Ejaad-Nama: Reader's Edition
Ejaad-Nama (Urdu: Letters of Invention). A fortnightly newsletter about Science, Electronics, Makers, DIY, and everything technical. We talk about lemons, acid batteries, and anything in between.
If you are wondering: Ejaad-Nama is the word from the Urdu language which means Letters of Invention. If you have not subscribed yet, here is your chance: (This email may end up in your Promotion or Update tab. If you see that happening, take appropriate action).
Reader’s Digest is a publication started by DeWitt Wallace in 1922 based on the idea of curating all his favorite articles from different monthly published works he read. Often times he would edit them, and sometimes completely rewrite them. You could say this was almost the “iTunes of Magazines” in that time and a proof of how important curation is (in 1922, can you believe it??). In the years to come, Reader’s Digest became the largest paid circulating magazine in the world with publications in 21 languages and reaching about 70 countries. Reader’s Digest would invite contribution from their readers and if the story is picked up will work with them to refine it for publication. Reader’s Digest had its big moments: In 1952, The article “Cancer by the Carton” by Roy Norr was published which slapped the smoking with cancer. The well-read article resulted in a fall in stock prices as well as the largest drop in tobacco consumption since the 1920s.
As I spend my time on vacation in my home country, with my complete family, I decided to write a special edition of Ejaad-nama called Readers Edition. In recent weeks, I have received some contributions from my readers who have done really nice hacks. In other instances, I have included contributions which I liked and asked permission to share here. I have gotten to know them a little by reading their work and have learned something from them. All in all, I am greatly happy thankful for everyone that sent in their contribution, for it is an important step for this newsletter :)
Brilliant Color Lamp from [Harry Hornbacher]
[Harry] turned his Brilliant LED lamp into a brilliant IoT LED lamp. Harry replaced the original RC control of the lamp by connecting with the internet. He stuffed his big ceiling LED lighting of the room with an ESP32 powered by AC/DC 3.3V and creating a dashboard using HomeAssistant. His build is documented here and is great for anyone who wants to start reverse engineering and hack cheap devices.
In most IoT-based hacks on lighting, what I don’t like is the effort required to hide the additional circuitry such as the microprocessor, power supply, etc. These lamps below the diffusor consist of only power supply, LEDs, and a lot of free space which can be used to add IoT functionalities.
DogBone Fillet from [Imran Anees]
If you are into 3d printing, then you know you can never get the corners perfectly sharp. This is the limitation due to the stepper motors not able to change their direction instantaneously. This becomes specifically a problem when you have to fit two pieces together as both pieces might have corners of different sizes. A similar issue is apparent in the CNC machine where the corner is limited due to the size of the bit.
[Imran] shares an excellent hack on how to circumvent that issue by creating dog bone fillet. He shares how they are created in the fun write up here. The images are taken from his write up.
[Left]: The pieces don’t fit as the green edges get rounded. [Right]: DogBone fillet connects and lines up both pieces together.
Right to Repair … Granted! ⚖️ from [Moeed Farooq]
I have written about the Right to Repair before and how we don’t own our devices anymore but only pay one time rent when we buy them. The repair is slowly becoming a lost art. Previously, [Aqeel] made one functional MacBook from two broken MacBooks. It seems this may not be possible in the future. Louiss Rossman has recently ranted about the inability to replace the camera in the new iPhone 12.
In the contrary to the trend, it was nice to see [Moeed Farooq] repair his Fujitsu laptop broken screen just by asking the vendor for the replacement part. Fujitsu was able to redirect him to their recycling partner who sent him a display screen.
Personally, contacting Fujitsu would not have been my first instinct, but it’s not uncommon to ignore the simplest solutions. Also, his example of repairing the screen is a good example of how the Right to Repair can work: Vendors providing the replacement parts needed.
Vanderlust continues from [Aqeel ⚒ Arshad]
[Aqeel] continues to convert his old Delivery Van into a Camper Van. He has documented his pains in sourcing the rear camera for the Van and installing it in the car.
One of the interesting hacks he shares is to using Soap-and-water lubricant to slip the wiring harness into the rubber pipes routed to the head unit in the front dashboard. That sounds very slippery ;)
3d printed Planters by [Nishant Singh]
[Nishant] is not a new contributor to the newsletter. He wrote previously about using decoupling caps for overpowered speakers with underpowered supply.
He has ventured into creating gardening pots using his 3d printer and shared a 3d printed planter mold by [Chappel] and tried casting a planter using Plaster of Paris. The original designer suggests using a Balloon to cover the center as a release agent.
Both the original designer and Nishants results look impressive.
Thanks a lot to all the people who shared their work, or those who I had asked the permission to use their pictures :D If you would like to send in your projects and hacks to be part of the newsletter, please do comment below, or email me: a.nadeem89@gmail.com. Leave your feedback in the comments about the content and share it with your people:
Very interesting read! Readers Edition is a great idea! Plus really wanted to check out the dogbone fillet solution but that link is broken.