Author: Derrick Robles
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Using a custom smart dial to control my lights
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Using Home Assistant and the ESP-Home firmware, I was able to build a bedside table smart dial that controls the lights in my room in ways not possible with a normal light switch. The base electronics are relatively simple: A rotary encoder wired up to an ESP32 microcontroller. The rotary encoder has a built-in push…
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DIY Tube Lights for $35
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I was searching for different methods of LED strip diffusion with visual examples. I was looking to work with addressable RGB LED strips but using the bare and blinding LEDs was not going to look good. I found this video by Wittech which shows a unique and cheap way to accomplish this on a large tube. In the…
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Initial Research for a Two-wheeled Robot
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My initial goal was to find some other examples of two-wheeled robots. Many of these robots are ‘self-balancing’ and have their center of gravity above the pivot point of the wheels. I have built a robot like this and was not really interested in doing that again. I am looking to make a robot that…
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HB2-0: Mechanical Design
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The main mechanical components of HB2-0 were salvaged from an old power wheelchair. That includes two very heavy brushed DC motors. These motors were sized to carry an adult person so they were definitely overkill for this robot. A pair of rubber wheels, 260mm in diameter (around 10 inches), were already present on the keyed…
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Multi-cam recording setup on a budget
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I have gathered the materials and configured the software necessary to create a complete multi-camera recording and streaming setup. It *can* be more affordable than my setup but I’ll show you the tools I am currently using to record videos and broadcast livestreams. Compared to using a dedicated video switcher or recorder, this setup is much cheaper…
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How I Turned My 3D Printer Into a 2D Plotter
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While I am home for the holidays I decided to work on a project that was small in scale but fun nevertheless. I’m going to use my Ender 3 3D printer to make a 2D pen plotter. In the end I want to have my 3D capable machine limited to two dimensions. The only issue…