Posts Tagged: DIY
RetroPie Controller
I’ve had a USB SNES controller for a while and kept wanting to throw a Pi Zero in it….but I also wanted a USB hub to be part of it somehow. I have been sitting on it for a while but couldn’t seem to get things to fit in nicely. Well, today I decided not to care about form so I could have function. So I present the ugliest controller build your eyes have seen!
Obviously, not pretty…but at least I can plug in a mouse and keyboard or whatever when needed.
Tessel.io
So I was able to get my hands on a tessel board and it has been a lot of fun! I’ve been toying with simple servo controls all the way to the Bluetooth Low Energy module (learning that from scratch was interesting!).
Using the servos I made a little arm to pick things up…but since it is made out of balsa wood, it is pretty flimsy.
I was able to get my hands on a stepper motor and get that working with the tessel so ideally I’ll keep going the same route to have the “arm” move up and down a track knowing it’s position as it goes. Maybe even have the arm be able to do a full 360 twist as well to be able to work on both sides of the track. Check out a video of what I have so far here.
The cool thing about the tessel is it’s native language is javascript so most developers coming from a web background can easily get to tinkering with hardware/electronics with it!
Will be exciting to see what others pull off with this thing!
External Power Supply on older iMacs!
So, I got an older g5 iMac for free from my brother-in-law because it was acting up on him. When I first got it, noun it worked fine for me! But after a few months, it would just start shutting down randomly…and eventually it wouldn’t turn on at all.