Category Academic
Having to frequently set up cross-compilers, I figured it would be interesting to write out my current understanding and see what gaps I have. I found it educational to set...
While this wasn’t a particularly novel project, I spent some time trying to better familiarize myself with how the JTAG interface works.
It’s been awhile since I used an FPGA toolchain, so I was looking for a good project to use as a refresher.
I finally had a chance to dig into the chipwhisperer. It’s a learning tool to teach about hardware security vulnerabilities like Side-channel attacks.
A project at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, in Germany, to use accelerometers to track heart motion to aid in robotic surgery.
As part of a project for the machine learning lab at Cornell, I did the hardware and some of the software to make a stock RC car autonomously drift though...
Final project for ECE 576 at Cornell, click here for the project write up
Final project for ECE 476 at Cornell, click here for the project write up
Final project for mechatronics. Ended up winning first prize in the sumo robot competition.
Category Hardware
My failed attempt to make an IoT nightlight.
I made an IoT dice box to combine two of my favorite open source LED projects, Pixels Dice and WLED.
I wrote a library for connecting Pixel dice to the ESP32 mcu and published it for Arduino and PlatformIO.
Well the Pixels Dice KickStarter I supported like 3 years ago finally came in. I wanted to do something fun with them before I played my next TTRPG session, so...
A friend wanted to use a toy guitar as a prop for a halloween costume, and they asked if I could swap out the sound effects with playing some song...
A friend of mine gave me a baby toy to hack awhile back, and I finally got a chance to take a crack at it.
I added a cat door to one of our windows to give our cat a bit more freedom to make up from our lack of attention due to the baby....
I had my first circuit board printed. I made an extremely over engineered life total counter.
I added a USB cable to a doll which would be detected as a USB keyboard, and give a personality quiz through notepad. The user starts and responds to the...
I made a decorated box that opens when a magnet key is placed on both sides.
With fire season approaching in California I wanted to get a air quality monitor to see how bad the air is over time. I thought I’d do another reverse engineering...
I bought a cheap weather station with the intent of adding networked data logging. I ended up reverse engineering both the RF transmission, as well as the inter-chip communication at...
I bought a cheap software defined radio (SDR), and tracked planes in realtime with ADS-B. This was a bit of a warmup for a bigger project I wanted to use...
Since the last article was on the female side of fertility why not switch to the male? Yo produces a test kit to measure sperm count. It’s main selling point...
In starting to try to have a baby, my wife got a digital device to track her hormones. Who am I to turn down an opportunity to reverse engineer something?...
I wanted to do a quickish project over my time off for the holidays. I had a recently broken a coffee grinder, and it inspired me to automate a chair...
I had a really cool 3 position key switch that I’ve been trying to come up for a use for. I decided to make an IoT controller that could turn...
Well it’s been awhile since we’ve been able to travel, so to feel better I decided to make a memento to the big trip Maria and I went on last...
While this wasn’t a particularly novel project, I spent some time trying to better familiarize myself with how the JTAG interface works.
It’s been awhile since I used an FPGA toolchain, so I was looking for a good project to use as a refresher.
I finally had a chance to dig into the chipwhisperer. It’s a learning tool to teach about hardware security vulnerabilities like Side-channel attacks.
Another simple “home automation” project. My wife mentioned it would be nice to have a way to keep track of when the cat litter was last cleaned. This is a...
Another update to Web Based Door Control. Here I take the path of least resistance to add Google Assistant integration and uptime monitoring by integrating with Blynk, IFTTT, and UptimeRobot....
As gift for my wife’s birthday I wanted to make something to celebrate our shared time with the game Fire Emblem Three Houses. I was originally inspired by a light...
As a followup to NodeMCU Development, I decided to connect my project to the AWS IoT cloud to see what that entailed. Turns out, it’s a huge amount of headache...
I’m starting another electronic art project, and decided to use the NodeMCU for the processor. It’s cheap, easy to setup, and has WiFi. However, when I previously used the board...
During some time off, I decided to rewrite the laser_stars (http://www.robopenguins.com/laser-stars/) code using the ROS framework. During the original project I ended up creating a lot of the configuration /...
Today I decided to break out a Alesis Q45 midi keyboard that I’ve had lying around. Much to my dismay, my computer had trouble detecting it. Looking at the device...
This is a bit of a weird one. I’m not sure what drew me to this project, but I decided to do a project to use a laser to draw...
This is another old one from back in college. I stuffed a microcontroller in a rotary phone to act as a stage in a scavenger hunt puzzle. When the phone...
Here’s a bunch of other old projects I dug up while updating the site that I’m throwing together into a pile.
Maria got me a k40 laser cutter for my birthday!
This idea was based on the concept of making a “Sound Catcher” pixel display. I’ve been wanting to make this for a long time, but only recently made the time...
One more high voltage project from highschool. This is a really simple ion thruster setup called a “lifter”
Another classic, I actually modified this one over the course of a couple years making a super sketchy cordless phone controlled version.
Wow this is an old one. I’ve decided to go back and write up some of the first projects I did.
Another set of puzzle pieces I made back in the day.
I wanted to do another electrical project that focused on aesthetics. While looking at thrift stores for material for another project I saw some pieces that inspired me. I decided...
After have locked myself out of my apartment one too many times, I decided that running to make a keyless entry system. I’ve been looking for a project to use a Raspberry...
I decided to recreate a sculpture I saw while in Spain for my Optometrist to be brother. A very simple project, but I had fun making the lenticular eye.
Infinity mirrors are an optical illusion that gives the impression of a long corridor, by sandwiching some lights between two mirrored surfaces. I’ve been interested in trying to make a...
Here’s a quick hack I through together to prevent jerks from ringing my doorbell late at night.
Over the holidays I wanted to come up with a simple project that could be somewhat streamlined for “mass production”. I’ve always liked working with clay and decided to make...
My brother and I used to watch the anime Outlaw Star together as kids, so I decided to get him something based on the show as a gift this year. Being...
A project at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, in Germany, to use accelerometers to track heart motion to aid in robotic surgery.
As part of a project for the machine learning lab at Cornell, I did the hardware and some of the software to make a stock RC car autonomously drift though...
Final project for ECE 576 at Cornell, click here for the project write up
Final project for ECE 476 at Cornell, click here for the project write up
A hollowed out book that works as a keyboard controlled locking safe.
Final project for mechatronics. Ended up winning first prize in the sumo robot competition.
Category Personal
I’ve had a few projects I’d done kicking around that didn’t really warrant their own articles.
I’ve been making in universe letters and posters as part of a Pathfinder game I’ve been playing. They started out as something my character roleplayed producing, but they’ve become a...
Unfortunately, the custom magic card creation tool Card Conjurer has been taken down by Wizards of the Coast. However, you can still use the tool if you run it locally....
After watching a clip from the insane Alex Jones Cross trial, I thought it would be funny to make a Phoenix Wright reenactment.
While I don’t have much time to make things, I have managed to do a few small projects involving my daughter.
I recycled some wooden boxes into card organizers. Mostly an effort in making art suitable for the laser cutter .
For an update on the custom card creator Card Conjurer mentioned in this article see this update: Running Card Conjurer Locally
My daughter was born 12/30/2021. This project was certainly more of an effort from my wife than me, though I saved the 100th article spot for the occasion.
I realized that I’m approaching my 100th article on this site. I wanted to take a look back at over the last 18 years of making things and see how...
I’ve been doing some entry level carpentry to make the TV’s around the house a little weirder.
After playing a game of Magic the Gathering with a friends kids, I decided to see if there was a way to get back in the game without taking out...
Since the last article was on the female side of fertility why not switch to the male? Yo produces a test kit to measure sperm count. It’s main selling point...
In starting to try to have a baby, my wife got a digital device to track her hormones. Who am I to turn down an opportunity to reverse engineer something?...
I had a really cool 3 position key switch that I’ve been trying to come up for a use for. I decided to make an IoT controller that could turn...
I wrote a quick script to solve a logic grid puzzle in Dishonored 2. It probably would be a decent tool for solving arbitrary logic grid puzzles.
For a non-software related project my wife and I recently had a chance to paint some miniatures for our DnD characters.
Another simple “home automation” project. My wife mentioned it would be nice to have a way to keep track of when the cat litter was last cleaned. This is a...
For something a little different, I thought I’d look at the process I went through to optimize a solution in the game Exapunks.
As gift for my wife’s birthday I wanted to make something to celebrate our shared time with the game Fire Emblem Three Houses. I was originally inspired by a light...
Over the holidays I spent some time on craft projects. Really enjoyed having access to my tools and materials after not being able to craft much while traveling.
Today I decided to break out a Alesis Q45 midi keyboard that I’ve had lying around. Much to my dismay, my computer had trouble detecting it. Looking at the device...
On a recent trip to Hong Kong, we visited an area called Cat Street to look for souvenirs. One thing that caught my eye, was a model of mechanical clock...
I’ve done a little GIF creation and pixel editting in the past, but I wanted to take another stab at making a sprite. I eventually found the awesome free program...
Here’s a bunch of other old projects I dug up while updating the site that I’m throwing together into a pile. This time programming!
This is another old one from back in college. I stuffed a microcontroller in a rotary phone to act as a stage in a scavenger hunt puzzle. When the phone...
Here’s a bunch of other old projects I dug up while updating the site that I’m throwing together into a pile.
Finally got around to framing and hanging my undergraduate diploma. I originally wanted to do something a little more elaborate, but after so many years of gathering dust, I decided...
Awhile back my great aunt asked me for some resources on learning about computers. I’d thought I’d upload the conversation to save it for posterity.
As a decorative project for the apartment, Maria and I made a mobile of eyeballs.
Maria got the idea for these ornaments at http://tallystreasury.com/2010/12/paper-ornaments-its-magic/
A gift I made for Maria. Uses mana rocks to unlock a treasure.
My 2016 Halloween costume. I made the mask, and Maria made the dress! Almost everything was handmade except for one layer of the skirt, the white wig, and one of...
One more high voltage project from highschool. This is a really simple ion thruster setup called a “lifter”
Another classic, I actually modified this one over the course of a couple years making a super sketchy cordless phone controlled version.
Wow this is an old one. I’ve decided to go back and write up some of the first projects I did.
After having a flaky VPS host for a year or so decided to switch to a new slightly less flaky host. I tried to remove some of the weird custom...
Halloween 2015 costume. It’s loosly based on the Crimson King from Steven King’s Dark Tower series. Here’s the thrift store junk that inspired it.
Another set of puzzle pieces I made back in the day.
Halloween 2014 costume. It’s loosly based on the King in Yellow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow. Here’s the thrift store junk that inspired it.
I wanted to do another electrical project that focused on aesthetics. While looking at thrift stores for material for another project I saw some pieces that inspired me. I decided...
I decided to recreate a sculpture I saw while in Spain for my Optometrist to be brother. A very simple project, but I had fun making the lenticular eye.
Infinity mirrors are an optical illusion that gives the impression of a long corridor, by sandwiching some lights between two mirrored surfaces. I’ve been interested in trying to make a...
Here’s a quick hack I through together to prevent jerks from ringing my doorbell late at night.
Over the holidays I wanted to come up with a simple project that could be somewhat streamlined for “mass production”. I’ve always liked working with clay and decided to make...
My brother and I used to watch the anime Outlaw Star together as kids, so I decided to get him something based on the show as a gift this year. Being...
Here’s a quick project that came together the evening before a long vacation. In order to get a little piece of mind I wanted to set up a simple security...
This is a very simple evolution simulator.
A hollowed out book that works as a keyboard controlled locking safe.
This is a simple demo that builds a video game level based on the content of a webpage.
Category Software
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a protocol for collecting info from devices like resource usage or configuration. It’s come up a few times when I researched how to gather...
I made a network monitoring tool that uses the data it collects to make a neighborhood of virtual pets.
For some inexplicable reason, I had a whim to try out Rust. I wanted a project that was very limited on scope, but still “real”. I decided to port the...
My failed attempt to make an IoT nightlight.
I wanted to improve our CI system by caching PyPI data locally. I saw that there’s a project to do this, but I didn’t see any good examples actually using...
I made an IoT dice box to combine two of my favorite open source LED projects, Pixels Dice and WLED.
My battles with trying to generate useful backtraces. Follow up article to Making Linux C++ Crashes Less Chaotic.
Some pointers on using GDB to analyze core dumps. Follow up article to Making Linux C++ Crashes Less Chaotic.
Fear the dreaded “Segmentation fault (core dumped)”? Here’s how I stopped worrying and learned to love the crash.
I wrote a library for connecting Pixel dice to the ESP32 mcu and published it for Arduino and PlatformIO.
Well the Pixels Dice KickStarter I supported like 3 years ago finally came in. I wanted to do something fun with them before I played my next TTRPG session, so...
For a work tool, I wanted to capture the last output from a process if it crashed. I ended up doing a deep dive into Linux data pipes to accomplish...
I recently spent some time optimizing a deserialization tool at work. I wanted to walk through my process for optimizing this Python code.
For old time’s sake, I decided to do a quick write up of the cute “educational” mystery game that tests your Bash knowledge https://github.com/veltman/clmystery. This is very reminiscent of the...
Syncthing is a Dropbox alternative that I’ve wanted to try out. I decided to set it up to run on my decade old QNAP NAS.
Recently, at work, I was faced with one of the more satisfying bug hunts that I’ve had in awhile.
I’m removing Google Analytics from my blog, but I’d still like to see view counts. To do this I’m running my own analysis on the HTTP request logs provided by...
Unfortunately, the custom magic card creation tool Card Conjurer has been taken down by Wizards of the Coast. However, you can still use the tool if you run it locally....
After watching a clip from the insane Alex Jones Cross trial, I thought it would be funny to make a Phoenix Wright reenactment.
As an educational project I could do purely in software, I decided to make a toy OS for an AVR microcontroller from scratch.
While C structures seem very straightforward, there are some surprising behaviors if you need to get consistent binary representations across different processors and compilers.
I had my first circuit board printed. I made an extremely over engineered life total counter.
Scratch is an online visual programming tool meant to introduce children to programming. I made an extension that allows the language to control LEDs through a WLED controller.
I added a USB cable to a doll which would be detected as a USB keyboard, and give a personality quiz through notepad. The user starts and responds to the...
I made a decorated box that opens when a magnet key is placed on both sides.
With fire season approaching in California I wanted to get a air quality monitor to see how bad the air is over time. I thought I’d do another reverse engineering...
I bought a cheap weather station with the intent of adding networked data logging. I ended up reverse engineering both the RF transmission, as well as the inter-chip communication at...
I bought a cheap software defined radio (SDR), and tracked planes in realtime with ADS-B. This was a bit of a warmup for a bigger project I wanted to use...
Having to frequently set up cross-compilers, I figured it would be interesting to write out my current understanding and see what gaps I have. I found it educational to set...
Unsurprisingly, I am a member of a DnD (Pathfinder actually) group. During the pandemic we switch to playing online with a service called Roll20. We would often joke about the...
After the Roomba and Reolink, I thought Nest devices would be a snap. How wrong I was. Google made this much, much then it had any right to be.
Who watches the watchmen? In this case I set up a check to monitor my security cameras.
I wanted to know what my Roomba was up to without going through official channels.
My home has a lot of computers and other devices on the network. To the point where I decided to set up some monitoring infrastructure.
Since the last article was on the female side of fertility why not switch to the male? Yo produces a test kit to measure sperm count. It’s main selling point...
In starting to try to have a baby, my wife got a digital device to track her hormones. Who am I to turn down an opportunity to reverse engineer something?...
I wanted to do a quickish project over my time off for the holidays. I had a recently broken a coffee grinder, and it inspired me to automate a chair...
Last year I kept a daily journal using the Journey android app. After falling off the wagon, I wanted to export my entries to a more durable format, so I...
After seeing some co-workers use snapchat filters with Zoom, I was inspired to find a simple way to program custom effects that would work with video calls. I skipped out...
I spent a little bit of time trying to expand my understanding of the GCC linker. I was a bit surprised the hoops I needed to jump through, but I...
I had a really cool 3 position key switch that I’ve been trying to come up for a use for. I decided to make an IoT controller that could turn...
I wrote a quick script to solve a logic grid puzzle in Dishonored 2. It probably would be a decent tool for solving arbitrary logic grid puzzles.
I’ve been learning the basics of penetration testing and reverse engineering by doing capture the flag (CTF) puzzles.
I wanted to make a very basic game to get a bit more experience with Unity, so I made a game base on how our cat stakes out her food...
Well it’s been awhile since we’ve been able to travel, so to feel better I decided to make a memento to the big trip Maria and I went on last...
With the current call for social isolation, online games have been a way to get some level of socialization. Since a lot of the people I want to play with...
For something a little different, I thought I’d look at the process I went through to optimize a solution in the game Exapunks.
Another update to Web Based Door Control. Here I take the path of least resistance to add Google Assistant integration and uptime monitoring by integrating with Blynk, IFTTT, and UptimeRobot....
I finally decided to go through the hassle of setting this blog up with SSL. While normally this wouldn’t be too hard with https://letsencrypt.org/, since I’m using S3 bucket based...
In my previous careers, I’ve spent a decent amount of time involved with bringing up processors in embedded platforms. However, despite spending a decent amount of time working with bootloaders...
As gift for my wife’s birthday I wanted to make something to celebrate our shared time with the game Fire Emblem Three Houses. I was originally inspired by a light...
As a followup to NodeMCU Development, I decided to connect my project to the AWS IoT cloud to see what that entailed. Turns out, it’s a huge amount of headache...
Had some fun playing the SQL murder mystery game at https://mystery.knightlab.com/. Pretty fun way to refresh myself on SQL syntax. I figured I’d record my thought process playing through it....
I made a tactics game with a gimmick of espionage in the LibGDX Java framework. This is probably the most complete game I’ve put together.
I made a framework for testing AI’s made to play the card game “Sushi Go”. Source at https://github.com/axlan/sushi_go_ai . It included a GUI to allow a human to play against...
I’ve done a little GIF creation and pixel editting in the past, but I wanted to take another stab at making a sprite. I eventually found the awesome free program...
Here’s a bunch of other old projects I dug up while updating the site that I’m throwing together into a pile. This time programming!
This is a bit of a weird one. I’m not sure what drew me to this project, but I decided to do a project to use a laser to draw...
This was a blog post I did for Swift Navigaiton. I appears it’s been lost to the sands of time, so I’m reproducing it here.
I decided I should probably move my site to a less fragile platform. I’ve been using Wordpress on 000webhost. 000webhost is fine for a free host, but about a year...
As part of my work at Swift Navigation I’ve done a lot of work analyzing the results of test runs and building CI frameworks to generate metrics or raise alarms based on...
Over the holidays my wife and I had some fun playing Spirit Island. The game describes itself as “The cooperative settler-destruction strategy game”. As a fun project to refresh my...
Visual Studio Code has been my text editor of choice for awhile. I enjoy that it’s a bit out of left field when it comes to the VIM vs Emacs...
This idea was based on the concept of making a “Sound Catcher” pixel display. I’ve been wanting to make this for a long time, but only recently made the time...
I often get ideas to make games, but rarely have the time needed. I had an idea for a game mechanic based on version control, and thought it would be...
Wow this is an old one. I’ve decided to go back and write up some of the first projects I did.
After getting the most basic functionality working I realized I had hit a bit of a dead end. SQLJet was severely limited in how it could manipulate the data. I...
I’ve wanted to document my work from start to finish on a project for a while, so I decided to try a screen capture program. I’ve used a bunch of...
I wrote this almost a year ago, but never posted it since I didn’t get a chance to fully comment the code. Since I probably won’t get around to it...
I have a daily commute that I drive down the US 101 highway. The length of the drive can vary immensely with traffic, and I’ve always been curious what the optimal departure...
Here’s a quick project that came together the evening before a long vacation. In order to get a little piece of mind I wanted to set up a simple security...
This is a very simple evolution simulator.
This was another app made to add a specific function I couldn’t find elsewhere. This apps purpose is to view the title text associated with an image. Specifically for webcomics...
Google Play Link
My first published android app. I decided to take a problem that I couldn’t find an existent app for and make a solution myself.
This was an app that I didn’t publish. It used the developer interface to control the phones apparent GPS location over the network. This was just a proof of concept,...
This is a simple demo that builds a video game level based on the content of a webpage.
Category Android Apps
Over the holidays my wife and I had some fun playing Spirit Island. The game describes itself as “The cooperative settler-destruction strategy game”. As a fun project to refresh my...
This was another app made to add a specific function I couldn’t find elsewhere. This apps purpose is to view the title text associated with an image. Specifically for webcomics...
Google Play Link
My first published android app. I decided to take a problem that I couldn’t find an existent app for and make a solution myself.
This was an app that I didn’t publish. It used the developer interface to control the phones apparent GPS location over the network. This was just a proof of concept,...
Category Reverse Engineering
With fire season approaching in California I wanted to get a air quality monitor to see how bad the air is over time. I thought I’d do another reverse engineering...
I bought a cheap weather station with the intent of adding networked data logging. I ended up reverse engineering both the RF transmission, as well as the inter-chip communication at...
Unsurprisingly, I am a member of a DnD (Pathfinder actually) group. During the pandemic we switch to playing online with a service called Roll20. We would often joke about the...
Since the last article was on the female side of fertility why not switch to the male? Yo produces a test kit to measure sperm count. It’s main selling point...
In starting to try to have a baby, my wife got a digital device to track her hormones. Who am I to turn down an opportunity to reverse engineer something?...
Last year I kept a daily journal using the Journey android app. After falling off the wagon, I wanted to export my entries to a more durable format, so I...
I’ve been learning the basics of penetration testing and reverse engineering by doing capture the flag (CTF) puzzles.
I finally had a chance to dig into the chipwhisperer. It’s a learning tool to teach about hardware security vulnerabilities like Side-channel attacks.
As part of a project for the machine learning lab at Cornell, I did the hardware and some of the software to make a stock RC car autonomously drift though...
Category Work
For some inexplicable reason, I had a whim to try out Rust. I wanted a project that was very limited on scope, but still “real”. I decided to port the...
I wanted to improve our CI system by caching PyPI data locally. I saw that there’s a project to do this, but I didn’t see any good examples actually using...
My battles with trying to generate useful backtraces. Follow up article to Making Linux C++ Crashes Less Chaotic.
Some pointers on using GDB to analyze core dumps. Follow up article to Making Linux C++ Crashes Less Chaotic.
Fear the dreaded “Segmentation fault (core dumped)”? Here’s how I stopped worrying and learned to love the crash.
For a work tool, I wanted to capture the last output from a process if it crashed. I ended up doing a deep dive into Linux data pipes to accomplish...
I recently spent some time optimizing a deserialization tool at work. I wanted to walk through my process for optimizing this Python code.
Recently, at work, I was faced with one of the more satisfying bug hunts that I’ve had in awhile.
This was a blog post I did for Swift Navigaiton. I appears it’s been lost to the sands of time, so I’m reproducing it here.
As part of my work at Swift Navigation I’ve done a lot of work analyzing the results of test runs and building CI frameworks to generate metrics or raise alarms based on...
One of my work projects from awhile back popped up on Ars Technica.
Category IoT
I made a network monitoring tool that uses the data it collects to make a neighborhood of virtual pets.
My failed attempt to make an IoT nightlight.
I made an IoT dice box to combine two of my favorite open source LED projects, Pixels Dice and WLED.
I wrote a library for connecting Pixel dice to the ESP32 mcu and published it for Arduino and PlatformIO.
A friend wanted to use a toy guitar as a prop for a halloween costume, and they asked if I could swap out the sound effects with playing some song...
A friend of mine gave me a baby toy to hack awhile back, and I finally got a chance to take a crack at it.
I added a cat door to one of our windows to give our cat a bit more freedom to make up from our lack of attention due to the baby....
Scratch is an online visual programming tool meant to introduce children to programming. I made an extension that allows the language to control LEDs through a WLED controller.
With fire season approaching in California I wanted to get a air quality monitor to see how bad the air is over time. I thought I’d do another reverse engineering...
I bought a cheap weather station with the intent of adding networked data logging. I ended up reverse engineering both the RF transmission, as well as the inter-chip communication at...
After the Roomba and Reolink, I thought Nest devices would be a snap. How wrong I was. Google made this much, much then it had any right to be.
Who watches the watchmen? In this case I set up a check to monitor my security cameras.
I wanted to know what my Roomba was up to without going through official channels.
I wanted to do a quickish project over my time off for the holidays. I had a recently broken a coffee grinder, and it inspired me to automate a chair...
I had a really cool 3 position key switch that I’ve been trying to come up for a use for. I decided to make an IoT controller that could turn...
Well it’s been awhile since we’ve been able to travel, so to feel better I decided to make a memento to the big trip Maria and I went on last...
Another update to Web Based Door Control. Here I take the path of least resistance to add Google Assistant integration and uptime monitoring by integrating with Blynk, IFTTT, and UptimeRobot....
As gift for my wife’s birthday I wanted to make something to celebrate our shared time with the game Fire Emblem Three Houses. I was originally inspired by a light...
As a followup to NodeMCU Development, I decided to connect my project to the AWS IoT cloud to see what that entailed. Turns out, it’s a huge amount of headache...
I’m starting another electronic art project, and decided to use the NodeMCU for the processor. It’s cheap, easy to setup, and has WiFi. However, when I previously used the board...
This idea was based on the concept of making a “Sound Catcher” pixel display. I’ve been wanting to make this for a long time, but only recently made the time...
After have locked myself out of my apartment one too many times, I decided that running to make a keyless entry system. I’ve been looking for a project to use a Raspberry...
Here’s a quick hack I through together to prevent jerks from ringing my doorbell late at night.
Category Costumes
Here’s a bunch of other old projects I dug up while updating the site that I’m throwing together into a pile.
My 2016 Halloween costume. I made the mask, and Maria made the dress! Almost everything was handmade except for one layer of the skirt, the white wig, and one of...
Halloween 2015 costume. It’s loosly based on the Crimson King from Steven King’s Dark Tower series. Here’s the thrift store junk that inspired it.
Halloween 2014 costume. It’s loosly based on the King in Yellow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow. Here’s the thrift store junk that inspired it.
Category Electronic Art
I made an IoT dice box to combine two of my favorite open source LED projects, Pixels Dice and WLED.
I had my first circuit board printed. I made an extremely over engineered life total counter.
I added a USB cable to a doll which would be detected as a USB keyboard, and give a personality quiz through notepad. The user starts and responds to the...
I made a decorated box that opens when a magnet key is placed on both sides.
Well it’s been awhile since we’ve been able to travel, so to feel better I decided to make a memento to the big trip Maria and I went on last...
Over the holidays I spent some time on craft projects. Really enjoyed having access to my tools and materials after not being able to craft much while traveling.
This is a bit of a weird one. I’m not sure what drew me to this project, but I decided to do a project to use a laser to draw...
Here’s a bunch of other old projects I dug up while updating the site that I’m throwing together into a pile.
Finally got around to framing and hanging my undergraduate diploma. I originally wanted to do something a little more elaborate, but after so many years of gathering dust, I decided...
This idea was based on the concept of making a “Sound Catcher” pixel display. I’ve been wanting to make this for a long time, but only recently made the time...
Quick demo of my new scope. I finally broke down and got one to help with an audio visualizer project I’m working on.
Maria got the idea for these ornaments at http://tallystreasury.com/2010/12/paper-ornaments-its-magic/
A gift I made for Maria. Uses mana rocks to unlock a treasure.
Wow this is an old one. I’ve decided to go back and write up some of the first projects I did.
Category Magic the Gathering
I recycled some wooden boxes into card organizers. Mostly an effort in making art suitable for the laser cutter .
For an update on the custom card creator Card Conjurer mentioned in this article see this update: Running Card Conjurer Locally
I had my first circuit board printed. I made an extremely over engineered life total counter.
After playing a game of Magic the Gathering with a friends kids, I decided to see if there was a way to get back in the game without taking out...
Maria got the idea for these ornaments at http://tallystreasury.com/2010/12/paper-ornaments-its-magic/
A gift I made for Maria. Uses mana rocks to unlock a treasure.
Category Laser Cutter
While I don’t have much time to make things, I have managed to do a few small projects involving my daughter.
I recycled some wooden boxes into card organizers. Mostly an effort in making art suitable for the laser cutter .
I made a decorated box that opens when a magnet key is placed on both sides.
Well it’s been awhile since we’ve been able to travel, so to feel better I decided to make a memento to the big trip Maria and I went on last...
As gift for my wife’s birthday I wanted to make something to celebrate our shared time with the game Fire Emblem Three Houses. I was originally inspired by a light...
Maria got me a k40 laser cutter for my birthday!
Category Food
Here’s a bunch of other old projects I dug up while updating the site that I’m throwing together into a pile.
Category Blogging
I’m removing Google Analytics from my blog, but I’d still like to see view counts. To do this I’m running my own analysis on the HTTP request logs provided by...
My daughter was born 12/30/2021. This project was certainly more of an effort from my wife than me, though I saved the 100th article spot for the occasion.
I realized that I’m approaching my 100th article on this site. I wanted to take a look back at over the last 18 years of making things and see how...
I finally decided to go through the hassle of setting this blog up with SSL. While normally this wouldn’t be too hard with https://letsencrypt.org/, since I’m using S3 bucket based...
I decided I should probably move my site to a less fragile platform. I’ve been using Wordpress on 000webhost. 000webhost is fine for a free host, but about a year...
Category WLED
I made an IoT dice box to combine two of my favorite open source LED projects, Pixels Dice and WLED.
A friend of mine gave me a baby toy to hack awhile back, and I finally got a chance to take a crack at it.
I added a cat door to one of our windows to give our cat a bit more freedom to make up from our lack of attention due to the baby....
Scratch is an online visual programming tool meant to introduce children to programming. I made an extension that allows the language to control LEDs through a WLED controller.
I had a really cool 3 position key switch that I’ve been trying to come up for a use for. I decided to make an IoT controller that could turn...
Well it’s been awhile since we’ve been able to travel, so to feel better I decided to make a memento to the big trip Maria and I went on last...
Another update to Web Based Door Control. Here I take the path of least resistance to add Google Assistant integration and uptime monitoring by integrating with Blynk, IFTTT, and UptimeRobot....
As gift for my wife’s birthday I wanted to make something to celebrate our shared time with the game Fire Emblem Three Houses. I was originally inspired by a light...
Category Cat
I wanted to do a quickish project over my time off for the holidays. I had a recently broken a coffee grinder, and it inspired me to automate a chair...
I wanted to make a very basic game to get a bit more experience with Unity, so I made a game base on how our cat stakes out her food...
Another simple “home automation” project. My wife mentioned it would be nice to have a way to keep track of when the cat litter was last cleaned. This is a...
Category Baby
While I don’t have much time to make things, I have managed to do a few small projects involving my daughter.
