Bodge of the week: replacing a naked piezo buzzer

  • March 20, 2018
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Two specimens of the same model of timer. Top: an as-yet-unused timer, opened up to show its innards. Bottom: my good-enough-for-now five-minute fix: soldering an SMD pieze buzzer to two of the leads on a transistor inductor. A few days ago, a dual-clock kitchen timer we’ve had for years stopped making much noise when its […]

Lead-free solder recommendation: Kester K100LD for shiny lead-free solder joins

  • March 6, 2018
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things Personal Firsts Sodding soldering
Can you tell the difference between the joins made with a type of SAC305 solder (top) and the K100LD solder (bottom), both from Kester? It occurred to me recently that I had no idea how much solder remained on the spool I’d been using, of the SAC305 alloy (Indium Corporation’s CW-807, a SAC305 (96.6% Sn, […]

Proof of life: Have 2.0mm-pitch pin headers, 2.0mm-to-2.54mm adapter plates, and LoRa transceivers—Will solder

  • March 2, 2018
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering
My soldering is still, gradually, improving. All four of the LoRa transceivers above have had 2.0mm-pitch pin headers attached. Two of the transceivers above are slotted into female headers on pre-made adapter plates which I purchased from an online vendor. THe other two have been soldered permanently onto bare adapter plates to which I fitted […]

Dupont crimp-on connectors marathon!

  • January 22, 2018
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things
Can you spot the little faces in this discarded, mangled length of Dupont connector reel-end? Tonight, I’m helping my better half with a work-related project. Nearly a hundred and fifty 4-AA battery holders and the same number of mini speakers need to have breadboard-friendly connectors affixed to the ends of their leads and I have […]

2018 is Coming! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

  • December 24, 2017
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things
All of the little odds and ends that I kept after disassembling a laser printer toner cartridge. S. and I have returned home after having possibly our finest Christmas Eve lunch yet (chicken biryani and a mango lassi for her; palak paneer, creamy red lentil dal, and beef curry with a banana lassi for me) […]

Nightingale/Songbird: Moving your media without losing your metadata |OR| A Python script for updating content_url values in main@library.songbirdnest.com.db

  • November 21, 2017
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Mucking About With Things Progging Python
If there’s a one-step means of notifying Nightingale or Songbird that all of your media files have moved to a different location via the music players’ UIs, I didn’t see it, so I solved my problem with a short (~150-line) Python script [Python 3.6 (Windows, 64-bit)] that, with input via a few prompts, connects to […]

A buck-fifty soldering iron tip-cleaning sponge versus one that cost thirty cents

  • October 4, 2017
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Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering The Diary of Lupin Pooter
The two sponges, side by side: cheap third-party sponge on the left and official Hakko-supplied sponge on the right. I’m still using the same cellulose tip-cleaning sponge included as an accessory with my Hakko FX-888D but I’ve been soldering more frequently in recent months and anticipate doing even more in the near future. When is […]

What would a fridge magnet made out of that stuff look like?

  • August 4, 2017
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Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter
The patterns for the letters I wanted to cut from the meter-square sheet of yellow astroturf. When I spotted meter-square sheets of cheap astroturf on sale and saw that it was available in bright yellow, it occurred to me that oversized letters cut out of the stuff and turned into fridge magnets might look neat. […]

Curious markings on a Bosch Sensortec BMP280 sensor: “117 YP”

  • August 2, 2017
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Handheld-magnifier view of the BMP280 barometric pressure sensor on my CCS811 sensor breakout board. A sensor breakout board which I recently purchased features a CCS811 sensor (designed to detect and quantify ambient indoor levels of VOCs) and, to supply the data needed to correct its readings, two additional sensors: a SI7021 (relative humidity and temperature) […]

Being John Searle inside the Chinese Room

  • August 2, 2017
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Google Translate gives Spot as the meaning of 现货, but it actually means in stock merchandise. I was asking whether they could fill an order for a list of specific items and they were answering in the affirmative. Squeaking by on a good-enough level of communication with Taobao sellers via Google Translate and a text […]

Look closer

  • July 22, 2017
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All My Friends Are Insects Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand
See anything interesting in this photo? Neither of us did at first, either, when we were having a gander at the original scene a few months back, but I paused our walk for a moment, to her minor exasperation, to give the spot a quick once-over. Here’s a closeup. That vase-like object is a potter […]

When you have microscopes but a magnifying glass and camera are closer to hand [Photo]

  • June 27, 2017
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Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand
INVENSENSE MPU-6050 [D4H592LAT EL 1539 E]: snapshot taken with a Canon G7X through a handheld 40x magnifying glass because they were good enough for my purposes and the scopes are all packed away at the moment.