April 2023
Weather Smart Lego Lighthouse
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:
- Sound effects . . . obviously
- Timer function to turn it on and off
- A foghorn . . because DUH, obviously.
- Oh, and the foghorn has to turn on when it's foggy out.
- And it has to lose the batteries, so I need it to plug in and run all the time
- And it can't have an attached computer, so I need a way to control the thing
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.
Beginning Main Box Joinery
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.
Enough --- I have to reclaim this site
OK, there are clearly theme problems with the Drupal site I've been running. And my version of Drupal is old enough that migrating is a major undertaking. I refuse to migrate to Wordpress or Joomla or SquareSpace or Wix. I'm just going to downgrade the current site to get the basics of what I want out of this hosting/publishing function. I have many projects that I've not published here because of the problems with the underlying tech. No more. I'll just go back to a simple layout and keep the old content as is.Coming soon . . .