Projects
Ping Pong Display
This project was inspired by another maker's effort to produce a similar display. It was a great idea that looked really special, so it was decided that a similar project would be undertaken. The build process involved coupling the microcontroller with software to control the LED lights. The software used was WLED, which has implemented a lightweight web server suitable for microcontrollers such as ESP8266 or ESP32 and similar, and can be used to control NeoPixel LEDs via a web interface. The...
Petrol Station Dot Matrix Display
We come from the school of thought that working surplus stuff might well be someone else’s refuse, but if it can be repurposed into something useful, then we’re generally up for the challenge. One of our members was able to recover some dot matrix signs which were used to show the price of petrol(before it needed extra digits because of inflation!) These signs came with no documentation about their display protocol, so one of our members put his software engineering skills to work and reverse...
Automated Hydroponics Enclosure
This project started out as a pile of old hardwood truss and framing timber from a house that was due to be demolished, the owners were giving away what was some nice quality wood hardwood(built back before cheap and light pine was the main goto material). Some of our members packed up some power tools, headed to this demolition site and collected a few sticks of timber that would be the start of the enclosure. One of our members took some of the timber and cleaned it up and built it into a...
Smart Picture Frame
When you have a modern resolution monitor that doesn’t work, but is in otherwise good physical condition, do you throw it away as e-waste? Not us, one of our members was in this situation, and after some searching online, found a replacement controller board, and now had a completely working computer screen ready to do something cool. The timber used in this frame was otherwise going to waste Another of our members took the screen and built a timber frame from it from old scrap timber that was acquired from someone online who was dismantling some pelmets from their apartment. This timber was covered in old paint which was removed with a heat gun, leaving a distressed timber look. With a few cuts for the frame and some mitre cuts for the fascia, a frame resembling a picture frame was built. Some of the cuts and drilled holes for this frame were particularly fiddly to execute Given this device will have a solid backing, and thus won’t have the normal passive cooling of a computer...
Arcade Game Table
So what do you do when you get a free table from someone online and an old computer screen? You strip off all the casing from the computer screen down to its raw components, take a circular saw to the table to cut out an opening for the screen to fit in, of course. Stephen & Mic tidying up the cut edges with a routed chamfer This was the initial thought which led to the conception of our idea that we wanted to build a retro arcade game table out of old scraps of hardware and into something...
