Bluetooth Media Button

This is a pretty straight forward project, though it still took a while to get everything fitting together nicely 🙂

The idea was to re-use this nice big volume knob from an old, analog amplifier, put it into a custom little box and make it able to control the volume of my computer.

ePaper Calendar

I had a couple of these small ePaper boards, bought on sale a while ago, begging to be used in a project… I wasn’t sure what to do with them, until I saw James’ video about his message board.

Then it occurred to me: a small, ePaper display for my Google Calendar would be perfect ! True, we all check our phones regularly, almost compulsively, nowadays, but still, there’s nothing like having your tasks/appointments on a piece of paper ! Even if it’s of the “e” variety… 🙂

Especially if it’s for the shared family calendar, so that my wife and kids can also have it right there in front on them in the kitchen!

Electric Longboard – v2

Quick update on my Electric Longboard.

It works surprisingly well, and even the fact that the 150W motor feels rather under-powered when I try to use it (it does work but I feel like it could go faster and it does take a bit before it reaches top speed) could be considered a “feature” as it’s plenty of power for when the kids play with it in the park 🙂

One issue that we kept having was the 3D printed plastic motor mount would break when hitting small holes or irregularities in the asphalt.

Electric Long-board

When this year’s lock-down started a few months ago, I finally bought myself a long-board so that I could keep up with the kids on their bikes or scooters when exercising.
It didn’t take long before I remembered that I always wanted to build an electric "toy" that could carry myself.
I contemplated a bike, a Go Kart and others, but it’s always been pretty obvious that the easiest to attempt would be a skateboard…

Tronxy X1 3D printer upgrades

This is a brief post, mostly for my own usage / keeping track, detailing the few upgrades  I did to one of the cheapest 3D printers out there, the Tronxy X1, which I bought a couple of years ago for my 8 years old son.

It turns out it’s much more capable than what I thought and I’m using it more and more often, as it has a slightly bigger print area compared to my other printer, the Mini Fabrikator II (I also have an old / initial version Ultimaker, on which I’ve given up, after years of frustration, mainly with the extruding system…).

Autonomous Army Truck – 1. Mechanics

This is the 6 wheels drive toy army truck that I bought several years ago (for fairly cheap) for one of my kids.

When reading the specs (6wd, 3 differentials, independent suspensions on each wheel, etc. … ) it sounded too good to be true for the price… and indeed, I remember being disappointed when I received it : the rubber of the wheels kept coming off, the battery was really bad, but most importantly both the steering and the main motor were simply on/off not *proportional* !

At the same time, I was impressed by the modularity of the design, how everything was screwed rather then glued in place and how easy everything was to take apart, ready to be modified / upgraded…

And I *knew* I could do better… sooo much better !

Here’s what it can do *now*, after the 2 main mechanical upgrades:

Simple Radio Controlled Car

There’s nothing much to say about this, no micro-controller or programming or any fancy stuff involved… it’s just that I’ve always wanted to build a simple RC car for my kids…

Self Balancing Robot – V4

It’s been almost 4 years since I started playing with self balancing robots posting about the very first version, then the 2nd really unsuccessful one and finally a really jittery / impossible to control 3rd version…

Now it’s finally time to show you something that actually works !

Self Balancing Robot – V3

Same as the previous post, this is an old project that still doesn’t work properly, but will probably never have the time to fix, so I’ve decided to post the details here, in case I need to refer to them later.

Self Balancing Robot – V2

This is a quick post to dump some pictures and lessons learneth the hard way, when I tried to build a nicer / better self balancing robot.

All this dates back from October 2014, so more than 1 year ago, but I finally gave up on trying to make this work and wanted to keep all this info/details for my own reference.