Retro Lamp Resto

In August this year, I had a brilliant day at the snow (Falls Creek) with my lovely wife, sister-in-law and nephew, followed by a day of cruising around the Kiewa and Ovens valleys, enjoying the scenery and searching for treasure in every junk and antiques store we saw.

I found this ugly duckling lamp for $15 at the Co-op Collectibles Vintage Store in Dederang. Surely that mucky bakelite and rusty metal could be made more interesting! What on earth were they thinking with that concrete block though?

“Unrealised potential”

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Old gauge, new tricks

Original gaugeSomething I’ve been wanting to do for a while: Convert a mechanical gauge to display sensor data, such as temperature or water tank levels, rather than display data on a screen. At the start of 2016 I picked up a couple of pressure gauges from an antique bazaar. Here’s the story of one gauge’s conversion.

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Another repair: E-reader edition

Broken Kobo TouchA couple of years ago, I bought a broken Kobo e-reader on eBay for A$10. My hope was that a factory reset or easy repair would bring it back to life. Alas, no. It turned out to be a cracked display, so I stashed the Kobo in a drawer as a possible source of parts. But I recently found that my favorite Chinese super store sells E Ink displays. So I ordered one… Continue reading

Remote enhancements

I like to tinker and to solve problems for the fun of it. However, this project might confirm that I’m just downright lazy.HTPC remote - bench test

I solved two ‘problems’ this week: adding remote power-on capability to my home theater PC (HTPC) and remotely switching input selections on an HDMI switch box — by reassigning a couple of unused buttons on our TV’s remote control.

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Flogging a dead cap

It costs a lot to get faulty electronic devices repaired, right? High labour costs and cheap retail prices mean a low threshold when deciding whether to repair or replace.

Electrolytic capacitors

However, with a little knowledge of practical electronics, DIY repair is possible and can be incredibly cheap — especially if it involves a power supply and faulty capacitors.

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Remote camera shutter release

Fully set upHave you ever needed to photograph a batch of objects in a consistent, repeatable way? I needed to take photos of more than 200 vinyl records to list on eBay. I couldn’t face the idea of doing this without some automation, so the Arduino-shutter-button-presser was born. Continue reading