Maker Monday
Another project on the #MakeItLabs CO2 laser.
I saw a Xmas tree ornament like this covered bridge in a museum gift shop in VT. "I can make that!"
Designed in Inkscape & etched & cut it out on the laser.
The little one next to it because I had plywood 1/2 the original thickness.
Maker Monday
I made this ring from an early 1900s Canadian penny.
Maker Monday
My group gets together this week to pick Red Sox tix for 2026. I wrote a program to enforce the rules that ensure those who want all 4 tix have games to pick on their turn. Input is a spreadsheet and output is used with AutoIT for regression testing. Photo is from the 2019 session.
Make Monday
I made a drawer from cherry (with a few 3d printed parts) to hold my amateur radio QSL (contact acknowledgement) cards.
This year's Marblehead (Massachusetts) Halloween decorations.
Yesterday's "adventure" was touring the Nantucket Lightship in Boston harbor,
Tiffany Dome in the Chicago Cultural Center.
A while ago, the #SolderSmoke podcast issued a challenge to build a direct conversion receiver.
The ham shack resource manager (KA1PQK) at #MakeItLabs organized a group project. Together, we each built our own copy of each module.
I decided to go further than mounting it on a simple board ...
#Soldersmoke Direct Conversion Receiver challenge. Last night we assembled the boards and tested them out. Tuning is fussy, but it worked! Not for some woodworking and other "packaging" details!
Last night's build in the #SolderSmoke Challenge was the last module - the audio amplifier. Now to connect them all together in the cigar box I found to house the completed project.
40 meter (7 MHz) band pass filter
Last night's build was the band filter for the #SolderSmoke Direct Conversion Receiver Challenge. Three out of four boards complete!
This week's part of the #SolderSmoke Direct Conversion Receiver project was the mixer board. I don't know how my soldering skills could have gotten even worse! :-) As bad as it looks, it is "mixin."
New England Golden Gloves Semifinals last night at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium.
At this point, it just creates a wave, tuanable around 7 mHz- ish. Next week ... the mixer!
Several of us at #MakeItLabs have begun constructing the #SolderSmoke challenge direct conversion receiver. Last night we built the oscillator. Please forgive my poor soldering skills. :-)
If you thought the cyber truck looked bad off the showroom floor, I submit the attached photo.
Happy Truck Day! Spring is coming!
3d printed end cap for my Meade 6" reflector telescope
I finally got authorized on my makerspace's ( #MakeItLabs ) #3dprinter with a bed large enough to print end caps for my #telescope
I'm not familiar with unbound and decided to go with a USB boot rather than use something like log2ram.
I'm running it just as it was installed. A button on my Home Assistant dashboard will disable it for 5 minutes. Nearly every time I've had to use the button was to get to an "unsubscribe" web page.
Axe throwing in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Our dishwasher's lights were blinking and not starting the cycle. Further tests showed downstream outlets only delivering 95v.
This is the outlet just before the dishwasher.
I don't know why this happened. Nothing was done to the outlet since we bought the house in 1983.
Replacement fixed it.
I'll see your "Ludicrous Mode" and raise you some "Holiday Spirit!"
youtu.be/TE98CW4Xs4Q
Anyone else participate in the ARRL 10m contest this weekend? Not bad for 100W and an OCF dipole that is relatively low.
Last night's "The Pipes of Christmas" concert in the Old South Church, Boston, Massachusetts. This is their first time in Boston. It was wonderful music and amazing architecture!
#bagpipes #celtic #Christmas #music #ThePipesOfChristmas
Murray the Murder Cat
My son-in-law thinks their cat is trying to kill him, so I made him "Murray the Murder Cat" out of acrylic on the laser cutter at MakeIt Labs last night as a Christmas gift.
#murdercat #MakeItLabs #makerspace #Christmasgift #laser
My wife is the luckiest woman ...
At dinner last night, she discovered the diamond in her engagement ring (46 years on her finger) was missing. Hanging Christmas decorations outside, grocery shopping, etc.
We were resigned that it was gone.
This morning, she found it on the kitchen counter!
Pre-lit Christmas tree giving us trouble with one string. It is undoubtedly the fuse bulb. Arrrg! I would love to cut them out of the string and replace with something more maintainable, but information is limited and I can find no one selling parts.
Has anyone else solved this problem? Details?
To try to fix the speed issue, I'm switching from the pi3 to a pi4 (faster and has USB3.0).
My pi-hole's SD card quit on me yesterday! Turning it off showed us all the garbage ads we had been avoiding. OTOH, I got to work the 9L5A DXpedition on Sierra Leone while I rebuilt the OS & pi-hole software.
This time, I decided to build it on a USB drive. It seems slow. I may not stick to USB.
