Electronics - Heatshrink

This stuff is almost as good as PVC, and that other plastic stuff I recently discovered.

Heatshrink is way cool, because it can hide your personal lack of soldering skill.

And kids, we all know it's important to hide socially awkward things like skill deficits.

Heatshrink is a thing like the thing that was on wire before you mutilated it with wire strippers, and a soldering iron.

It's a bit like make-up, and a bit like a seat belt.

I'm not sure if I remember how it's a bit like make up, but it's a bit like a seat belt in so far as it can stop your house from burning down.

It looks something like this.

It's the black bits.

When you buy it, it looks like this.

All wrinkle free and smooth.

When you butcher a bit of soldering, you can hide it (except in profile) from the world with a small cutting of heatshrink.

Just cut off the appropriate length to cover all of your electronic inabilities, and you're one step closer to the prom.

A bit of heat sees the stuff shrink against the underlying wire!

Who'd have guessed?

The final product looks like this if you are unlucky.

And unskilled.

But the reality is, it's not just a cover up.

Being able to add a layer of insulation to whatever exposed wires you needed to create to make your project, makes for a totally worthwhile product.



It replaces bits of tape, and sometimes hope. And hope rarely does much to put out fires.

A truly wonderful product that I would be happy to gain profit from endorsing.

If only I knew what brand I use.


It really comes into it's own when you cram your vision onto a breadboard in any of the malformed ways that have become all to familiar to readers of this blog.

At least, when you use heat shrink, you know the problem is with your design rather than with some crazy bits of wire touching each other inappropriately.

Depicted here, a staged approximation of chaos on a breadboard, rendered happy by heatshrink.







Actually depicted there are some short lengths of wire soldered to even shorter lengths of header pin (stiff wire bits) that serve to make connecting stuff on a breadboard a dream.

But perhaps best of all, if you decide to spring for the $2.33 to buy a few* metres of heat shrink, and make some breadboard wires, you also get to learn some stuff about how solder flows, and get your soldering technique under control in a way that can more perfectly disguise your delinquent soldering misadventures.

It's soldering practice, but it has a purpose, and it will serve you well.

Make some breadboard wires with heatshrink today.


* hang on, isn't 233 a prime number that doesn't really divide well into a "few"?


120 Things in 20 years has some small burns since discovering heat shrink, but less than you might expect if you follow this blog closely.




















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Electronics - Breadboard multimeter adapter

For some time now I've been looking for a convenient way to probe around my breadboard with my multimeter. It can be a little tricky, because the probes are too thick to get into the little holes on the breadboard.


I had a bit of an idea today.

I came up with this...

It's a stereo headphone jack with a long length of header pin (sturdy wire used as a plug) soldered to the legs.

I added some insulation in the form of heatshrink, and...

TaDah!

The 120 Things in 20 years multimeter breadboard adapter.

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Handmade fishing lures - Mold making - Prototyping plastic

I just discovered my new favourite substance.

It's even better than PVC.

Maybe it is PVC.

I don't know.

I was in my local electronics store checking switches, and was sold some of this stuff.

It's plastic that you can warm up and shape.

You need to get it to around 65 degrees c before it melts into itself.

Once hot, you can shape it into anything you can think of.

Pictured here is a bit I squeezed.

It retains fine detail like fingerprints, and when dry, it sets white like the beads again.

It sets to a strong plastic with a little flex, a lot like a soft drink (soda) bottle cap.




My first use was to make a very specific battery pack that didn't exist as far as I could tell.  It's great to work with, and totally recyclable. You just drop it back into hot water, and it re-melts.

I would guess you have around a minute to work with where you can press two bits together and they form one. And perhaps another minute where you can still shape it, but pressing two bits together wouldn't quite become one.

If you need more time to work it, you just put whatever you've half made back into hot water and it softens again.

Very cool stuff that I think I'm going to need to buy in bulk.



120 Things in 20 years is excited about making handmade fishing lures, and just general prototyping  In reality, I have no idea what I'll do with it, but it's exciting just knowing about it. I'm easily excited.

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Electronics - Aquaponics - Demand feeder fish lever build

I spent some time in an electronics store testing long buttoned momentary switches.

They all seem to work when you tilt the button to the side as well as when you press the button normally. Perhaps they are designed to work that way after all.

Thanks button maker.

I had a bit of a breakthrough with the entire lever, and not just the switch part. I found this fishing float had a white plastic bit that almost fit over the momentary switch's button.

That's the switch lower right.

The white plastic thing was hollow, but needed a slight enlargement with a hand held drill.

The button went in with a snug fit, and the white thing was really their just to give me some surface area glue onto.

The new lever incorporated a second fishing float as the stem, and as a nice bulb for the fish to hit.

The float stem has a bit of flex to it, so it should be forgiving if a fish hits it hard.

It looked lie this when built.

I glued it in place with super glue, and held it while it dried with what to me looks like a naked chicken with a fist for a head.

So now my device looks like this.

It also works.

I turned it on, and while I was putting a cover over the fish tank, the bigger of my two fish hit the lever and got a feed.

I did have the camera running, but the video was too dark to post, but the switch and lever worked perfectly.

I count this as a success!











120 Things in 20 years suggests you never try to take your electronic aquaponics demand feeder on a plane with you, unless you feel like explaining it for a few hours.

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Electronics - Aquaponics - Demand feeder lever

Probably the most difficult single thing to deal with in making my demand feeder has been working out the lever.

But as usual I called upon chance to solve it for me.

Thanks chance.

For some reason I remembered playing with a switch I bought when I was making the first version of this demand feeder. The switch was one that is a button, and turns on then off again after you lift your finger.

It's sideways click seemed nice to the touch.

The one pictured (centre front) is the same, but is on an old circuit board. I cant find my original version.



It's quite long for a momentary switch.


The interesting thing about these particular, particularly long momentary switches, is they they do their switching thing if you tilt the button to the side rather than just press it. I just tested this one and it works.

They also work if you press it, but it's the sideways switchyness that interests me. It should be perfect as the lever the fish hit, because they can hit it from any direction and it should trigger.




Now all I need to do is figure out which brand they are, and if they all work like that. It might be the case that only some of them do this. It might be a manufacturing error rather than a feature.

Perhaps manufacturing error is too harsh.

Perhaps manufacturing  tolerance would be better.

Either way, I might be able to use it.



120 Things in 20 years - As luck might have it, for the next few days, you might find me in electronics stores with a multimeter, trying to find a switch for my electronic, aquaponics demand feeder lever.

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Heliostat - What's a heliostat?

I want to start building a heliostat, with the eventual goal of making a solar tracker, but for now, I really want to just build something that will send light through my window.

Why? You may well ask.

And "What's a heliostat?" you may add.

A heliostat is the kind of thing someone with a water drop lensed microscope might have used to get some light on the subject*. Early models involved humans, who were forced to point shiny things in such a way as to reflect the light to shiny men's laboratories. Later versions incorporate wind up mechanisms. For a single day device, all that's required is that it turns 15 degrees every hour, as long as you are willing to manually adjust the elevation for the particular day you are using the device,
a heliostat will track the sun so that a mirror will always reflect to the place I want the light.

The solar tracker is like a heliostat, except that the place it's pointing at is always moving. (that point being directly at the sun wherever it is. But the solar tracker is for another day. Actually all of this is for a great many days.

For now, I'll be working on a small digital device that controls the direction a small mirror is pointing, to make it always reflect light to a fixed point. Basically a way to bring some natural light through a window that doesn't see a lot of light.

There seems to be a few different ways to create some linear movement. Linear movement being required to lift a side of the mirror to adjust the direction of the reflection in the up and down aspect.. I figure if I can raise or lower one side, and make the entire device pivot around a mast, I should have all the degrees of movement required.

According to the invention engine, one way to create the required angle might be to glue a hinge to a mirror, and mount that to a mast to support it. Tie a string to one side of the mirror, then wrap it around a tiny winch mounted half way up the mast, then tie the other end to the other side of the mirror. That would give me up and down, and then all I need is a way to rotate the entire device, perhaps using a geared motor, and a pulley.

I haven't really tackled this bit of the design, but the control of the motors could be done via a PICAXE chip similar to that used in my demand feeder. and some light dependant resistors (LDRs).

If two LDRs were arranged so that when the device was pointing correctly, they were both in full light, but when one became shaded, the motor could be turned in the correct direction to make the adjustment.

A similar arrangement could be made for both the up and down, and rotational movements.

I'm off to an electronics store to buy some stuff.



*may not reflect reality.

120 Things in 20 years is busy finding bits of heliostat. 

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Thinking - Fresh produce

Is it just me or is everyone crazy?

Don't answer that, it was a rhetorical question .

I just picked a stack of cherry tomatoes from my aquaponics system. They represent only the second batch that has made it back to the house. All the others were devoured before the back door. But this time, some made it.

Looking at them in my kitchen has me wondering why we insist on having all our fresh produce being uniform in size, shape, and colour. This is a very "developed world" kind of issue, so if you are more sensible than this where you live, just ignore this post, but in this part of the world, almost everywhere we buy fresh produce only sells perfect looking produce.

I wonder what would happen to prices if they just left out one of the criteria for A grade produce.

For example, size.

The size of a fruit is by far the least relevant thing.

The tomatoes harvested were all ripe, all delicious, and all different sizes.

So why would the four on the right be classed as second grade.

It's because...







We are all crazy.




120 Things in 20 years - Where thinking and forming opinions about everyone regarding fresh produce, is often presented as fact.

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