Category Archives: Hacking

Easiest firewood splitting method or how to reuse a junk tire.

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I have no idea who invented this thing, but it is seriously the best way to split wood ever.  No more chasing pieces, no more bending over, just insanely fast wood splitting.  I am way faster than a hydraulic splitter.  It is not even close. Granted, I get tired eventually but I am easily splitting 5 times as much wood as I was without the tire.  I figure at least 1-2 face cords an hour with reasonable effort.  I used to be faster with the saw, now I am faster splitting.

Anyways to make this, get a big chopping block, and screw some scrap 2×4’s to the sides, then put a scrap tire on it.  I screwed the tire down but I don’t think it would actually move too much if you didn’t.  Then fill the tire full of wood, and go nuts.  Very rarely one piece will pop out but the best part is you can fit 4 pieces in sometimes.  That cuts down on all the chasing and wasting time.

How to Make a Stinky Sno Cone: Stinky Gringo

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What to do when you are up north, and happen to have a bottle of the best pre-mixed Margarita mix?  Make stinky sno cones of course.

Take your pint canning jar outside and fill it with snow, pack it in there really good, especially if it is the light fluffy stuff.  Be wary if you have a dog, no yellow snow in the jar, it will be impossible to tell if someone makes one for you, so you should always fill your own jar of snow.

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Next open the Stinky Gringo, I only like the lime, and I mean REALLY like the lime.  If you have not tried this mix, really, go try it.  You will be out like $15 and it has as much tequila as I would normally put in a margarita I mixed myself.  The first one is a bit rough but it is downhill to insanity afterwards.  Fill up that pint jar and enjoy.

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Let Mother Nature provide for you with this delicious blended margarita with no work at all.  When life gives you snow, don’t fret, make stinky sno cones.  You will no longer even care about the snow.

 

Upcycling a cloth shopping bag into a firewood carrier.

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Living with a wood stove is not too bad however, it does require one to carry wood fairly often.  Sure, you can load up one arm with the other but this is uncomfortable for carrying more than a few pieces at a time.   They sell these firewood carriers  for $22 at Lehman’s.  I needed one and I have big sheet of canvas that I was going to use to make one then I had an idea.  Why not make one out of a cloth shopping bag.  I have tons of them, for a while there everyone was giving them away and I have like 20 of them.  So here goes.

Upcycling is an important homesteader, hacker and maker skill.  It is basically taking something that is useless or less useful in its current form and modifying it.  The best part is that it usually does not cost much or anything at all.  In this case I already had the bags and thread.  For a small time investment I have a really nice firewood carrier.

Items Needed:

  • Cloth Shopping Bag

  • Scissors

  • Needle and thread

  • Sharp knife of seam ripper

Here is the bag that I started with.  Given to me as a set of 5 from Google when they visited my work.

 

 

I Ripped the seams of the side of the bag.  I chose this bag because of the 4 panel construction.  The piece that the handle is sewn to was one piece and the sides were sewn on to it.  Making it perfect for this project.

 

 

Here is the bad with the 4 seams ripped out.  You can see the shape of the bag.  I just trimmed the short sides with a scissors and cut off the material that was covering the seams.

 

 

On the panels that I trimmed I folded them under and pinned them for sewing.

 

 

 

Here you can see both sides pinned and ready to sew.

 

 

 

Please ignore my awful sewing job here.  I go for function not looks.  I could have fired up the sewing machine but it was so little sewing, I didn’t feel like setting it up since we moved and took it apart.

 

 

Immediately after sewing it, I had to try it out so here is the firewood carrier out at the wood shed waiting to be filled with wood.

 

 

The wife is filling the firewood carrier while I cheer her on and take photos.

 

 

 

Here is the wife modeling the finest in Northland Fall Fashions.  The upcycled, shopping bag firewood carrier.

 

 

 

The firewood carrier from another angle.

 

 

 

Closeup.

 

 

 

This carrier is nice because you can set down the logs and the pile does not roll around while you open the door.  It also keeps all the wood shavings, and bark chips inside it so you can just bring it outside and shake it out when you come get more wood.

This project took about 1 hour from start to finish and I am really happy with the outcome.  I think I might try making a few more of them once I get the sewing machine set up.  I do think that the handles are a bit long on this bag so I might trim them or take them off and sew on handles that wrap around the bottom so they are less likely to rip off from the weight of the wood.

Hack, Make, Repair and Upcycle.  Break the cycle of conspicuous consumption.
-TM

Root: Kindle Fire and HTC Desire

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Rooting the Kindle Fire:

While my brother-in-law (BIL) was staying with us over the past two days, I got a crack at two new android devices I had not seen yet.  Of course they did not leave the house without being rooted.  I sort of talked BIL into it by tempting him with more free apps and divesting himself of all the carrier provided garbage.  Not a hard sell.

We attacked the Kindle Fire first.  Let me say, first off, that I was really impressed with the device.  Having an iPad myself, I had the defacto tablet to compare the Fire to.  The Fire came along with a lot of hype and it appears to live up to it, especially after being rooted.  We did not put cyanogen on it but just rooted and got the android market on there.  It is not an iPad by a long shot, however, it is a really nice tablet / ereader for the price.

We followed this guide and video to root it.  The process was ultra smooth and took less than an hour to do.  No hiccups at all except having to do it in bootcamp because of some windows only tools.  Not a huge deal for me but it might suck for people without access to a Windows installation.

We also followed this guide to put the android market on it.  We did not do the custom recovery or CM7 mod because I was not sure he wanted his Fire to look like a big phone from the CM7 mod.

Want Android Market?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTkegVrnAvA

Want Custom Recovery?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqKZLMaRSgc

Want to install CM7 (Or Any Fire ROM)?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-zTJWY3CRc

Rooting the HTC Desire:

This was even easier than the Kindle Fire, probably because I rooted my phone with Cyanogenmod in the past.  When I did my HTC Hero about 2.5 years ago, the process was much less refined and took a lot longer to do.  It is quite amazing how far the process has come in that time frame.  I do wonder why we still have to do this to our phones, I would like to see them have the rooting option be a check box like running unauthorized apps.  Simple and easy.

We followed this guide Cyanogenmod HTC Desire and everything went super smooth.  Easy to follow guide and just about anyone should be able to follow it.  The CM7 was a huge hit with the BIL.  CM7 has such a clean and smooth interface it is hard not to like it after getting away from the default carrier interface.  I really enjoyed being the one to root the phones and pull back the curtain a bit for the BIL.  He has not really had much exposure to hacking and I am hoping this little taste of fully owning an electronic device sheds some light on the options that are available for those who choose to seek them.

Tattoo Push to Talk Foot Switch

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I am an avid gamer and run a Teamspeak VOIP server to chat with my friends while playing World of Warcraft.  One of the short falls of using this application is that a push-to-talk switch is required to use it.  There is an option to use voice activated mode but that will transmit when ever a loud sound is present in the room, which in my case happens every time my dog squeeks his ball.

I was thinking about a solution to this problem that would leave both of my hands free to press keys that I need for playing the game and thought about a foot switch.  I have a friend who is a tattoo artist and asked him if he had any broken foot switches and he had one that he was no longer using.  The switch that he provided me with was a Linemaster 491-S available from Allied Electronics.

With the help of some folks at Milwaukee Makerspace, I found the USB development board called the Teensy from http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/.  This board can act as a keyboard and with the use of the teensyduino I was able to program the board using a simple arduino sketch.  The best part of using the teensy board is that it is very small and fit right inside the case of the foot peddle.

This project is barely scratching the surface of what the teensy and teensyduino are capable of but it is my first hardware hacking project.  I am glad that I started with something simple.

Build Log:

The original foot switch.

 

The foot switched disassembled and ready for hacking.

 

I desoldered the cable and attached the Teensy with two small sections of wire.  In my case I used pin 10 and the GND.

 

Another view of the Teensy attached to the switch terminals.

 

Here the Teensy is press-fit into the foot switch case.  I had to modify the original cord retainer by sanding it down quite a bit to get the board to fit inside the case.

 

Another view of the Teensy fit into the case.

 

The modified cord retainer is used to hold the Teensy in place.

A view of the USB connector.

 

Finished product.

 

 

Arduino Code:

I based the code off of Pete Prodehl’s Photobooth button but had to change the keypress to the control button and also clear the keypress when the peddle is released.

void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(10, INPUT_PULLUP);
delay(4000);
}

void loop() {
if (digitalRead(10) == HIGH) {
Keyboard.set_modifier(0);  // clear keypress
delay(10);
} else {
Keyboard.set_modifier(MODIFIERKEY_CTRL);  // hold control key down
Keyboard.send_now();
}
delay(10);
}