A Really Simple "Dishwasher Clean" Signal

 

We have a bit of a strange problem in my house when it comes to the dishwasher. The rule here is the one person loads and turns on the dishwasher while someone else is tasked with the job of unloading it. 

A bit of an ongoing issue has started to happen with the recent installation of the new dishwasher.  With the old dishwasher, everyone knew when the dishes were being washed based on all the racket that was coming from it.  Since the new dishwasher is so quiet, you really don't have any way to know when the dishes are clean, which causes a bit of tension when it's discovered that the dishwasher is still full of clean dishes several hours after being washed. 

I suspect that this is a fairly common problem in a lot of households since I have noticed that you can quite easily get magnets that you can stick on your dishwasher that say "Clean Dishes". 

While I suppose I could easily get such a magnet to stick on our dishwasher, but since we tend to be a bit pre-occupied with other things, I have my doubts that a plain old magnet is just not going to get much attention around here. 

We needed something that would be a bit more eye-catching.

LED Mood Light

A little while back I wrote about a "crate" subscription service that I had tried out.  It was certainly a lot of fun putting together the ukulele that came with my first kit, but I found out that the neighborhood kids were also quite keen about them too, so I have ended up pretty much giving away a lot of my recent kits to them. I don't really mind - It's very refreshing to see kids tackling something that doesn't involve a screen. 😀

However, once I started getting the kits, I was starting to regularly see online ads for another kit from a company called Creation Crate. I really like how those Facebook algorithms know how I would be interested in these things... 

The particular spin with Creation Crate was that they were almost all electronic projects with a focus on teaching you electronics. 

This actually has a more direct appeal to me since the only formal training I had in electronics was with the course I took to get my amateur radio license - even then it was very much focused on theory.  So far all my hands-on learning with electronics has been at an experimental level. While I can make a few interesting gadgets, I don't really have a full understanding of how things work. The thought of being able to build something and learn why it works was certainly quite appealing. 

Of course, I ordered a crate and in a few weeks, my first project arrived - an LED Mood Light based on an Arduino. 

A Simple Public Safety Radio Scanner with the Raspberry Pi - Putting It All Together

In my last post, I designed and built a cabinet for my Raspberry Pi radio scanner. Now it is time to wrap this project up and install all the electronic bits into the cabinet. 

As a first step, I gathered up all the bits of the cabinet, Raspberry Pi, and other components and laid them out on top of my work table. 

The other components included the SDR dongle, the USB sound card but also included 3 short USB extension cables that I had picked up from Amazon for a few dollars. 

A Simple Public Safety Radio Scanner with the Raspberry Pi - Building a Cabinet

 

Once again I turn my attention to my Raspberry Pi radio scanner.  Now that I was happy with my electronic solution, I now needed to figure out how I can house my creation as something that looked fairly attractive. 

I did have a 2-watt laser engraver that up to now I've been using to engrave some wooden signs, but the manufacturer of my engrave also claimed that it could also be used as a cutter that can be used to make parts out of thin materials. 

I always wanted to give that a try and I figured that building a cabinet for my scanner would be the perfect first project to try this out.

Based on the literature that was provided with my lase, it was claimed that I should be able to cut through 1/32 inch thick plywood. With that bit of information, I immediately ordered a few 12"X12" sheets from Amazon

Building a Tablet Computer Stand

 

It's been a while since I made some real sawdust in the shop and the opportunity finally arrived when I started getting a bit annoyed with how I was using my tablet computer the other day. 

I find tablets to be a very handy gadget - you pretty much have the capability of a full PC in a format that is totally portable. They are much nicer than a smartphone since they also carry a much bigger screen - an added bonus as my hair is starting to go grey.

The only annoyance I have is when I don't need to have the portability, but rather I need to use it sitting down at my desk or I need to have it sitting on my workbench so that I can use it to look at something while my hands were busy.  The issue in those cases is that this often means that the tablet is sitting flat on the tabletop, which makes it a bit hard to read without doing a bit of neck calisthenics.

To solve this problem I really needed some sort of stand that I could set the tablet on, with the screen positioned at an angle to allow for easy viewing. 

As luck should have it, I just recently got my hands on a couple of pieces of 3/4 inch thick spalted maple that I scored from the "Free Wood" bin at my local cabinet maker.