Getting Settled

Hey guys, while ive been living here in my new place for a couple months now ive barely had time to even set up a decent work area. By the time i get home im too tired to do anything but i finally got around to fixing up a room for me to play in. While its not 100% complete, its usable.

As you can see i have lots to play with. This is about 75% to 80% of my tools. Whats missing are tools i use for work like my 20v Makita drills and griders. My sawzall and other hand tools. Since i use them for heavy work stuff i dont put them on the wall.

The good news is im almost done and juse got my ESP32 board to play with.

I hope i get time soon to tinker and build things. I want to hopefully create a small network for home automation. Yes i know its been done and it may not seem like a big deal but if i can make a cheap alternative to these high priced devices ill be happy.

I hope i get more opportunities to write here and hope you guys visit often. Thanks!

Back to it!

Ok ill be trying my best to blog more often of my adventures in the world of electronics. Ive recently ugraded my cnc to be a laser cutter/engraver with a new 500 x 1000mm rail. Using a 500mW laser right now but have a nice 10W laser in the mail.

Ive also designed all new electronics for it. New arduino, new grbl 0.9 & 1.1 compatible pcb and new limits and motor/laser control pcb.

This is going to be my focus for the coming months but ill be sure to include any and all details i can.

Pix-Watch – Teensy 3.2 based smartwatch

https://hackaday.io/project/8441-pix-watch-teensy-32-based-smartwatch

I have been recently asked to join the group creating a awesome smartwatch. Ill be designing the PCB and Schematic. Im currently at the parts creation portion and will be designing the schematic any day now.

Go take a look at the hackaday link above and share your thoughts 🙂

Weather Base

I have decided to work on a small or i should say basic weather display for in my home. It will use a Arduino Zero Clone (AtomZero), 7in LCD, MicroSD for images, Wifi using the ESP8266, some internal temp sensor and probably a 12v adapter to supply 3.3v @ 3A or something.

Now this might not seem basic but i will try my best to make code available and understandable. I usually dont comment anything but ill try to this time.

The ESP8266 will be using NodeMCU to help take the load off the AtomZero. NodeMCU is new and a mystery to me so i will be studying this: https://github.com/nfriedly/nodemcu-weather-station

He seems to have a weather station done completely on the ESP8266 which is quite cool. But the LCD i want to use requires SPI (MOSI, MISO, CS, SCK, INT, SCL, SDA, CS2(SD)) Thats 8 IO already, not even sure if i missed any 🙂

The LCD is a 7 inch capacitive touch (5 finger max) and will have a simple GUI to set things like Wifi user/pass, Location , update info etc… When on it will take about 800mA to 1.2A which is the main reason i dont plan on using batteries, even though i will have the screen timeout i still would like to not have to worry about batteries. I might make it have a small 800mAH battery just to be able to move round the house without having it turn off.

Jan 20, 2016: will be paying what ever code i have done so far today or tomorrow.

Moving

Hey guys I’m currently in the midst of a move. So haven’t been able to do anything but orders from tindie. We are almost done. The new place seems nice and just got Fios installed which seems good.

Here is a night picture of the new area.

And day of another corner 🙂

I’ll be back up in no time. See you all soon.

1.5″ OLED

I recently bought a OLED from Wide.HK ebay page:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/130762865608

All i needed was a easier way to tell the pinout so i made this little image. I plan on making pinouts like this for everything i do from now on. Seems easy and saves me time.

Home made stencils!

Check it out! I make PCBs all the time and to be honest i dont want to spend money on stencils or wait for them to come in. So i decided why not try and make my own. I own a ShapeOko 2 and some other tools so it shouldnt be too hard.

Now just because i have a CNC machine doesnt mean you couldnt do this without one. I havent tried it but it should work with a Drill Press, just manually 🙂

I have no time to explain it all to be honest been busy but ill make time this weekend to edit this post with actual steps.

Tools i used:

1. CNC Machine
2. 1mm Drill Bit
3. Double sided tape (Cheap Dollar store kind (image below))

Here are some images…