killercarrot

Build Brighton is a top place, full of electric lasers and 3D, but it's an absolute sod to find. So I decided to add a little bit of trim ( or flare as they might say in "Office space" ) to the inconspicuous BB doorbell. A quick measure, and a few minutes with the #BuildBrighton jigsaw on some scrap mdf left over from the Dalek, and I had a some shapes. I sanded them down, and primered them up, then gave a quick splash of the ever useful "Plastikote" enamel paint. Final job was to stick the blocks to the wall using a couple of dobs of Gripfill, that way if we want to get rid of them, it's a ten minute job with a crowbar. So that's Donation bot's cousin, Welcome/Direction Bot... I guess we could tap the power to the doorbell to run a couple of LEDs but for the minute, job done.

So, for a bit of light relief I bought a few of Justin's LED Christmas tree kits. I think the original idea was to have a relatively easy kit to put together on Saturday workshops in the run up to Christmas, but they seem to have become quite popular with all manner of folk. Anyway, the kit is based around a couple of well made pcbs, a bag full of components, and the simple instruction that +ve is UP. It took about 10 mins to solder all the bits together, and with a huge amount of satisfaction over the end result. Justin and his Christmas tree kits can be found here: http://cyber-lane.com/ The Build Brighton Christmas workshops will be running each Saturday from 30th November to 21st December from 10am – 2pm. Entrance is completely free. Kits are priced between £2 and £5. #BuildBrighton can be found here: http://www.buildbrighton.com/blog/

The Strandebeest model I ordered on ebay arrived, and I've put it together. Great value for just £7.98. I reckon they must have lots of surplus stock as these kits usually cost about £40. I put it together this morning, and am delighted.

Unortunately last week I found that the spiders seemed to have eaten all the electronic magic from the old 70's transistors and gubbins in my old Hacker radio, and after an hour of poking about with a multimeter I decided to remove the old stuff and replace it with "newer" gubbins. Tonight I aim to get some bluetooth radio goodness going by hacking an old Jabra bluetooth earpiece that has singularly failed to of any use in taking calls, and  connect it up to a little amp circuit I built years ago as an Altoids tin amp for my guitar. I 'll then connect the amp to the lovely Celestion speaker in the old Hacker radio. (One of the fascinating things I found when dismantling was that the "tone" control was provided by a wad of folded loo roll) I have also impulsively ordered a silver nitride 12V igniter which was dangled in front of me on twitter by Cool Components . I actually do have a project to  add this to... ages ago (2008) I built a "fireball sho...

Before all the nonsense with Angelina Jolie pretending to be a computer nerd (seriously), and our Colonial Cousins making up stuff about inventing computers at a model railway club... the  name Hacker was synonymous with Radios... The Hacker brothers created the DYNATRON brand in the 1920's (how cool a name is Dynatron?) I'm a little tired of listening to 6Music through my phone, so this Thursday's #BuildBrighton project will be to resurrect the Hacker as a bluetooth speaker... or something. Spiders will likely be harmed in this project... look away now.