To put this into context, I took my first Loopy’s tubing trip long before waterproof Bluetooth speakers were something you could just go pick up at your local Circuit City. For the average rivergoer, a tranquil float down the serene Chippewa River on a beautiful sunny day is already pretty hard to beat. But what kind of engineer would I be if I didn’t seize the opportunity to enhance such a natural experience with a piece of cobbled together tech designed for the sole purpose of blasting out the fattest bangers of 2005? What started out as a dumpster dived Continue Reading
3D Printing
The Voice™: Maker Edition (DIY Bluetooth Game Show Buzzers)
tl;dr: I made 3D printed, bluetooth game show buzzers for playing The Voice at home, powered by Adafruit Circuit Playground Bluefruit boards and a laptop. Bringing Reality TV to Reality If you ask me, combining a makeshift karaoke setup, cheap beer, and good friends all but guarantees a fun night. Ok who am I kidding, my college days are well behind me – decent beer. Anyway, toss in some random swivel chairs and before you know it, you’re playing your own version of The Voice™ wishing you had some big red buttons to smash. That’s the origin story of this Continue Reading
A wireless water level sensor for the Internet of Tannenbaums
I rigged up a crude little water level sensor to monitor my Christmas tree and send me alerts when it gets thirsty. With the help of two strips of aluminum stuffed in a FoodSaver bag, an Adafruit HUZZAH32 – ESP32 Feather Board, and a little Arduino code, our humble tree has become part of the IoT revolution! Physics lab flashback The sensing probe that goes in the water is basically just a parallel plate capacitor straight out of undergrad physics. The water flows between the plates and works as a dielectric. The relative permittivity (aka dielectric constant) of water is Continue Reading
Semi-permanent Railing Extension For Baby Gate
In case that awkward title doesn’t paint a perfect mental picture for you, here’s a little more context: When we bought our split-level house, we didn’t really think much about baby proofing it. Now that the little guy is mobile, it feels like we spend about 98% of our waking hours making sure he doesn’t go tumbling down the stairs. We had a baby gate that could conceivably keep him out of harms way, but there was no obvious way to mount it at the top of the stairs. The solution I came up with was to design some 3D-printed Continue Reading
Flashing My Cornhole: Building a Shot Sensing, Light Up Bean Bag Toss Set
A while ago I got my hands on some scrap photoelectric sensors from work. The defects were only cosmetic, so I mounted a pair of them to a flimsy bean bag toss (aka cornhole) set I had made a couple months before. I drilled 12 small holes in a circle around the main hole and filled them with LEDs. I added a little box with some batteries and a couple 555 timer circuits so that the LEDs would flash for a few seconds whenever a bag went through the hole. The effect was kinda cool considering it was mostly just Continue Reading