Tag: buildlog

Another Bandai kit of a vehicle from StarWars. Crashed after an emergency landing.

A build log for a Gaslands inspired vehicle with a piece of terrain.

A scratch-building story full of beads, bots, super-glue and baking soda.

I was really happy with the snowspeeder model I have built, but I was unhappy with the stand included in the kit. I decided to try to build a piece of terrain and create simple scenery.

Because I enjoyed my last scale model build a lot I have quickly started working on another one. This time I picked a Star Wars snowspeeder kit by Bandai. I always liked the aesthetics of Star Wars and I am more interested in building sci-fi and space-related models rather than historic planes and tanks.

Bandai kits have a great reputation and since I was hugely disappointed with the quality of the shuttle model made by Revell as I wrote in the build log, I wanted to try a kit with a very good reputation to have some comparison.

And just to make to context clear: this is the second scale model I am building after I got back to the hobby after more than 20 years long break. It’s the 3rd plastic model I am going to paint ever. And it is the first one I’ll attempt to weather.

This project an example of how one project can lead to another. I have recently revisited an old hobby of mine - building and painting scale models. Even though the resulting model is a work of a beginner with many flaws I still wanted to have some nice pictures of the result. And it wasn’t for the first time it crossed my mind that it would be nice to have an automatic rotating turntable so I could easily make a 360 video of something I made.

Would you believe this was my first project with ESP32? So far I had some experience only with ESP8266. I must admit I fell in love with ESP32 and I am never going back.

Note: I had this article in my draft folder for several months and forgot about it. So I am giving it just a quick polish and publishing it now.

Somehow, I have got an idea to revisit one of the former hobbies of mine.

When I was a kid I was quite interested in planes. Apart from reading books and visiting air shows I also ended up building few scale model kits. I have never really got good at it. If I remember correctly, I managed to paint only one of them. Somehow I didn’t have enough patience to learn more and pass through the true beginner phase.

It might be interesting to try again now, a few decades later, maybe I am patient enough? I bought a cheap Revell model kit of Space shuttle Atlantis, glue, paints and other accessories and this is my experience.

It was early pandemic when my employer switched to the work-from-home mode and I realized I have a bit more free time since my commute times dropped to zero. Apart from keyboard stuff, I had no nice project in progress that wouldn’t involve waiting for PCB manufacturing or parts. So, what could I build from things I have at home? What about those 2 cheap geared DC motors, those 2 wheels, some micro, IMU unit. Hmm. I see a 2-wheeled self-balancing robot here. I always wanted to build one and learn how they work.

In the previous post in this series, I wrote about several prototyping steps for this project. In this article, I am going to describe the final version.

I have enjoyed designing and making a Squid PCB badge some time ago and I have some plans for more complex PCB badges and creations. But Christmas is coming and I realized it might be fun to create some simple gift for friends and family. It was also a good opportunity to try another PCB manufacturer.

When I built my Freeform ESP8266 OLED MQTT client and wrote about it I mentioned I have a long-running project which captures the data I wanted to display on the device. I call it Room Monitor and it is nothing special - a bunch of sensors connected to ESP8266 and powered with a battery. I am going to briefly sum‑up its hardware and software development in the following two articles. This one is going to cover prototyping and the next one the current (and semi-finished) PCB version.

I designed my first PCB. It’s not useful at all and very primitive electrically. But I have learned a lot.

I have build katana60 - a custom mechanical keyboard - a few months ago and I use it on a daily basis. But there are so many interesting keyboard designs out there. It just too tempting not to build another one.

This time I chose the Corne Keyboard - or ckrbd if you want. This one is designed by a guy from Japan who calls himself foostan.

When you have a custom keyboard with some nice keycaps and case, you might start to think, what should I customize next? Let’s start with the cable which connects my keyboard to my computer!

My second freeform creation, or third if we include The CyborgDuck is here. I wanted to do something simple in order to gather more experience and improve my skills.

Behold, our cyborgduck overlords are coming!

I have been watching those amazing freeform creations by people like @MohitBhoite and @jipraus for some time. I examined many entries for the recent Circuit Sculpture Contest on hackaday.com and have been thinking, that I would love to build something like that, but I had been convinced that my skills are not good enough.

But skills can be trained and learned. So I finally ordered a few brass rods and tried my first freeform sculpture. Here’s the result.

A story about how I was reminded that impatience and impetuosity can backfire when dealing with hardware.

I learned recently that there’s a huge community around making of custom mechanical keyboards. Even though building such keyboard is actually quite expensive I failed to resist the temptation and decided to build my first one.

An improved version of my previous creation. Better and hackier!

What could I do with couple of ICs (mainly shift registers), LEDs and basic components, but without a micro-controller?

I made a LED cube. A silly thing that blinks a lot and is controlled by programmable microcontroller. But why? And how?