Lawyer, writer & author, medical education consultant, and enthusiastic self-taught maker.
raspberry pi
What is Fing? Most users of Raspberry Pi have needed to find its IP address on their local network. A quick goggle at Google, and we find that the Fing App for Android is the way to go. Load it up, log on to your network, and in seconds you&
google sheets
About a year ago I posted a blog describing how to log temperature straight to google sheets from a DS18B20 temperature sensor. New Version This blog is an extension of the first, using much the same technique, but this time logging Temperature, Humidity and Air Pressure from a BME280 sensor
Kronaby
Geek that I am, until now I've avoided smart watches. The square-faced Apple Watch never appealed to me and the Android devices look too big, clunky, and intrusive. I didn't know there was an alternative - until I read about hybrid Smart Watches. They are a
ESP8266
Several acquaintances have asked for instructions to build a switch that can be operated from a phone app, and/or virtual assistant (Google Home, Alexa, etc). This is a detailed description - but you'll need a wee bit of technical skill to get through it. THIS PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Arduino
A couple of days ago I watched a YouTube video where a guy pointed a device at a spinning disk. The disk's rotation speed was displayed on the gadget's screen. When the speed changed, the reading changed with it. At first I didn't understand
mechanical clock
This is going to be an unusual post for this site as it includes no electronics. Today I did something that astonished me. So much so, that I had to share it with our community. It started a couple of years ago when I bought a plastic kit to construct
ESP8266
Ask your iPhone for weather conditions and it'll display data from a sensor somewhere nearby - often at the local airport - which might be miles away from your current location. And at home, you may have IoT sensors that tell you the temperature in your bedroom or
MAX7219
First off - I take no credit at all for this project. All praise goes to the code writer David Bird. His code is here. I needed to be able to send a message to a dot-matrix screen remotely. I found the solution in minutes. It works so well, I
raspberry pi
Last summer a relative showed me his Tesla Model X do its impressive Sound & Light show. If you've never seen it, click here. I decided to build my own - without the wheels - on a severely limited budget using only a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero. If
3d printer
A couple of days ago I posted a blog that described how I designed and constructed an Hourglass Inverter. I used Tinkercad to design the parts. Quite a number of people commented, so I thought I'd share another small project I completed. I've talked often about
Arduino
For nearly 10 years I've had a large hourglass sitting on my desk. It has fine sand that takes exactly 30 minutes to drop through from one end to the other. It looks something like this. I bought it long before I became involved in the Maker World
raspberry pi
One of the best RasPi security cam packages is MotioneyeOS from Calin Crisan. I've written about it in a previous post. There's a great wiki for it here. This week I needed to set it up again for a new RasPi Zero W. I noticed that