Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Cleaning up the end of the broken shaft let me shove it into a drilled ball:
Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – repaired – drilled balls
The insert and random screw came from the stub end of the broken shaft: ramming it into the cleaned-up end makes the job look Good Enough™.
Clamp the repaired stalk into the spare mount, drop the drilled balls & lathe fixture back in their bag, and maybe it’ll be another six years before they’re needed.
One of Mary’s garden neighbors recently started biking, she recommended he needed a helmet mirror, and I handed her a spare from the Bag o’ Mirrors:
Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – on helmet
So I built another one:
Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – epoxy clamping
Fortunately, the Bag also had that (slightly rusted) mirror with a drilled ball, so all I needed was a new printed mount with two brass inserts and screws.
Now we have two spares against future need:
Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – ready spares
They’re much better than the old yellow Az-El mount, but I couldn’t have made the ball mounts without that experience.
Both versions outlasted all the commercial versions we’ve had over the decades, so that’s a 3D printing success story right there.
The Kohler fill valve in the Main Bathroom’s Kohler toilet tank began leaking, but (unsurprisingly) the shutoff valve on its water pipe no longer completely shut off, thus converting a simple replacement into A Plumbing Project. Because toilet shutoff valves sit below all other valves / faucets / plumbing, the pipe can spew a generous amount of water straight up while you’re fumbling with the new valve, no matter how well you (think you) drained the pipes.
So I deployed scrap towels around the pipe, buttered the new valve threads with joint compound, applied various wrenches with appropriate muttering, and swapped the valves without damage to the premises:
Toilet shutoff valve – installed
AFAICT, the chromed pipe and corroded trim plate are original; no possible motivation can convince me to replace that plate. The tattered PTFE tape on the pipe suggests the valve I replaced might have been only a few decades old, albeit with a correspondingly deteriorated washer.
With the water shut off, I replaced the fill valve with a Fluidmaster valve from Box o’ Plumbing Stuff #3; it was new-in-box despite being maybe a decade old. Turned the water back on, fiddled with the float setting to match the Water Line level, and declared victory.
Which lasted until user feedback indicated the new fill valve wasn’t shutting off. After a fruitless day of fiddling about, I replaced the original seal with a repair part taken from Box #3:
Fluidmaster 242 Fill Valve Seal
The fill valve now works perfectly, for reasons having nothing do with the the appearance of either seal, and victory has once again been declared.
Several years and realignments later, the brake sensors on Mary’s Tour Easy became slightly mobile on the foam tape holding them to the brake lever mounts and, of course, anything affecting the sensor position relative to the magnet inevitably makes it overly sensitive to the brake lever position.
For unknown reasons, the DPC-18 displays devote zero pixels to the brake sensor status, so the only indication of a brake sensor being active is when the motor cuts out. This is not to be tolerated, particularly in traffic, so both the sensors and their magnets are now remounted on fresh tape with careful attention to proximity.
The magnet is snugged against the sensor when the lever is released:
Tour Easy brake sensor gap – released
The activation point is about a third of the way to the fully pulled position:
Tour Easy brake sensor gap – braking
I would prefer having the magnet move parallel to the sensor’s long axis, but that’s just not the way these levers work.
The left-side sensor cable is now snugged to the brake cables to keep it out of harm’s way as she installs & removes the water reservoir on the handlebars under the fairing:
Tour Easy brake sensor cable – left
For symmetry, the right-side sensor cable sports a similar tiedown:
Which, as always, required the Greatest Ratchet with a foot of extensions getting the 1-1/16 inch socket down to the rod:
Water Heater Powered Anode – socket wrench
Remember to:
Turn off the water heater power
Shut off the inlet and outlet valves
Open the drain valve to relieve the tank pressure
Only then loosen the anode rod
Seeing the first few inches justified extracting the rod:
Water Heater Powered Anode – old rod top
Due to low overhead clearance and inauspicious pipe locations, I had to hacksaw the bottom third off to extract the rod:
Water Heater Powered Anode – old rod overviewWater Heater Powered Anode – old rod bottom
With the rod out, draining a few gallons of water into a pan didn’t produce any notable gravel, so I didn’t do a complete flush. Much to my delight, the drain has a ball valve!
Given that this is a fancy water heater and I no longer regard anode rod maintenance as a fun-filled activity, I installed a Corro-Protec powered anode rod for cathodic protection without all the crud:
Water Heater Powered Anode – Corro-Protec parts
The wall wart proclaims 15 mA with a green LED indicating it’s hard at work:
Water Heater Powered Anode – Corro-Protec wall wart
The data plate on the back reports 24VDC 15mA, but, being me, I poked at it with a handful of resistors:
Corro-Protec power supply measurements
The electronics could be as simple as a 24 VDC wall wart feeding a 425 Ω series resistor and a transistor switch lighting the LED for currents a little over 6 mA.
A quick ohmmeter check shows the powered rod electrode is open-circuit with respect to the tank, as it should be without much applied voltage. Applying +24 VDC from the wall wart drives 15 mA into the water: the rod is hard at work.
I’ll take a look at it in a year or so just to see what’s going on in there …
Heavy winds during an overnight storm on July 4 2026 brought trees down across Dutchess County and caused widespread power outages. Our little generator justified its existence by preserving our food for about 24 hours, but other folks were without power for three or four days.
A large branch fell across the Carriage Hill entrance:
Carriage Hill Bridge – treefall – 2026-07-07
The terrain and lot layout in Carriage Hill often requires heavy equipment for tree maintenance:
Tree Clearing Crane
Many trees along the Dutchess Rail Trail toppled as their root balls rotated or simply broke off:
Rail trail north – treefall B – 2026-07
Others snapped and took out the fences:
Rail trail north – treefall A – 2026-07
We ride as far from this deadfall as we can:
Rail trail south – treefall – 2026-07
Cleanup continued for weeks and we wish the crews well.
After five years of daily use, the lithium battery in the charging case of my Nuheara IQbuds² MAX they’re-not-hearing-aids earbuds began absorbing far more energy during its overnight recharges than the usual 100-ish mA·hr. This isn’t unexpected and, of course, Nuheara specifically mentions their batteries are not replaceable, so just toss the earbuds in the e-waste stream and buy another set.
The lower part of the hinged case holds all the good stuff, with that blank hump obviously covering a great place for a battery:
Nuheara IQBudsMax2 charging case – overview
The bands around the earbuds are strips of gaffer tape holding their halves together after replacing their batteries. In this application, gaffer tape works much better than duct tape.
There being no obvious screws, wedging a thumbnail into the joint just above the Micro-B USB jack proved promising. Doing the same on the other side produced enough of a gap to force a flat steel blade in there; further prying popped the snaps (red):
Nuheara IQBudsMax2 charging case – snaps and glues
The green ovals mark places where the case halves were glued together, accounting for some of the struggle.
The two neodymium magnets in the front corners grab similar magnets in the upper cover to hold the case closed. The two magnets along the front edge grab magnets in the earbuds to hold them in the pockets, with more magnets flanking the gold-ish pogo pins visible in the first picture for better connections. If you’re concerned about the health effects of static magnetic fields, get over it.
The battery was glued in place, so the first position after cracking the case apart must look like this:
Nuheara IQBudsMax2 charging case – pried open
Yes. Yes, that is five years of earwax. You’ll note the lack of a seal at the bottom of the tunnels guiding the foam earbud tips: any and all particles falling off the earbuds have a direct path to the interior of the case.
Easing the battery from its restraints reveals the data plate:
Nuheara IQBudsMax2 charging case – snap and glue locationsNuheara IQBudsMax2 charging case – 802050 lithium cell
The reflections in the pouch’s now-curved upper surface show the battery has become a Spicy Pillow.
Somewhat to my surprise, 802050 batteries are available from the usual sources.
Unwrapping several layers of kapton tape exposed the battery protection PCB:
Nuheara IQBudsMax2 charging case – battery management PCB
Comfortingly, the DW01 topmark on the upper IC says it’s a battery protection IC and the 8205A topmark on the lower IC indicates a dual MOSFET switching the battery current off during shutdowns. I did not trace the circuitry, but the white wire might control the DW01 CS terminal.
The solder side:
Nuheara IQBudsMax2 charging case – BMS solder joints
The new battery had a similar protection PCB with two wires. Rather than argue the point, I snipped its (welded!) battery tabs and transplanted the Nuheara PCB to the new battery, adding 30 AWG jumpers because the new tabs were shorter than the old ones:
Nuheara IQBudsMax2 charging case – new battery installed
The strangely empty space to the right of the battery is just big enough for the protection PCB and all the kapton wrappings. The various plastic tabs around the battery hold it in place, so I did not renew its glue.
Similarly, the four case snaps do a great job of holding the halves together, so they’re not glued, either.
An overnight charge brought the case back to life and it’s once again working fine. However, the earbuds may be due for their third battery refresh.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 