quick update

ahhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHhhhhh exams.

Also, I build the standing desk as previously shown on this blog 😀

status – hiatus

it pains me a lot to write this post, however I always knew it would kinda happen.

Exam time has come to my university (well in two weeks) and being a bit of an overly tepid student, I am going to throw myself to the fullest extent into studying.

What does this mean? Well I am going to not be posting until after exams. I know it’s sad, however I am going to work on designs as I take breaks studying (as well as watching episodes of Seinfeld). Furthermore when I am done with exams I will (hopefully but probably not) have more time as the next quarter of classes warms up.

PANCAKEPRINTEROMFG

Sick and sleepy, but still here: I’m Wo Meijer saying “pancake printer, that is all”

I can finally bring my 90’s speaker driver into this century… about time

If Stalin taught us anything it’s that infrastructure is crucial to the success of a modern country and a pain in the back side. Also something about being a mass murderer and just a crazy guy. But making new roads, bridges, and water pipes for a whole country is expensive. But so is buying a new Bluetooth speaker.

I love the Bluetooth speakers I have, they mesh with my phone so well, you just turn them on and my phone connects! Unfortunately conspired to proper speakers I have they lack in the sound department, however why would I ever use a cable in this day and age? It’s not 2013 anymore.

presenting the Ichi

if that looks like a Chromecast, but shorter and then with two RCA cables instead of the HDMI…. then you were thinking what I was thinking when I made this. I mean, is there anything wrong with that? Just plug it in the back of a speaker amp and power it with micro USB, connect with bluetooth (instead of wifi) and boom, you can use any phone worth having with it (burn Nokia 3310).

please enjoy this crudely drawn concept drawing.

More nexus 5 stuff

So looking around Etsy and stuff the only thing that I could find for my nexus 5 were cases… Which makes me super sad. What’s the point of a phone if you can’t pay more money after you bought the darn thing.

Anyway I made an alarm clock for nexus phones (again in the spirit of turning old consumer electronics into things that interface exclusively with cellphones). Basically the idea is a small boom box with a AMOLED screen (so that it can show black with out having a back light which can wake you up).

 

The nice part about the nexus 5 is that it has wireless charging and NFC meaning that you just need to put it on the special pad and it will charge the phone and let it know to connect to the boom box using bluetooth,

I dont know, I would kind of just like to be able to place my phone into the box. Any time I touch the front it lights up and tells me the time, and it could probably tell me if I have any notifications. And it blast music to wake me up

Shelves of Elves, but then not

I want to begin this by saying that the entire time I was working on this today I had a strange feeling like I could have seen this idea elsewhere, however I have not been able to locate what I made, so I hope everything’s good with all that.

Aaaany way, I designed some shelves! I made them the way I make most things, I stared deeply into the pond across from my house and immersed myself in thought. And then I did a little doodle, and then I opened up Solidworks and started doing stuff. Here’s what I got out of it:

it’s pretty basic, uhm, boxes with wavy fronts so you can connect them face to face. However this is kinda sad, it doesn’t offer an improvement on stacking or placing next to each other compared to your standard issue cardboard box.

So I did this:

yeah, there is probably a way to reduce the amount of wood… and change the fact that there is not really a nice way to do this. But damn it this is about design, or at least the attempt at it! So I am not going to bother myself with it right now. Anyway, what do we gain from this? Well won’t slide apart from each other that much, so that’s cool, and it just looks kinda funky, the problem is it’s no longer flat on the bottom…

look at those extra pads 😀

pencil case

So, today has been a long day for me already, topped off with being tired and a bit cranky and very uninspired, I sat down and started sketching a bit to try and make something happen. And then, when I was picking a coin up from under my desk it hit me. My pencil.

So, I decided to make a pencil case.

here it is in an unfortunate gray (I can’t figure out the solidworks appearances right now). Basically I opted to go for a simple cylindrical design (although I was thinking of making it a decagon in honor of my pencil of choice, the Pentel P205).

Personally I don’t like to sound like a tinkerer’s cart when I walk around or bike, so my idea to combat that is to put high density foam on all sides and in addition I have been trying to work out a kind of expanding starfruit spring thing…. yeah, it’s as hard to explain as it is to model, however the idea is a spring that pushes the pencils to the outside of the cylinder to keep things cool. so cool

Children’s Artistic Outlet, Meet Industrialization.

So, it’s election time in my neck of the woods and one of the parties decided to advertise by having people go around and use chalk to draw their logo. Well, I was biking by and I kinda realized that chalk would be a pretty good way to advertise, it can have nice colors but it washes out 😀 so my product for today is a robot that does that. Why am I putting that in words instead of just blasting a picture? well, my Solidworks crashed and now I am left with this

look it’s a robot that is sized to move along a sidewalk and big enough so people will notice it. Not shows, uhm… everything.

well that’s not exciting, however things get more interesting when you think about how to ‘print’ with the chalk. First I was thinking of just using a piece of street chalk. The problem is that chalk works best when you can change the angle you write with and make sure that the whole piece doesnt crumble. My solutions is this:

 

You can use a compressed air jet and powdered chalk that gets blasted by the jet into the concrete. I have no idea if this will work, so if someone wants to fund some research into the best way for a robot to draw with chalk, you can email me.

 

This one’s for the ones with the ones that have those things.

Unlike you cool kids with your Mac computers and lack of unnecessary ports, my fat ass laptop has an Express Card/54 Slot and since it also has wifi, decent speakers, and an sd card reader, I have no idea what I would use it for besides for holding the dust cover.

UNTIL NOW

That’s a little tiny usb cable in a Express Card/54 Slot 😀 I worked on making it decent to use (little slots for your fingers and all that. But it’s pretty much a one and done simple concept, because according to the European Union we don’t need no stinking Thunderbolt.

boop

You can hear me now, more clearly than before

Oh snizzity snap it’s a busy Monday, so I decided to design something kinda small. But I think it’s cool 😀 here it is!

it’s the REC! 😀 a high quality microphone accessory for the Nexus 5, because I am not a part of your Steve Jobs, thunderbolt, Apple mainstream… wait, android has a bigger market share now doesn’t it….. damn, guess I could start using windows phone again.

Aaaany way, I came up with this idea when I saw this. I like that accessories are made that make it easier to get nicer videos from a cellphone. So I decided to tackle an area that is oft neglected, sound! Now this is not really the best mic design for movies, I might design a shotgun mic case later on 😀