With energy prices seemingly increasing all the time, I decided to build a couple of wall based information panels to help us manage costs – so far saving about £50 a month by using electricity more mindfully/at cheaper times. The UK provider, Octopus energy, has a tariff called “Agile” where rates change every half hour,… Read More »

I’ve been interested in aircraft memorobilia for a while and have picked up a few bits and pieces on visits to random business parks which sell these parts. This project is an alternative flight simulator, from a passengers perspective. The first part of the project involves a PI Zero, PC monitor, a control panel from… Read More »

The Covid pandemic has meant that I’m in the house a lot more, and travel has been restricted/difficult to say the least. Since I’ve been more involved in video streaming technology professionally recently, I decided to build a project based off these techologies to relieve some of the cabin fever. The World Window shows a… Read More »

This automated cocktail maker is my biggest (in terms of size) build yet – the machine is built around a small fridge, and uses air pressure to force the drink into the nozzles in the serving hatch. In order to make sure that the measures are being accurately poured, I use an HX711 scale/load sensor… Read More »

This was a bit of a fun project – I’ve seen on the movies (or maybe Scooby Doo) pictures where the eyes follow you and wanted something similar in my house. Also, from a practical standpoint, I often get caught out without an umbrella in rainy England so I wanted something that would tell me… Read More »

This project has been a bit of an on/off (no pun intended) mission of mine for several years. I decided a while back to install WiFi switches for a large number of devices in my house and, upon installation, was fed up with having to pull my phone out to turn them on and off.… Read More »

This project combines electronics, magnetics, optoelectronics and pneumatics to create an automatic opening door, <nerd>like on Star Trek</nerd>. Behind the scenes, the components used are a Arduino Uno, a HMC5883L magnetometer, a couple of Sharp IR sensors, a couple of cheapo pneumatic valves, a 1m long actuator/piston, a Bambi BB8 silent compressor and a load of wires/pneumatic connectors. The door operates in… Read More »

Using the Phidget Servo Module, along with a USB Extender and a scheduled Perl script, this internet connected barometer automatically changes to show what the weather is going to be like tomorrow. The data is scraped from WeatherUnderground and then interpreted by the script.The script also checks for train delays from the Southeastern railway website, along with new e-mails to a special… Read More »