Unspecified Updates

As noted a few posts ago, I’ve been trying my hand once again at not failing to keep a plant alive, and have been keeping a watchful eye on my Meyer Lemon tree. It’s continuing to grow pretty nicely, and the lemons are starting to get fairly sizable. As winter continues to approach, the days get shorter, and the weather gets colder, I may need to move the pot inside or into the shed, and put a plant lamp on a timer so it can get the light it needs and not freeze to death.

This photo was taken nearly a month ago, and many of the lemons have about doubled or more in size since then.

IMG_1193Additionally, I got my new iPhone recently. As my phone is really the only camera I ever use, any improvements made in that regard are a real draw for me. I’ve been pretty pleased with the results it’s been spitting out. Photos are coming out really nice, and I’ve been having some fun with the 240FPS slow motion video recording. Here’s some example photos/panoramas I’ve taken with the new phone’s camera.

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Anyway, I’m pretty pleased with how well it works. I’m looking forward to finding more interesting things to catch with it.

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3D Printer

Recently a friend of mine sent me a number of parts he had laying around to get me started on building a 3D printer. The parts he sent, plus some time, and a few parts I could buy would combine into a machine for making objects out of rolls of plastic.

Once his shipment arrived, it was time for me to construct the frame, which everything else would attach to. I ended up building the frame from some finish plywood I picked up at the local Home Depot. After which came the measuring and cutting. Of course, I had my puppy helper to distract me.

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After the panels were cut, I grabbed the iPad for directions, and my finish nail gun to tack the whole thing together.

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And with the magic of the finish nail gun, nearly instantaneously a frame appeared before my eyes.

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After the frame was built, it was time to start attaching parts to it. First to come was the X axis and carriage, and the Z axis that supports it.

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Next came the Y axis which has the bed, and moves back and forth underneath the X axis.

IMG_0913Then, through the magic of not taking pictures, all the electronics get installed and the printer is complete!

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Then it came down to fiddling all the settings, and tuning things here and there, and calibration, and repeating everything, and etc, etc, until finally you get something printed!

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Hey! Look at that! It’s a box! Also, for the heck of it, I put my magnifier on the box. Oooooh 60X magnification!

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Anyway, after all the initial calibration is done, you can start doing fancy parts, like this freaking awesome gear bearing I printed!

Or this awesome vase-like-object, which maybe I’ll use to hold pens or something!

IMG_1065Or, practical things like a case for the Random Number Generator USB stick I talked about a few posts back!

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Anyway, it’s been very interesting building the printer and tuning it up to make decent prints, and I think it will find a lot of use as it dovetails in with my other electronics and hobby projects.

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Bending Acrylic

I’ve had a large 2000VA UPS here under my desk for some time, and it uses an external battery pack. The problem is, some time ago I lost the top half of the battery pack, so the batteries and the wiring was exposed.

I leaned a sheet of acrylic against it to prevent feet/dogs/falling objects from getting into the batteries, but I had always intended to construct some sort of real cover. I was fiddling around with the pack a couple days ago, and realized that if I could bend the sheet of acrylic I had stuck there temporarily, with two right angles, it could make a nice little cover.

A quick youtube search later, and I had a plan for bending the sheet.

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I used this board as both a support, as well as the form, as it was the same width as I wanted the top/middle section to be.

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After gently heating along the bend to be made, I bent down one side of the acrylic at about a 90 degree angle.

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Then I bent the other side, and cooled the piece down with some water from the garden hose.

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Unfortunately, the first bend I heated a bit too quickly, causing some sections to bubble and look less than pretty.

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But I had much better success with the second section, by heating it more slowly, the bend didn’t bubble and came out clear.

IMG_0846And finally, the cover is in place over the partially disassembled battery pack!

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Nest Thermostat Data Logging

I have a Nest thermostat here at the house, which we really like a lot. It’s great for keeping track of energy usage on heating, as well as being able to remotely control the settings, in addition to the insanely awesome scheduling it can take care of.

However, I had wished that it offered some way to log or plot the data available from the onboard sensors for temperature and humidity inside the house. Unfortunately, it’s not *really* available. However, some some helpful dude made an PHP class that makes use of the interface the nest itself uses to talk, so I’ve taken advantage and am now making fancy graphs of the data. Woo!

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Secure Data Destruction

In light of my recent work with making things more secure with a truly random number generator for use in feeding the kernel entropy pool, I also thought it would be a good time to visit secure data destruction, and share a few photos from a recent outing.

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IMG_0782Most of the damage and holes were done with the 9mm, but the .22 played a good role, and the 12 gauge with trap shot was around to pretty up the top plate with a number of small dents.

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