Maker Faire 2016

Here is my walkthrough video of the Maker Faire that was held in Newcastle England.

It was a brilliant day. Found the Life Centre really easy and the parking was directly across the road from the event.

I met a Borg and my wife had a conversation with  a Dalek. As is always with these events I came away with lots of ideas for projects and it was a good idea that I didn't go with a ton of money or it would have been spent on the myriad of products that where on sale.

The video doesn't show everything that was there on the day but it will give you a pretty good idea as to what was on offer on the day, including a brilliant act called  'Lords of Lightning' which literally electrified Time square

Cant wait till the next one.

Portable Potting Bench

My wife was having trouble getting down to re-pot the plants in the garden due to her back problems. I was looking through the back of the garage and found an old portable washing stand from when we used to go camping.

We don't really have anywhere permanent for potting bench so I decided to upcycle the wash stand.

I had a couple of old pallets left so used this to make a box and shelf to fit over the wire frame. I all folds flat when not in use and fits inside our small shed. I also made a lid for the top of the box to cover it over from rain for the times we do leave it out for a while.

Here are a few pictures of the finished bench,

My MAC Allister 3,6V MESD36 LI Cordless Screwdriver

Here is my review of the MAC Allister 3.6V MESD36 LI  Cordless Screwdriver

It has a some really cool features including carousel storage of screwdriver bits inside the screwdriver that can be loaded via a pump action ala shotgun.

It also has an LED to help when you are screwing in those dark spaces.

Making a Bead Spider

Someone I know was wandering around my pictures and came across the pictures of the bead spiders I used to make and sell on ETSY. She asked if I could show her how to make them.

The design is very simple and can be used and modified to make pendants and ear rings or ornaments.

I decided the best way to present this was to create an Instructable for it.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Creating-a-Bead-Spider/

Sons first attempt at a walking robot

My son needed a skill to do for his Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award. He decided he wanted build a walking robot. This was a big step from the basic electronics he had learned at school. Before attempting this he had played with motors and LED's but he has never done any programming or touched a servo in his life.
Ever enthusiastic he worked out a design he wanted to attempt after looking at some walking robot videos on Youtube. he decided to make a 4 legged robot. here is
the first attempt at testing the basic principles of his design.



as you can see from the video the table is very slippery and he established he needed to add feet to help with the grip. Next step to tidy up the wiring and add feet. progress will be shown in a future video.

Teardown Liff Wrappa electronic water conditioner

Here is my tear down of the Liff Wrappa water conditioner that i found attached to my pipes when i moved in the  house. It didn't seem to be making any difference to the water quality so I removed it and decided it might be interesting to see whats inside.

100 Billion barrels of oil in the uk :(

100 billion barrels of oil found under the south east countryside ok England.
However only 15% of it can be recovered because that amount is in shale rocks that have naturally fractured.
This still sounds like a lot of oil to get out the ground. But what happened to renewables ?  Surely it would be better to be concentrate on researching ways to create renewable energy. We have a big badass sun in the sky and money spent to improve the conversion rate of solar cells and collectors would be a much better solution to run along with wind and wave technology.
I think this new find and the mentioning that its held in fractured shale is again the start of media manipulation to quietly push the public to accepting fracking.

I live up at the northern tip of England and am glad they have discovered this well away from me. In a few years lets see if the fat cats of London and the surrounding area are being poisoned by their greed by the polluted water table they create.

Why rubbish such a lovely area of the country !!!