An Introduction
My name is Jay Oyster. By trade, I'm a manager in the IT industry, but by inclination, I'm a woodworker. This site began as a place for me to share my projects, my ideas about design, and my commentary on the world of woodworking.
My name is Jay Oyster. By trade, I'm a manager in the IT industry, but by inclination, I'm a woodworker. This site began as a place for me to share my projects, my ideas about design, and my commentary on the world of woodworking.
OK, to reiterate where we are in the build of this Smart Weather Lighthouse build, up to this point I had configured the sound files and sound boards to play when triggered, and powered on and loaded Circuitpython on the Metro MX board. Up next, I'll go through how I got the 4.7" touchscreen attached and operating. And then talk about getting data back to the Metro board using the OpenWeather API, and finally, attaching the clock.
So far, I've described the overall idea for the smart weather lighthouse, and what the various systems of the build will be, but let me lay out the stages to this build . . . since it is a bit complicated. These are the steps I went through to pull it together:
I have to say that I couldn't have pulled together all of the electonics and coding without the excellent support of the Adafruit projects and learning pages.
I started off as I have typically done lately by opening up a gridded notebook and making some drawings. I needed to understand the typical sizes of these coins, and how many could be places in a certain area. I understand the coins are made by several companies and are usually of very high quality, including fine metals, engraving, enameling, and while many are round, some are odd shapes. So I needed to accomodate a variety of potential coin types.
Most coins are between and 3 and 4 mm in thickness, and around 4.5 to 6 cm in diameter. (1.75" - 2.0")
I opted for a simple board tray with multiple row slots for the coins, and a riser mounted at the back to lift it to create tiers. Overall, it was going to be about 12" wide, 6" deep, and about 2 1/2" tall. (30cm x 15cm x 6cm)
OK, thinking back to the beginning of this effort in January and February, I had a basic idea of what I wanted to accomplish in this build. First, I wanted the lighthouse itself to look pretty-much stock, as designed by Lego. I just want it to function with more autonomy.
Basic design of the lighthouse automation systemSo starting with a basic set of functions and I how I saw it coming together initially . . . this is not that different from what I ended up building. Here are the basic components:
For the moment, this is a placeholder until I can add the updates. I've moved very fast on this project, and only a little bit of it is woodworking related. Otherwise it's Lego, electronics, interface design, sound design, and python programming. I'll start with the wish list:
The motorized lighthouse is cool and all . . . but I want it to do more. I made the mistake of, the second night while showing it to my wife, opening my phone, finding a lighthouse sound effects video on Youtube, and played that in the background. Even she got goosebumps. So I wanted it to do more:
See . . . . nothing much. Just a standalone lighthouse toy that looks, sounds, and acts like a real automated lighthouse with foghorn.
Sounds a bit mad. But ya know what . . .I've BUILT it. And it is AWESOME!
Much more to come.
I haven't posted on the Tansu Teabox project in quite awhile, but I have been working on it. Slowly, as ever. But after a couple of major side-tracks in the maintenance of my basement shop, I also had problems with my website, as I've mentioned elsewhere here. But in between, I did manage to make a bit of progress on the teabox. Last December, I finally resawed the sidewall pieces to the 1/4 to 1/2" thick pieces needed for the box shell, and planed them down and joined them, then cut to final dimensions. Through all of that, I neglected to take any photos.
But after a major effort to fix the flooding problem in my shop this past year, I got my tools put back . . in particular my workbench. With the bench back, I started working on the dovetails for the teabox case.