GPS mount for the kayak

I needed a GPS mount in the kayak, so I broke out my trusty printrbot and printed one.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:322918

Printrbot Simple

The latest thing I'm drooling over.

http://www.amazon.com/Printrbot-Simple-Printer-Filament-1-75mm/dp/B00HLSR0O8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1392666639&sr=8-2&keywords=printrbot+simple

Making my Utii-kilt

I decided to make a kilt. I wasn't interested in a tartan and I decided on a box-pleat kilt. A knife-pleat kilt seamed like overkill. I bought some khaki duck cloth and laid it out how I thought I'd want it.

I (as usual) didn't bother with a pattern. I more or less visualized what I wanted and went from there.

I cut the fabric leaving the selvage at the bottom. I folded it over and stitched a hem with a double needle. Then I began folding the pleats.

I finished folding the pleats. Stabbing myself at least 45 or 50 times in the fingers with pins. Great fun!

Then I sewed belt loops onto the apron part that I was going to put at the top of the pleats in the back of the kilt.

Then I attached the apron to the top of the pleats. 

I sewed the front panels. I lined the inside panel so I wouldn't have the rough duck cloth rubbing against my, well, you know...

I assembled the front panels to the pleated back

Note the lining on the inside flap below. Reduced chafing!

I'll get better pictures of me in it as soon as I can.

Folded for storage. The stitching across the pleats is to keep them intact until August. I'll pull them before I plan to wear it.

 It still needs buttons and I need to make a "sporrin", but for the most part I'm done building it.

Melted crayon art

A very cool project that came from a picture I saw on the interwebs! I'm just going to post a list of materials and the pictures. I think you can figure this one out on your own!

1 box 128 crayons
White glue
Easel pad
$14 heat gun from Harbor Freight (Many uses!)

Ta Da!

Emergency boot repair!

One morning while lacing up my boots, I broke the lug off the outside. It looked kinda like this one:

I needed my boots quickly!

• I drilled out the rivets and pulled them out of the boot from the outside. I didn't want a hole in the padding on the inside. 
• Then I used my butane soldering iron to burn a circular hole behind the hole made by the rivets.
• I then shoved a small eye-bolt through the freshly burned hole and back out the rivet hole. 
• The last step was to apply clear, quick setting epoxy to the base of the eye-bolt to keep it in place. 

It's been two months of daily wear since then and the repair is holding up well!

Electronic uppy-downy thingy (AKA: EchoBox)

Back in August I got a height adjustable desk. It's motorized! So, one of my basic tenets is: What has motors, must be hacked! (which incidentally is NOT why my Roomba isn't working right now)

I (as usual) didn't do a great job of documenting the process. The project took shape because in order to make the desk go up and down, I would be forced to hold a button for up 17 seconds! Can you imagine the drudgery of holding in a button for 17 long, tiring seconds?

I decided to create a device with a microcontroller and a sonic module to bounce sound off of the floor and measure the distance between the desk and the floor. I started with an Ardiuno nano and a (knock-off) Ping((( module.

Then I went to Radio Shack and found the perfect case and a piece of perf board to build on.

I knew I'd need to open up the control and solder in a connector (I chose a stereo plug) to actually control the direction of travel. I got lucky. The desk's controller had three solder pads right behind the plug for the controls. Up - Ground - Down.

Then I got to experimenting with the Ping module, I came up with some code to make it work. It would simply send a trigger signal out to the trigger pin and then begin listening on the output pin.

Yes I know the wires aren't hooked up in this picture!

Once that was working I just needed a way to switch the up and down controls on and off in the desk controller. I added a couple 2222 transistors to a couple digital pins and wired them up. I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I will post a schematic when I get a chance.

Next came the push buttons to select which direction the program will send the desk.

Red for up Black for down

The board, when it was all wired up, was a mess, but it works!

All dressed up in it's pretty enclosure...

Mounted under the desk. The finished product.

Now, the code!

/*
 echoBox
   This is a sketch that controls the control box for my desk at work.
   It is a motorized desk that requires you to hold the button until 
   it gets to the correct height. 
   
   This will allow me to program a height and press a button to get the 
   desk to the correct location.
 */

// set pin numbers:
#include
const int outputDn = 2;
const int outputUp = 3;
const int trigger  = 6;
const int pingPin  = 7;
const int buttonDn = 8;
const int buttonUp = 9;

// variables will change:
int setUpState = 0;
int setDnState = 0;

void setup() {
  // initialize the pushbutton pin as an input:
  pinMode(outputUp, OUTPUT);     
  pinMode(outputDn, OUTPUT);     
  pinMode(buttonUp, INPUT);     
  pinMode(buttonDn, INPUT);     
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop(){
  long duration, debug;
  float inches;
  debug = 1;
  
  setUpState = digitalRead(buttonUp);
  setDnState = digitalRead(buttonDn);
  if (setDnState == LOW) {
    duration = 10000;
    while (duration > 2900) {
      digitalWrite(outputDn, HIGH);  
      delay(100); 
      pinMode(pingPin, OUTPUT);
      digitalWrite(trigger, LOW);
      delayMicroseconds(2);
      digitalWrite(trigger, HIGH);
      delayMicroseconds(5);
      digitalWrite(trigger, LOW);

      pinMode(pingPin, INPUT);
      duration = pulseIn(pingPin, HIGH);
      inches = microsecondsToInches(duration);
      if (debug = 1) {
        Serial.print(inches);
        Serial.print("in - ");
        Serial.print(duration);
        Serial.print("ms");
        Serial.println();
      }
    }
    digitalWrite(outputDn, LOW);
  }
  if (setUpState == LOW) {
    duration = 100;
    while (duration < 4650) {
      digitalWrite(outputUp, HIGH);  
      delay(200); 
      pinMode(pingPin, OUTPUT);
      digitalWrite(trigger, LOW);
      delayMicroseconds(2);
      digitalWrite(trigger, HIGH);
      delayMicroseconds(5);
      digitalWrite(trigger, LOW);

      pinMode(pingPin, INPUT);
      duration = pulseIn(pingPin, HIGH);
      inches = microsecondsToInches(duration);
      if (debug = 1) {
        Serial.print(inches);
        Serial.print("in - ");
        Serial.print(duration);
        Serial.print("ms");
        Serial.println();
      }
    }
    digitalWrite(outputUp, LOW); 
  }  
}

void getHeight() {
  // Add code here to do the measurement to reduce the number of lines
}

long microsecondsToInches(float microseconds)
{
  return microseconds / 74 / 2;
}

Just had to post this.