Over the last few weeks I've been playing around at Ape Index Leicester, it's like a ninja warrior training gym with a climbing wall. I'm mostly playing but I've certainly been getting fitter because of it, I was talking to the owner who discussed a big red button project like they have at the end of the ninja warrior course. Wiring one up is tricky because the place is so big so it sounded like a perfect match for some of my ESP8266 work.
It's a simple browser based stopwatch app written with javascript, this is served up from the ESP8266 as an access point. A websocket is opened to transfer data too and from the browser without refreshing the page. When you press start on the screen the light on the button becomes illuminated, when you push the big red button the timer stops counting, so you can start the system from one end of the course and see what time they get at the other end.
This is very much a fun project I threw together in an hour this evening while cutting useless machines. The internals definitely reflect this, thrown together with sticky tape and bits. I used a rechargeable battery for a power supply but some strain relief on the cables would be preferred. Ultimately this system should tie into a larger screen to show the current time but that's future work.
Big Red Button Simple Box
On/Off switch on the back of the box
Very messy impromptu internals including rechargeable battery
The RDC6442G controller from Ruida This is going to be quite an image heavy post describing the rewiring needed to convert between the Leetro controller and the Ruida controller. It is also pretty straight forward on the old Just Add Sharks laser cutters because all of the wires are clearly labelled. The controller was prepared in the previous step in order to make this conversion process as smooth as possible. The Leetro (Pad03) panel on the left and the Ruida panel on the right The view from inside the laser looking up at the control panel The control panel is an easy place to start, both panels have just a single cable that runs down to the controller, both panels are a very similar size, with the Ruida panel being slightly smaller underneath so it will fit in the hole left behind easily. The Pad03 panel clips into place so you'll need to reach up inside the machine to work the clips loose. The cable runs down the inside of the laser and is cable tied onto mounti...
This is my laser cut cryptex. It features 28 different characters and 9 rings, giving a total possible 10.5 Trillion different combinations. I took a bit of time developing the design so that I could add some nice features. This cryptex file is laid out so that you can have any number of rings in your own design. The best feature is that the codeword is changeable, each locking ring has an outer letter ring that can be placed in any one of the 28 different positions. Once the rings are back in place the ring locking bars can added and they prevent the rings from being modified until the box is open again. It's a bit hard to explain so I made a video showing how it all work ( svg here ) It took a long time to assemble this so I lived with my initial design choices but if I were to remake it I would adjust the file to make the ring locking bars out of 6mm ply and maybe put some blind holes onto the code rings to prevent the code being brute forced.
A while back I found myself on one of Dinkydoodle Designs cake course where I made a moving BB9 cake , it taught me a lot about the cake making process and I used a lot of that knowledge in making this new Toothless Dragon cake. The electronic parts are simply a servo, arduino, neopixels and a sound recorder, all fairly common parts but I learned a lot making/baking my own cake. A 9 inch round cake was baked , cut and modified to form the basic shape required. Two crescent shapes were cut and moved up to form horns, the two eye sockets were added to the cheeks to pad them out a bit. The cake was covered in chocolate ganache to smooth out the lumps and bumps and firm the design up. Larger dollops of ganache further filled the gaps between the horns and the head. Chocolate Silk sugarpaste was used to cover the whole cake. A large rolled sheet was stretched into place, smoothed and trimmed down to the board. Details were added using rolled...
