, and at some camps, a postal system. At Electromagnetic Field, the postal system was provided by the Sneakernet, a select group of volunteers including your Hackaday scribe under the direction of the postmaster Julius ter Pelkwijk. I even had the fun of delivering some chopped pork and ham. (More on that later.) Continue reading “My Career As A Spammer, And Other Stories From The Sneakernet” →

Fixing A Broken Postage Scale

January 16, 2015 by Rick Osgood 7 Comments

[Starhawk] had an old Pitney Bowes G799 postage scale that wasn’t working as it should. After years of faithfully measuring packages and cooking ingredients, the scale stopped working. At first it fell out of calibration. Then the power up sequence stopped working. The scale normally would turn on, light up the entire display, then change to dashes, and finally set itself to 0.0 lbs. In this case, it would get stuck at the dashes and never change to 0.0.

[Starhawk] ended up purchasing another duplicate scale from eBay, only to find that when it arrived it had the exact same power up problem. Using deductive reasoning, he decided that since the scale was broken during shipping the problem would likely be with a mechanical component. He turned out to be correct. The cheap momentary power button was at fault. When pressing the button, the contact would get stuck closed preventing the scale from zeroing out properly. [Starhawk] easily fixed his problem by replacing the switch.

Next [Starhawk] replaced the old scale’s LCD module with one from the new scale, since the old one looked to be on its way out. The scale still had a problem correctly measuring weight. [Starhawk] tried swapping the load cell from the new scale to the old one, but he found that the new load cell had some kind of problem that prevented the scale from zeroing out properly. The solution ended up being to use the newer “analog board” as [Starhawk] calls it. The end result was the old scale with two newer circuit boards, an older load cell, and a new power switch. Next time it might be easier to just build his own scale.

Weasure, A Scale That Weighs And Measures

November 9, 2008 by Eliot 2 Comments

weasure

[John Peterson] created this postal scale device for a Renesas design contest. The Weasure not only calculates the package’s total weight but the dimensions as well. He built it using a SKP16C62P evaluation board that had an LCD, pushbuttons, and indicator LEDs. The original DigiWeigh parcel scale was modified to provide PWM output and tare control. He embedded photoresistors every inch along each axis. They were angle slightly upward and the surroundings were painted black to minimize reflection. The Weasure outputs everything via a serial connection so it can be used with shipping software to generate postage.