We took time away to drive down to Dallas for the April 8, 2024 full eclipse.  We made our “reservation” with my wife’s sister a couple of years ago when the path of totality was published. We weren’t all that optimistic on the drive down from the Kansas City area to Dallas.  The forecast not only called for clouds but for strong storms. For the eclipse of 2017 the path of totality was nearby.  It was an easy trip to get to a spot where we could set up.  I had brought my daughter and her new tracking telescope with…

Work on the display case has followed three areas. Room Finishing This part is time consuming and mundane.  The room that the case is in is a combination office, workout room and more than a little bit of storage space.  That means when the walls get painted there’s a lot of stuff to move out of the way.  Most of it is “keeper” stuff, but some of it, particularly old framed prints will probably be donated. The paint on this room went back to its original finishing back in 2003.  It was really in pretty good shape except for the…

These experiments involve the addition of a “RAMPS 1.4” board.  I realized that for a lot of this stuff, making my own board was silly.  For less that I could make some very basic stuff I can buy a board that is exactly made to go with the Marlin software that does a things that I was about to do. Some of that is little things.  Reading a thermistor?  It needs a pullup resistor and a capacitor is a good idea.  The RAMPS board already has that installed and the values in the software already are aligned with the components…

This isn’t a post that lends itself well to pictures. A lot of what the BeerMKR does during the brewing process is to just hold a temperature. My concept for replacing the board on the BeerMKR is to use Open Source 3D printing software, “Marlin”, to do the maintenance on the heaters, coolers, and temperature monitoring.  Something else will have to know the recipe and when to switch temperatures. The RepRap project, which is about self replicating machines, came up with a set of specifications to turn an inexpensive single board computer into the smarts inside a 3d printer.  The…

Thermoelectric Assembly connector: JST VL Series Board Power Connector Hirose DF63 Series Heater Connectors (2 top 1 bottom) JST VH Series Pressure Sensor, Button light assembly  JST XH series (2.5 mm) Temperature Sensor and TEC fan JST PH Series (2.0 mm) Vibration Motor, Power Supply Fan and Vent Solenoid JST EH Series (2.5 mm)