Category Archives: Hack

#PIDDYBOT DIY PCB Giveaway.

PIDDYBOT PCB
I have 5 bare PCBs that I will be sending out to some lucky winners. They are for the PIDDYBOT so you can build your own! The raffle is below, requires you to follow on twitter, you can get other entries by tweeting about it as well. You need to use your email to sign up, but I won’t email anyone about anything other than this raffle. This is a trial run for me using RaffleCopter, so hopefully it goes smoothly!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Wearable-Technology Conference in San Fran!

Ring Blinking

On the 8th and 9th of July 2014, there will be an annual wearable-technology conference held in San Francisco. I believe this is the 12th conference Wearable Technologies has organized. This year I have been asked to speak at the conference about my Peltier Ring! You can see the details about the conference here:

http://www.wearable-technologies.com/events/wearable-technologies-conference-2014-usa

I am very excited to see all of the new technologies that will be shown at this event. Also excited to go back to San Fran. If anyone – makers, hackers, fans – want to see the ring and are not able to attend the conference, please let me know, I will be exploring the city all week and networking as much as possible! I would love to check out some hackerspaces as well. If anyone knows the hot spots, let me know!

 

 

Past Project: DIY CNC Mill – Pictures

TitleCNC

I would say that this was probably my very first project in the field of robotics. When I was finishing up my last year of high school – maybe 2007? – somewhere online I discovered a world of DIY CNC machines; I had to make one myself. This is a little blast from the past since just today I rediscovered the following pictures. This was such a fun project and I learned a lot from it. Sadly after I finished it, it didn’t get much use. I had power supply and table alignment issues, and a lack of funding to fix it. The best part of this project is the inspiration it gave to my friend, John Grimsmo. After seeing it, this got him into CNC machines and he is now running a successful business using them – http://www.grimsmoknives.com/
Hit more to see more pictures of my first hacked together CNC machine.

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Quick Hack: LiPo Battery Improvements


I have inadvertently broken the solder joints on a few of these batteries just from using them on a couple of small projects. It was time for that to stop. A quick video of what I do to prevent the solder joints from breaking, and how to make the connectors be less aggressive in their plug. 20 seconds out of your day to reduce the wear of the batteries.

All these LiPos are from SparkFun.

Quick Hack: Crank Flashlight Repair

Crank Flashlight With Leads

Crank Flashlight With Leads

The other night there was a power outage in our area, so naturally all of the flashlights are brought out so everyone is able to see. There have been these crank flashlight hanging around for years, and I actually cannot remember the last time they held a charge. They would light up when you crank them, but the batteries were long gone, or so I thought.

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