So I built this really quick arcade controller a few months ago using a kit I bought on eBay. It worked well, but I didn’t have an appropriate enclosure at the time, so it has been living in an old router box. Now with the help of super-future-3D-printing-technology, it can finally have a real home!

The Build

This is the first object I’ve printed of this size. My print bed is only 200x200mm and this controller enclosure if 190mm wide. It’s also difficult to calibrate the bed evenly across such a wide distance with my current auto-leveling sensor, so the first layer could definitely be improved in the future.

I did end up making a vinyl cutout for this controller to make it look even more professional. I suppose I could use another layer of vinyl to add text or images, but I really like the clean, minimal look of the current version.

Conclusion

 

I think the total printing time for this project was about 18 hours–most of it overnight. Assembly of the final parts only took a few minutes. The base plate screw posts were fairly short in the original design, but I thankfully had several sizes of nylon standoffs on hand.

Now if only I could get past the first stage of Ghosts ‘n Goblins!

About 2 weeks ago I received a 3D printer kit that I bought for $190. It took 7 hours to assemble and several days to dial in the print settings. Here is a brief overview of my latest obsession.

The Build

I bought an FLSUN i3 kit from ebay for $190 for this project. I’ve been wanting a 3D printer for a while, and I felt that ~$200 was a pretty good price point to jump in. The kit was very well packaged, and arrived without any damaged parts. The included instructions were very thorough, with images for each step. The software I was sent was a bit outdated, but easy enough to update.

This kit features a 200x200x220mm printing volume, with a heated aluminum print bed, and an auto-leveling sensor. Two small rolls of PLA filament were also included with this kit. For the most part, the printer works surprisingly well with just the stock parts from the kit. Of course, one of the main advantages of a 3D printer is the ability to print modifications and improvements for the machine.

The build was incredibly straightforward. It may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but everything fits as it should, and there isn’t anything too complicated to put together. If you’ve got the time to invest, don’t be afraid of going for a kit like this instead of a pre-made machine.

Printing

The first things I printed were modifications to improve the quality of the printer. Results from the stock printer weren’t bad at all, but you could visibly see improvements in each subsequent print after an upgrade. I began with Z-axis braces, and printing a Raspberry Pi case that would hold an RPi running OctoPrint. I added a sheet of PEI (polyetherimide) to the print bed which significantly aids in adhesion and clean removal of prints. A few other parts were added for convenience or to tidy up the printer’s appearance, including aluminum extrusion endcaps and a mounted spool holder.

I very quickly used up the included PLA and had to order a new spool within the first week. By the time I’ve finished printing one object, I’ve found five more to add to the queue.

While printing at 0.1mm results in incredibly high quality prints, it drastically increases the print time. I mostly print at 0.2mm, which still looks great for most objects. PLA is a fantastic material–surprisingly strong, lightweight, and very easy to print.

From household objects to highly-customized components for electronics projects, there really is no limit to what can be 3D printed. The greatest moment for me was when it finally clicked that if I needed something–anything–I could just print it. I needed a chip clip at one point, and a few minutes later I had one.

Conclusion

I’ll add some more specific projects I’ve been working on recently with the assistance of my new 3D printer soon. I hope this post encourages some of you who are curious about 3D printing to dive in and get started. If you have any questions, feel free to email or message me.

Sous vide has been gaining a lot of popularity recently but, outside of the internet, I often hear “What is sous vide?” followed by “Ok, so how do you do that?”. There are countless resources that can answer those questions much more thoroughly than I, but in this post I’ll share with you the method I’ve been using for about 2 years now.

TL;DR: Get a crock-pot, buy this temperature controller, make great food.

What is sous vide?

To paraphrase Wikipedia, sous vide (French for “under vacuum”) is a method of cooking that involves vacuum-sealing food in plastic bags before cooking it for a long time in a heated water bath. There are many advantages to sous vide, including easy preparation and cleanup, incredibly consistent results, and improved texture/flavor for many ingredients.

One of the main features that is oft-touted when cooking sous vide is the (near) inability to overcook food. The temperature of the water bath is electronically controlled, so the internal temperature of the food can never rise higher than the set temperature. Similarly, there is significantly less loss of moisture and fat in the sealed food, which creates very moist and tender results.

Sous vide can be used to cook almost any food. It is particularly suited for cooking meat and vegetables, but can be used for less obvious recipes too–soup, creme brulee, pickles, eggs, and sauces among many others.

Ok, so how do you do that?

Easy! There are some pretty fantastic off-the-shelf solutions available today than can get you started with no setup, including Anova and SousVide Supreme. However, this is a DIY post, so I’m going to (briefly) explain how I built my own sous vide cooking appliance for about $12.

Honestly, if you own a slow cooker (preferably an old analog version), you’re halfway there! The only other thing to do is add a temperature controller. I used this one from eBay, but if it isn’t available just searching eBay for “temperature controller” will bring up a thousand more. This particular controller works well for a number of reasons: it runs on 110VAC, has a built-in relay, and it includes a relatively accurate sensor–all for about $10.

In addition to the controller, you’ll need a regular power outlet from any hardware store, and the end to an old power cable (if you can’t find one, cutting the end off of any cheap extension cable works too).

Setup

Putting everything together is really simple. You can see from these pictures the plastic box I used to contain everything–really any sort of box or container will do. The temperature controller has labelled terminals on the back, so it should be pretty obvious where everything goes. Basically, you connect your cut-off power cable to the marked terminals on the controller, your power outlet to the next set, and the included sensor to the final pair. Put it all in your container to make it look neat.

 

Assuming everything was plugged in correctly, you should be good to go! The controller most likely came with a manual, but it is also fairly straightforward to operate. Pressing the “S” button will allow you to set the temperature, pressing again to confirm. I wish I had taken more in-progress pictures when I first built mine, but that was almost 2 years ago now.

This controller will only turn a device on or off based on temperature–it will not allow you to set a timer! You’ll have to use something else for that. Just fill your crock-pot with water, turn it on, and let the temperature controller do the rest.

Preparing Food

Now you’re ready to cook sous vide! Sealing your food can be done in a variety of ways. The best way is to buy a proper vacuum sealer, if you don’t already own one (they are very useful tools to have in the kitchen). I’ve found several over the years at Goodwill for around $5, and they seem to pop up regularly. Even a new entry-level FoodSaver sealer on Amazon is about $65. Rolls of vacuum bags can be found cheaply on Amazon as well, at $15 for 100ft.

Side note:
If you don’t have a vacuum sealer on hand, you can still achieve perfectly acceptable results with regular sandwich bags–preferably quart size or larger freezer bags. Freezer bags tend to be thicker, which makes them more durable when cooking at higher temperatures. If you’re going to go this route, season your ingredients first and place them in the bag. Next, with the bag still open, slowly submerge the it in the water bath. This will force all of the air out of the bag. When you reach the top, seal the bag with as little air remaining inside. Unfortunately it is nearly impossible to get all of the air out with this method, but I’ve used it several times and can confirm the results are still totally fine.

There’s not much to it at this point–one of the appeals of sous vide. The way you season or marinate your food before cooking it will remain largely unchanged. Just seal the food in the bag, making sure to remove as much air as possible, and place in the water bath. The temperature and time will be dictated by the type of food you are cooking. There are tons of sous vide recipes online now with recommended cooking times for practically everything.

Additionally, when cooking meat, many people will suggest searing your meat before (sometimes after) putting it in the water bath. I tend to sear meat after cooking–sous vide meat can often have a strange exterior texture straight out of the bag (caused by the texture of the bag) so I sear it to make it look visually more appealing. Flavor and aroma should never be an issue.

Up next

Stay tuned for part 2! I’ll be sharing some of my recent sous vide recipes and experiments, including making pickles and custard.

If you would like some more in-depth information on sous vide cooking, I would recommend checking out ChefStep’s great introduction, and subsequent recipes.

Thanks for reading! See you next time.

I recently starting using some Amazon Dash buttons to log every time I get a soda from the fridge. A few days ago there was a sale (with coupon!) to get 3 Dash buttons for $5, so now I can individually track soda AND water consumption. Additionally, I’ve created a template for making your own Dash button labels.

DXF file of template
Silhouette Cameo file of template

Setup:

If you haven’t heard of Dash buttons before, they’re these super cheap little devices Amazon sells that allow you to order popular items with just the touch of a button. I suppose some people use them for that purpose, but it turns out it’s really easy to block them from reaching out to Amazon, and having a script intercept that call and then do something else with it. One of the easiest guides and programs I have found to do this, Dasher, can be found here on GitHub. I am currently using Dasher in conjunction with IFTTT which makes integrating your buttons with other services trivial. The process is fairly straightforward, and just involves modify the example json script included with Dasher and adding in your IFTTT webhooks event details.

The process therefore goes something like this: Dash button pressed -> Dasher grabs the call -> Dasher then sends a request to IFTTT -> IFTTT completes the assigned task.

In my case, I’m using IFTTT to log various values to a spreadsheet in Google Drive.

It doesn’t really matter which buttons you purchase, since they won’t be able to connect to Amazon anyway. Pick some that you think look cool, or continue reading this post to see how I made some custom labels.

Design:

I wanted some consistent labels for my buttons, so I wouldn’t have random logos marking up the fridge. I made a template in Illustrator, then exported it to Silhouette Studio before cutting it out of adhesive vinyl. I used Oracal 651 vinyl, which is fairly forgiving in this situation. It can be re-positioned on these buttons a few times.

Unfortunately, my Silhouette Cameo can’t cut details fine enough to make this project look really sharp. I’m still content with the results, but some of the text turned out a bit rough.

Conclusion:

That’s it! I just wanted to provide some templates to anyone else interested in making something similar, and display my results. If you haven’t played with Dash buttons before, give it a shot! They’re normally $5/ea, but they go on sale for $1-2 fairly often. With IFTTT, you can easily make a wireless button for almost anything!

See you later, my dudes.

It’s done! I’ve been messing with this project on and off for a little while, but the other day I realized I finally had all the pieces I needed to complete it. I’m very happy with how it turned out.

TL;DR: Raspberry Pi 3 plays emulators up to N64 and PS1, uses Nvidia Gamestream via Moonlight to stream Steam and modern emulators with no lag.

Concept:

I’ve been trying to consolidate our media and games for a while now. Media is all handled by the server now and streamed to our Chromecast, which works great. However, all of my games are on PC which presents a problem when playing couch co-op games in the other room. I have a Steam Link that I’ve used for a while now, and started with a Raspberry Pi 2 with RetroPie to play some NES games.

I wanted to (ideally) merge everything into one device for gaming that looked nice and blended in with the other electronics in our entertainment center. Because I upgraded my GPU a few months ago and received a Raspberry Pi 3 from an online promotion, I now had all the parts needed to make this happen.

The cornerstone of this project is the much more powerful Raspberry Pi 3 along with Nvidia’s Gamestream technology.

Setup & Construction:

This was actually a super easy project–there’s tons of documentation and support for every step in this process online.

Basically, the RPi3 is the core system running RetroPie. RetroPie is a fantastic interface for playing all of your old emulators. Setup is dead simple, and with the upgraded processor and RAM in the RPi3, the tiny computer can easily play N64 and PS1 games on its own. Most controllers are recognized automatically, and can be remapped if needed. If you have a Raspberry Pi sitting around, it’s definitely worth checking out: https://retropie.org.uk/

The next big component is streaming a desktop to the RPi. This can easily be accomplished via Moonlight –an open source Nvidia Gamestream client. Note: this only works with Nvidia GPUs, and only GTX 600+ series. I couldn’t do this in the past because I previously only had a GTX 560, which is not supported. Even with my budget GTX 1050, Moonlight works amazingly.

Shortcuts to Moonlight can be added to RetroPie which allows you access Steam (or any other client) directly from RetroPie.

Onward to the build!

I know there are tons of really cool cases for the Raspberry Pi, but I wanted something that blended in and wasn’t obviously a game console. I had this old EQ sitting around that I bought at Goodwill years ago. It stopped working a while back, so I didn’t feel too bad gutting it. It’s a bit messy inside, but no one sees that part.

I was able to reuse the original power button and power cable, and I added USB ports to the buttons on the right. I was using the tiny fan inside earlier, but I didn’t actually need it because the interior never gets hot enough to be an issue. I’ll probably use it in another project later. The Xbox 360 wireless adapter can support up to four controllers, but I only have one wireless controller at the moment.

A “Steam” emulator option can be added to the RetroPie menu that just opens a script that launches Moonlight. By letting RetroPie handle everything, you can easily stop streaming and open a different emulator at any time.

Any game on your PC can be played this way, and even other emulators like CEMU. Although I had to lower the resolution a bit (the GTX 1050 isn’t that powerful) most games run surprisingly well. I haven’t had any issues with MK8 yet. I’m sure the performance will only increase over time as well, as the emulator improves.

Conclusion:

That’s it! Pretty easy. I’m content with how it turned out, and the RetroPie interface makes keeping everything organized trivial. It is worth noting that Moonlight can also stream to Android and iOS devices, even outside of your local network (with the correct ports forwarded).

If you have a Raspberry Pi, give it a shot! I’ve included a few sources I used when getting started. Best of luck!

RetroPie setup: https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/First-Installation

Moonlight setup: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Setup-RetroPie-With-Moonlight-Steam-Streami/ 

New Moonlight setup: https://github.com/TechWizTime/moonlight-retropie

In the previous Moonlight guide, be aware that mapping controllers the way they instruct is now deprecated. All controller mappings are now included in /usr/share/moonlight/gamecontrollerdb.txt. It may be worth running the script in the new guide, although I haven’t tested it personally.

 

I was debating posting this part, but I figured the whole process should be documented–even when it doesn’t work out. These pictures date back a few weeks ago, around August 11th.

TL;DR: Built some temperature sensors, but they were too prone to interference which made them useless.

Concept:

I wanted to build some wireless temperature sensors that I would later use in creating a custom smart thermostat. The sensors would be based on ESP-12E’s (my first mistake) and the thermostat would just be a simple Wemos D1 Mini with a 4-channel solid state relay connected to a local Blynk server for control.

Up front, I’ll start by saying buying 12E’s was a terrible idea for this project. I originally thought they would be needed due to their smaller form factor, but it turns out the D1 Mini actually fit in the enclosure I had planned although I didn’t realized this till after everything arrived.

Note to anyone else attempting something similar: Just buy D1 Minis or regular NodeMCU’s–after paying for the breakout boards, voltage regulators, and USB headers, they came out to the same price.

Setup:

I originally planned on using the ESP-12E’s bare, but that quickly became too much of a hassle without some sort of programming rig, so I just bought some cheap breakout boards on AliExpress.

The boards made flashing the ESPs much easier. I’m not sure what happened when soldering them, but they ended up rough.

With the boards attached, I could easily flash the devices with some jumper cables attached to my trusty USB UART. All of the programming for the chips was done with the Arduino IDE. With both ESP and Blynk libraries available, programming everything was pretty straightforward.

I chose to use the HTU21D temperature and humidity module for this project. These sensors have an accuracy of ±1°C  and ±2% relative humidity. They also have a much wider range (-30 ~ 90C, 5% ~ 95% RH) than the cheap-o DHT11 sensors typically used in projects like this. Comparatively, they are also slightly cheaper than DHT22’s at around $1.80 shipped.

The sensors are great, but it seems like they are very vulnerable to interference at close ranges which will be more obvious later.

Design:

With the programming out of the way, I wanted to design a small, appealing box that wouldn’t look too out of place attached above a power outlet.

My design was to create a small box with a mesh cover that would allow air to pass over the sensor. I wanted to mount a few of these boxes above power outlets throughout the apartment to gather data. Each box would have a micro-USB port, which would connect to a slim, flat USB cable that connected to a 5V power supply behind the outlet’s faceplate.

I don’t have access to a 3D printer yet, so I had to make do with what I could find online.

I found some perfectly-sized boxes on (again) AliExpress. I cut out a small hole to press some fine mesh through and added a micro-USB port to the base before painting. Painting didn’t work out so well–it’s very difficult to paint small plastic objects smoothly with spraypaint. Oh well, version 0.1 I guess.

Everything fit surprisingly well in the box. Again, I would have saved even more space by using D1 Minis, but it turned out alright.

Conclusion:

So the design was solid. Or so I thought.

Like I said at the beginning, the sensors ultimately didn’t work. They reported temperature and humidity, but both were wildly off and would not remain consistent.

I tried multiple sensors, multiple ESPs, across multiple days. I tried removing the metal mesh, but no luck. However, if I removed everything from the box, or pulled the HTU21D far enough away from the ESP12e, the data would appear fine. If I put anything around the sensor, or moved it closer to the body of the device, the readings would get wonky again.

I’m not sure if this is specifically an HTU21D problem, or if there was an mishap during the construction of the device. Regardless, I’ve put the project on hold for now until I get a chance to research more sensors and find one that can tolerate being so near other electronics.

I’ll post an update when I make more progress. Thanks for reading!

This is my first “full” game, developed as part of the online Complete Unity Developer course. It’s a very simple clone of Plants vs Zombies, but with my own art and animations. Sounds effects were found online from various royalty-free sources. I’ve included the PC and Android versions. For Android devices, you’ll need to enable 3rd-party apps in your settings to install the APK. Looking forward to sharing more (original) games with you in the future!

PC Download
Android Download