I was at a local estate sale last Saturday and found this beautiful vintage EICO Decade Resistance Box to restore.

The steel box was a bit rusty, and it was caked in dirt, but after some cleaning it turned out that the aluminum faceplate was in great shape. I used Evapo-Rust to remove the rust on the box and then spray-painted it a nice black. Next, I sprayed the switches down with DeoxIT and tested all the resistors. Surprisingly, most were still in spec, however two were open, so I cut those out and soldered in replacements. While I was at it, I added banana jacks; now I can use all of my test cables with it. I also traded the rusty screws for brass, because pizazz.

I found a broken plasma globe at the thrift store and decided to rebuild it. Now it looks like it belongs with all my other antique tech.

I made myself a tiny Van De Graaff electrostatic generator. Great for making really small sparks.

BUILD DETAILS:

• The bottom roller is 3d printed and wrapped in PTFE tape.
  
• The top roller is glass.
  
• The belt is rubber.
  
• The sphere is stainless steel (I cut a hole in a garden gazing ball).
  
• The combs are made of copper wire strands.
  
• Uses a 3v motor powered by two AA batteries.
  

I wanted a Back-to-the-Future Flux Capacitor in my workshop because I love the films, and it's one of the most iconic scifi props. Replicas can get pricey, but I found this affordable model that came in a limited-edition themed Yahtzee game (it's discontinued now, but still available on eBay). It has two problems though: it runs on batteries, and the LEDs only activate on vibration and cut off automatically after seven cycles. So I decided to hack it. 

I started by removing the tilt sensor and replacing it with a jumper. Then I desoldered the board's timer chip, and soldered wires directly to the LED paths and ground. With those in place, all I had to do was connect them to an Arduino and write a quick script to control the LEDs. Now I can have the lights run continuously, and the whole thing is powered via USB. While I was at it, I also created a diffuser with a few layers of tracing paper, which makes it look a bit nicer IMHO.

I’m a big fan of the Portal series, so I had to have a GLaDOS robot mounted on my pegboard. This is what I came up with:

The head is 3d-printed and hand-painted. The rest of the build is made of servos, metal brackets, a PWM servo driver, a QT PY ESP32, and a motion sensor.

I just added a Binary Watchface option and a “Pipboy Green” color scheme option for my Pipboy Mini.

Github has been updated.

I love Fallout’s Pipboy (wrist computer), but the truth is it’s too big and clunky to actually be a daily worn device. I wanted to see if I could make a smartwatch with a similar vibe, but in a form factor small enough to be worn daily in the real world.

I decided to build this around Adafruit’s ESP32-S2 Reverse TFT board. This board is fairly tiny, and it has built-in features that I needed

• on-board wifi
• tft screen
• battery charging capability
• accessible buttons

I designed, 3d printed, and painted a case for the board that I think captures some of the Pipboy aesthetic. It’s held together with heat-set inserts and allen screws. Inside is a rechargeable lithium battery and a tilt sensor. The tilt sensor automatically turns the screen off when you’re not looking at the watch in order to extend battery life. The USB port can be accessed on the side without removing the case. The case can be used with any 22mm watch strap, but I had some nice scrap leather, so I just made my own leather cuff band.

The way the watch works, is that on reset it gets the time and date from online NTP servers while connected to my home wifi. Then the ESP32-S2’s internal clock handles keeping track of time until the time is updated via NTP servers again. This seems to work well. (Traditionally, you would use a Real Time Clock or GPS module to keep accurate time, but that would have made the watch bulkier.) Likewise, I use OpenWeatherMap’s API to get weather data to the watch daily. I plan to add additional functionally in the future, but for now I’m happy with my Pipboy Mini.

CODE
Case STL File

I’ll be taking PLC programming classes soon as I complete a degree in Industrial Electronics, so in preparation I decided to set up a PLC for tinkering at home. I chose a Siemens S7-1200 with TIA Portal as the automation software. Everything is mounted on din rails with pegboard brackets that I 3d printed.

Then I just needed to build the Input/Output trainer. I ordered all the parts from China via Aliexpress to save money. Everything went together smoothly, and it gave me an opportunity to use my new Knipex Ferrule Crimpers (they rock). The trainer has 4 Inputs (pushbuttons and switches) and 4 outputs (LEDs and an alarm). I also added a 24v fan to a rail as an additional output.

I found this beautiful antique wood radio at an antique store for $12. The electronics were pretty far gone, so I thought it would be a great choice for a mp3 project.

I cleaned and oiled the wood case, and salvaged what radio parts I could for future projects. From Temu, I purchased a fine copper mesh to use as speaker cloth ($2) and a DFPlayer Mini ($2). I loaded an SD card up with music from the 1920s to 1940s, then I wrote a simple script that will continuously play random tracks from the SD card. Using an Arduino and a 3W speaker I already had, I wired the circuit up. I decided to use the original radio knobs to control the Arduino, because that’s a lot more fun. I had to make a custom speaker mount out of some salvaged aluminum sheet I had, which turned out well. Finally, I put a couple of LEDs behind the dial to replace the original incandescent bulbs, and assembled everything. Here is the final result:

I found this awesome vintage Eagle Traffic Signal at an antique shop; It’s solid aluminum with glass lenses. I wired it to a controller that allows me to program the light pattern. I also found used mounting hardware on eBay, so I could wall mount it in my workshop. How cool is that?