Hitching a charged, albeit worn, NP-BX1 lithium battery to the astable multivibrator produces a blinding flash:
NP-BX1 Holder – SMT pogo pins
The current pulse shows the wearable LED really takes a beating:
Astable – NP-BX1 4V – 100mA-div
The current trace is at 100 mA/div: the pulse starts at 400 mA, which seems excessive even to me, and tapers down to 200 mA. It’s still an order of magnitude too high at the end of the pulse.
On the other paw, maybe a 14% duty cycle helps:
Astable – NP-BX1 4V – base V – 100mA-div
The top trace shows the base drive voltage dropping slightly, although I suspect the poor little transistor can’t take the strain.
Obviously, the battery holder should grow ears to anchor the 14 AWG copper posts and would look better in black PETG:
NP-BX1 Battery Holder – 1.5mm pins – solid model
The battery lead wires get soldered to the ends of the pogo pins and are recessed into the slot in the end of the fixture. I used clear epoxy to anchor everything in place.
The camera sees the nozzle in a mirror laid flat on the platform, making the image less crisp than a direct view.
So the silicone seems a bit worn around the tip, has acquired a few firmly adhered globs, and definitely isn’t as shiny.
Rather than (try to) peel it off and reapply a new coating, I picked off the globs, cleaned around the nozzle, and slobbered a thin layer atop the existing silicone:
M2 Nozzle – more silicone
Extruding a few millimeters of filament pushed the film off the nozzle opening and it now works as well as it ever did.
The ancient (Came With The House™) Electrolux canister vacuum cleaner long ago lost the plastic bushing around the opening passing its retractable cord, which I’d long sworn to replace. A recent trip around the Basement Laboratory paused near the recently relocated Box o’ Wire Loom & Braid, whereupon I snipped off a few inches of split loom and tucked it in place:
Electrolux Vacuum – cushioned cord cutout
Looks and works better than before, anyhow.
The blue flap dangling off the back should latch over the exhaust port, but failed long ago when the latch tab eroded. I attempted a repair, which never worked quite right, and won’t get around to attempting another for quite a while.
Being a bear of unbearable consistency, I save edited picture files with a description following the original camera-assigned sequence number:
IMG_20181108_190041 - Kindle Fire Picture Frame - Another Test Image.jpg
Yup, spaces and all.
Kindle Fire Picture Frame – Another Test Image
I store my general-interest pix chronologically by year, in subdirectories for interesting categories, so copying all the edited (a.k.a. “interesting”) pictures to the Kindle Fire becomes a one-liner:
The --parents parameter tells cp to recreate the directory structure holding the picture in the target directory, thereby keeping the pix neatly sorted in their places, rather than creating one heap o’ pictures.
Come to find out I’ve edited slightly over 7 k general-interest pictures in the eighteen years I’ve been using digital cameras, of maybe 27 k total pictures. Call it a 25% hit ratio; obviously I’m not nearly fussy enough.
Then there’s another 16 k project-related pictures, of which 10 k were edited into something useful. With an emphasis on utility, rather than aesthetics, a 60% hit ratio seems OK.
Which works out to half a dozen pictures a day, every day, for eighteen years. I loves me some good digital camera action!
The Michelin ProTek Max tube I installed two years ago developed a slow leak this year, which I eventually ascribed to the valve stem, because the sealant should plug any other leak.
Cutting it open reveals the perfectly good greenish-yellow sealant:
Michelin ProTek tube – sealant
The sealant also carries black rubbery grit / shavings / dust, perhaps intended to jam inside larger gashes while the sealant coagulates and binds it together.
There’s a lot of rubber floating around in there:
Michelin ProTek tube – rubber fragments
Dismantling the Presta valve stem show the rubbery crud on and around the valve seal and seat:
Michelin ProTek tube – fouled valve seal
Whenever I pumped up the tires, I finger-tightened the nut to ensure a good seal, as you do with all Presta valves. Obviously, finger-tight can’t handle that much crud between the sealing surfaces.
I’m sorry to say I was right about the leaky valve stem, because I think all the ProTek tubes will fail in exactly the same way.
The valve has small wrench flats making it easy to remove, so I can at least attempt to de-gunk them when they develop slow leaks.
