Posted on

Make a solar LED garden light from scratch

I will describe how to make a solar LED garden light from scratch, using the 5252f part which runs the light at night once the light on the solar LED gets low. It also keeps the battery from draining down too much and damaging the battery. It does not have an overcharge circuit. Be careful not to put too much of a solar panel, in milliamps, as you can overcharge the battery. But you might consider larger solar panels for AA batteries (rather than a AAA battery), or in places where the device might be indoors and not get a lot of sun, or only in direct sun for a limited time per day.

Check out my YouTube video covering this article. While this article goes into more detail in some spots, it does not contain all the information in the video, so check out both.

Continue reading “Make a solar LED garden light from scratch”
Posted on

Arduino Talking Dog Buttons

I’ve been following Christina Hunger’s Instagram posts and web page about her dog Stella and her board of buttons that enable her dog Stella to talk. It’s very incredible to see a real conversation between a dog and her owners. She’s using “Answer Buzzers” that you can get from Amazon, four buttons for $20 to $25. Each button can have a short phrase, or one word recorded on it, and Christina puts them on a piece of cardboard with a label near each one. Stella learns which buttons are what based on the position of the button on the board.

My Talking Dog Button board, made with an Arduino Mega and a 24″ x 48″ board that will hold up to 32 buttons.
Continue reading “Arduino Talking Dog Buttons”
Posted on

Repair and maintain your solar LED garden lights

I was disappointed trying to find articles or videos on how to repair the LED garden lights. In this article, I’m going to go over everything from maintaining to repairing your LED garden lights, instead of tossing them when they go bad. Depending on the value of the light, you still may want to toss the very cheap dollar or two lights, by if you have some nice ones, you can get them working again. I am veering off my normal woodworking, but I will get back to that soon. I am planning on making some color changing glass lights for the yard, as well as another project to make a light up house number that will also be solar powered, and have a nice wood frame.

Continue reading “Repair and maintain your solar LED garden lights”

Posted on

Dust Collection Monitor

I just finished and published my first product – the Arduino Shop Dust Collection Monitor. This was a fun project for me. The display tells me when to clean the cartridge filter in my dust collector.

The Dust Collection Monitor measures the pressure build up inside the cartridge filter. When the collector is on the filter pressure is displayed, which increases as the filter gets clogged with sawdust. When the pressure increases, it can help tell when it is time to clean the filter.

The monitor was built fairly cheaply using an Arduino. The monitor is hooked to the Internet, and can get and display the time, the temperature, humidity and barometric pressure in the shop. The dust collector motor tracks runtime in hours since the filter was last cleaned, since the filter was new, and a total for the dust collector itself.

To check it out – see my full article!

Posted on

Dust Collection Overview

I want to go over my dust collection system, and explain some of the tips and tricks that I know of. Dust collection is for a couple reasons. One: to get a lot of the sawdust and chips collected without making a mess over the shop. Two: to try to reduce the amount of dust in the air for you to breath.  Wood dust in the air is really bad for your lungs, especially the smaller particles. Also, you can get wood dust allergies, which would be bad if it made it so you couldn’t enjoy your hobby, or how you make your living.

Continue reading “Dust Collection Overview”