“God Bless our Queen”
8th of September 2022
I was inspired by this creator and discovered a whole world of tiny electronics designs. The internet can be such an amazing place to learn new skills.
I tried to “copy” the designs and had a lot of fun creating my own versions.
I already had a good grasp of some of the prerequisites like Arduino and soldering and programming, but it still was a challenge to get it all to work as expected.
I was frustrated by some of the components which I purchased on the internet which required some hardcore programming. (at least for me). Flashing a new bootloader on a completely blank chip was a new experience.
It uses an ATTINY85, which is similar to the Arduino things I have used before but in a very small package and also consumes very little energy. Especially when in sleep mode.
It uses brass wires as the structure and part of the electronic circuit. The soldering is a bit tricky as the parts are so small and difficult to hold. I am pleased with my first attempt.
I used some small calculator-type solar panels as the sole source of energy and supercapacitors to provide for energy storage. The chip is programmed so that it is in sleep mode for a couple of seconds or so, then wake up to blink one led or more, then goes back to sleep, forever.
I have programmed the ATTINY so that it blinks all the time, day and night. The voltage and power are very low overall, but ATTINY is managing it very well. I had to set up some brownout fuses, but the code is fairly simple.
I started with the cube version and then made the “lander” version. Today my favourite is the lander. I am looking to make more copies and improve my overall design.
I am currently exploring how to increase the voltage on the circuits so that I can use coloured LEDs which require a slightly higher voltage than the current circuit allows for.
I have discovered that it is not as simple as double the size of the capacitors or doubling the size of the panels etc….been playing with the new oscilloscope to track what is going on in the electronics.
So much to learn still.
Update Feb. 2023: Sometimes the sun is too weak to fill the capacitor, I then use my bench power supply to fill the capacitor and restart the chip. I simply apply 2.5 Volts on the capacitor leads.
The best Garlic Mayo on the planet is the one I have at my brother-in-law’s place in the South of France…..
Check out his recipe….
I was inspired by this internet find :
So I made my own, which I think I prefer…
So easy to do and super nice as an aperitif dish or as the main cheese dish.
Make some fresh bread or pitta bread to dip into the melted cheese.
Simply scoop a teaspoon or 2 out of the middle of the Camembert, put a bit of whisky into the hole, and then pick a few branches of thyme herb from the garden around the circumference.
Put into the oven at 180 degrees celsius for 10 minutes until melting in the middle.
Use a dish of the correct size so that the whole cheese does not pour out into your oven!
There is plenty of fun designs here!
Like a mini cheese fondue. Delicious…
Feels like forever since my last post. Been too busy with my new business and feel trapped in something I don’t need.
I enjoy the adventure but it is costing me too much in my personal time, I though I had put all that behind me.
I need to find a way to balance better this exciting project and my true objective in life which is to live more in the present. (I really struggle to do that).
Been doing some electronics and learning new things, will post here soon.
Decided to make some more generative art. Was inspired by something I saw on the internet. The Zeroes and the Ones are spelling Happy Valentine in binary code!
I take each letter and convert it into a binary representation. I make a large image with only white zeroes and ones. I then load separately a heart image and scan every pixel of the image to modify the colour of the appropriate one or zero. I use a colour palette which I created using some colours from another picture. I then displayed it on my computer screen and took a picture of the image at an angle. Finally, I applied a couple of filters using my phone. Voila!
The internet is amazing. I wanted to build a web page with access to the local Video surveillance cameras around key places of my interest for when I want to drive to central London or to my new office in Richmond.
Been exploring the TFL API to discover the location of cameras and other interesting items that are being stored on the TFL API. For example, I discovered that TFL keeps a log of all the electric charging points with details about location and charging power etc…
Made a small computer program to make hundreds of designs of bikes, a generative coding example. The software creates various shapes by modifying a few parameters of a standard bike shape.
When everybody seems to be moving from 2D to 3D to VR….we are taking it back to 1D !
Great fun building a ONE dimension game with Jules at the coding helm!
It is still early days but already fun.
I have done so much work for free and as of today, it is still the worse investment I have ever made…but I am still proud of the achievement.
This could be a study case on motivation, incentives and decision making…
Some could say that I am a foul donating so much of my time and energy for something that I will never feel is a fair share of the returns.
However, I also know that none of this is about the end-point but more about the journey and the legacy one can leave. So I let myself enjoy the present.
I intend to make this big and meaningful for the people that need an affordable and sustainable source of natural medicine.
So far, in my life, my “foolishness” has served me well so why not trust it a bit more.
Been cursing the bloody Virus again. Was looking forward to a nice family get together for this Christmas and it all fell apart.
The new Omicron variant is raging through London and soon will be everywhere in Europe etc…it is said to be mild but it crushes ours hopes for any get together with the grandparents or even parties of more than a few people.
Everybody is trying to protect their own families.
Jules got tested positive just before Xmas. Thankfully, his girlfriend was able to travel to her parents before and my parents had already decided not to come to the house anyway. So it was just a major bother for Jules really…
As we always do as a family, we made the most of it and had a lot of fun. Manu made sure that there were presents under the tree even if we could not go shopping. And she even. found a HAZMAT suit to make sure that Jules would be able to join us for the Xmas evening. There were a few tears here and there but more laughs about it all.
Obviously, there was a lot of cooking involved as well…with my dry-cured ham slowly getting ready. It has been a month and still only 50% of the way ready. It has nice white mould growing on it, but also a bit of Blue/green mould so I cleaned them up a bit and removed the muslin to help with the drying process.
It has been raining a lot this past 2 weeks and the humidity in the garage is a bit too high.
But the taste is very nice and it smells good as well.
Made some nice tempura of Asparagus and Onions. I cooked in Avocado oil on the new induction cooker using the frying function which is excellent to keep the oil hot but not burning…a really nice purchase. Keeps the temperature of the oil around 180-200 which for the avocado oil is OK.
The tempura pastry was very nice :
1 egg yolk
125g of Tapioca Flour/Starch (from the Chinese market)
125g of cold sparkling water
1/2 teaspoon of Salt
1/2 teaspoon of Baking powder
and some Plain flour to adjust the consistency until the batter is very runny but still sticks to the vegetables.
Cook in the pan with at least a couple of centimetres of oil in pan.
Want to make some egg benedict’s so need to learn to do the Hollandaise properly! I will use the Kenwood chef to see if can make the sauce quickly.
Ingredients:
How to make :
Can keep the sauce in a thermos for a couple of hours or keep on low heat (60 to 65 degrees Celsius). It is also possible to “flavour” the sauce by cooking separately some shallots for example and collecting the butter through a sieve, adding this flavoured butter to the rest of the butter.
Serve with a nice toast of bread and some poached eggs.
A typical Sunday must have….super easy to make and perfect to boost the early winter morale.
The only problem is that you need a special tray to cook them!
Ingredients:
How to make :
Perfect with a coffee after lunch or as a quick snack mid-day.
It is better to cook eggs straight from the fridge into boiling water, this makes it easier to peel the eggs.
If you want the ultimate cooking method, put a little bit of water in the bottom of a pan, bring it to a boil (quicker than boiling a full and put a steamer grill in the pan. Put your eggs on the grill straight from the fridge for the number of minutes required to get your perfect egg.
