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 wedding gift.

21 September 2020

When my brother got married, I needed a wedding gift. Of course, I did not go with something ordinary. Instead I 3D printed a holder for an e-ink display that served as a digital guestbook.

Thumbnail of a youtube video the wedding gift with an illuminated e-ink screen.
Click the image to see the video on youtube.com.

Guests as well as friends who could not attend (especially during the Corona pandemic) can easily send messages from their phones that are shown immediately.

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There oughta be an irrigation system.

19 August 2020

Instead of watering my lawn manually, I created the automated irrigation system that you can see in the following video.

Thumbnail of a youtube video showing an active sprinkler.
Click the image to see the video on youtube.com.

As you will see, just a simple system that turns the water on or off was not sufficient. I will show you all aspects of this Arduino based system in this article and provide the source code.

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There oughta be an interface for Jooki.

13 August 2020

When I tried to integrate my son’s MP3 player into our openHAB system to control it with our everyday household app, I found that it was fairly easy to do so. In fact, I got much more than I was hoping for…

You can get an idea of this project in the accompanying Youtube video. However, more details and all the code are presented in this blog post.

Thumbnail of a youtube video showing the Jooki with colorful glowing LEDs.
Click the image to see the video on youtube.com.
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There oughta be a fix for Hartan wheels.

08 August 2020

Our “Hartan Racer” baby stroller started to lose its wheels. Turns out that the mechanism that is supposed to allow switching wheels was worn out and a simple 3d printed replacement is the solution.

Since this is mostly about design and less about coding, the accompanying video might actually give you a better idea:

Thumbnail of a youtube video showing the printed part next to the original part.
Click the image to see the video on youtube.com.

Anyhow, we bought this Hartan Racer second hand and are very happy with it. Until it suddenly missed a wheel. After tracking back, we found it, mounted it and… lost it again. Several times. So, I had to look into it.

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There oughta be an automated dehumidifier.

08 July 2020

Could there be a more exciting topic to start my new blog? Dehumidifiers. Warriors against mold. Not so exciting? Well, I have to start somewhere…

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