Andrew de Quincey's miscellaneous tech projects
A key part of any project is knowledge and technical skill. Both of these can be gained with time. However, for a personal project done in your own time, a bigger factor is "Arsedness Threshold" (AT):…
I listened to a security podcast, and ended up building a simple network intrustion detector with Claude Code
Our old kitchen was not great. You can actually see a picture of a little bit of it here. One thing that WAS good though, was the Oak Butcherblock worktops. We recently got it replaced with a nice new…
I've been meaning to start this blog again now I have more time; I moved house and was focused on fixing the new place. Anyway, first things first: I've decided to ditch Wordpress.com. It's an OK plat…
In our old flat, we had control over our heating from our phones: I’d reverse engineered the RF control protocol used by our Salus thermostat. I never got round to blogging about that, but the code is…
We had a smart meter installed last year. It’s kinda useful to observe long term power usage. However I really wanted to be able to see more detail; like turn off this device, what happens to the powe…
I bought a "luxury selection of exotic wood blanks" from ebay to try turning some bowls. Some of them worked! These were a success, although I think bowl 2 is better from a shape and finish point of v…
A friend, Sandy, suggested trying laser cutting wood veneer (he has plans for a complex design). However, I’d not tried that before, and it sounded like an interesting idea. I’ve often watched people…
I was watching some of Uri Tuchman’s excellent videos, and he mentioned making his own tools; sounded fun, and I now have a garden I can safely try that sort of project in. Kinda fancied making some s…
I recently received an Elegoo Saturn 2 resin 3d printer, so I thought I’d document my initial testing: These printers print using a 2d array of UV leds which cure a liquid resin held in a tank where U…
One problem with the lathe is I now have a whole set of chisels lying around the place, which is kinda annoying. I spent yesterday designing a quick tool support to attach to the lathe bench in Fusion…
I've always wanted one of these. When I was wee, we went on tour round England visiting various relations, and I remember being very impressed with a lathe. I've no idea which relation it was, unfortu…
Nicola bought me a present for my birthday: a hammer making course at Athelstaneforge! I really enjoyed it! It was a pretty intense few hours though: hitting chunks of hot metal with a sledge hammer t…
Time for some slightly boring, but useful, 3d printing. When I wired the house, I was planning on adding ceiling mounted wifi access points. However, in the end, I didn't use them. So we were left wit…
I used a few offcuts to add some new woodworking tools: I bolted a length of the construction timber to my bench with some "star nuts" and spare M10 carriage bolts. The idea is you put one end of the…
I've been watching a lot of restoration on Youtube recently: AT Restoration, Hand Tool Rescue to name a couple. I thought I'd give it a go: there's an old side table that's been in the family for ages…
If I'm going to do woodwork, it made sense to install a woodworking vice. I did some research, and found you could buy relatively cheap vices of modern manufacture, which, or you could try and buy an…
I had some spare C24 construction timber left over, so I decided to make a Moxon "dual screw" vice. This clamps to your workbench and overhangs it, and lets you do certain fiddly jobs. When its not in…
Now that I had built a workbench, it was time for some shelves! This is the cupboard under the stairs; originally it was a big dingy, but I've painted it to make it a lot brighter and nicer. Why the d…
Been quiet on here for a while: I've been moving house! I've now got proper space for projects; I even have a studio/cabin/workshop (just don't call it a shed!) now. First things first though, I neede…
I've been having a busy time in general recently, but I've finally got back to making things. I've been meaning to play with enamelling for a while. I ordered some WG Ball transparent enamelling powde…
I somehow stumbled onto this website; they sell DIY hologram kits! So I ordered one. I'd always assumed making a hologram would be quite complicated, but it turns out it really isn't. You basically ne…
I got one of these nifty wee Pinecil USB-C soldering irons for Christmas They're really quite cool: temperature controlled by an embedded RISC V processor, USB-C powered (using modern high power suppl…
I quite fancied one of these AxiDraw drawing machines, but at the price they go for, I couldn't really justify it. However, I did some looking around and found this home-made version: I can definitely…
For my next project I wanted something more complicated. As the new Dune film is out, and I'm a total Dune fan, I thought a map of Arrakis would be pretty cool. The Map Unlike Mars, there's no geo dat…
The circular cutout of my previous project gave me an idea: what if I drew a planet next? I'd bought some red card from Hobbycraft, so Mars was the obvious choice. I always liked the name for Mars, "B…
Since I last posted, I've been busy going on holidays in Scotland, zooming about on my new bike, and generally going out and doing stuff. But as its getting dark again, and the weather is getting wors…
Kiln Beeper I installed a mini beeper in my kiln and adjusted the software to beep letters in Morse code depending on the stage of the program. I just used the same transistor+resistor+5v supply desig…
This is the process I'm now using: its had 100% success so far. This post is stitched together from various pieces; I unfortunately didn't take pictures of the complete process for a single piece. Ste…
PMC clay, or Precious Metal Clay clay(sic!) is a mixture of tiny metal particles with an organic binder. It allows you to mould metal objects by hand at room temperature, then sinter them into solid o…
I have a small "Prometheus Pro-1 PRG" Jewellery kiln for experimentation and artwork. Its a programmable kiln, which allows you to have programmes with multiple cycles of heating and cooling over time…
A friend asked me to 3d print this 3D scan of Emperor Trajan. Its taken me a while to get round to it though (guiltguiltguilt!). I decided to chop the scan so just his head and shoulders were visible…
I acquired one of these in a deal Google had running. After trying it out, I decided it wasn't really for me, so I had an unused Stadia controller lying around.... The design is interesting; in order…
Next up in the riveting Thermocouple series is how to identify an unknown thermocouple as a Type K. There are loads of videos on Youtube on this, but I didn't find them completely conclusive. Many of…
I've been playing around with Type K thermocouples for a project. These are cheap, commonly available, and can read a temperature range from –270C to 1260C (though it depends on the exact thermocouple…
It's not been looking well for a while, poor thing..... Then I spotted the underside of the leaves were covered in little black things.... to the microscope! - - Aphids! Bastards! Well, getting rid of…
I've been enjoying Electroboom's Youtube channel, and was really interested in the various Tesla coil videos. I had a look at the OneTesla DIY kits: they look great, but way too expensive for an after…
As soon as I decided to add the 5x5 Blinkenlights matrix to the horn, it obviously needed to be turned into a music visualiser. Googling for "mopidy audio visualizer" found this post, where someone di…
I inherited an old "Revo" speaker horn from my dad. I have a strong suspicion he acquired it from a "job lot" in an auction somewhere. He gave it the rather fetching red/gold/black paint job. Anyway,…
I've been struggling with a pair of worn out snips for all my snipping/wire stripping needs for years. For some reason I didn't realise that I could just.. order something better. I've now rectified t…
I fancied getting an eink screen to use for future projects. I bought a wee one with a raspberry pi "hat" attached. However, I realised later that I could maybe just re-purpose an old Amazon Kindle eb…
I've been watching a lot of the Technology Connections Youtube channel recently. I was particularly intrigued by the series on RCA CED VideoDiscs. There's also some information available on Wikipedia.…
"Frit" is glass which has been broken up into pieces of varying size. You use different sized chunks for different purposes (eg large chunks could be used for mosaic style work, while glass powder cou…
I've been trying combining fused glass with various powdered metals and metal compounds to see what effect it has on the glass colour. I've been intentionally avoiding compounds which - when heated -…
The first thing I tried with my new kiln was some glass fusing. Tools To cut glass I needed some new tools: - Toyo Glass cutter and cutting oil (appears to be just a very low viscosity mineral oil). -…
I've wanted one of these for ages, so I decided to buy one a couple of weeks ago. I went for a "Prometheus Pro-1 PRG" which is a small, comparatively cheap desktop kiln: Its ideal for a beginner. I pa…
I tried the Cyanotype process again. I used the same method as before, with the following improvements: - I had sponge brushes to paint the fluid on the paper consistently. - I made sure not to leave…
My Peace Lily has flowered and is scattering pollen everywhere. I think might even be giving me mild hayfever. Clearly the only thing to do is investigate! I happen to have this microscope slide equip…
A Cyanotype is an early photographic method which yields a characteristic Prussian Blue image. It is literally how you make a "blueprint". I've done this before on a small scale, but I'd forgotten the…
I wasn't going to post another of these attempts as I'd hoped to be actually doing something with it now, but as it turned out, the red owl was a failure. It never cured properly: I figured out I'd si…