Magnet PCB Clamps.

 

I've been tinkering with this idea for a little while and designing and printing a few iterations. It's my take on magnetic clamp posts for, primarily PCB's, but also super useful as a helping hand for many items. There's not a huge amount to them, designed in FreeCAD, there are 3 small parts to print. The base has a captive M4 nut and a captive 12mm diameter x 2mm thick Neodymium magnet. Above that a 40mm machine screw/bolt has a compression spring under a floating clamp section and an upper clamp section at the top. They work, even if this sounds like blowing my own trumpet, incredibly well!

For a base there are lots of options. I've used mine stuck to a random piece of invar steel that's been lurking in my shed for an age, but also they can clamp to say a small tobacco tin, or a really  nice option can be a small whiteboard. 

I may well make up a few sets to put on my Tindie store, and I'm also going to chuck the repository (where you can download all the files) in for OSHWA certification.

 

 

Tech Talks Pesda

 

 

It was a pleasure earlier this week to host an evening of tech talks at Canolfan Cefnfaes in Bethesda. Partneriaeth Ogwen allowed us to use their excellent community room and we were treated to a collection of great talks. Charles Gersholm  from Reality Boffins got us started and spoke about how Godot has put the fun back into coding, not just for games, but for quick tools and applications also. Along the way he highlighted how Reality Boffins are paying it forward into their community running excellent tech help drop ins for anyone having problems or fed up with their tech to come and get some help and a cuppa. (I'll be blogging on that very soon)!

Chris Huffee, aided and abetted from the sidelines by Snoof Kattekop, spoke about their frankly brilliant work over at Steam Engineers. They work ceaselessly to make science and making and related topics fun and accessible with a brilliant focus and set of skills in working with neuro-divergent groups. Fabulous. Chris also brought some tantalising hardware that can be used as a controller for the TOUV project... but I'm going to post next week about that more properly!

Finally we had the fabulous Adrian McEwen talking about his company and what drives them to do both exciting commercial work, but also to work on fascinating slower burn projects that have garnered lots of support and use. He spoke about the amazing Museum in a Box which is in use widely in a broad collection of settings, from dementia care to schools. He then rounded out a motivating talk with some show and tell of the "My Bikes Got LED" project and how it has enabled a community bike joy riding group to operate more safely and crucially, have more fun! Thanks to everyone who turned out. Diolch pawb.

 

SOURCE Issue 2 Out Now!

 

 

 Well here we are! After a lot of work I'm pleased to release SOURCE issue 2. It's larger than issue 1 and we have a collection of tutorial content rather than one big deep dive. In this issue we get started with the Godot game engine, we look at Termux that brings a linux terminal to your android phone, a little Inkscape tutorial and look at a really simple way to contribute to Open Street Map.  I also included a piece I've wanted to write for a while about combining Logseq and Synchthing for some really handy functionality. 

Here is the direct PDF link for SOURCE Issue 2.

As established in Issue 1, this is a pay what you feel magazine, and there are links in the magazine to chip in some cash via paypal or kofi. I'm committed to producing at least 4 of these but I'd love it if there was a little bit of donation, enough for me to continue to give it some attention and carry on after Issue 4. Also if people are donating by issue 4 we can look at hosting this in a better way. Speaking of, DO feel free to share SOURCE, you can host it, compress it and email it, seed it, whatever, lets make it spread the opensource knowledge far and wide!

So I now turn to Issue 3. I think it's going to focus on some opensource tools for open hardware and generally look at open hardware related stuff! That's the "plan" so far anyway!

Printing the Mundane Can Be Rewarding

 

I'm still, after all these years, in awe of 3D printing and what it allows me to create and make. Today is a good case in point, my Prusa mini + is on with a longish job printing a new rear panel for  my uConsole, the uConsole is a great portable computer that runs of 2 18650 cells but they are inside a bolted on aluminium cover, and there is no battery hatch. I found a design for a back cover with a magnet hatch over on Printables and chucked it onto my machine. That's pretty magical but it's the other job I've chucked together in 5 minutes for my other machine I wanted to talk about. 

For ages I have had this really cheap set of USB lights. They are primarily deployed for adding light to take photos of stuff for articles, but often also get deployed as a temporary work light. They have swivel heads and are mounted on pretty light (but OK) tripods and are reasonably adjustable. The one thing that has bugged me about them is that there is nowhere to stow/stash the built in USB cable. I end up wrapping it around the tripod which is a mess, also is definitely shortening the lifespan of the cable, and takes ages to unwind when I want to use them.  

I whipped up a supper simple glue on slot piece. As you know I am an advocate for FreeCAD, but really, what ever tool you choose, it's just so super handy to be able to make even simple items like this in whatever CAD you choose. This took me way less than 2 minutes to create and within 5 minutes from the "I need to keep half an eye on the first 20 minutes of this uConsole job what else can I do" moment it was on the printer. 

20 minutes later and it's glued onto the pair of lights.  The slot allows me to insert a length of hook and loop, which I have in my sewing box, to make a simple tie down system for the wrapped USB cable. Such a handy solution. 

So Yeah! Whilst I might catch your eye making  DIY Tiny Opensource Underwater Vehicles, I flipping love 3D design and print for these little practical doohickeys. Finally, many moons ago I wrote an article for Hackspace magazine about a similar theme  of 3D printing functional things. Was reasonably popular at the time in Issue 36.

Testing the Tiny Opensource Underwater Vehicle (TOUV-1) and Makertube

I acknowledge the irony of posting about Makertube on this old (est 2007) blogspot (google hosted)... I'd love to move everything towards the fediverse and away from the capitalist monoliths but this blogspot is almost like a listed historic building... one day I may migrate it. 

That aside, above is a circa 1 minute video of the TOUV-1, a small brushed DC motor powered tiny underwater vehicle. I'm writing an article about the design/build for Raspberry Pi magazine (I'm using a Pico plugged into my StoRPer board for a controller!) and will get the source released in the next week or so. It's been a fun first foray into underwater stuff and I'd love to create more. 

And yes, it's my first video posted to Makertube a maker themed peertube instance. It's pretty straightforward to join and use and it's a PLEASURE that there are no adverts! I don't plan to take down my Youtube account (hell somewhere out there there is a Vimeo account as well!) but in the future all my sporadic video stuff is heading to the fediverse. Do give me a follow over on Makertube!

DIY Bike Stem/Feed Bag With Bonus Tent Recycling

 

 

 

Spent a little time today knocking up a first attempt at a DIY Stem/Feed bag for on the bike. The idea is that you have a set of loops around the bag to shockcord or velcro onto the handlebars and then some more webbing loops across the bottom panel to connect to the fork crown so the bag stays snugly in place. The main grey material is some pretty thick vulcanised fabric I bought a while back specifically for bag making but the bag is lined with, well, my old tent!

A couple of weeks back I travelled up to Open Hardware Summit to both check out the talks and stuff, cover it for Raspberry Pi magazine, and to help run a panel on Opensource Rocketry. In a fit of cheapness and adventure I schlep'd up on the train with camping gear and camped a bit out of town. We own loads of tents but I decided to take this 25 yr old Coleman 2 person tent. It's not a very lightweight tent but it was a good balance of size and weight for carrying it but not walking long distance with it, versus having a reasonable bit of room. It hadn't been used for a while so I re-waterproofed it the week before the trip. Sadly... whilst I spray treated it, I failed to generally inspect the seams and they'd failed in numerous places. I'd already patched and fixed numerous parts of it, so on return home, I decided to end of life the tent and use it for parts!

 

 The bag is lined and I've used a part of the tent outer for the liner, and also for the small drawstring lid. I also used some of the binding from the tent for the binding around the upper edge of the bags main section.

 

I love my sewing machine! It's a Brother FS60 which I was given by a family member. It's really good, but projects like this definitely show that it's a machine mostly for fancy stitches in fine materials as opposed to stitching through multiple thick layers of fabric and webbing.  I spent a lot of time struggling with the machine and I'm definitely up for picking up something a little more industrial at some point.

 

 

The bag works well, I'm obsessed with these super handy ranger bead knots which work well to cinch up the top section of the bag.  There's plenty of space in it for even the largest water bottle. I'll use this one a little, but I'd like to make a matching pair eventually, but will probably try a few different designs. I've seen someone using using a rectangle as 3 sides of a square body and then an L shape rectangle to make the base and final side, seems like it would be simpler to produce. Also lots of people add pockets and other features which I'm keen to explore. There's also stuff to think about with the webbing mounts. I could make machine stitching easier by not making the webbing run through the bag seams, but also could potentially make bags that could be used not only mounted to bike handlebars, but potentially front fork bottle cages and also to other objects/rucksacks/packs etc.

Tiny DIY Knife from Hacksaw Blade

A lifetime ago I was really into Locksport and in particular into making manual tools and picks, I'd often use hacksaw blades as a cheap stock of very hard decent steel. I've also always wanted to tinker with knife making and today the synapses all fired at once and I made this.

 

 Starting with a small length of hacksaw blade I made a crude drawing on some card, cut it out and glued it to the stock. Ages ago I bought one of those tiny, cheap, yet surprisingly useful 12V belt grinders. I could do with making some jigs/holding to make my bevels absolutely correct but for half an hour of off hand grinding it's not the worst for a first attempt.

 

I ground out the original hole to accomodate the little piece of brass tubing I'd found and I also ground a hole (this steel is incredibly hard to drill unless you temper it and re harden) and throughout the grinding I kept cooling the blade in water so it didn't lose it's hardness. 

 

Then a super quick little bit of design work in FreeCAD and some 3D printing it was time to assemble. The scales are printed in PETG and I've used some epoxy resin to hold it all together. Despite my grinding it's wicked sharp so I deffo need to come up with a small sheath. Finished off with a small lanyard it's been a good fun little project and it's possibly inspired me to look for a larger piece of steel for further attempts!