Framed!
Electronics (sadly) aren’t built for eternity. I bet you’ve got some broken gadgets lying around as well… Here’s what I started doing to mine:
1) My Sony Ericsson K750i was the phone I used around 2004-2007 and it was famous for a 2 MP autofocus camera as well as good sound. We’ve had a great time, pal, you deserve the honour of being framed.
2) My Sony actioncam, which I bought in 2014 was more of a disappointment. It’s intended use was underwater photography which should have worked great with the advertised 12 MP Sensor and 60m rated dive-housing. The pictures it took were only 2MP without any way to change it (12 MP is probably used for enhancement). And it ‘drowned’ while diving (somewhere above -32m) – which wasn’t due to dirt in the lid or improper sealing of the casing-door but due to a manufacturing defect allowing water to leak inbetween the plastic parts the ‘dive-door’ is made of. The removal of the battery couldn’t save it due to the soldered coincell I discovered later. Well, it looks better disassembled and framed anyway 😉
Bonus) My former 3.5′ HDD with the lid replaced by acrylic glass (no, it doesn’t spin anymore ^^)
To be continued 😉 …
Lighting up the living room
I’ve always loved LEDs sind I built my first 5mm-LED Flashlight in a ballpen-casing back in 1999. So LEDs were bound to become a part of my new appartment. For watching TV, partying or simply a nice, dimmable light I wanted to have indirect LED-lighting in my living room. Without wasting much space or money, I decided to mount it on the walls: A small cable-canal offeres a great solution to mount LED strips facing upwards and/or downwards while a black wooden cover-plane (~5cm tall) serves as ‘shade’ to avoid the glare of individual LEDs. Two RGBW-LED-controllers offer wifi connectivity and control via smartphone, tablet or Alexa (via the ‘Magic Home’ App). Here’s how the ~ 12m Warmwhite and ~12m RGB-Led-Strip look in my living room:
As you can see, they are bright enough to replace conventional lighting entirely.
Shopping-List ~ 130€:
– RGB-LED Strip, 60 [5050]-LEDs/m, 12m 24€
– WarmWhite LED-Strip, 60 LEDs/m, 12m 20€
– RGBW Wifi controller, *2 30€
– Power Supply, 60W *2 30€
– Cabel-Canal, 12m 8€
– Wooden 100cm*5cm*0.4cm-Panel * 14, 13€
– short screws, rawplugs, hot glue, black paint, 4m DC-cables & Tools
And a coffee-capsule-holder!
After building a nice teabag-shelf, I decided to build my own coffee-capsule-holder as well. More durable wood and more precise planning & cuts this time, same ‘teak-wood’-paint.
Shopping list:
– a backplate of wood
– some thin wooden bars (vertical dividers); height ~ capsule-height + 2mm
– some flat wooden pieces to prevent the capsules falling out the front
– some smoothened ‘stoppers’ to ensure the capsules have to be pulled/squeezed a little to come out at the bottom.
Building a Teabag shelf
Annoyed of getting teaboxes out of the shelf and opening them to finally be able to get a teabag? So was I – and built a solution: Most boxes can be used as teabag-spenders when put vertically but they require some kind of retractor to be able to pull one out. Other Teabags come in individual paper-wraps. Here’s my ‘cheap, quick & dirty’ teabag-shelf. [Yes, lasercut/cnc-milled or thicker wooden pieces would look more awesome but it serves it purpose – ( maybe I shouldn’t have covered it in ‘teak-wood’-paint though… :D) ]
Building a quadcopter
Some years ago I decided to build a quadcopter (back when DJI Quadcopters were really expensive and before the spark or mavic existed). The original plan involved the idea to build the chassis and electronics by when I heard about the RC-store ‘hobbyking’ and saw the prices, I decided to order some parts for testing first and might add or replace electronics later on. I went with a turnigy 9Xr remote with swappable modules (FrSky for now) and a multiwii controller.
Singapore stopover
It’s been way too long since I left Singapore – but this summer I finally made it back for a 3 day stopover. Unfortunately my Sony camera broke so I was left with my phone’s capabilities.
K(h)o(h) T(h)ao
Whilst I’m not sure which way to write this islands name*, I am sure that it’s an awesome place to chill and dive. After stepping off the plane in Ko Samui and leaving the open-space airport, I took a ferry to Ko Tao which – due to some exhaust problems – covered everyone inside in black particles. The next morning I started diving with a few friends with Phoenix divers – an awesome diveshop with a pink boat 😀 . Please excuse the bad image quality – I used a 70$ Actioncam whilst underwater.
*I’ve seen all of the above in different places.
Diving Bali – again. At the wreck
This year I finally made it back to South East Asia! And of course I had to stop in Bali. This time a friend joined me for diving and we decided to book a day of ‘all you can dive’ and rented a computer and camera as well. We started at 7 in the morning and finished the day with a night dive. Below, you’ll find the best pictures we took with the Canon G-16. (the date wasn’t set propberly so just ignore that 😀 )