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Bob S

@minisess

I am hardware, software, and chemistry engineer. I am always looking for fun new projects that fit my niche and like minded people to do them with. I strive to learn something new every day.

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22.11.2024
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Latest posts by Bob S @minisess

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Installed a float switch into the ice maker so that we don't have to worry about it. Kind of wish I had put a hole in the counter instead of the sink but it is working perfectly!

08.03.2026 00:12 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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I wanted to automate my wife's ice maker so that I could detect its status and turn it on/off on a schedule. It uses three photo resistors that line up with its status leds to read the state and a little servo to press the button. It connects to home assistant with an esp32 S3 prog w/ Esphome.

03.03.2026 20:52 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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A red leather bag I made to practice my box stitching because I would like to use it on a backpack.

24.02.2026 03:39 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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A little leather belt pouch I made. It's my first attempt at wet molding leather. And it worked pretty well. All veg tan, dyed with light brown dye.

24.02.2026 03:38 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Some more pictures of the construction.

09.02.2026 04:02 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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After weeks of work I am proud to share a backpack I made for my wife. This is my first major veg tan project. The pattern is from Vasile and Pavel with some modifications and tooled accents. I went all the way from raw undyed leather to here.

09.02.2026 03:58 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Continuing my leather working journey. Making a backpack for my wife with tooled accents and it is going pretty well. Wish I had bought better leather in retrospect because this stuff is stiff.

01.02.2026 04:36 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I was having that issue at first but it turns out that was the timeout I had for my router to give up and use the secondary DNS and my pihole was not connecting at all.

25.01.2026 18:11 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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After 8 days of up time in rain and over cast. Feasibility is complete on meshtastic solar node. I did need to change to the nRF52840 for the ESP32 not only was the current draw too much on cloudy days but the startup draw would prevent it from coming back on if it ever did die.

25.01.2026 17:46 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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My first finished leather tooling project. A couple more and I may be ready to make a tooled pouch.

28.12.2025 00:11 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Took my Nov and Dec break to do handicrafts. Took the plunge into leather working after looking at tools the last couple years. Completed three purses for Christmas.

22.12.2025 22:03 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I agree, I ended up putting two panels on it for this, but current consumption is probably the biggest concern still. I will probably replace it once I get my parts off of back order.

25.10.2025 16:08 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Great success after months of battling furnace issues where it would reset randomly or error out. And all the individual parts look fine I found solder breaks on this wire harness and since resoldering it has been working perfectly.

25.10.2025 04:38 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Decided to make a mostly vertical (5ยฐ) double sided solar box. I used an MPPT charger from DF hack and the Esp32 based meshtastic pack from seeed. Now it just needs a bottom, a mount and some water proofing and it will be ready for deployment. But first testing on my roof for a week.

25.10.2025 01:34 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

I highly recommend esphome if it covers your use case. And MQTT can be implemented in esphome if you prefer that

29.09.2025 12:14 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 3 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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I tried hooking up a usb solar panel to the esp Xiao with the grove breakout and a battery and it worked for a time and then promptly burned up my Xiao. It definitely needs a dedicated charging board in between. #Meshtastic

20.09.2025 15:44 ๐Ÿ‘ 4 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Had a great time at VCFMW a convention I did not actually know about until I heard about it over the meshtastic mesh!

14.09.2025 21:43 ๐Ÿ‘ 4 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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The first meshtastic box for my car is complete. I am trying to decide if it is worth the work of mounting the antenna on the outside of the car or if I just accept the signal attenuation. I will probably have to do a range test to decide.

11.09.2025 03:42 ๐Ÿ‘ 2 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Fell down the meshtastic rabbit hole and now I may need to get HAM certified. Loving the seeedstudio products and I with their radios were not always on backorder.

06.09.2025 17:36 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Upon reading more I really thought I2S had more in common with I2C but turns out it does not. I2S is still a good protocol and there are probably boards that can bridge the gap between i2C or usb

27.06.2025 02:30 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

If you have I2C access available there is a protocol called I2S that is specifically for audio.

27.06.2025 02:19 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Rust for IoT: Building a Secure ESP32 Weather Sensor with MQTT, TLS, and OTA Updates During downtime between freelance projects, I often use the time to learn new things. This time, I explored the world of IoT and built a weather sensor with an ESP32 board, then decided to document th...

Curious how to set up OTA firmware updates for ESP32 using Rust and Harbor as an OCI registry? Built with MQTT over TLS, minimal backend, and #RustLang. Full post on secure IoT + #OTA + #ESP32 + #oras + #Harbor + #Kubernetes

e10n.me/posts/rust-f...

13.05.2025 16:08 ๐Ÿ‘ 3 ๐Ÿ” 1 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Having tried both which do you prefer between the influx dashboards and graphana?

14.05.2025 00:31 ๐Ÿ‘ 0 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

This is fantastic. I have been doing something similar but this just has such a nice tech stack all put together. I had no clue cargo existed and this will a good push to try rust.

14.05.2025 00:30 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

These are absolutely fantastic, 3D printed aids helped tremendously in my physical chemistry classes and these take it to the next level.

02.04.2025 14:48 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

If your bed isn't unlevel then you may be under extruding due to a clog in the tip.

26.03.2025 13:41 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Preview
Guide to 3D Printing Medical Devices Explore the applications of 3D printing for medical devices, compare 3D printers for the medical industry, and learn about the regulatory process.

Guide to 3D Printing Medical Devices: From Prototyping to Commercialization

3dmedicaldesign.com #3DMedicalDesign

formlabs.com/blog/3d-prin...

22.03.2025 03:58 ๐Ÿ‘ 3 ๐Ÿ” 1 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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After building these bookshelves nearly a year ago I promised I would make decorative column toppers for them. I finally got around to designing them in blender and getting them printed and painted. #3DPrinting

21.03.2025 06:00 ๐Ÿ‘ 8 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Here is another one I made for the #cyberpunk vibe. An air quality monitor built into a respirator. Since it reports particle counts and VOC you always know what filters to use with it. Electronics are all #M5 stack atom along with an I2C display. #electronics

09.03.2025 17:28 ๐Ÿ‘ 1 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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I did this build a year or two ago because I was captivated by the cyberpunk aesthetic. Raspberry Pi laptop, I regret the narrow screen too many things have a fixed window size and it doesn't show nearly enough terminal for general use but it does look good. www.hackerspace-ffm.de/wiki/index.p...

08.03.2025 17:28 ๐Ÿ‘ 4 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0