Repairing a 45-year-old Atari 810 Disk Drive
A couple days ago, after putting off the project for decades (you know, kids and all), I finally dug out the old Atari 800 I had as a kid. The 800 fired up after a bit of cleaning but I’m…
Category Technology
Designing an Efficient BookNook Light Timer Circuit — Part 3
The Circuit: Designing for Low Power, Clean Logic, and Physical Constraints In Part 1, I explained why I tore out the original “transistor-and-hope” lighting circuit from my Book Nook kit.In Part 2, I went through the firmware architecture around watchdog…
Deep Sleep Logic and Reliable Timing on an ATtiny85 — Inside the Code
This is Part 2 of the BookNook Light Timer Series. Last time I introduced my BookNook Light Timer project and walked through how I planned to complete it using an ATtiny85 microcontroller. In this post, I wanted to unpack the…
I Reengineered a “Book Nook” LED Timer to Make It Actually Functional
A few months ago I got this cool miniature bookstore diorama “puzzle” from Amazon. It’s charming. Laser-cut wood, tiny bookshelves, warm white LED lighting — the kind of cozy miniature bookstore scene that slides between books on a shelf and…
How to Charge a 12V SLA Battery with a Desktop Power Supply
I have this little SLA battery that enables my emergency generator to start without using the pull cord. I don’t have a maintainer on this batter (and maybe I should), so every once in a while I like to charge…
How to Make Laser-cut Loaves and Fishes for Godly Play
About a year ago I make a bunch of loaves and fishes for a Godly Play story at the church. I made them out of 3mm door hanger plywood that I picked up at the local craft store using a…
DIY Drum Sander
Backstory: We took down a red oak a couple years ago (Part 1 and Part 2) and I got it milled up for projects. Wifey wants a desk but the grain is a little tricky and my thickness planer just…
Stepped LED Brightness in ESPHome
I use ESPHome for a number of projects including LED task lighting, and my devices often use an inexpensive TTP223 capacitive touch sensor as a button. I like to be able to tap the sensor multiple times to cycle through…
TEMT6000 Illuminance Math with ESPHome
I use inexpensive TEMT6000 sensors in various projects to detect the level of ambient light. I originally hand-coded the firmware, but now I use ESPHome. My projects are usually 3.3V because I use pretty bare boards like ESP-12F instead of…
ESPHome SOS Morse Code Light Effect
I’m using ESPHome with Home Assistant for a bunch of home automation projects. I want to be able to flash some of the lights in a Morse code “SOS” pattern as an annoying alert that something has gone terribly wrong.…