Building a Tweeting Weather Station

 

I seem to be a bit of a sucker for weather stations. 

A couple of months ago I mentioned that I started subscribing to a crate service called CreationCrate, which sent you a monthly box stuffed with electronic goodies that typically included an Arduino Uno and plans to build a project of the month. 

This month when the crate arrived in my mailbox, I was absolutely stunned to see that the project of the month was a weather station kit complete with sensors to measure temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. 

A Wee Break in the Programming

 

This week is a bit of an odd one, for I don't really have a project to share this week. 

Oh trust me, it not because the tank is dry in the ideas department, I have a long list of ideas and I have some in the hopper right now being worked on, however, I seem to have been afflicted this week by an issue that a lot of people seem to have - too much to do and not enough time to do it in. 

At this particular moment, I am in the midst of working through a series of custom orders for some signs that I have been making with my laser engraver and my CNC router. 

While it's been keeping me from tinkering with my next new thing, I am pretty happy to see that people are really liking what I pump out of my little workshop and that they like it well enough to shell out good money for it!

 A couple of things that I am working on at the moment are for some repeat customers, so the fact that people are actually willing to come back to me to make more stuff is really exciting to see. 

The other nice thing about doing custom orders is that it gives me fodder for my online shops. The rationale of course is that if someone likes a certain item, there are likely more that have the same needs. Because of this, I always make a duplicate of a custom item and post it up on the on line shop. 

It's been really surprising seeing what sort of demand there has been for something that came to me as a special request from someone. 

Between that and working the regular job - which is still important since I need to pay for my tools and wood somehow, I found myself with very little time left this week to work on that cool little something to showcase on these pages. 

However, the custom jobs are almost complete and a new week is ahead. Time to get back into the groove 😀

An Enclosure for My 3018-PROVer CNC Router - Part 3

 

After a couple of weeks of construction, I was finally at the point now where I can finally put everything together and give my CNC router a decent home. 

The first order of business was too pretty up the enclosure up a little. While the enclosure is going to be serving a purely utilitarian purpose, I really wanted to make it look as attractive as possible since it will be sitting out in the open on my workbench. 

To accomplish that, I decided to give the entire closure a couple of coats of black paint (though any color would have been fine - I just happen to have a lot of black paint on hand).

An Enclosure for My 3018-PROVer CNC Router - Part 2

 

Last week I started building an enclosure for my 3018-PROVer router and I finished the week with the bottom or "tub" of the enclosure built. 

This week I focussed on building a lid for the enclosure to keep the noise and dust down while the router was in operation. 

As I mentioned last week, I wanted to make the enclosure a bit like a clamshell with a shelf at the top to install the off-line controller box and a bit of a lip at the bottom to help keep the sawdust inside the enclosure. 

An Enclosure for My 3018-PROVer CNC Router - Part 1

 

For the past month or so I have been getting a fair bit of use out of my new CNC router and I've been busily trying my hand at doing some simple projects like making some cut-out letters and Christmas ornaments as I continue to learn how to use the machine. 

For all of its versatility, I did notice a few drawbacks with it. 

For one, it can get a bit noisy, while not really a problem for me since I have it installed in a garden shed in my backyard, I do wonder how the neighbors feel about hearing a loud humming noise emanating from my shed. 

Secondly, the router does throw up a fair bit of fine sawdust into the air while it's doing its thing and after a while, I have noticed a fine layer of sawdust has now started to coat all the tools that I keep in the shed.