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Time for a breather

A project log for Reflecting the sun into your home

My home doesn't face the sun, so it's dark and cool inside. I want to use mirrors to reflect sunlight into my home.

mimemime 10/05/2020 at 14:090 Comments

Just a little log to share my thoughts, only a few minutes after the deadline.

I had not intended to finish everything in a mad rush, and I hate to use this excuse, but CORONA happened! Or rather, the UK government was threatening to put us all in a lockdown again, at which point I decided to visit my mom abroad a month earlier, taking away a great deal of tinkering time.

Looking back, I'm quite pleased with the write up and the program itself, considering the short amount of time I had to construct everything. Since I've uploaded the source files, I'm pretty confident someone with a bit of patience can work out how to use my work and create something theirselves.

It was a bit of a shame I did not have more time to pretty up the prototype itself, but it did do what it was meant to do, and display the concept. People will just have to look past that I had to operate the limit switches by hand because I couldn't add them to the rig on time.

I've at least described how it should have worked.


If I understand correctly, I will hear in a month time if I have won anything. In the meantime, I may make some more videos about my project, even though these strictly speaking will not count for the prize.

Especially the hack I came up with to use the USB-TO-UART device to control a stepper motor driver. I don't think anybody else has come up with this yet, and it brings stepper motor tinkering more into the hobby domain, because you won't have to buy 3rd party drivers or use an Arduino type device, which is not terribly difficult but does add a layer of complexity.

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