• Hanging tools, or, the virtues of cardboard

    johnowhitaker • 03/31/2016 at 17:25 • 0 comments

    Unrolling a box yields a big sheet of corrugated cardboard. After hanging it from the picture rail, and leaning the base on top of a shelf, I am able to hang a large amount of weight. Now my tools are in easy reach. They hang from paper-clips, bent into hooks that poke through slits in the cardboard. So far I have yet to find the limit of how much weight one can put on them before they break. This was never meant to be permanent, but I'm liking it so far!

    PS, I ran out of paper-clips, so a few tools are missing and there are two on one hook (the horror). It's usually better :)

  • Update - A shelf, some decor and a ukulele

    johnowhitaker • 02/23/2016 at 14:52 • 0 comments

    Haven't made as much progress as hoped. Added some pot-plants and this lovely art from scanlime (Micah Scott, an amazing artist/engineer scanlime.org):

    This is lovely, and cost less than $0.30 to print. One thing that only strikes me now is that some images weren't made by me in zenphoton.com, they were copied from Micah's description page. Need to check rules re: payment, but I can always make my own less artistic versions :P Also visible is one of many A4 whiteboards - so useful!

    I added a shelf where there was an ugly gap by the sink. I now have a place to put toiletries, and my bagpipes case stashes away underneath:

    I am also including this here, although it's not really to do with my room:

    I made a case for my new ukulele - had some torn shorts that didn't fit, and I like how it turned out :)

    (It fastens together with two buttons)

    In the background is a shirt with a custom design bleached on - more 'art' for my wall. The design is barely visible but IRL it looks nice and more importantly it's my personal creation :)

    That's about it so far, but I am scouting around for material for a decent work surface/second desk.

  • Hanging pockets

    johnowhitaker • 01/29/2016 at 08:59 • 0 comments

    A friend donated some torn jeans to the cause. I cut slits, cable tied the crotch to bring the legs into alignment, and hot glued the bottom of the 'pockets'. Pictured here filled with shoes and socks, but will probably end up storing other things and filling the extra pockets.

    I also got the mini projector working in Linux, but the dumb thing doesn't take power when it's displaying something, so from a full battery it will run out 3/4 of the way through a movie! Next step is to open it up and add a proper power source (since it will be fixed in one place a wall wart isn't a disadvantage). Then at least I'll be entertained while I start collecting material for further room hacks.

    Finally, I fixed the towel rack with some epoxy and hot glue (the hot glue just to seal around it and hold it in place while the epoxy hardens) - it's a permanent modification to the room but I doubt I'll be in trouble for fixing something so totally broken :P

  • Raw materials

    johnowhitaker • 01/28/2016 at 19:14 • 1 comment

    So here's the starting materials:

    A room, hot glue, a pico-projector, enough sensors and so on to do whatever needs doing, a hack saw and a dremel, both probably illegal, enthusiasm and a small budget (like, tiny). I should hopefully get access to a laser cutter and possibly even a 3D printer, but since it'll be a pain I'd rather do stuff myself.

    The room (sink not pictured, ONE power outlet):

    And here's my bed put to good use laying out some of my junk:

    From top left, in rows from back to front:

    The good bits of my #Mini Laser Cutter and #Scanning EIT Imaging System (SEITIS) projects. A box full of enclosures, power supplies, cable ties and tea things. Two excellent books :D. Printer parts (opto-interrupters etc). A stickvice. Row Two: Hacksaw blades, files, soldering stuff (flux not shown), some motors, box cutters, markers, breadboard, THE BOX, glue gun. Third row: stickers (embedded.fm, hackaday, possibly google), batteries, tape and pin headers hiding an assortment of resistors and caps, a box with a few dev boards (obligatory arduino in there from the early days), a tub of toner powder and more breadboards, the dremel with a few sanding and cutting attachments (plus a leatherman sidekick and another hammer multitool in the case.

    THE BOX is new for me - it came as a kit of 37 sensors to which I added my own stuff. Rough contents:

    Original contents described here: https://tkkrlab.nl/wiki/Arduino_37_sensors

    Added more photo-transistors, tons of LEDs, motors and control boards, misc ICs (including micros), a few displays, some radio nodes given to me by a friend, connectors, RFID reader, a few more temp sensors and thermistors from printers,lots of FETs and BJTs, lots of random extras like buttons and so on. Could come in handy!

    Since everything has to be impermanent and non-destructive, I'm going to be using a lot weak adhesive (hot glue on walls? will check it's ok) and string to keep the warden happy.