Other Christmas Projects

Hi All,

Merry Christmas and all that!!! Perhaps we can run a thread talking about what (funky projects) we can do during our extra time over the holidays? I'm sure that many of us need some INSPIRATION.

My PC is pretty done for now. I did a major overhaul (again) just in September ... so I'm good for another couple of months probably ...

Current Ideas (or non-ideas):

• I'm bored with building drones. You can now buy a better drone at Curry's. If you are interested, however, then I suggest looking up F450 kits as a starting point. DJI branded is safest and also most expensive, but there are many options ...
• I was thinking about learning C++ and CUDA to use all of that PC power I have. Do any of you know of Virtual Machines or somehow pre-fabricated databases + applications that can be installed on a desktop? I'd love to do that then reverse-engineer them ... that would make me happy. I've seen such things for the Raspberry Pi but not so much for bigger apps ..
• I spotted an Unreal Engine course on Udemy that's ~40 hours and includes some basic games
• There are some Arduinos lying around here ... and I have the mCookie Itty Bitty City ... build then tweak a robot (with my son)??
• I always think that I will do some technology-based 'art'?
• I bought BlinkyTape ... do something fun with that?
• I have a 300 in 1 Electronics kit ... so learn some more electronics?
• I subscribe to Boldport but am yet to build a single project that I've been sent ... there are some hours there ...
• Get fit (unlikely, but could be involved somewhere and I might even live longer?)
• Build a remote controlled car/sub? I'm a bit scared of what I'd find with a camera sub in the London canals ...
• ???

Any other ideas??

P.S. I am not affiliated with any of those links!

 

Drinking myself sober.

 

- Learn to program my Arduino properly.
- do some more on my PC build.
- bake bread.
- bake an apple and blackberry pie. Both apples and blackberries are foraged locally.
- make limoncello.
- read.
- start building that soldering station...

 

Download Unreal Engine for free
follow these tutorials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJJn9igmznc&list=PLL0cLF8gjBpqGJwEe5XL5mSL8UvwwVMKu

Merry Christmas

 

- Re-learn Java for my uni project and make a digital dashboard to run on a Pi
- Fix the rust spot on my car roof and the curb rash on one of the alloys
- Have a bash at dipping my car (see below)

Try turn this:

Into this:

 

I'm itching to get started on a Tantillus 3D printer build



I don't think my current printer will ever be "finished", there are just too many parts to tweak and change in order to keep making it better. But the Tantillus design produces fantastic results, and can do it very quicky due to the lightweight XY carriage. Having something that can quickly crank out smaller parts would be very handy indeed - most of the things I want to print don't even come near 100x100x100mm.

It's either the Tantillus or the Richrap 3DR. I haven't made up my mind yet...

 

What's this "extra time" you speak of? I'm not familiar with the concept.

If you're bored with flying drones, how about building me a ROV for underwater work?

 

yeah just think of how many shopping trolleys you could find down the local canal, then retrieve them, weigh them in and profit


My Project is titled 'Project Mancave, and involves turning my Garage that isnt used into a gaming room

 

Project mancave is a must. I can't even express how great it is to have a space where I'm the boss

 

Folding @ Home has become a full-blown addiction for me again, and is one of the only things keeping me sane at the moment. So, I'm dedicating what little down time I have over the holidays to rebuilding a couple of machines for the farm. My current goal is to get to 100M points per month which works out at ~3.5M PPD. In its current config my farm is capable of producing a little over 2.5M PPD, but not reliably. I've been having stability and connection issues with some of the machines (which are at a remote site) lately so a couple of them are being rebuilt and I'm adding one more because I no longer have enough PCI-E slots to run all the cards I have.

The idea of having them in 4U rack chassis in a massive cabinet sitting in an air-conditioned server room was nice in theory, but useless in practice, and during the summer the AC units had to work hard to keep the place at a respectable temperature. My folding rigs had a lot to do with that, and even with the ambient air temperature of the room at 16 Celsius, I was seeing cards in the rack hit 80 degrees because the racks were heat soaked and the cards weren’t getting enough cool airflow. A big part of the problem is that my 970s are almost all Twin Frozr 5 cards as opposed to reference cards, so they don’t exhaust much of their heat out the back of the PCI-E slot, they dump it back into the case and then you’re relying on case airflow to move that out and cool air in.

The best airflow 4U chassis that I could find from Xcase with an ear bleeding setup of 2x 3000RPM intake fans, a 3x120mm 3000RPM fan wall and 2x80mm 3000RPM exhausts are still pathetic compared to a good midi tower chassis with 120mm and 140mm fans running at a whisper, so I'm de-racking two of them now to liquid cool and the last one sometime next year when I can afford the liquid cooling hardware for it.

I've got a Fractal Design Define S into which I'm putting:

• 2x MSI GTX 970 TF5 with EK water blocks & a parallel terminal block
• Running in an ASUS Rampage III Gene with an i7 930 under an EK Supremacy and 12GB of RAM
• Cooled by a 360mm HWLabs Black Ice GT Stealth, a 280mm Black Ice GT Stealth which are equipped with Noctua Industrial PPC 2000RPM fans, controlled by an NZXT Grid+ V2.
• The loop will be run from an EK D5 XRES through 12/16mm tubing with Bitspower compression fittings.
• PSU is a Corsair AX860.

The second machine to be re-built is going in a Coolermaster Mastercase Pro 5, and it's going to consist of:

• EVGA X58 Classified 3x SLI board with Koolance chipset & VRM water blocks.
• i7 920 CPU under a Swiftech Apogee GTZ, with 12GB RAM.
• 3x EVGA GTX 980 Hydro Copper cards.
• 280mm Black Ice Nemesis GTS & 240mm Black Ice Nemesis GTS radiators fitted with 2000RPM Noctua Industrial PPC fans.
• Koolance RP452x2 dual bay reservoir with 2x Laing D5 PWM pumps in series.
• EK compression fittings and 13/10mm PVC tubing.
• Mixture of Aquacomputer, Bitspower & Koolance sensors, flow meters and so on monitored by an Aquero 5 LP which will also be controlling the pumps and fans.
• PSU is an AX1200i and by my calculations and testing with only two 980s, this system will pull as near as makes no difference 1KW from the wall when it’s running a hard task on all three cards.

The new machine I'm adding is going into one of the rack chassis for now and I’m going to run 3x reference cards with blowers in it as opposed to Twin Frozr 5 cards which dump the heat back into the case and require all that extra airflow. It’s another X58 Gigabyte board with an i7 930 and 12GB of RAM which will be running 3x reference 980s off an Enermax Revolution 1250W PSU.

When that’s all done (which will realistically take the time I have off at Christmas and some evenings in mid-January too) I think I’m right in saying that it’ll be running six GTX 980s and six GTX 970s in 5x machines which run 24/7!

(expect to see this copied and pasted in the Folding sub-forum at some point)

 

That looked bloody freezing when I saw it last! Plans?

I have some ideas but this is calling me, a lot

 

I'd use it for shipwrecks. One in particular that comes to is the Servant, a tug or possibly fishing boat, on it's side in one of the sloughs in Everett. On a low tide just the turn of the bilge is visible above the water, but unfortunately at low tide the current is awfully strong. With a ROV I could go out at high tide and anchor over the wreck and explore it.

One of the things I want to do is build a floating camera platform I can tow behind my kayak to shoot underwater. That's the simplest option, just a GoPro strapped to a float with some weight to keep it pointed downwards. Ideally would be a proper camera sled with lights and thrusters and sonar.

Lowrance now makes a reasonably affordable ($1000) side scan sonar that is useful for survey and locating wrecks, but ROVs start at 10 grand and go up from there.

one of these days i'll buy a drone and I have a vision of installing a flight deck on one of my kayaks to fly it off of. They probably don't like baths very well, I bet.

 

Experimenting with robotics has always been on my "to do" list. So, today I figured I'd give my (much-neglected) 3D printer a workout and put together a parts list for my own platform. Of course, as a child of the 70's there could only be one form factor - Artoo Dee...actually a C1 model, like "Chopper" in Star Wars Rebels is smaller, has a lower centre of gravity and probably makes more sense. So yes, that.

The plan is to put function over form; I'm not interested in a canon-accurate model - It's for experimenting with contemporary tech, which I plan to add to over time. If it has to have a big omni-directional mic grille on it's face, then so be it. Version One is going to be RPi3-based and very basic, just a remote controlled toy with a camera, speakers and mic. However, by Version Whatever, I plan to add an APM autopilot, speech & facial recognition, depth perception, amplifier, neopixels and working arms; Probably not in that order.

I've got a bad feeling about this...

 

I was planning to install the BMW E46 seats in my RS.

But that went ridiculously smoothly and it took a day. So now I'm not sure. Assetto Corsa I guess.

 

Isn't the electricity cost for this setup absolutely huge?

 

Definite sign you're on the right track.

 

Are you planning to use Alexa Voice Services? That would be very cool - although AFAIK you can't change the "always on" wake word from "Alexa" on the Pi. Custom wake words would be very handy indeed.

 

I'm going to strip down my last project THIS ONE
fit a new GPU, but means relocating the rad, so may change the pump at the same time and give it a new colour scheme. It always going to be an ongoing build even though it's finished.

Build a new fish tank stand and give the boys a good clean out. Thats on the things to do list

 

Google Home.

Yesterday morning I was going to buy a Gopigo - It's what Google used for their 2016 I/O demo of Google Cloud Speech, and Google Cloud Vision. It wasn't long before I went down the R2 route, but the plan has always been to integrate it with Tensorflow-based systems; Be it pre-rolled APIs, a custom chatbot for basic conversational capabilities, or Google Home (I'm hoping I can override the speech recognition part of the Home service, using the Speech API, for custom wake words and commands). Although, all that won't be integrated until I buy at least one smart home system it can control, so there's a £200 bill to kit the house out with wifi-enabled RGB bulbs before that happens

 

Move family PC Win 7 install onto SSD and put data on a bigger HDD. Move Family PC2 from s775 C2C rig to H87 G3258 rig with SSD.
Never enough HDD space to juggle data....