MSRaynsford

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