Setting Up Your Pynq Z2 Dev Environment While the Pynq Z2 development board is marketed as being a Python environment with FPGA hardware accelerators, it is a very capable FPGA development board. Due to the python+accelerator is the main marketing pitch, there isn't a lot of documentation on getting things set [...]
Shelving the 3D-Printed Shelves My original plan was to 3D print individual shadow boxes for each of the 118 chemical elements, mount LED's in them, and make a truly insane periodic table of elements display….with real elements. Well, I'm still collecting elements, BUT, the 3D printed part is out for the [...]
Element Collection + Display Update Gotta say, the collection is simultaneously the easiest thing ever and the largest pain in the rear. On one hand, you can purchase just about every element in pure or semi-pure states for $10-40 for a few grams. On the other hand, some are stupidly hard [...]
If you've ever met me in person, you'll know that I'm a chemistry buff. You'll also know that I'm a hoarder collector who is always in search of something new to start. Well, here we go - I'm starting an element collection. Inspired by some of the interesting displays shown on YouTube channels like [...]
Want to increase the life of your K40's laser tube? How about more precise power control? Start here! While the K40 laser cutter (aka an eBay/Alibaba laser cutter) is branded as a 40 watts, it really isn't. For reasons I won't go into in this article, it is closer to a 30W laser in [...]
Get yourself a new laser cutter? Plug it in just to find out that it either doesn't work or do what you thought it should? Let's upgrade it! One of the simplest things you can do to improve the capabilities of your cheap, Chinese laser cutter, sometimes known as a K40, is to upgrade [...]
Make An Indicating Fuse Box! 3D Printed Indicating Fuse Box BEHOLD! The indicating fuse box! Gone are the days that you must ask yourself, "Did the Earth stop spinning? Or did I just blow a fuse?!?" For eons, mankind has been stuck with boring fuse connections, BUT NO MORE!!! [...]
I have to say, I love knitting, I love electronics, and I was elated to find that you could combine the two. After a bit of research, I found the AYAB project and dove in. Unfortunately, I struggled to find a lot of documentation when I embarked on this road a few years ago, [...]
As I mentioned in the previous post, I picked up a "K40" laser cutter off of eBay. I knew when I bought it that it was going to be bad. Well, it arrived and I had the chance to dig through it a bit. In a nutshell, it's bad. Not just bad, but baaaaaaaad. What [...]
This is a pretty old post at this point. I'm working on getting my upgrades up on this site with better documentation. I stuck with much of this post (it was somewhat of a brain dump at the time) but did change a few things. Check out this (much newer) post to [...]