Arduino Turning a $10 kitchen scale into a WiFi smart scale for Home Assistant Over the years I've seen a few posts on Reddit demonstrating the use of a load cell with an internet-connected microcontroller as a weight-based filament sensor for 3D printing. I decided to embark upon a similar project, retrofitting a $10 kitchen scale.
Arduino 555-Timer Oscillator for Ultra Low-Power Devices Using the Astable Multivibrator circuit with a CMOS 555 Timer, power consumption on battery-powered sensors can be drastically reduced to microamps. This guide demonstrates two common circuits that can be used to achieve this.
Reviews MakerHawk USB 150W Load Tester - Review and Battery-Power Mod I ordered this MakerHawk USB load tester a few months ago. For the price it packs a punch, but comes up short on the accuracy of voltage readings. I modded it to run on a single 18650 Li-ion battery, making it a much more portable and easy to use tool.
Arduino Homemade Battery-Powered Alexa Smart Speaker Using a disassembled Echo Flex device, I made a portable, wireless smart speaker with an integrated phone charger. Aside from being a fun project, it is cool to have a powerful speaker that just integrates with the rest of my Alexa devices.
Electronics DIY Gigabit Passive PoE Splitter - Sharing data signal and power on the same wires I build a homemade PoE splitter that supports Gigabit connectivity. It's a little more complex than the more simple PoE splitter that uses only spare wire pairs. Overall, it was a great opportunity to learn more about PoE.
Arduino DIY Peloton: Cadence and Resistance Sensors, Speakers - Powered by Raspberry Pi Pico DIY Peloton project - created a smart exercise bike with cadence and resistance sensors and a built-in speaker. Powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico
Electronics DIY Passive PoE Splitter with Integrated DC Buck Convertor I made a passive PoE (Power-over-Ethernet) splitter/adapter to power my Ring base station. It has an integrated convertor that is integrated into the cable.
Electronics Raspberry Pi Pico Neopixel Controller w/ Motion Detection Trigger Guide to making a ws2821b LED controller triggered by an infrared motion detector. This is powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico Microcontroller running micropython. Build details and guide + schematic.
Electronics Raspberry Pi 4B All-in-one Kids' Computer Part 2 I build a custom all-in-one kids computer based on a Sceptre 20" monitor and Raspberry Pi 4B SBC. It was a really fun project and I was able to end up with a clean look and only a single cable needed to power and operate it.
Homelab 1U Quiet, Short-Depth Mini-ITX Ryzen Virtualization Server Build Powerful and power efficient 1U small form factor server build. This is a quiet, compact workhorse running Proxmox. It took a few iterations to get here, but I'm real happy with the result.
Electronics Custom All-in-One PC Part 1: Disassemble and Paint Sceptre Monitor How to disassemble a Sceptre 20" LCD monitor to custom paint it purple using spray paint.
Homelab 1U 3-port KVM-over-IP console appliance using PiKVM (Raspberry Pi 4B) I built a 1U small form-factor KVM console for remotely managing laptops on my home network. This project was powered by PiKVM, an innovative open-source solution.
