Picture Frames

Three picture frames were required for a significant day. I thicknessed some offcuts of scaffolding board and mitred the corners. Some glass from our old windows was cut down. An old box was used as a backing sheet.

I normally glue frames and hammer sprigs in for support, but this time I used proper V nails manually hammered in. They worked well, so much so that I didn't need to clamp the frames as the glue dried.

When You Have a Remote Control RGB Lightbulb...

... you always turn the lightswitch on and off instead of using the remote. It's just habit. So, one of these is needed:

the light switch is still accessible:

Latest OLED Watches

The latest iterations of the OLED watch are finally approaching wearable. Well, the first of the two is wearable but a bit thick. The second is much more wearable size.

The first iteration is the smallest PCB so far fitted into a 3D printed case and mounted on a cloth strap latched with velcro.

The switches are mounted on the top and the clear front flexes when they are pressed.

The overall thickness is 15mm, which is a bit too thick to wear comfortably. It gets caught on sleeves and catches easily on fabric.


The latest iteration is a one that doesn't use a PCB. This removes 1.6mm of thickness immediately, but makes the construction more manual.

The wiring is manually laid out and not very tidy. the thickness is much less, at 9mm, or 10mm to the tops of the front cover screws. Compared to my main watch this is very similar.

The components are mounted in a 3D printed frame like this earlier version:

The minimum thickness is fixed by the switches that I have used. The wiring adds a millimetre or so to the thickness, that could be reduced by inlaying the wires into the frame. More use could also be made of the 3D space in the frame. At the moment there are no components on top of components.

Using a PLA 3D printed frame is useful as it is possible to heat components and wiring up with a soldering iron and push it into the PLA. This then holds the component firm when the plastic cools.

There may be a better way to wire the components, maybe using a smaller PCB that just has the surface mount components on it.

Casting Test

The first sand casting test is a simple one:

To hold it I have made a  box on the CNC using some custom  Gcode:

This box fits the casting really well (the peak of the cap had to have it's own cut out, this keys the box lid as well:

It's quite plain on the outside:

The box gcode was generated using a Tcl script, and I'm going to create a parametric top level script that drives the lower level gcode scripts so that I can generate boxes like this of any dimensions just by running the top level script.

Zip Up bag For Ongoing project Support

I bought some material for making bags a while ago, and made a zip up bag for holding some essential items for an ongoing project.

Some of you may recognise the elastic straps...


The last bag I made had a twist to it. That isn't the case here.

Epaper For A Current Project

There was a need for some information in photos for one of the current projects, so as my epaper kit had arrived from Kickstarter, I adjusted the code to allow for larger text and we have this:

This display isn't connected to a controller in the picture, which is useful. It really is like an electronic piece of card. It'll be interesting to see how long the text remains on the display...

Canopy Fittings Finished

The canopy fitting replacement is done, and I've reinforced the original broken one with a couple of aluminium plates.

Hopefully the newly manufactured fitting will fit the extrusion it lives in OK, and if for some reason it doesn't work then there's the reinforced original fitting that can be used instead.