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!

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 – 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.

Repair toy with 3D printed parts

A month or so ago my son received a very basic remote controlled car. Being 18 months old, he unsurprisingly managed to more or less break it in a couple of weeks…

The car and its remote