electronics

Solar freakin’ bird noises

by

I was tasked with building a device that emits bird noises at specific times of the day, with the intent of attracting real birds of that species to nests that had been built for them.

The problem was that these nests are in the middle of nowhere, so no power or internet – hence the solar bit.

There are commercially available devices to achieve this, but for some reason they are like 10 times as expensive as doing it yourself. I’m sure an electronics person could have done it cheaper still, but I’m a software person, so I spent just north of 100 bucks on:

  • Raspberry Pi Zero (with Raspbian)
  • Waveshare WM8960 Hi-Fi Sound Card & Speakers
    (official driver did not work, seeed-voicecard did)
  • Waveshare Solar Power Manager with a built-in LiPo Battery (10000mAh)
  • Polysilicon Solar Panel (18V 10W)

Read more

USB Battery Pack

by

After watching Systm Episode 86, I decided to build the second version of the USB Battery Pack. This is, as David has pointed out, not the best way of charging a USB device, as it simply relies on a 7805 Voltage Regulator. But I had one lying around, so I decided to go with this version.

usbbatterypackaltoid

I used an altoids-maxi-tin, which left me with enough space to fit an iPod cable in as well.

Brightlight

by

brightlight1

This was once a flatbed-scanner.
I extracted the fluorescent lamp and the circuit board needed to drive the lamp. Then I feed the wires through the goose neck down the the battery compartment which is an old flashlight box. 12 AA batteries fit in there, but as this is slightly insane, so I added a standard 12v connector (also from the scanner).
In order to protect the fluorescent lamp I used a pvc-tube and a small plastic box which once contained screws. I also painted them black to fit in with the battery compartment.
brightlight2