Making Things in 2023

Nick Momrik1 Comment

There were more posts for 2023 than I remembered.

January

February

March

April

May

November

December

It was a good December for making when I was able to catch up on a lot of electronics kits. I’ve been working on a new desk for my office since November, which I hope to finish soon. Then I’ll be starting to build other things for the new house.

Check out previous recap posts for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Swapping an AC Adapter Cable

Nick Momrik1 Comment

I was given a replacement AC adapter for an Acer laptop, which isn’t compatible with the Dell Optiplex micro PC I wanted to use it with. The output is close enough to work, so I looked for an adapter to convert from the 5.5×1.7mm connector used by the Acer to 4.5x3mm used by the Dell. I couldn’t find an adapter anywhere! I did however find a pigtail adapter on Amazon for about $8 I could wire in. Here’s the original connector and the new cable.

I opened up the power brick.

Then I made sure to test the output voltage and the polarity of the wires and connector with a multimeter. I noticed an unused spot for LED1 on the circuit board, so I figured I’d see if connecting a second LED would provide some other status indicator.

All it seemed to do was take over and disable LED2. So I removed it and left the original green LED. I desoldered the original cable, which only had positive and ground wires. The board had a spot with an S, which I assume means “signal,” so when connecting the pigtail, I soldered the blue wire there.

I checked the voltage on the new connector and it was as expected.

I plugged in the Dell and everything seemed to work. I cleaned the old thermal paste off the 3 components that screwed to a big metal heat sink and put on new paste. When I went to close everything I realized the black wire was too short, preventing the cable from reaching the hole in the power brick. I had to solder on a short extension and cover it with shrink tube.

Tucked everything back in the power brick, snapped it together, and it’s good to go.

Boldport: PissOff

Nick Momrik1 Comment

PissOff was project #9 of the Boldport Club, which was before my membership, but I bought it in December of 2018 with my credits when the club closed. I recorded an unboxing video on February 21, 2021 and I guess I ran out of time for the build. The project sat on my shelf for almost three more years before I finally assembled the circuit, which ended up being five years after ordering it!

The kit created a proximity sensor via IR and combined it with annoying noises. With so many surface mount components, this was one of my most challenging electronic soldering builds. I really struggle when an IC has a lot of pins. At one point I tried some other solder and realized what I’d been using was junk, so it went right in the trash.

I screwed up the placement of a couple of SMD capacitors, but caught myself soon enough to remember which ones needed to be exchanged. The other mistake I made was swapping locations between the IR phototransistor and diode, which I didn’t catch until testing. After putting them in the correct locations, everything worked!

Here’s a 8x speed run of the unboxing and some footage of Ninja’s testing.

Useful links:

Metal Earth R2-D2

Nick Momrik1 Comment

I bought this R2-D2 model kit from a toy store in Gatlinburg, Tennessee this summer.

There wasn’t any obvious way to open the package, so I tore off the top and then realized it ripped the instructions. The instructions are terrible, which led to making a lot of build mistakes. It was a very difficult build, which took me several hours. I even had to pull out super glue because the folded metal breaks if you have to fold it in the opposite direction to fix a mistake.

It turned out pretty good. I wouldn’t buy another one of these kits though.

A New House

Nick Momrik4 Comments

We’re having a house built!

The planning phase has a been a lot of work, but we made it to the end. The plans are finalized and the construction agreement has been signed. This photo is only a portion of the revisions.

Our first meeting with the builder, Cobblestone Homes, was on August 21st and we signed on December 11th, which was our 13th meeting. In the end, we went with a custom build, heavily inspired by their popular split ranch floor plan. Their plan was too big for us, so we moved in some walls, changed the location of the basement stairs, and made a larger walk-in closet and pantry. We saved about 200 square feet and will get exactly what we want.

I did some early drawings before passing off to the architect. Since this is based off a Cobblestone plan, I believe they hold the copyright. This was my first attempt and we ended up flipping the entire house.

This next drawing I did is very close to what we ended up with. The final plan is 1,947 square feet.

Hopefully we close on the loan in a few weeks and then the lot becomes ours. If the weather cooperates, they should be able to break ground in February. We can’t wait!

Network Rack Supports

Nick Momrik3 Comments

We’re having a house built next year and it’ll have ethernet ports all over. I’ve already started gathering equipment and setting up a network rack cabinet (from Amazon), so I can start playing around with the stuff in our current house over the winter. The rack will do the job fine, but it’s not super high quality. Since the components usually only mount to the front rails, the heavy equipment can sag quite a bit in the rear. I cut and stained a couple of pieces of scrap wood.

The UPS is the heaviest piece of gear, so it’s mounted at the bottom of the rack. I used a couple of pieces of VHB tape to stick the support beam to the rack floor. The rear of the UPS simply rests on that piece of wood.

The other support piece mounts to the rear rails with washers and screws, propping up the back end of the switch.

Simple and effective improvements.

2023 Home Screen – iPhone 15 Pro

Nick Momrik2 Comments

Here’s the yearly share of my iPhone home screen.

This year I switched from Golfshot to a Shot Scope watch, but since it’s out of golf season, the app moved from the home screen in to the Sports group. I think the only other big change is the wallpaper.

Check out previous screenshots from 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2010.

Homemade Christmas Ornaments – 2023

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After getting married in October, of course we were going to center our ornament around that this year. We took some leftover pieces that didn’t get used for the kitchen backsplash, glued two together, cut it to size, rounded the corners, softened the edges, and added a couple of screw eyes.

We bought two different colors (hard to tell in this photo) of twine and tied a square knot. Obvious symbolism.

After having a Cricut for almost two years, we finally cut vinyl on it.

A little super glue gel to attach the knot.

Then we sprayed three coats of lacquer to help set it and hopefully hold on to the vinyl better.

We also have some bonus ornaments this year. I drilled a hole through one of the golf balls Brandi had made for some twine. The other two were Huichol art we did on our honeymoon in Playa Mujeres. Can you guess who did which one?

Making ornaments is a yearly tradition for us. Check out 2021 and 2022.