Diy

post-1672040157

My house got struck by lightning again, taking out the alarm system again. This time I decided to #diy my own alarm system with an #arduino. It's a bit of a rat's nest right now (prototype), but it works! Controllable via Telegram and standard remote. Gotta solder it up on a board next and add some lightning isolation/protection. There's surprisingly little info on the internet about replacing a commercial home alarm system with custom Arduino one. The biggest challenge is that the long wires to sensors can pick up noise/EMF so I had to do some filtering in software to avoid false triggers.

Mon 26 December 2022

post-1670772992

Bought this ESP32-based Esplay Micro V2, and it is sweet! Not only is it a great form-factor and fairly priced, but it comes fully assembled with an SD Card loaded with some music and cool retro games. It's a #DIY #maker dream as I can turn this into almost any device I can think of! #esplay #esp32 #retrogaming #diy

ESPlay
https://www.robotics.org.za/MES32PRO

Sun 11 December 2022

post-1668947201

Today's project: #diy battery for my 2015 phone. Original battery down to 6% of it's original capacity. Replacement battery costs only R90 and is readily available at hobby shops. Had to make an adapter plate using my favourite material: masonite board. Sealed it with a polyurethane coating. I've avoided buying new electronics and am still sticking with my 2015 phone and 2015 tablet as my main mobile devices because they are hackable in this way, and the software (after disabling all the bloat) is still running sweetly.

Sun 20 November 2022

post-1662452469

Made a distraction-free audiobook player using a Raspberry Pi 3A. Doesn't even distract me with a progress bar :) #diy

Tue 06 September 2022

post-1658844533

Here's a pic of my fridge-top Smol Data Centre, which I previously blogged about on gemini at gemini://tobykurien.com/articles/2022-05-17-smol-data-centre.gmi #photo #diy

Tue 26 July 2022

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Made an extended battery pack for my aging MacBook that also acts as a comfortable base. The 55Wh battery pack consists of cheap and easily replaceable 21700 cells. Plenty of space to add more batteries, USB hub, hard drive, or other accessories. #diy

Sat 21 May 2022

post-1639897856

The latest incarnation of my #raspberrypi DIY audio player. Still a bit clunky, but it's now pocketable, and can run 15+ hours on a full charge. The software is now perfect 👌 #diy

Sun 19 December 2021

post-1625207794

Sampler is an amazing text visualization tool for the terminal. I was able to make a smart-mirror type of dashboard really easily with it. #text #console #dashboard #diy

Sampler
https://github.com/sqshq/sampler

Fri 02 July 2021

post-1618908395

I made a music player using the awesome Pimoroni Pirate Audio HAT for #RaspberryPi. It plays any format including OGG and even videos, remembers where it left off, buttons work exactly how I like it because I wrote the code, and it has outstanding audio quality (24-bit DAC + headphone amp). The UI needs work tho! #maker #diy #audio

Tue 20 April 2021

post-1615442746

A #loadshedding solution I've been playing with: Blue Nova 280Wh LFP battery + 300W inverter. Runs my laptop for over 6 hours, charges with standard car battery charger, over 10 years of cycle life, weighs less than 3kg, costs under R3000. #diy

Thu 11 March 2021

post-1614871435

Not super proud of this, but when it's a choice between tossing out an old tablet because of a broken USB charging port, or an ugly fix to save it, I'll do the ugly fix.

#MakersGonnaFix #diy

Thu 04 March 2021

post-1610118794

Bumper harvest of cherry tomatoes from my #aquaponics #diy

Fri 08 January 2021

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Raspberry Pi portable PC #diy

Tue 22 December 2020

Aquaponics runneth over

My #aquaponics runneth over! That's cherry tomatoes hanging off the side, bearing plenty of fruit. #diy

aquaponics-runneth-over

Sun 20 December 2020

DIY Raspberry Pi Tablet

rpi_tab


How I built my own Raspberry Pi tablet

Sat 04 July 2020

Raspberry Pi Star Trek LCARS Interface

rpi_lcars


Star Trek LCARS interface implemented on a Raspberry Pi with touch screen, using Python and pygame

Wed 30 March 2016

PiScope

piscope


PiScope is a House4Hack project, presented at ScopeX 2015, to do basic astrophotography using a RaspberryPi, Arduino, 3d-printed parts, and a telescope.

Wed 22 July 2015

Gym Timer

gym_timer


I built a dead-simple Arduino-based gym timer for my StrongLifts 5x5 routine

Thu 23 April 2015

Beat load-shedding with solar tech

beat-loadshedding-with-solar-tech


My simple solar setup has been featured in articles on Fin24 and HTXT.

Mon 23 February 2015

House4Hack smart watch

h4h-watch


We built a smart watch at House4Hack. I decided to re-write the firmware and Android app from scratch.

Thu 28 August 2014