MSRaynsford

It is my intention to cover the whole depth of the coding that went into the NikolAI puzzle box  and I really didn't want to start with the 'Blink LED' project because everybody does that and it's been done a million times over but it's just too darn useful. I'm not going to cover setting up Arduino because even I've done that tutorial before. PinMode(2, OUTPUT); set up digital line 2 as an output to turn the LED on/off DigitalWrite(2, HIGH/LOW); actually turns the digital line 2 on/off, blinking an LED Delay(1000); creates a time delay of 1000 milliseconds between turning the line on/off So there it is, the simplest blink LED program. This can be found all over the internet and it does the job of blinking an LED and that's about it. There's actually a few issues with this as a program and you'd never use it in sensible program so I thought it would actually be much more useful for me to describe what's wrong with this example and lay out...

Last summer, I had the privilege of creating a puzzle box for Chris Ramsay , the Canadian Magician and Youtube Puzzler (Not the English comedian Chris Ramsey ). Like most projects of this nature I failed to take enough photos, I rushed to complete it in a good time and I didn't even write about it here. Thanks to some very keen collectors, I have an opportunity to rebuild the box this summer. This time around I am going to write about it, documenting the design choices and code that goes into such a creation. I've even found time to list it on my puzzle website should anyone be interesting in purchasing their own copy.  https://www.donteatpuzzles.com/nikolai The project was delivered in July 2024 and was filmed almost immediately by Chris and his team. I think it's fair to say that he loved it. Seeing all of my efforts being appreciated in this was is rather magical. I should just take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported me in making this, whether it was playte...

This is a binary sequence puzzle box built from 3mm birch plywood, it uses a Gray code pattern to ultimately align all the dials into a rainbow pattern before the lid can be removed. It's actually a redesign of a puzzle inside Loki's box of Tricks  because I thought it would make a cool stand alone puzzle box. The files are available for sale in my Etsy store . ( svg here ) The puzzle consists of five interlocking disks that can only rotate when the disks either side of it are in the correct position to allow it. The large wheel in the middle and the disks on the underside of the lid further restrict the rotation of the disks. The large wheel must be pointed to the disk that is being rotated and the large wheel is in turn restricted from pointing to the smaller disks depending on alignment. Once all the disks are aligned into the full rainbow the large wheel is completely free to rotate and can be turned to the edge of the box and allows the lid to be removed. There is a very ...

The time is 12:10 and 31 seconds Now that we finally moved house we have space for all the extra things. The new house has a large extension which allowed us to turn the old dining room into a bit of a games room. We're now the proud owners of a Stargate pinball machine  which we love but it's very possible to loose track of time while we're playing. I decided that we needed a clock in the room and it would be cool if it was in keeping with the pinball theme. I dug out an old dot matrix display and a wemos D1 wifi controller so that it can retrieve the time from the internet without the need to set it up. The screen is an 8x32 red LED dot matrix , controlled by the MAX7219 chip. The display uses SPI to connect to a Wemos D1 microcontroller , this means there's only three data lines that need to be wired between the two devices. Power and Ground are also connected to the Wemos board which allows the whole thing to be powered from the USB connection, this is useful for pr...

  I spent a bit more time sorting out the new workshop today. I finally got round to removing junk from the eaves on the other side of the garage and I installed boards on that side while I was up there. It's another large space to store things and the last of the easy spaces to board. I intend to bridge the gaps between the two sides but that seems to require a lot more complex shapes as I cut the boards to go around the joists so I'll have to think about that one. One unexpected bonus from having a roof full of junk belonging to the previous occupants is that I found two rolls of expensive underlay. This will come in very handy when we put carpet in the final bed room. The laser has been up and running and I've actually managed to spend time making a few projects this week. I intend to write them up shortly but as a bank holiday tomorrow the kids will need occupying first :D

Tomorrow, for the first time since we moved into the new house four and a half weeks ago, both children are going to be in school at the same time and I actually have to do some work in my new workshop. I  thought I had prepared enough stock to last a few months but it turns out all of that sold pretty quickly and now I need to spend some time making new boxes.    I actually cut a lot of parts for Antikythera Tablets  before we left the old house so it's mostly just an assembly job but I needed a space to work on (I'm no longer allowed to take parts into the house for assembly :D ). I cleared down one of the benches and had a good tidy of everything else. It's still the same junk just better organised. In particular I now have a packing bench for all of my stock items and packaging.

  I sat with the river coasters on our coffee table for a few days and decided that they weren't quite right and that I could do better with them. I went back to the artwork and adjusted them to produce this new and improved design. The lower layer of the river now has it's own curves that differ from the upper layer, it's a more interesting shape for the whole coaster. The upper and lower layers but start and stop in the same positions so the tiles can still be laid in any order. The lower layer tiles also share common edges to make the cutting fast and simple. The lower layer now runs all the way to the edges which makes it look much more like a continuing river this achieved by cutting the two halves of coaster and spanning across the gap with a spar underneath the coaster. I'm using the stronger  5 Ply BR grade birch plywood  which is plenty strong enough for this 3x3mm spar. The spar locates into the lower layer of the coaster which is hidden under the top layer. J...