MSRaynsford

The final piece I made for the Vipers LRP event last month was this monument. I've made a similar display case before so we were trying to improve upon that one. This time the monument could only be opened once all the corresponding rune keys were in place. As the keys were scattered around we thought it would be cool to make them glow when they were inserted into the monument. Some simple LED and microswitch arrangement, side lit the perspex runes. The runes were supposed to be easy to insert and hard to remove. The body was made with ply but painted with a stone effect. I don't believe it fared particularly well in the weather and could have done with a coat of sealant but I shall learn for next time. I even managed to pick up an action shot of this item too.

A quick tray puzzle I was asked to make for a LARP event. I assume once all the events were placed in order some kind of secret was revealed. The arrows ensure that the pieces are put in the right way round and show which direction time travels, the events were jumbled before cutting so that the grain didn't give any clues.

I've come to the conclusion that I just don't need 3 laser cutters and I don't have space or time for them all anyway so I'm going to have to let this one go. It's barely been used, we bought it with Just Add Sharks and then never used it. I haven't used it for 6 months. It comes with RD works and should be compatible with Lightburn  which is what all the cool kids are raving about. It's also got a really lightweight head so it's super fast. I wish I had more time to play with it. If you're interested, it's up on ebay, try to snag a bargain. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Kent-Laser-Solo-40W-C02-laser-cutter-600x310mm-RD-Works/282927236074

Over the laser few weeks I had the joy of making some props for a LARP event. The first was 4 large wells/portals which specific inscriptions upon them. This was largely a woodworking project made from an old pallet, the inscription stones were engraved upon the laser and each stone was weathered using a hot air gun to give it a burnt looked. Some plastic sheet and lighting gave it the effect of being filled with water but it also made them waterproof so that actual water could be put inside them. As the event has now happened I even spotted some photos of the items in action.

Now that I've really got to grips with the ESP8266  I can start to use it in various projects. This one has been on the cards for a very long time and there are already lots of projects doing something similar here's my effort. For anyone still not sure what it is, Stranger Things  (season 1) is a tv series about a missing boy, who at one point, communicates with his mum through the medium of fairy lights. This is just a fun way to spell out messages for people but it's wifi controlled so any old phone can set up the messages to display. These displays are now available in my store as kits or working items, should you want to build one for yourself or read on for further details. The project is based around some 12mm WS2811 RGB led's. The 12mm lights have a lot of diffusion are easy to mount in holes and don't have to be spaced evenly apart making them ideal for quick installation in a back board like this. The board is 3mm birch pl...

During the wifi configuration tutorial I described a method to provide a firmware reset in the case that you forget the user name and password using an additional button (or wire loop). I also lamented the problems of the Wemos D1 board not being able to distinguish between a power cycle and a button reset. Today I'm going to discuss another way to achieve a firmware reset of the device without the requirement for any additional hardware. The method itself is quite simple and we have already used all required parts for the wifi configuration program. The first thing the device should do when it starts up, is set a flag in the non volatile memory and after a given period of time it should clear this flag again. Now if the device is reset before it has the chance to clear the flag we can tell that the reset button has been pushed twice in quick succession and use that as an indicator that we want to perform a firmware reset. There are a few items to declare at the start of ...

This is a set of wooden templates and tokens for the game 'Grasslands' . The game itself looks like a lot of fun and I like the idea you can get started with any old die cast toys. I loved the new mad max film and this looks like it fits right into that genre.