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I haven't had much time to do many things lately.

Recently, we started moving my wife's art studio from the basement to an upstairs room. Needless to say, it has been quite the affair, and it still is not done. I am hoping that the worst is over. She found a map cabinet locally for an excellent price. However, I did not realize how heavy they are. Each drawer weighs about 50 pounds... there are 10 drawers per cabinet and there are two cabinets - over a thousand pounds of steel. 

The original plan was to stack them on a cart so they can be shifted around and the top one would get a work surface put on it. BUT... at over a thousand pounds, it still did not want to move with the big wheels I put on it. So, she sold one of them and I put even bigger wheels on the cart. Now it moves at least and I had to build a table to go around it. Been a busy weekend.

Lots of little stuff to finish up for her studio, but it is coming along.

I have been working on a portable game emulator, the Drachenberry Pi. I got the STL files from Thingiverse. So far so good. Been working on getting all the wiring done. I will do a project page for it once I get it done.

I also finally have all of the parts for a new quad... Just need some time to get to it.

ttfn,

Keith

June flew by... I haven't been painting much, but I did get some stuff primed for painting. My sister came for a visit and we stayed really busy the whole time she was here. But I did manage to get one project done...

I made a RaspberryPi Echo Dot clone.... and it works, just like the Amazon Echo Dot. Keep in mind, if you had to buy everything, you could probably gotten 2 dots. BUT, what fun would that be and I can extend it to use the GPIO on the RPi. The only thing I had to buy was as usb microphone. - I had everything else on hand.

You can find a walk through on Lifehacker. I did mine as a part of a stackskills course, The 2018 Ultimate Guide to Raspberry Pi. It was $9.99 and covers a lot of ground for the price, from webservers to camera servers, but the final project is to build an Echo Dot clone. Now I need to learn how to set up skills.

I plan on taking some photos and doing a little write up on it. I am just not quite there yet.

ttfn,

Keith

I finally got my Prusa i3 Mk2.5 all sorted. They released a new firmware/software update (you can get it here). I also did a factory reset and after the firmware update. She is printing nicely again. Another tip is to preview your print. Things that look good on one screen may not look so good after slicing. 

Target started carrying the Google AIY projects (voice and vision kits). I picked up the Google Voice AIY kit. It was $49.99 and included the RasberryPi Zero... Not too bad. It only took about 30 minutes to build, but over an hour to get it to finally work. But, following directions helps! Now I want to see what I can do with it, besides pressing a buttion and asking a question. I need to write this one up... 

I got back to work on my old quadcopter. It was having issues, very unstable. I finally sorted it out to a bad ESC. It would not calibrate, the other 3 would. And, I finally got it to fail, though it was flying at the time and I broke an arm... no biggie as it was a 3d printed frame. So, I started working again on my FPV frame. I pretty much had it together, I just needed to finish a few tweaks. Again, it is 3d printed - but for some reason, I cannot locate the files or web reference right now. Once I find it I will post it.

I wanted to do a little write up on it as well as this is my first FPV quad. So, do not expect perfection or for it to last long. I expect to crash it, sooner rather than later. I need to find some goggles that work with glasses, or some reading glasses that will fit inside my goggles. I can see, just not too clearly. I may be able to find some readers that are narrow enough to fit inside the goggles I have. We will see.

Lots more to come...

TTFN

Keith