Author: Ed

HQ Sixteen: Nose Ring Lights Power Supply

With the quilt off the HQ Sixteen, I could install the 24 V power supply for the Nose Ring Lights:

HQ Sixteen Nose Ring Lights – power supply installed

IMO, black nylon screws look spiffier than brass.

The solid model shows the covers have a 2 mm overlap with the power supply case to keep them lined up:

HQ Sixteen Nose Ring Lights – power supply cover – solid model

I managed to reuse three of the five holes from the previous 12 V power supply and drill only three more:

HQ Sixteen Nose Ring Lights – power supply detail

The tops of the power supply ears aren’t quite flat, giving the standoffs a slight tilt that the covers mostly drag back into alignment.

The M4 brass standoffs screw into holes tapped in the thick plastic, thus eliminating nuts inside the power pod:

HQ Sixteen Nose Ring Lights – power supply wiring

The yellow silicone tape wraps two pairs of Wago connectors that dramatically simplify electrical connections in anything with enough space for their chonky bodies.

In the unlikely event you need such things, the original post links the OpenSCAD source code.

With the power supply in place, I think I can put some LED strips under the arm of the machine to light up more of the quilt than the nose lights can reach. More pondering is in order.

2025-06-13

WS-5000 Anemometer Bird Spike Ring

A critter made off with our battered plastic rain gauge, so I set up an Ambient Weather WS-5000 station to tell Mary how much rain her garden was getting. I added the Official Bird Spike Ring around the rain gauge to keep birds off, but robins began perching atop the anemometer while surveying the yard and crapping on the insolation photocell.

After a few false starts, the anemometer now has its own spikes:

It’s a snugly fitting TPU ring:

Weather Station Spikes - build test piece — Weather Station Spikes – build test piece

The spikes are Chromel A themocouple wire, because a spool of the stuff didn’t scamper out of the way when I opened the Big Box o’ Specialty Wire. As you can tell from the picture, it’s very stiff (which is good for spikes) and hard to straighten (which is bad for looking cool).

The shape in the middle is a hole diameter test piece. Next time around, I’ll use thicker 14 AWG copper wire:

Weather station spikes - test piece — Weather station spikes – test piece

The test piece showed I lack good control over the TPU extrusion parameters on the Makergear M2, as holes smaller than about 2 mm vanish, even though the block’s outside dimensions are spot on. This application wasn’t too critical, so I sharpened the wire ends and stabbed them into the middle of the perimeter threads encircling the hole.

Now we’ll discover how TPU survives weather.

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

	// Ambient Weather – Ambient Weather WS-5000 anemometer bird spike ring
	// Ed Nisley – KE4ZNU
	// 2025-06-09

	include <BOSL2/std.scad>

	Layout = "Show"; // [Show,Build,Slice]

	/* [Hidden] */

	HoleWindage = 0.2;
	Protrusion = 0.1;

	ID = 0;
	OD = 1;
	LENGTH = 2;

	SpikeOC = 30.0; // straight-line distance between spikes, OEM = 35

	WallThick = 4.0;

	BandID = 3.5*INCH – 0.5; // = OD of weather station
	BandOD = BandID + 2*WallThick;

	BandHeight = 8.0;

	SpikeOD = 1.7 + HoleWindage; // wire diameter
	SpikeWall = 2.0; // around wires

	SpikeBCD = BandOD;

	MountOD = SpikeOD + 2*SpikeWall;

	NumSpikes = ceil(PI*BandOD/SpikeOC); // need integral number of spikes
	SpikeAngle = 360/NumSpikes;
	NumSides = 3*NumSpikes;

	echo(SpikeAngle=SpikeAngle);
	echo(NumSpikes=NumSpikes);


	//———-
	// Define Shapes

	module Slice() {

	difference() {
	hull() {
	pie_slice(h=BandHeight,d=BandOD,$fn=NumSides,ang=SpikeAngle,spin=-SpikeAngle/2,anchor=BOTTOM);
	right(SpikeBCD/2 – MountOD/2)
	cyl(h=BandHeight,d=MountOD,realign=true,anchor=LEFT+BOTTOM,$fn=2*6);
	}
	down(Protrusion) {
	cyl(h=BandHeight + 2*Protrusion,d=BandID,$fn=NumSides,circum=true,realign=true,anchor=BOTTOM);
	right(SpikeBCD/2)
	cyl(h=BandHeight + 2*Protrusion,d=SpikeOD,$fn=6,circum=true,realign=true,anchor=BOTTOM);
	}
	}

	}

	module SpikeRing() {

	for (i=[0:NumSpikes-1])
	zrot(i*SpikeAngle)
	Slice();


	}

	//———-
	// Build things

	if (Layout == "Slice") {
	Slice();
	}


	if (Layout == "Show") {
	left(SpikeBCD/2)
	Slice();
	SpikeRing();
	}

	if (Layout == "Build") {
	SpikeRing();
	}

view raw Weather Station Spikes.scad hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2025-06-12

Bizarre Spam

Thanks to Google Translate:

Mrs Sgt Candy Payne spam

It’s not clear why a Sergeant in the US Army would translate her request for help into Simplified Chinese so I can better understand it, but that’s the world we live in.

This deposit would move my Quality-of-Life needle, but certainly not in a good direction:

Mrs Sgt Candy Payne spam – detail

Today I Learned: there are humanitarian doctors connected with the Red Army in Morocco.

The cost of sending this junk must be low enough to fuel the spam machine from a minuscule response rate.

A pox on their collective backside!

2025-06-11
PolyDryer Internal Fan Puzzle

With the humidity inside the PolyDryer boxes being roughly proportional to the amount of filament on the spool, I printed a slightly modified airlock plate and a TPU seal ring, then stuck a tiny fan on it:

PolyDryer airlock plate – tiny fan

It just barely clears the curved air guide inside:

PolyDryer airlock plate – tiny fan installed

The tea bags full of desiccant allow some wind between them and the filament in the spool, but I obviously must re-think that setup. There’s enough clearance for what should be reasonable circulation, so i defined it to be good enough for now.

The box of TPU started at 25 %RH, dropped to 22 %RH overnight, then returned to 25 %RH the next day:

PolyDryer TPU – 25 pct RH

Now that I’m watching more often, I’ve seen the meter glitch to 10% for a few seconds:

PolyDryer TPU – 10 pct RH glitch

A humidity indicator card suggests the air is under 20 %RH:

PolyDryer TPU – humidity indicator card

It may be the filament can outgas water vapor as rapidly as the desiccant can remove it, but I expected the fan to make at least a little difference.

I have no idea what’s going on in those boxes.

2025-06-10
Screen Door Handle Repositioning

For unknown reasons, the handle on the porch screen door was installed less than one finger width from the frame, so I conjured a pair of plastic plates shifting it far enough to prevent finger pinches and avoid the screws for the outside handle:

Porch door handle repositioning

The original holes now have M4 threaded wood inserts and the holes in the ¼ inch acrylic have M4 heat-staked brass inserts, mostly because I had everything on hand.

This was part of a project to trim the bottom of the door to clear the porch floor boards, which evidently continued warping after they trimmed the door to fit:

Porch door trimming

That thin blue line suggests the highest part of the floor was once near the bottom of the picture, but it’s now the lowest part. The highest part is now near the hinge side near the top of the picture, firmly jamming the door in place.

Works great now!

2025-06-09
Wreath Robins

Last year, a pair of finches made several nesting attempts in the wreath at our front door, only the first of which succeeded.

This year, a pair of robins took over:

Wreath Robin Nest – 2025-05-02

They’re considerably larger and we hoped would be more able to repel attackers. They also seemed to get off to a late start, as we saw young robins hopping around the yard with other adults while these birds were building their nest, so this may have been their second nest of the season.

The first egg appeared on 5 May:

Wreath Robin Nest – 2025-05-18

Two weeks later, the first chick pipped:

Wreath Robin Nest – 2025-05-19

Only a mother could love something like that, but they almost always do:

Wreath Robin Nest – 2025-05-20

Floppy chicks are (still) floppy one day later:

Wreath Robin Nest – 2025-05-21

Rapid growth is Job One:

Wreath Robin Nest – 2025-05-22

Taking shape:

Wreath Robin Nest – 2025-05-23

And then there were none:

Wreath Robin Nest – 2025-05-24

The M50 trail camera was defunct, so we don’t know what happened to them. Mary didn’t hear a fuss through the adjacent bedroom window, which suggests something grabbed them while Ms Robin was off getting breakfast.

We took the wreath down and replaced it with a slate plaque, because we’d rather not know …

2025-06-06
Pepper Mill: End of Life

So I finally took our pepper mill apart to see why it was having trouble grinding peppercorns:

Pepper mill wear

It was a wedding present and, nigh onto half a century later, it’s all worn out.

Its replacement surely won’t survive so long, even with ceramic innards, but I may not notice.

2025-06-05