This project uses an Arduino Nano to add LEDs to a post box to alert the user to when there is post in the box. An Post (Ireland’s National Mail Carrier) sell a “DeliveryBox” which is a post box that can take parcels as well as letters. The post worker puts all your post in the box and scans the box which sends you an email. However I wanted a quick visual indicator to alert me when I passed the…
I wanted to embed a preview of the latest posts from this blog on my main website. The problem was that this blog runs on WordPress and my website is a custom PHP site with Bootstrap. WordPress has a built in API (wordpress-site.com/wp-json/). So I wrote a PHP script to pull the information I wanted from the API (Post Title, URL, Date and the Featured Image). To use the API you call wp-get-post.php?post=0, the post can be changed between 0,…
My parents recently bought a new patio table and because of the drainage slope on the patio the table didn’t sit level. They were using a block of wood under one leg of the table to level it but they were looking for a better solution. I suggested that I could 3D print a “sock” to go over the leg with the block to raise it the same amount as the block. But they wanted all the legs to match…
After the last post about how I turned the Computer Society logo into a key ring (Here), I thought I’d go through the process of turning a logo into a 3D printed object in more detail. First you need to find a good quality version of the logo (I’m going to use the crest of my university). Take the image into Adobe Illustrator and run “Image Trace”, The settings I used were configured to simplify the design and make it…
I made these keyrings for promotional purposes for the computer society to use at a conference that we were attending. I took the outline version of the society logo into Illustrator. I had to create two drawings one of the main body and one of the design in the center, I also simplified the design to make it easier to print. I saved these two drawings as .dxf which is a type of vector drawing file that can be imported…
In the last post I started refurbishing a DELL XPS 15 L502X by improving it’s thermals (here). In this post we will look at: Replacing the Hard Drive with an SSD Replacing and increasing the RAM Doing a clean install of Windows 10 In my opinion the easiest way to find a replacement SSD and RAM is to use the Crucial System Scanner which is run by Crucial who are a reputable maker of SSDs and RAM. When you run…
I refurbished a DELL XPS 15 L502X for my parents. The laptop was running very hot and slow. I decided that in order to refurbish the laptop I would: Clean the fan and heat sink Replace the stock thermal paste Replace the Hard Drive with an SSD Replace and increase the RAM Do a clean install of Windows 10 (This was Windows 10 upgraded from Windows 7) This post will cover the first two points and a follow up post…
I designed a custom hook to hold a Dyson V8 head, in order to keep it off the floor. I used steel rulers and a calipers to work out the length, width and angle that I needed the hook to be. I filleted the edge and put a large fillet between the hook and the body. I also put two holes into the body for screws and chamfered them to make it neater. In order to check the design I…
I recently bought a new car and wanted to hard wire a dashcam into the car. From reading different reviews and looking at which dashcams insurance companies in the UK recommend (Irish companies don’t want to deal with dashcams apparently) I decided to get the Nextbase 312GW. For this project I bought: Nextbase 312GW Nextbase car camera hard wire kit Transcend 32GB Micro SD card (Some people had problems with Sandisk SD cards and this camera and this one was…
This week we mounted the new servers in the Server Racks. The main server has been named Jarvis and the NAS has been named Ultron. It’s a Skynet tradition to name Skynet machines after famous Artificial Intelligence and Computer Systems from films and TV. We racked and booted them to check them and run some tests. Ultron has 16.6TB usable space from it’s 24TB RAID 5 configuration it is a lot better than the 2TB NAS we currently have. They…