There oughta be…

…a blog with awesome projects. A collection of overcomplicated devices nobody needs. A sanctum for all the things that did not get living room clearance, but oughta be seen by fellow nerds.

There oughta be a PCB animation.

08 March 2021

Since I received several questions about how I created the rendered PCB animations of my previous project, the macro keyboard, I decided to record my work on a new PCB animation for an upcoming project. So, here is more than four hours of mostly unedited footage of my by no means professional Blender skills:

Thumbnail of the youtube video showing a schematic of the PCB on the left and the rendered result on the right.
Click the image to see the video on youtube.com.

There is not much more to say here. If you are interested in this, skip around in this very long video. If not, wait for the post about the project that will use this particular PCB.

There oughta be a macro keyboard.

17 February 2021

I built a dynamically assignable macro keyboard with an e-ink screen. What does that mean? Well, it is a device that pretends to be a regular keyboard, but the meaning of each button changes depending on which application you currently try to control. Let me show you in a video:

Thumbnail of a youtube video about the macro keyboard, showing the device with rainbow LEDs and images on the e-ink screen.
Click the image to see the video on youtube.com.

So, you now have an idea what I am talking about? Then let me explain the details in this article.

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There oughta be a way to use a Sony Alpha as a webcam.

17 December 2020

Hacking a Sony Alpha for clean HDMI out: On my journey to find the perfect image for video conferences and lectures with a spare DSLM camera I found several solutions to use a Sony Alpha as a webcam - with varying results and obstacles.

Thumbnail of a youtube video about using a Sony Alpha camera as a webcam, showing four simultaneous perspectives from four Sony Alpha cameras.
Click the image to see the video on youtube.com.

The video should give a good overview and examples of what to expect. This articles describes how to do it…

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There oughta be a smart garage door.

03 December 2020

Probably one of my less impressive projects. Controlling my old garage door opener via MQTT. If you cannot imagine what a garage door looks like when it opens, here is a three minute video of the setup:

Thumbnail of a youtube video about the smart garage door opener, light shining through the opening door.
Click the image to see the video on youtube.com.

Self-deprecating commentary aside, I simply trigger the input of the garage door opener with a relay and determine the garage door position with a Zigbee orientation sensor. Two components that just happened to be available as spares from other projects, but it might help you if you want to do something similar.

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There oughta be an LED cube.

28 September 2020

Inspired by many LED cube projects before me, I decided to build my own version, which eventually turned into a CPU status indicator on my desk. Is there a more over the top way to monitor your CPU temperature and usage than 12,288 individually addressable RGB LEDs arranged as a cube?

Thumbnail of a youtube video about my LED cube, showing three images of the cube with dominantly blue, then green and finally red color.
Click the image to see the video on youtube.com.

In this case, I strongly suggest to check out the video first as it conveys the looks of the cube much better than static images. Of course, the blog article will provide all the technical details.

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