Archives: Projects

I made an under-bench storage rack for pistol-grip tools using 3″ Schedule 40 PVC pipe.

I made a portable, off-grid solar power station for powered camping.

Specs:

• 400W solar panels – 4x 100W parallel 12VDC panels
• 40A MPPT Charge controller
• 300W 120V Pure Sine Wave AC Inverter
• 100AH 12V Deep Cycle AGM battery

I wired all these components together, and built wooden frames to mount them in a rolling toolbox for added portability. All that’s left to do is build up some collapsible frames for mounting the panels, and I have power anywhere on Earth the Sun shines.

Background – Project Helios:

The first time I went to Burning Man, I wanted a solar lighting solution for our yurt. I bought some parts and tested them in the yard. I found that while the charger was okay, the connectors that I bought melted waaay before the 10A fuse blew. With not enough time left before the trip to get replacements, I had no way to connect anything useful to the system. Two years later, I updated that design and put it all in a handy enclosure I made from an ammo can I drilled holes in and painted yellow.

We successfully ran evaporative cooling and some lights, but the power draw from the cooler really took a toll on the unit, and the lights were not very effective for illuminating our home – only for a bit of ambient glow. I didn’t want to use a gasoline generator, but I wanted AC power. I needed an inverter, but the 50W panel and the 10A charge controller weren’t going to provide enough power to run it. I was going to have to start from scratch.

To build a solar station, follow these steps:

• Figure out what devices you want to run, and how much power each consumes. Add up the consumption of all the devices. This is the load.
• Get an inverter that can support that load
• Get a battery that can power all that load for a 24-hour period
• Get enough solar panels to charge that battery during the period of useful sunlight (about 4-5 hours, depending on geography)
• Get a charge controller big enough to manage all the incoming power from the panels to the battery

Project Ra:

I did a little research, and followed an Instructable for the base of the idea. Then I went onto Amazon and picked up some parts.

When they came in, I wired them all together and tested them out in the yard. The charge controller wasn’t recognizing the panels when I had everything hooked up. I called in a friend who is an expert at solar, and he kindly pointed out that my connections were crap. When I made the cables, I didn’t have the proper crimping tool, and used a general wire crimper. The result was an inferior electromechanical connection. I tested it with the multimeter, and it tested good. So I thought it was. Just because you have continuity doesn’t mean you can pass current :/

I bought the correct crimper and re crimped the connections. As a result, I was able to continue testing. I brought two panels with me to Apogaea, Colorado’s regional Burn. I started with just one panel, and a string of LED lights around my camp. The single panel wasn’t enough to keep up with the system overhead, and the battery was losing charge, even with the panel in direct sunlight. I added the second panel, and started netting a positive charge.

After testing it in the field, it was clear that before I did anything else with the system, I needed to mechanically bind all the components into a coherent unit. I picked up a small rolling toolbox from the local hardware box store and designed some internal structure in CAD. I cut up some scrap lumber I had lying around the house, and bolted everything together.

I plan on keeping the box inside the yurt anyway, but the fans should help keep the internal temperature down and not kill the components.

To decorate our site at night, EJ weaved 250 yarn squares into flower shapes to shroud the LED holiday lights I picked up at the hardware store. It was nice to be able to finally have everything integrated and see Ra powering the flower lights at night.

I just need to make a frame to secure the panels to the ground at my desired angle and I’ll call it a station.

For now…

7/22/18 Addendum at bottom: Josh has provided me with some process shots with the light in action.

A few months ago, my buddy Josh approached me with a print job: Sammus Aran’s Arm Cannon from the NES classic game Metroid. I didn’t really like the file he found, but I liked the subject, so I printed it out.  But that wasn’t the end, you see, because there’s a story here.

A young woman and musician [Sammus] had her car broken into and her performance arm cannon was destroyed. Josh swore that he would make a successor worthy of song. He enlisted the help of me and my trusty TAZ5, Starfighter, and we sallied forth…

Printing the first parts

 

End cylinder and muzzle

 

The first layer was almost all buildup

 

Whoops! ran out of filament. Dang!

 

Much Better

 

Elbow Inlet

 

Fender or something. The printer artifacting looks almost like a wood grain here.

 

The “wood grain” is a bit more apparent here

 

One of two pods. I really didn’t like how this turned out so I reprinted it…

 

…and ruptured the film on the bed . I replaced it and continued

 

Starting anew on the side pod pieces with a different orientation

 

The artifacting on the top as a result of the orientatation. It sorta looks like a vent to me. I like it. I’m going with it. I had to keep this consistent, so I chose the more diagonal grain, and mirrored that on the other side

Another part that’s mostly buildup for the first layer :/

 

Some of the finished pieces

 

At this point Josh also picked up a super bright lantern at the hardware store to act as the reactor light. I ran the switch on the light out to an external limit switch mounted as a trigger on the grip inside the arm tube. A press of the switch closes the circuit with a satisfying click, and the super bright LEDs blast out photons out the front.

 

Josh smoothing out the imperfections with Plastic Wood. It’s like bondo but not frustrating bondo death!

 

The finished surface

 

Another angle

 

Priming

 

Priming

 

All painted up – sans muzzle

 

Josh found a beautiful tool case to ship/house the cannon in – Then he added foam and found some brilliant NES controller fabric to line it with

 

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any shots with the light-up effect. There is a trigger inside the cannon on a grip. When pressed, it lights up a super-bright LED array behind an amber filter.

Added shots of the light in action:

The light josh picked up from the local home despot. I didn’t get any process shots of hacking the puck light (I plumbed a limit switch out of the body to  trigger mount on the grip). Here we are testing the light mid-build.

Light off,

Light on

Fit testing

Testing the light. I love that you can hear the limit switch.

Thanks for reading 🤖

The concept behind this project was to make space ship control panels that homage to old-school gaming by borrowing their shapes from Tetris. The Space ship is the set for a friend’s music video

For this project, I used some transparent blue and red acrylic I got at the local plastics shop on markdown. I used a laser to cut the basic shapes. Four of the five panels I made are pictured above. I didn’t have the materials necessary to make all the shapes found in the game.  I was able to squeeze all of these shapes and the unpictured second blue “L” into two 18″x24″ sheets.

I laid out the control surfaces (switches and dials) roughly where each will go.

 

Once I had the control surfaces located on the panels, I drilled and placed each.

 

Don’t drill acrylic if you have access to a laser. Acrylic is brittle and doesn’t take internal stress very well. I should have made all of these circular cuts on the laser when I cut out the initial shapes. Balls.

Regardless, I ended up using the cracked panel with some blatantly obvious tape (here, lemme point it out to you so you can’t not see it).

Here’s a video of me testing all the panels after I’ve wired them up.

In addition to the ship control panels, I also scrounged up some parts to make the “reset switch” that was the McGuffin of the video’s story.

We had a good time shooting the video. At some point we were chased out by rain, but the camera crew got all the footage that day.

Check out the video in its entirtety: An Hobbes – “Away Team”

Remember, DON’T PANIC!

Wherein they built a modular steel deck to go atop the 32-foot geodesic dome.

Five welded steel wedges bolt together and bolt to the top of the dome. One wedge frames a trapdoor for access to the deck from inside the dome.

It all started with cutting, layout and dry-fitting the parts

I wish I got more shots from welding the pieces

All welded

 

Fabrication done and ready to install on the dome at Apogaea

The deck installation was considerably easier than its wooden predecessor, took a fraction of the time, and a fraction of the labor power.

Not shown: safety rails and center light-up pole.