Stuff you have made today

[DAPPH]

Who else used to have to clear the snow to then lift the lethal, concrete coal bunker, sliding door (also concrete). Then chip away at the frozen mass of coal. Legging it in the morning from the scratchy blanket covered, bed to find Mum warming your school clothes on a leccy bar fire.

Spoilt I was!

Bloody posh spoilt namby pamby kids .

We had no electricity , gas or mains water out in the sticks in the 50's . The only way our clothes had a bit of warmth inthe morning was by was having them betwen the blankets on the bed & under the eiderdown . One particular period of the winter .... us kids went to bed fully clothed less our shoes for a few days

Some days Jack Frosts window patterns never disappeared , I think it was the bad year of 1955 into 56 that it was well frosted to almost 1/4 inch thick on the inside of all the upstairs rooms & all the damp curtains were also frozen stiff , same with the unheated front room and the kitchen window .
Dad & my brother Bill dug a path through 36 inch deep snow to the outside long drop toilet that was some 50 yards away from the house . The torn up news paper squares hanging on a nail in the toilet styed there as it was frozen solid . You only took it from the pile kept near the cooking range in the living room .

 

[RichardM]

You think you had it hard, we had a black and white TV until I was about 11. Stunted my social life as I was too embarrassed to bring friends home...

No telly at all until I was 11ish, colour came when Dad married my stepmum when I was 16.
When wifey and I got married we had a second hand colour telly - unfortunately the red gun stopped working and it was a year or so before we could afford a new one

 

[bigegg]

That’s very impressive and I don’t mean to be thick, but what’s it for?!??

Basically, I have a small computer which I use to automate my house:
Lights come on when I arrive home - if it's dark.
Central heating turns off when I leave home (and back on when I return).
If I put the TV on, it dims the house lights, and closes the curtains.
Turns on a low-level light on the landing if anyone gets up at night for the toilet.
Detects when mrsEgg visits, and turns the kettle on.
Detects when the washing machine stops running, and sends me a reminder to my phone to empty it.
Turns shed lights off if I'm not in there - and detects if anyone enters.
Monitoring of house climate and automatically turns on/off heating+fans.
Water monitoring of hydroponic system + my pond.

I had various movement sensors + panic alarms set up for mum, but I've removed a lot of those now.

Basically, it integrates lots of different tech to make them interact.

The tablet is just as a monitor, and manual control if necessary.

 

[magnet]

Bloody posh spoilt namby pamby kids .

We had no electricity , gas or mains water out in the sticks in the 50's . The only way our clothes had a bit of warmth inthe morning was by was having them betwen the blankets on the bed & under the eiderdown . One particular period of the winter .... us kids went to bed fully clothed less our shoes for a few days

Some days Jack Frosts window patterns never disappeared , I think it was the bad year of 1955 into 56 that it was well frosted to almost 1/4 inch thick on the inside of all the upstairs rooms & all the damp curtains were also frozen stiff , same with the unheated front room and the kitchen window .
Dad & my brother Bill dug a path through 36 inch deep snow to the outside long drop toilet that was some 50 yards away from the house . The torn up news paper squares hanging on a nail in the toilet styed there as it was frozen solid . You only took it from the pile kept near the cooking range in the living room .

Jeez

 

[Barking Mat]

Bloody posh spoilt namby pamby kids .

We had no electricity , gas or mains water out in the sticks in the 50's . The only way our clothes had a bit of warmth inthe morning was by was having them betwen the blankets on the bed & under the eiderdown . One particular period of the winter .... us kids went to bed fully clothed less our shoes for a few days

Some days Jack Frosts window patterns never disappeared , I think it was the bad year of 1955 into 56 that it was well frosted to almost 1/4 inch thick on the inside of all the upstairs rooms & all the damp curtains were also frozen stiff , same with the unheated front room and the kitchen window .
Dad & my brother Bill dug a path through 36 inch deep snow to the outside long drop toilet that was some 50 yards away from the house . The torn up news paper squares hanging on a nail in the toilet styed there as it was frozen solid . You only took it from the pile kept near the cooking range in the living room .

Back in the good old days, when men were men .... Etc....

Well I'm glad to say I've never had that.

However, we heat our house with nothing but wood burners, we end up with blankets over doors, as we live in a huge half uninsulated draughty house, all good fun... Duh...

 

[DAPPH]

Very interesting points raised.

Currently with fuel (i.e. Diesel / petrol) prices 25% up on last year, food prices rocketing, electricity and gas, general inflation which they 'say' is around 9 or 10 %...

Things are tight here too.

Read an interesting thing by some cook / chef on twitter, the real inflationary costs, not around 10%.

I'll see if I can find it.

Jack Monroe's thread on reality of UK’s cost of living crisis is brutal

This is the real increase in the cost of living - one the vast majority of the media chooses to ignore, the food activist said.

www.thelondoneconomic.com

I did my first full tank refill for a long time as I expect to be doing a bit of mileage in the near future ... last time I did a£ 99 maximum card fill at a 24hr Tesco some 4 miles away for just under 3/4 tank refill . This time at the same place the pump auto stopped at
£121.23 , though I'm sure if I had played with little squirts on the trigger I would have had it past £125 with ease.

 

[MattF]

Well I'm glad to say I've never had that.

You've not lived until you've stared across the bedroom to the door, thinking: "I've got to get out of a warm(ish) bed & make it across to there".

 

[Maker]

I don't know whether it's the software, or the fire tablet, or me, but it's not very reliable.

Probably the tablet, they used to do a high end model (Fire HDX iirc), but around 2015 they switched to making them cheap rather than high performance, and as a result they're pretty crap. That does make them ideal for building into projects like you've done there though.

Is it running FireOS or is there some way of putting something a bit more open on it (akin to using Linux on a PC)?

 

[bigegg]

Probably the tablet, they used to do a high end model (Fire HDX iirc), but around 2015 they switched to making them cheap rather than high performance, and as a result they're pretty crap. That does make them ideal for building into projects like you've done there though.

Is it running FireOS or is there some way of putting something a bit more open on it (akin to using Linux on a PC)?

FireOS is hard-baked in on this one.
TBF: it only cost me a fiver at the bootie.
It was bricked and needed a hard reset.

 

[Maker]

FireOS is hard-baked in on this one.

I thought that was the case, I wanted to use one to make a fancy DRO display but it would be hard enough learning to write an Android app, let along getting it to work in FireOS. Not to mention, linear encoders aren't cheap!

 

[bigegg]

I thought that was the case, I wanted to use one to make a fancy DRO display but it would be hard enough learning to write an Android app, let along getting it to work in FireOS. Not to mention, linear encoders aren't cheap!

Have a look at a ESP32 and use it to serve a web page with the DRO readings? Then you could just use a full-page browser.
I'm not an ex-spurt at the Webby stuff, but I arsume one can make a webpage that updates fast enough to work?

If not, esp32-oled(?) is an MCU with a built in display?

<Edit: "blynk" app seems to be a simple way of using android to control/monitor iot stuff. That might save you learning 'droid?>

 

[Maker]

I think a website will always have some latency, and its just something to go wrong, it'll decide it can't connect for no good reason when I want to use it in anger.

An OLED is the new plan, not sure what microcontroller to use, Pi's might exist again by the time I get around to it, that would be the easy option. When I first had the idea of using a tablet I wanted a lathe DRO, but now I'm after a DRO for my microscope, a tablet would be a bit big for that but a 4" OLED would look perfect. It just a two inch travel too so I want to play with getting the data out of cheap digital calipers and using those as scales. I also want a rotational input to measure angles with the reticle and I haven't figured out how to squeeze an encoder inside the thing yet.

 

[bigegg]

I think a website will always have some latency, and its just something to go wrong, it'll decide it can't connect for no good reason when I want to use it in anger.

An OLED is the new plan, not sure what microcontroller to use, Pi's might exist again by the time I get around to it, that would be the easy option. When I first had the idea I wanted a lathe DRO, but now I'm after a DRO for my microscope, a tablet would be a bit big for that but a 4" OLED would look perfect. It just a two inch travel too so I want to play with getting the data out of cheap digital calipers and using those as scales. I also want a rotational input to measure angles with the reticle and I haven't figured out how to squeeze an encoder inside the thing yet.

PIs are overkill for most things IOT
If all you need is a serial in > process > display, why go to the effort of using a full Linux box?
Even an ESP32 is probably overkill: you don't need WiFi, or Bluetooth (?) or dual cores, or 30-odd GPIO pins.
An esp8286 will run an oled display.
Even an esp01 would probably do the job.

 

[Hitch]

Finished this off today...

 

[Maker]

If all you need is a serial in > process > display, why go to the effort of using a full Linux box?

Really just because I already know how to use Pi's, and I assume it's easier to build a GUI in Python than in C++ish or microPython, but otherwise yeah it's a bit overkill, a simple microcontroller should handle it easily.

 

[MattF]

Finished this off today...

View attachment 362605

Wood?

 

[bigegg]

Really just because I already know how to use Pi's, and I assume it's easier to build a GUI in Python than in C++ish or microPython, but otherwise yeah it's a bit overkill, a simple microcontroller should handle it easily.

I don't use python, or c++

I flash them using esphome, and yaml

I appreciate that it only really works if you have a home assistant install already, but there are a LOT of templates/libraries/projects in c++ that could be tweaked for what you want.

 

[Hitch]

Wood?

Yeah. Some t&g offcuts from doing the little gable above my porch a few months ago

 

[redlig]

You think you had it hard, we had a black and white TV until I was about 11. Stunted my social life as I was too embarrassed to bring friends home...

We had a B&W telly when we got married but didn't watch it much . Decided to paint it orange so I could say that I did have a colour telly.

 

[Onoff]

We had a B&W telly when we got married but didn't watch it much .

After 30 years we watch lots of telly, mostly in different rooms...