Weeknotes

Week 691 – Bike Embellishment, Debugging

2nd September 2024

Each week we’ll endeavour to publish some details of the interesting things that members of DoES Liverpool have been up to over the past seven days. You can find out a bit more about them in our introductory post.

And remember, if you’re involved with DoES Liverpool at all, let us know what you get up to so we can include it here!

Things of Note

  • Adrian McEwen:Got some time on the laser-cutter to test out my latest FreeCAD design work. Also got to use up some of the masses of waste cardboard packaging from the @museuminabox production run 😀Quite pleased with how it’s turned out so far. Now I can move onto the next stages.#BikeTooter #ibal250 #weeknotes #FreeCAD #LaserCutting #prototyping
    Screenshot of FreeCAD showing a roughly-triangular wedge shape with a slot cut in it and behind that the outline of the unwrapped mesh of the same shape
    A workbench with a cutting mat, some tape, a sharpie, a Stanley knife and a metal ruler. On the cutting mat is a flat sheet of brown corrugated cardbaord cut out in the shape of the unwrapped mesh from the CAD design. Next to that is a version which has been folded up to make the triangular wedge shape.
    A gravel bike with drop handlebars leans against a planter outside a brick building. On the handlebars, looking a bit like a head for the bike, is the assembled brown cardboard wedge shape.
  • Adrian McEwen:Got the Microbit and LED noodle fitted to it too and it’s starting to come together nicely.I’ve got IO for another two noodles, but holding off fitting them until more of the code is written.It’s not the brightest LED in daylight, which isn’t ideal, but we might be able to tweak the battery voltage, etc. to improve that. Need to work on the battery pack attachment more too.

    #weeknotes #BikeTooter #ibal250 #microbit #LED #prototyping

  • Adrian McEwen:Working out that my multimeter isn’t good enough to measure 10pF and resigning myself to swapping out a dozen various 0603 capacitors to work out which ones have been specced wrong.I guess that’s a simpler task than the swapping out a couple of hundred 0603 capacitors that I’m expecting will be the next step once I track down the bug.Though there’s a chance that’ll be the fab house’s problem rather than mine

    #debugging #electronics #soldering #weeknotes

  • Adrian McEwen:The detritus from today’s rework. Oh, plus a dead NFC board because it’s really easy to lift a 1.34mm long trace when desoldering the 0603 cap at one end of it 😀However, I found that two of the cap values were wrong. Four capacitors in total. I’m guessing the reels got swapped over when loaded in the pick-and-place machine?Anyway, broke out the #TinyTapeout QC stickers to celebrate solving the mystery of the poor antenna performance! 🎉

    #weeknotes #electronics #debugging #soldering #ibal243

    Close up of a workbench. A cluster of rectangles with silver ends is visible: a collection of desoldered 0603 (so 6 hundredths of an inch by 3 hundredths of an inch, or 1.5mm by 0.8mm) capacitors

Coming Up in the Next Week

Monday 02 September, 6:00pm-8:00pm 7pm-9pm Socialist Alternative discussion group
Tuesday 03 September, 5:30pm-8:30pm Hack the Space Evening
Wednesday 04 September, 6:00pm-8:00pm Liverpool Linux User Group
Thursday 05 September, 6:00pm-8:30pm Maker Night
Our free weekly evening meeting where you can find out about our space and all the making equipment in it, get a laser cutter or CNC embroidery machine induction, and work on projects from physical computing and electronics to 3d printing, routing and sewing. Just pay for materials used.
Thursday 05 September, 6:00pm-10:00pm LivNUG (Liverpool Nix/NixOS User Group)
Sunday 08 September, 1:00pm-4:00pm Plastic Playgroup (DoES Workshop)
In a world with mountains of plastic and molehills of play, let’s get our spades out and shift the balance.Make new things from abandoned plastic with us. Plantpots, purses … pedalos?Shred plastic. Blend it. Meld scraps together with a heat gun. Make sheets. Laser cut it. CNC it. Stitch potato bags together with soldering iron? Make fabrics with a regular iron? What have we got, what can we make? We don’t know – let’s figure it out!
Two rules:
1. No Objectives – this is an aimless and wandering session.
2. Bring Your Own Initiative – this is an active session and we’ll help you get creative.
Every two weeks on a Sunday afternoon, between 2pm and 5pm.Facilitated by Plastic Tactics – follow on social for the latest updates, and to see what we make if you can’t be here in person:
http://instagram.com/plastacs
http://twitter.com/plastacs
http://facebook.com/plastictacticsliverpool

Somebody Should

The DoES Liverpool to-do list is stored in the issues of our Somebody Should repository on github. Head over there if there’s something you’d like to report, or if you want to help out fixing things.

See all the issues…

Issue counts: 412 open, 1527 closed

No new issues

Featured issue: Reduce the draughts in the space. Can we move this on or close it?

No issues closed

Tags:

Book a coworking desk

Scroll to top