More natural gas (bad) news
We’re designing a new house and talking a lot about a functional kitchen. I think we’re leaving the world of gas stoves, and while we’re at it, gas ovens. The electric stoves from the past are awful but the induction stoves available now are great. We also want to go solar as much as possible, […]
The Unexpected Long Term Effects of a Pandemic
How’s your life going? Are you where you thought you’d be now if you look back to a couple of months before the 2020 elections? Or to the early days of 2020 when America First thought China had declared biological war? It’s made a mess of my sideline business, but I’m recovering and adapting and […]
Moog Werkstatt Eurorack adapter
Back when i started the Moog-friendly enclosure, I got a bit sidetracked and started thinking, “How can you mount something not Eurorack-friendly to a Eurorack?” Well, it turns out to be a bit of a pain, not to install, but to operate. The install instructions have all the details to consider before you buy one […]
sensor box and particle detection
Installed a couple of particle detectors that count particle sizes of 1.0, 2.5, and 10.0 microns. Looking at these values along side CO2 and tVOC in the kitchen is one functional test. Last night I used Alton Brown’s “Election Night Steak” recipe, and on the printed copy I’ve written “only cook in summer” because of […]
“sensor box” update
For the past few weeks I’ve had sensors in my studio (2nd floor) and kitchen (first floor) and data collection has been interesting. Some things I’ve learned looking at the data I’ve collected. I’ll post some images to illustrate these in the future, but just wanted to share my notes with other people. The best […]
The “sensor box” project
Digging through sensors I already have, I discovered that my Sparkfun Qwiic Ideation Kit came with an Environmental Combo sensor that can detect temperature, humidity, CO (carbon monoxide), and VOC (volatile organic compounds). The list of VOCs is long but NO2 is in the list. What’s Qwiic? It is a standard from Sparkfun for I2C […]
Context: Gas stoves pollute residential kitchens
Let’s start by saying the thing nobody who loves cooking wants to hear: Gas stoves are bad for the environment and for humans in the kitchen and we should stop using them. Yes, I know they are magic tools for controlling fire. For decades I’ve passed on renting an apartment or a house simply because […]
Interaction Design in the Environment
Starting a new category because I’m starting a new project and it needs a home. For several years I’ve been teaching “Making Things Interactive” at CMU’s IDeATe program with all assignments turned in on the class blog. It’s basically “Arduino 102” where we take what people learned in an intro to physical computing class and […]
Marlin 2.0 and E3D Bigbox Update
Finally had time to finish the port and doing some testing. If you want to help, here’s the link/branch: https://github.com/allartburns/Marlin/tree/bugfix-bigbox
Making Things Interactive, the 2020 Quarantine Variant
It’s that time! As I did in previous classes, I’m posting all my notes and students are posting all their assignments to the class blog.