Robut

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I wanted to make a simple robot chassis that could have things added to it as needed.
I decided to go with some pz22gr9120r gearmotors because they are cheap (~$3 each) and easy to find. The 1:84 gear ratio and 6-24V operating range means that they aren’t going to be going very fast on a 2s or 3s battery pack, but for just playing around I think that robustness is more important.

The top shell shown upside down.

The top of the shell shown upside down, tanning in the desert

The body has a 20 mm grid for attaching components and takes about 12 hrs to print. The bottom takes another 3.

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Bathroom sink

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When replacing the entry half bath I noticed that the toilet wasn’t centered. Supposedly this is to make the room look bigger. I don’t know about that, but things not being centered or aligned bothers me, so I wasn’t sure what to do. I decided in the end that the vanity doors should be aligned with the toilet and a cubby would be put to one side for TP and such.

The toilet is not centered on the wall.

The toilet is not centered on the wall.

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Makita XT257M review (DC18RC XPH07Z XDT08Z BL1840)

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DC18RC battery charger

The DC18RC battery charger that was included is a bit odd.
The first thing you are likely to notice is that it advertises a different charge time for the different battery capacities. As none of the charge rates appear to exceed the 18 V / 9 A output shown on the bottom, I am not really sure why. There are a number of possibilities, but none really make sense in this context. Presumably is has something to do with heat dissipation, as it always does, but the tools should draw more current, and they don’t have fans.
After charging my battery, the battery seemed to be at room temperature but I found the charger case to be quite hot. I don’t have a thermometer on me but I can say it was significantly hotter than any charger I have ever used, and use mostly Chinese knockoffs to charge my LiPos. As a result, I decided to open the case.
DC18RC_450px

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Programming the ESP-01 to control RGB strips via MQTT

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Now that I have shown you two different hardware setups for the RGB strips, it is time to talk about the chip firmware and software.

I have chosen to use NodeMCU which uses Lua as the programming language. The good news is that all the functions you need are already there. As a result, even someone like me who doesn’t know Lua can easily write it.

And, thanks to a number of online blogs detailing what is going on, it is mostly copypasting existing code. Mostly this is adapted from the blog of openhardware.co.za. There were a few things unclear, but I suggest looking at it as he has much more verbose documentation.

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