Fun projects (aka "I'm bored…")

Table of Contents

1. Reference To publish this:

(x-hugh-org-publish-fun-projects)

2. Reference Best place to buy used books https://www.betterworldbooks.com/

3. Reference Motors vs steppers vs servos

4. Reference How to program an Arduino Nano with an Uno

5. Reference Using the TP4056 for solar battery charging

6. Reference Re-using vape pen batteries

7. Doing Fun project: OMG Sonic tomography for trees

7.1. Rough plan:

Start with two nails on opposite side of tree. Hammer one; detect wave in the other; figure out time of flight between the two.

7.1.1. Step 0: Count time between button pushes

  • Press button; start timer
  • Press button again; stop timer
  • Print time between those two events.
  • Interrupts for both.
  • Step 0b: two buttons.

7.1.2. Step 1: count time between hammer and received wave

  • Hammer to ground
  • Nail to +3v
  • esp32 3v <-> pull-up resistor <-> ground 🔨--- esp32 GPIO <-----------------–—+

    long piece of wood

    esp32 other GPIO <------------–—> nail

8. DONE Weather vane + Arduino

9. SetAside ESP32 remote control for Spotify

10. DONE Fun project: Scrape pollen counts from this API

  • https://www.pollen.com/forecast/historic/pollen/98225
  • Request:

    {
      "GET": {
        "scheme": "https",
        "host": "www.pollen.com",
        "filename": "/api/forecast/historic/pollen/98225/30",
        "remote": {
          "Address": "52.23.90.186:443"
        }
      }
    }
    
  • Response:

    {
      "Type": "pollen",
      "ForecastDate": "2023-05-22T00:00:00-04:00",
      "Location": {
        "ZIP": "98225",
        "City": "BELLINGHAM",
        "State": "WA",
        "periods": [
          {
            "Period": "2023-04-23T05:30:32",
            "Index": 1.7
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-04-24T05:30:32",
            "Index": 4.2
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-04-25T05:30:33",
            "Index": 8.8
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-04-26T05:30:32",
            "Index": 8.1
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-04-27T05:30:32",
            "Index": 8.5
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-04-28T05:30:32",
            "Index": 8.6
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-04-29T05:30:33",
            "Index": 9.7
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-04-30T05:30:33",
            "Index": 7.9
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-01T05:30:32",
            "Index": 7.8
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-02T05:30:32",
            "Index": 8.4
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-03T05:30:32",
            "Index": 7.4
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-04T05:30:32",
            "Index": 7.8
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-05T05:30:32",
            "Index": 1.9
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-06T05:30:33",
            "Index": 4.7
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-07T05:30:32",
            "Index": 6.4
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-08T05:30:33",
            "Index": 7.6
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-09T05:30:32",
            "Index": 7.7
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-10T05:30:32",
            "Index": 8.1
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-11T05:30:32",
            "Index": 9
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-12T05:30:32",
            "Index": 8.9
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-13T05:30:32",
            "Index": 9.1
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-14T05:30:32",
            "Index": 9.2
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-15T05:30:32",
            "Index": 9.2
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-16T05:30:32",
            "Index": 7.7
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-17T05:30:32",
            "Index": 7.9
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-18T05:30:32",
            "Index": 8.5
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-19T05:30:31",
            "Index": 8.5
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-20T05:30:32",
            "Index": 8.6
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-21T05:30:32",
            "Index": 9
          },
          {
            "Period": "2023-05-22T05:30:33",
            "Index": 5.7
          }
        ],
        "DisplayLocation": "Bellingham, WA"
      }
    }
    

11. Doing Solar lamp as power supply for ESP32

12. NEXT Fun project: Arduino "radar" ultrasonic display

13. NEXT Fun project: Ikea Air Sensor – use the pico for this!

14. NEXT Winogradsky column

15. NEXT Microscopy

16. NEXT Food computer

17. NEXT Thunderboard Sense

18. NEXT Finish up Russet

19. NEXT Finish Geiger counter!

20. NEXT Magnetic field surveying

21. Homebrew seismometer

Went with Raspberry shake in the end

21.2. Seismometer with MPU6050

22. ESP32 trailcam

23. Lolin32 3D printed case

24. Infragram: monitoring plant health via near-infrared light

25. CCS811: VOC + eCO2 sensor

  • https://www.sparkfun.com/news/2369

    One measurement that causes a lot of confusion is "Equivalent CO2." The CCS811 will report equivalent CO2 in parts-per-million, but that number can be a little bit deceptive. It's important to recognize that the CCS811 cannot measure CO2 and that the "equivalent CO2" being reported by the CCS811 has nothing to do with actual CO2 present in the area. So why the heck is it called "CO2 Equivalent Units" and why would anyone need it? The answer comes down to the use of indoor air quality sensors — like the CCS811 — in HVAC control.

    Building ventilation, it turns out, is all about occupancy. The more people present in a space, the more CO2 they're exhaling, and the more ventilation is required. Now, it's certainly possible to design and operate an HVAC system around the design occupancy of a building or room, in other words the number of people expected to use a space. But this means that you may be wasting energy at times when the building isn't actually occupied. To solve this problem, many HVAC systems will monitor the concentration of CO2 in a given area in order to calculate the amount of air exchange needed in a scheme called "demand-controlled ventilation."

    Makers of indoor air quality sensors that don't detect CO2 (in an attempt to market their devices for demand-controlled ventilation systems) have correlated rising CO2 levels in certain environments to rising VOC levels. It's important to recognize that this is a correlation of the change in levels and not a correlation of the levels themselves: High VOC concentrations are not analogous to high CO2 concentrations. But it can be said that if the VOC concentration of a given space begins to slowly climb above baseline, it probably corresponds to room occupancy and an increase in CO2 (because humans exhale both CO2 and VOCs). Therefore, the manufacturers of these devices report the "CO2 Equivalent Units" with respect to this correlation so that their devices might fit more easily into an existing demand-controlled ventilation scheme.

  • Library: https://github.com/maarten-pennings/CCS811

26. Balloons around the world

27. Floaters and buoys

28. Underwater glider - hackaday project winner for 2017!

29. Vancouver maker spaces & resources

30. Muon hunter kit

31. More particle detectors

32. Photo Upsampling

33. High-Resolution 3D Human Digitization from A Single Image.

34. OpenDataCam

35. Bird banding

36. openbot.org - smartphone + arduino robot

37. Open source water bottle floater & GPS tracker

38. Raspberry Pi Seismometer

39. https://github.com/plant99/felicette

40. Anthotype printing

41. NDVI with Arduino

42. https://publiclab.org/

43. Measuring wind speed with microphone noise 🤯

44. TinyML book

45. Long-lived Arduino data logger on batteries

46. Lightning detector

47. Nerdfeeder

48. CoSMO stream flow data

  • see CoSMoSpring2022newsletter.pdf in this directory

49. Solar charger night light – good reference for other projects

Good overview of calculating power requirements for solar charging a battery: https://hackaday.io/project/185217-diy-solar-bottle-lamp

50. Focus stacking!

51. Use arduino uno as FTDI for ESP32 Cam

52. Magnetometer surveying

53. Lollybot – good for web dev, maybe

54. Web development

55. Hydrogen line astronomy

56. Otto - simple, 3D printed arduino-based robot

57. Solar-powered, waterproof ESP32 camera

58. Bat ultrasonic tracking

  • Echo Meter Touch
  • Hooks up to smartphone, Ids calls like Merlin does for birds
  • apparently at Coquitlam library – but looked on [2022-08-22 Mon] and could not find any mention. They do have a tech centre with telescopes, binos, 3d printers, etc – so maybe just not up on their website?
    • Emailed Coquitlam Library to ask.

59. Car logger ODB2

60. Kmonad

61. Fun project: automatic rebooter for weather station, router

62. Fun project: Sign up as pull reviewer for $$$

63. Fun project: Go through opendata.aws

  • Also: aws.amazon.com/earth

64. Fun project: OpenCTD: open source ocean-going probes

65. Fun project: AI for detecting algal blooms

66. Fun project: Homebrew ocean floater with satellite modem

67. Fun project: Soaking pasta to cook it

68. Fun project: Arduino water quality monitoring station

69. Fun project: Lisp for microcontrollers!

70. Fun project: Join Queensborough biodiersity project on iNaturalist

71. DONE GPS plotter

https://makersportal.com/blog/portable-gps-tracker-with-arduino

  • good example of what can be done w/the gps agent I got from dad

72. DONE Anemometer for weather station

72.1. [2021-03-05 Fri]

  • Did first pass at software
  • Had to use Arduino IDE to compile – compilation errors when compiling
    • arduino-wx-transmitter worked – suspect the Makefile I'm including there (that is, the upstream Arduino-Makefile) is diff from the one I'm including in the anemometer code.
    • Just for the record:
      • working with Arduino-IDE: /home/aardvark/dev/arduino/anemometer/sketchjan02a
      • Not working, fiddle with Makefile: /home/aardvark/dev/arduino-anemometer
    • Got it working!
      • 3 magnets taped in place
      • sensor in right place
      • interrupt handling for detection
      • rpm, interval time
    • Orientation of magnets & sensor will be important – these things need to go close. Poss there will be collisions if not careful. Will need to think about adjustable placement for sensor + repeatable placement for magnets
    • Next steps:
      • Collect & send to InfluxDB
      • Think about placement of sensor – some kind of arm that can be moved into place? Something on a screw?
      • Record orientation – marks on magnets, pictures, record placement of sensor

72.2. Whoah, been a while…

73. DONE Soil moisture probes

74. DONE Birdhouse camera

75. Fun project: Wifi tank + camera

76. ML - Open source LLMs are eating our lunch

77. Fun project: Set up DD-WRT on DIR-615 routers

78. Fun project: Write a python firefox extension

79. Fun project: Import Environment Canada wind data to Grafana

80. Fun project: Generate charts like this for weather

81. Fun project: Take a look at spotify data

  • Have a look in Downloads: …or just re-download

82. Fun project: Anecdata – citizen science platform

83. Fun project: NASA Javascript framework for maps, globes

84. Fun project: Arduino + Quaternions

85. Fun project: Python webdev projects, some react-like

86. Fun project: Sentinel timelapse

87. Fun project: DIY air purifier

88. Fun project: Emacs client for iNaturalist

89. Fun project: Shazam from CLI

  • https://github.com/loiccoyle/shazam-cli
  • "To use these scripts you'll need your own API key. It can be obtained from rapidapi you'll need a RapidAPI account and subscribe to the Shazam API (there is a free a plan). "
    • RapidAPI looks like fun on its own…

90. Fun project: Infinigen: procedurally generated worlds, Python+Blender

91. Fun project: Cloud chamber!

92. Fun project: vterm for Emacs

93. Fun project: Trees & strain gauges!

Enhancing TreeMMoSys with a high-precision strain gauge to measure the wind-induced response of trees down to the ground: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2022.e00379

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245631

94. Fun project: bat detector!

95. Fun project: Play with Open-Meteo APIs: climate change, weather forecasts

96. Fun project: citizen weather reporting

97. Fun project: https://newscrewdriver.com/2023/08/23/solar-monitor-battery-charging-failure/

98. Fun project: Wyze v3 hacks project

99. Fun project: DIY magnetometer kit

100. Fun project: Citizen science: soil evaluation

101. Fun project: Efficient/tiny ML: online course

102. Fun project: Write an interpreter in golang

103. Fun project: Planktoscope

104. Fun project: Tote – simple servo-based 4-legged robot

105. Fun project: Cheap Yellow Display – ESP32 w/display & more

106. Fun project: Simplest quadruped robot

107. Fun project: Solargraphy: long-term pinhole camera of the sun

108. Fun project: Scientific American Book of Projects for the Amateur Scientist

109. Fun project: Emacs & LLMs

110. Fun project: Personal mp3/ogg player

111. Fun project: Bucket ponds – aquariums without much work (allegedly)

112. Fun project: How to make jungle music

113. Fun project: Add EU radiation data to Grafana

114. Fun project: UV imaging!

115. Fun project: locally-run LLMs with Bash

116. Fun project: TinyML

117. Fun project: Llama GPT on Pi4

118. Fun project: Lithium battery series on Hackaday.com

119. Fun project: 3d printed radio controller

120. Fun project: Spotify favourites -> genre playlists

121. Fun project: Continuous rotation servo reference

122. Fun project: Jellyfin media server

123. Fun project: Hacking a bluetooth speaker

124. Fun project: Build An Audio AI App Course

125. Fun project: UTC clock

126. Fun project: Bonsai trees

127. Fun project: http://avtanski.net/projects/

  • Neat stuff!

128. Fun project: tic-tac magnetometer

129. Fun project: Measuring atmosheric co2 with SCD40/41 sensor

130. Fun project: Migrating bird sounds at night

131. Fun project: Microscope photography

132. Fun project: One-servo walking robot

133. Fun project: Mothbox!

134. Fun project: Make a lisp

135. Fun project: Vancouver water levels

136. Fun project: Atari punk console

137. Fun project: auto bed levelling

138. Fun project: Tardigrades!

139. Fun project: Octoprint on an Android phone

Author: Saint Aardvark

Created: 2024-12-13 Fri 19:02

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