DIY

Experimenting with making cat litter out of biodegradable newspaper. It was pretty easy. Found a large strainer out on trash day.

1. Cut or shred recycled newspaper into ribbons.(above)

2. Soak in water with a little biodegradable soap

3. Strain and soak in plain water.

4. Sprinkle with baking soda and squeeze out water.

Let air dry for several days. I'll report back on how it worked. :-D

Eventually, I'd like to compost with mycoremediation for non-crop plants.

hello Lemmy,

Every little while I update you on my basement build as I encounter problems. I am pleased to tell you the city is out of our hair. We have gotten everything up to code.

So here is where things get weird. My roommate and I live down here in the basement. Our rooms don't have drywall or tile ceilings. Currently, our funds are exhausted, and I am not looking to pick a fight with the city over permitting with the ceilings. That's a someday kind of thing.

We would like a small modicum of noise privacy from each other though. Right now the walls go up to the top plate, and end at the joists. The joists are open, as illustrated.

I am thinking I put something in the joists. My thought was just to grab some faced fiber glass insulation, staple it in there, and cover up the other side with a piece cut out from a blanket. I was also thinking maybe some XPS, which would be easier to cut to size and shape around infrastructure. I'm worried about foam board's flammability. I was also checking around my options with various blanket types, finding wool to be a good option, and a welding blanket to be an option as well.

Am I insane? Are the words coming out of my mouth still making sense? Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? or any suggestions? Help would be appreciated.

Hi,

I have an old xiaomi 20 000mAh battery bank with two non working USB ports.

I've bought another one to replace it, but I'm wondering if there is a way to fix the ports.

The problem is that the case seems mostly sealed, and I see no way of opening it.

If you have some tips on how to approach this I would appreciate it ❤️

Hi,

I would like to build myself a DIY DVR

Here what I'm targeting

1. The software is FLOSS

2. Have a community/free/gratis version that can handle >= 16 cameras and it's usable (meaning not crazy restricted)
   or
   is paying, but not crazy scheme (like subscription etc..) So you pay once, and you can use that version forever for unlimited number of cameras.

3. Lightweight on resources ( can run on a Single-board computer )

4. Can handle Hardware compression.

5. Can handle Passthrough recording (IP camera)

6. Have a HTTP server User interface.

7. Can record audio, when the camera provide it.

8. Motion detection (possible to enable at certain times)

9. extra: Written in Python

10. can record in H265

Thanks.

If you have any reference or any good (recent) article I'm all ears :)

cross-posted from: https://lemmings.world/post/11714128

I tried to make a phone "wallet" case. I used the inside of my old one (what you press your phone into), cardboard from a an old box and some leftover vinyl flooring. I originally wanted to glue everything but ended up stapling some bits. these pics where hastily made and don't do the thing justice. Let's see how well this holds up (I seldom have it in my pocket so that helps).

hi all. i live in western Colorado, in the desert part rather than the mountain part, and it's HOT. and sunny. my house has a long west-facing wall full of large windows, and we've been keeping the blinds shut all day but it's not helping. i'm thinking of installing awnings.

my questions are, a) have you done this or something similar, and if so what did you do, b) are there awnings available that are NOT just plastic? and c) any other hints, tips, or ideas would be welcome.

My bathroom tub fixtures have seen better days. Pretty sure they're original to the house (~60 years). We have fairly hard water, and the prior owners were not the best at maintenance so no clue how long these slow leaks have been going on. But the shower handle is stuck hard on the valve, and the bath spigot is crumbling away and similarly fused in place. Hot and cold come off easily.

Does anyone have any tips for freeing the one handle and spigot? I've tried light tapping with a mallet on the back of the handle to no avail. The spigot seems bound pretty tightly, to the point where I'm concerned about damaging the pipe if I apply too much torque.

As for the leaks, I haven't decided if I'm going to just replace the valves, or try fiddling with/replacing the packing nuts. This is my first time messing with plumbing, but either way seems straightforward enough after watching a few videos.

Any tips/tricks/suggestions appreciated, thanks!

I bought this cheap bathroom vanity off of amazon and we assembled it. We cannot get the drawers on. These silver things get in the way. When I get them mounted in a way I feel is correct they prevent the drawer from closing all the way. I haven't dealt with anything like this.

Does anyone know how to mount it? I'm sure once its done Ill feel like an idiot for how simple it is.

Thanks

We have an electric cargo bike that’s served us really well. We bought it second hand at a pretty affordable price because the battery was shot. Fortunately we found a great local repair shop that could replace it, and we now have a pretty great bike.

Unfortunately the drum breaks on the front wheels are getting really bad after about 12 years or so, and our local bike repair shop is at a loss for finding new parts. The front wheels are mounted on an axle that’s controlled by hyudralics (which gives the bike a great turning radius), so they’re a bit special. The original hubs are Sturmey Archer XL-SD’s, but they don’t seem to be available anywhere.

Does anyone have suggestions for what I can use instead? Has anyone hacked their way to one-side-mounted front wheels for a three-wheeled bike, eg by using a through axle?

Hi!

I'm planning to try to get into some solar-powered (or low-powered) DIY projects.

I have a mechanical engineering background so I'm not super worried about learning technical stuff but I live in an apartment and don't really have ready access to a workshop.

Does anyone have good projects they've found? Having some creativity issues more than anything else, I think...

EDIT: I think this video shows a better design, although I note some improvements below:

Making a DIY analog force sensor under quarantine, with the Kontrol Freak. | KontinuumLAB

The main video linked uses two strips of copper bridged by the velostat, but this creates deadzones where those copper strips are, and probably also gives different responses depending on the shape of the region being pressed. I've done more research and a much more consistent method should be to sandwich the velostat between the two conductors so that the entire surface gives a consistent response that goes directly through the material. This should also give a more pronounced response because the length of the circuit through the velostat is only the thickness of the sheet, not the width of the pad. This should also make it less sensitive to changes in the pad size.

Some videos use conductive fabric, but the best one I found uses adhesive copper tape. If you're getting this, make sure to use copper tape that is conductive on the adhesive side, as not all of them are.

And a follow up video with a more refined method of building the pads and ideas about how to improve the analog-to-digital conversion:

Eight pressure-sensitive Velostat/Linqstat pads for a velocity-sensitive MIDI controller

There is also this method using piezo sensors, but from experience I know that this is completely insensitive to sustained holds. It's used for electronic drumkits because it measures percussion, not pressure:

DIY midi controller with 8 Velocity-Sensitive Drum Pads (on one chip Atmega328) 'Very simple'

I suppose combining a piezo sensor with a simple touch-sensitive control might achieve a good effect, but velostat seems like a simpler solution to me. Also if you want a capacitive sensor on the surface you probably can't use the soft rubbery material that nice MIDI pads use.

Also this guy is quite good at his explanations and breaks down quickly how to make a full button pad, although he still uses regular buttons and pressure-sensitive ones would need a bit more logic to understand:

Launchpad || DIY or Buy || Keyboard Matrix & MIDI Tutorial

So I've been looking into how to do this, and I found someone on reddit asking this same question like 3 years ago, and they're still active. I was planning to log in just to link them the video since literally everyone just told them to use regular buttons, but they obviously want to make the real thing, and it's a night and day difference between using velocity sensitive pads and simple buttons. Also they said they live in India where a lot of musicians can't afford the more intuitive interfaces because they're massively marked up, and I thought they should have the information they need to make a DIY solution.

Anyway, I realised giving them that link would be contributing to making reddit the go-to place for information, but I didn't find this there, I don't spend time there, and in fact my alts keep getting banned, and I'm the one adding the information.

So since reddit doesn't want me, I figure the best way to solve this is to make a post here and link them to it. That way I'm helping them with their problem, adding content to the fediverse, and linking people here.

The only thing to add is that I plan to expand on this to make a proper MIDI controller using some of the second video's suggestions for improvements, and I'll be making a modular set of boxes that can magnetise together to arrange however we want. Also I'm going to look for translucent silicone rubber that I can illuminate with RGB LEDs so the sequencing can be animated.

Anyway, if that person or anyone else finds their way here, hello! Welcome, this is a much better place than reddit.

Also interesting is this video.

From ProjectKamp.

So I have this silly idea/longterm project of wanting to run a server on renewables on my farm. And I would like to reuse the heat generated by the server, for example to heat a grow room, or simply my house. How much heat does a server produce, and where would you consider it best applied? Has anyone built such a thing?

Any recommendations? Are any of them usb-c rechargeable? Seems like most of the ones I'm seeing take AAA batteries.

Previously:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_Medal

Oh boy Fedi, do I have a weird one.

Ive posted here a few times regarding my basement build, and one of the handymen noted that if I am not going to cover up my ceiling, I have two exposed I beams. One runs through the kitchen, and one through a bedroom (mine). We were talking about mounting a spice rack, and he said I could mount a piece of wood on to an I beam trolly.

These things are cheap, and they are strong. What kind of fuckery can I get up to with them? Especially one in my bedroom? Is there anything ceiling mounted you just wish you could slide across the room, and back again? I'm envisioning something I can collapse against the wall.

Is this just insane?

This is clever. But in a way, it's also shifting the environmental impact from these bottle caps. I can't imagine under which conditions the birds' may be a problem (e.g. getting too much food). Maybe someone with better knowledge on these species can tell if there could be a downside (no matter how improbable, just the risk of X). Such risk may include the interaction through second or third organisms (e.g. lack of seed spread, abundance of parasitic prokaryotr, etc.)

Biological question aside, anyway... This is so cool! I'd like to try building one myself ;)

A couple of years ago I built two ram pumps and installed them in the stream near my house. They pumped water for the garden for a few months during spring and summer. I'm okay with the fact that the pumps are just useful during part of the year, but didn't really like damming up the entire stream for my installation, seemed rude towards wildlife.

So this year I returned with a longer tube and just took the water from further upstream. I have only about 70cm head. I haven't really measured the height I'm getting, but it's more than the first year and enough for what I want to do.

My installation in the stream is very simple: fence post hammered/wedged into the stream bed, pump tied to it with wire. Everything wobbles a tiny bit. Might return and solidify that later, but I love it when stuff is so simple that I can just throw it into the stream and it works. After a while of pumping by hand it just runs. Variations in water height might stop it as it sits low in the water. Will report back tomorrow.

This is for a reservoir IBC and washing tank outside the kitchen. I'm thinking about adding a solar heating panel in there as well.

The image is of a smaller kid-sized pump that I want to turn into a demonstration model to take to markets and fairs.

It was even the same brand. I love when hoarding materials pays back.