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The (Old) Tool Holder

Tool Holder

Back in February I got sick of the tools I use most at my soldering desk just lying in a pile and decided to do something about it. I grabbed a block of wood and started drilling holes so I could place tools into it standing straight up. This would make them easy to grab and hopefully easy to put back… in the same place each time. The block of wood has worked well enough, but more than once I’ve wanted to change the order of the tools, and I can’t easily do that since each hole is customized for the tool it holds.

It was also a fun time creating the holes for the wire cutters and wire strippers since the holes are sort of oblong. I actually did pretty good for freestyle drilling on those. At the time I also imagined a modular system for this, and a month later I found a dovetail library for OpenSCAD and started messing around with it. I could not get a good dovetail joint to print though, so I gave up for a while.

Tool Holder

A few more months passed (hey, I got busy) and instead of printing the dovetails on the old Maker Select Plus I tried on the Prusa MINI+ and wow, things fit perfectly! Well, after a few tests prints to determine the exact Teeth_clearance to use. Once I had that, Bob was my uncle!

Tool Holder

Here’s the first successful attempt. The pieces fit together well. Not super-tight, but not too loose. A small strip of tape on the bottom of the blocks would work well to hold them all together as one piece, with the ability to easily take apart and reconfigure. (The first dovetail attempts required a hammer to assemble and could not be disassembled!)

I’m still considering this prototyping, and I may tweak things a bit more before the final version… When I have something final I’ll post it here. My first thought on this version is to make the blocks a little smaller so the tools are spaced together a bit tighter. This should save a bit of desk space as well.

Tool Holder

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A Shorter Raspberry Pi Pico

Yes, I literally cut a Raspberry Pi Pico on a bandsaw. And… it works! It still mounts and it runs code as expected.

I noticed that the back portion of the Pico seemed to have no components, and just traces running to the pins, so it was worth a $4 test.

This makes the Pico a bit closer in size to an Arduino Pro Micro or a Teensy LC.

So why would you want this? You can get a Adafruit KB2040 – RP2040 Kee Boar Driver or a SparkFun Pro Micro – RP2040 but those both use USB-C instead of Micro USB and for specific cases, that may not be ideal.

(I originally posted most of this on Mastodon, but figured I should drop it here as well.)

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NeoPixel 7 Segment Display (Part I)

I had been looking for a 7 segment display for a project and the ones I found were similar to the ones I used about six years ago… Had things not really changed since then? Eventually I found these on Tindie, which seemed like they could work, except they were out of stock, and they were a kit of SMT components, and I didn’t want to hassle with all of that.

But what I did like about them was the Arduino library, which supported using NeoPixels for a large multi-digit 7 segment display. Someone pointed me to this Ninja Timer: Giant 7-Segment Display but that too appeared to be way too much to take on. Instead, I went a different route. (Note: I’m going to use the term “NeoPixel” even if I mean WS2812 for the rest of this post.)

Instead of using the flexible NeoPixel strips, I planned to use these NeoPixel sticks. They have mounting holes, so no need to hot glue them down or 3D print some holder. I just laser cut a plate to hold them. I did need to solder them together, and while it wasn’t the easiest thing it also wasn’t too painful.

So hey, getting 7 sticks attached to a plate and soldering them together? That was the easy part. Well, the code was also the easy part. I loaded up an Arduino UNO, connected the segment with three pins, and bam. We’ve got numerical success.

Now, there’s more to come, of course… I next made a front diffusion plate. I started by laser cutting a piece of black acrylic and sticking a piece of white vinyl to it.

I know there needs to be a midsection with walls to isolate each segment, I just haven’t got that done yet… I did get a little ambitious and did a test print without properly measuring everything and it showed I should totally measure everything. I should also note this is the maximum size I can print a single object on my Prusa MINI.

Now, the white vinyl was just a test. The idea was to use translucent white acrylic as a diffuser. The plan is to cut the black front panel, then cut the white diffusion segments so they fit perfectly into the holes when the panel is flipped over and the angled kerf of them makes the magic happen with the two pieces mating together. This worked. What didn’t work was the acrylic I got, which was 32% translucent. I got some 55% translucent later and that worked much better. (Photos of that will be in the next installment.)

At this point, there are many pieces that work, but not all the pieces. Seems I got a bit busy with some projects for customers and had to put things on hold. So I figured it was worth writing up where this project stands so it will remind me to finish it at some point.

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What When Words Are Our Art

I am not a perfect human, and I have many flaws. One of these flaws is that sometimes I fail to recognize the efforts that someone makes and focus instead on the mistakes they made. When I say “mistakes” I am speaking of typographical (or related) errors in the publishing realm. First, a disclaimer. I’ve worked in publishing for over 30 years, and I also really, really, like to get things right. (I’ve even served as a Technical Editor for two books. And I still make mistakes!)

But when someone volunteers their own time to help promote something (good) and I point out the errors, I think I am being helpful… but I also need to remember there is a human on the other end of my feedback.

After a recent incident, a friend sent me the image above. Here’s where my brain does weird things. When I saw the word “hykoo” my brain did not translate it to “haiku” and I assumed it was a non-English word. Of course it’s just a phonetic spelling of haiku. Yeah, it took me a minute.

I think my friend thought I might be annoyed by this image, but I see it as art, and in art, there are no rules besides those the artist creates for themselves. I like the image you see above.

This one’s a classic! Did I mention I have a degree in Graphic Design? Well, I do. This will piss off all of your designer friends! Except, not really. It won’t. Not if they are good designers. As a designer, I recognize this was designed. I realize a designer made conscious decisions about how to space everything. The kerning and leading are not accidents, or defaults that were not adjusted by someone. The use of white space in this piece is quite good. This is all deliberate, and it works really well. (Except for the idea that it will piss off your designer friends.)

Here’s a recent print I created. The type is a bit distorted, and it may be difficult to read. That’s okay. This is a piece of art. Communicating the message is not the only purpose of this piece. In other forms of publishing communicating something as clearly as possible is probably the number one goal, and with that in mind, avoiding errors (typographical or otherwise) and creating a message that is clear, concise, and well written is what most people probably prefer.

But what do I know? I’m just a hack. (Also, let me know if there are any typos or other misteaks in this post.)

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QLab Four Button MIDI Controller

I was contacted by a QLab user who wanted a custom controller. He wanted a device with a 5 Pin DIN MIDI output and rectangular buttons for go, stop, next, and previous. It was a bit of a rush as well, and since he wanted something similar to the MIDI Controller 4 Button LC I had previously built, I started with that as the base.

I did up a quick sketch to make sure I knew what I was building (mainly to determine button spacing) and then got to work making it. We just used four different MIDI noteOn events for the buttons. I should also note that while USB is used to power the device it can also operate as a USB MIDI device. This means you can choose between the 5 Pin MIDI output, or the USB MIDI output, or use both… going to two different computers even. I think that’s a nice feature.

The one snag on this project (which I blame on doing it very quickly) was that I accidentally swapped the position of the red and green buttons! I did not notice until it shipped, and offered to correct it if needed. It turned out it was very easy for the recipient to pop off the red and green covers and swap them on his end. Problem solved!

The one other think I did here was separate the cover from the enclosure so it could print separately, which makes it a bit more modular of a system for future changes, and also allows printing without support. So, less material, and faster production. Nice. The black screws on the top are also a good fit.

We also used a USB-C connection for this one. I’m normally not a fan of USB-C but if requested it’s certainly an option that can be provided.

Do you need a custom controller? Get in touch with me!