This project was a spur-of-the-moment "Pinterest request".
Without any prior planning, I was given a picture from Pinterest and asked "Can you make me something like this?"
The pin in question was this desk organiser:
I found some thin plywood offcuts that were roughly 2/3s to 3/4s of the length of a new pencil, so figured that was about the correct height.
The length of the offcuts was slightly longer - approx 9 1/2 inches. It seemed a bit too much to split into 2 4-and-something inch pots, so rather than cut it down and create waste, I'd make my desk organiser three pots of roughly 3 inches each.
For the width, I figured it would look best if the pots were square, so I found some other offcuts and cut them to 3 inches.
The end result is a three-pot desk organiser with pots of that are 3x3 inches by somewhere between 4 and 5 inches tall.
For the base, I cut a length of pallet wood and cut grooves along the position of each of the middle dividers, and in turn cut a short section of each divider, so that the dividers would sit in the grooves:
On one end I cut a finger groove, as sticky notes are a standard 3x3 inch square, so one of the pots could be used as a dispenser for them.
I took apart a 'corkboard' (which turned out to be a thin veneer of cork over cardboard, and glued this around one side and the back.
On the front (the sticky-note side) I took part of the cork veneer and glued it on - purely for aesthetic reasons.
On the other side I attached a thin, flat piece of hardboard coated in chalkboard paint (which according to the tin was supposed to also be magnetic, but in reality isn't.)
I re-purposed some of the old corkboards frame to create a neat border around it all, and it was done.
The first step was to join the slats together to create the boards that will form the sides of the chest.
As I don't have access to a planer/jointer this was a case of hand planing boards where necessary and being selective which boards matched together best.
In the absence of enough clamps I screwed the boards to a piece of scrap wood to hold them in place whilst the glue dried.
The panels were too big to cut on my small tabletop saw, so I opted for handcut box joints.
I measured them so that the would line up with each of the slats on the long sides of the chest.
Cutting the curved top required some maths to match up the number of slats that would form the lid with the angle that would need to be cut in each slat to form a proper semi-circle.
Once these were cut I glued them and used a metal bar bent to a curve to temporarily screw them to as it was not possible to use a clamp.
The handles are simple bought. The hinges were standard trangular shaped hinges, but in order for them to work with the curve of the lid, I bent them to a curve by heating them with a heat-gun and a hammer.
Finding a suitable padlock was more difficult - sure, DIY stores sell padlocks, but I wanted something more old-fashioned looking to fit the "pirate chest" aesthetic. After quite a bit of searching I found this one at a car boot sale.
For finishing, I used the heat gun to heat the wood to the point where it started to brown (almost like toast), without burning. I thought about going the burn-and-sand method, but at this point I had invested enough time in the project that I didn't want to risk it.
Finally, the chest was finished with a coat of oil to help highlight the grain
At work we get through a lot of cans of soft drink, and an comment about incentivising recycling gave me the idea of making a can crusher.
So I doodled up this sketch, and decided to set myself the goal of building it without leaving the workshop.
With my initial sketch I was envisaging using PVC pipe as the container for the can, but it turned out that I didn't have any. What I did manage to use instead was this metal tube - it was scrap from an old side table.
Cutting apart the tube was substantially trickier than PVC would've been though. The ends were cut off with a hacksaw, and the middle 'window' section where the can would be loaded was done with a Dremel, a file, and a lot of patience.
The two plugs that would form each end were cut from a scrap of kitchen counter top, cut by bandsaw and trimmed to create a tight fit for the base end, and slightly looser for the plunger end.
Building the rest of the frame was a fairly straightforward process, the plunger became a metal rod scavenged from an old wardrobe rail, and the frame from lengths of 1cm x 1cm wood.
Initial testing showed the wood wasn't quite strong enough on it's own and started to crack, so I took the whole thing apart and reinforced all the joints with metal u-channel.
In the end, the design works, but it's a lot bulkier than I'd originally hoped, and would be best suited to perhaps being mounted next to a recycling bin, or maybe a can vending machine - as the test video below shows, it's a bit wobbly when just free-standing.
Finally got round to tidying up the code. There's the arduino sketch which powers the lights, and a java application that runs in the background on the server, reads the server logs and will produce the serial commands that are sent to the arduino.
When thinking of a new case for the LAN box, I wanted to ensure it was easy to setup, and as portable as possible. As portable typically means 'small', it was necessary to consider the heat that would be generated by the computer when it was in use.
I purchased this ammo box from the local army surplus years ago, and it's only been used for storage, but it fits the bill nicely, it's fairly small in relation to the flight case I'd used before, has a handle for portability, and being metal should help dissipate the servers heat during use.
On top of all that, being an ammo tin, it fits the military/industrial aesthetic of Unreal well, but I wanted to do something to set it apart.
While I was planning this project, we were joking during our weekly games that we needed some kind of trophy that each weeks winner could keep on their desk, so I was looking at options for that, and I was toying with the idea of creating the iconic Unreal logo in brass, to create a shield-type trophy.
Then I figured we could combine the two ideas.
To start with I printed the logo to fit the 20x20cm brass that I ordered, and stuck the logo to the sheet to use as a template.
My original intent was to cut the brass on the bandsaw, but after a bit of testing, it was incredibly slow, and I found it easier to start by drilling around the logo, and then use a Dremel to cut out the shape by joining the holes together. From there it was just a case of grinding and filing down the edges.
The same process was used to cut a hole in the side of the ammo box for the window to be mounted, though as the metal was quite a bit thicker, I used an angle grinder for grinding down the edges.
The brass was glued and sandwiched between two sheets of clear acrylic, and mounted into the hole.
The original netbook that I used was too wide to fit the box, but I found another that just about fit - although I had to remove the screen, the battery, and pretty much anything else I could get away with ditching.
The next step was to add a band of WS2812 LEDs on the inside of the case, around the window, so that the logo could be backlit. To control them I used an Arduino Pro Micro, which I can in turn from the netbooks serial port. All the code will be covered in part 3.
Part 1 - The Story So Far
The title’s pretty
much self-explanatory. My colleague, Ray, and I were talking about
“The good old days” of online gaming – before Call of Duty,
when the dominant games were Unreal Tournament, Quake 3,
Counterstrike and the like.
We were toying with
the idea of trying to run a LAN game over the work network, but
figured the bureaucratic headache that would cause wasn’t worth it.
Then I got to
thinking about how to cram everything we’d need for a LAN game into
a single portable box, and could easily be set-up, used and torn down
again within a lunch hour.
The great thing
about returning to older games is that the system requirements, that
once required hi-end PCs will now run on pretty much any old
commodity hardware. What once meant lugging around heavy, bulky
desktops, separate monitors and keyboards, could be replaced with a
modern, lightweight laptop.
Ray was bringing in
his laptop, and I setup an old laptop for me to use.
I installed Fedora
25 from a live CD (no particular reason for this distro, other than I
had a live CD for it to hand – I’m sure others will work fine)
Installed WINE, and the game.
We also wanted to
use a dedicated server, so I dug through my stack of old hardware to
find something to use - and I setup the server using an old netbook.
The networking was
provided by an old home router of mine, which supplied DHCP
configuration, making the network a straightforward plug and play.
This whole setup was
stuffed into a metal flight-case for taking into work, and worked
well for a spot of lunchtime multi-player, but there were a few downsides:
Cabling – lots of
mains plugs and network cables.
Size - it's quite a substantial amount of gear to lug around - the flight case measures 33x46x15 cm and is packed pretty full.
Although UT runs quite well in WINE, there is definitely some latency. The server seems fine, but graphically on the client machine, it's noticeable
The original setup - the netbook in the background is the current server.
Obviously something needs to be done to address the shortcomings, so this will form the basis of my next project - it should be a nice mix of DIY (for the case) and tech (hardware, software config, networking etc).
One of my friends is a writer, and one of the common complaints I hear is that of “Writers block” - experiencing a creative slowdown and not being able to think of ideas to write.
I experience a similar thing with the projects I'm working on from time to time. A solution I've always sworn by is to just jump in and start doing something – even if it's crappy to begin with, it can always be edited later, and the process of actually taking action helps stir the creativity.
The discussion itself was enough for me to start thinking creatively for ways to overcome writers block. Think a cattle prod, combined with the movie Speed, and you get the idea.
As usual the full write up is below, or here's the video of it in action. Unfortunately there's not much to see, the shock wasn't strong enough to create much of a visible effect - it made my thumb twitch a bit, but seemed very dependent on where the electrodes were placed.
The hardware
As we're administering electric shocks to people with this project, in the interests of safety I didn't feel too comfortable DIY-ing the actual shock circuitry, so I picked up one of these reaction-test toys – the idea of the game each player holds one of the controllers, the light in the centre blinks red, as soon as it hits green, the last player to press their button gets a shock. Simple.
The shock game that's going to form a base for this project
The game in action
The bottom of the unit just contained the main switch, battery compartment and small speaker. None of these are needed in this project, so all found their way into the junk bin.
The top of the PCB just contains the main button (centre, surrounded by
LEDs), a number of players button in the corner, and a few capacitors.
The 4 LEDs around the edge were removed.
There was also a switch on the side which determined the severity of the
shock - either a single one or multiple. I forgot to check which one
was selected when I removed it, so that'll be a surprise when it's done. (This was connected to the green wires in the PCB picture below - effectively I've left the switch open)
I also cut away all the controller wires except for player one - that will be the one we're using.
The controller and it's circuitry
Interfacing & Software
How we're going to interface this is by wiring shut the player one button (so effectively it's always held down), and adding an optocoupler in place of the main game button. Then when receiving the signal to deliver a shock, a new game will be triggered, and player one will be shocked for pressing the button too early.
It looks like a steampunk torture device, but it works.
The wires on the controller side were re-wired to a couple of cheap pound-store bracelets, separated by a few 3d-printed plastic spacers and held together with copious amounts of hot glue.
The typical next step here would be to wire in a microcontroller, usb-serial converter and have the PC direct output that way, but I've done that dozens of times and felt like doing something different, so I'm going to use bluetooth and a Wiimote.
The Wiimote connects via bluetooth and contains several sensors. In truth, it's overpowered for this project, but it does give plenty of room for expansion in the future. We're going to use the vibration motors connections to link up to the shocker.
The dismantled Wiimote we're going to use
The connection itself is very straight-forward - a simple optocoupler between the shock toys' main 'play' button connections and the vibration motor output on the Wiimote.
Power is obtained with a 5V wall-wart supply, brought down to 3.3V for the Wiimote using an LM317.
The finished box and bracelet
The software
The source code for the application can be found on Github. Uses Bluecove and MoteJ libraries.
Update
The initial bracelet didn't work to well in testing, as the angle made it difficult to ensure both sides of the connection were in contact with the arm, so I put together an alternative using an old sweat band with a couple of pennies glued into it.
