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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bumper harvest of cherry tomatoes from my #aquaponics #diy

Raspberry Pi portable PC #diy

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

How I built my own Raspberry Pi tablet

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

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

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

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

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