A D.I.Y. Kind of Post

(Edit: For those following my wife's pintrest, the under cabinet lighting is further down) Last month I needed to get the leaves mulched up in my yard before the warm weather started down here.  Unfortunately, the choke cable on the lawn mower was crimped at some point and the cable wouldn’t pull the choke far enough back to actually rev up.  If I got down there and pulled it back then the choke would sit far enough back to go, or at least it would until I hit a bumpy spot on the ground and the choke would jostle just enough forward for the engine to die.

My dad taught me a lot about repairing broken things rather than buying a whole new item.  But as I was looking at the cost to buy a replacement cord another lesson rang true in my ears.  Don’t be afraid to make it yourself!  A silly little cable would cost about $50, but I could buy some guy-wire and cable clamps for $5 and do it myself.

Here it is attached to the choke on the engine.  I pulled the old damaged wire out of it’s tube and reused the tube to keep it looking nice

And here it is attached to the choke bar.  I figure I’ll have to tighten the cable again by the end of the year but for a tenth of the cost that’s a price I’m willing to pay!

Next up on my DIY list was my kindle (Edit: here's a link to the instructable I made for this DIY lighted Kindle case).  I like to read in bed for a little bit before going to sleep (a trait I inherited from my mother), but I can’t keep the light on or else Amy can’t fall asleep.  I’ve been using a battery powered reading light, but I don’t like how quickly the battery dies (it’s two of those watch batteries CR2032).  I wanted one of those lighted kindle cases that use the Kindle’s battery, but they cost $60!  I already had a light and a case though, so why not make my own lighted case?

First up was the issue of actually getting power from the kindle.  Located on the back of the kindle (4th Generation) are two metal pads.  When face down the one on the left is the positive terminal and the one on the right is the negative (which means when face up, positive is on the right and negative is on the left) I tried a couple methods of interfacing with them before I realized that they were recessed.  A quick dollop of solder fixed that issue!

Next up I measured and hot glued a couple metal bars to the case to connect with the kindle’s metal pads.  I added some solder where they would connect to make sure I had a good connection and soldered my power wire to the correct bars (the white cable is the positive one and the bare, copper, cable is the negative)

On the other end I drilled a hole into the battery chamber of the reading light and soldered the cables to the right terminals.  I had to come back latter and add a resistor because the light was much too bright.  It turns out the kindle puts out (by my estimation) 55mA but an LED needs more like 20mA.  This made is shine extra bright and would eventually decrease it’s life span.  Besides Amy couldn’t sleep with it because it was so bright!  The resistor dropped the current to a nice dim, but very readable level.

Here’s the finished design all light up and spiffy

Tucked away and off for normal use.

Last up on my DIY shelf was some under cabinet lighting (Edit: Here's a link to the instructable I made for this with better instructions).  Amy let me know that there just not enough light under our cabinets.  We turn the microwave under light on, but it’s just not enough sometimes.  See?



It’s not too dark, but just dark enough to make seeing hard.  Especially since you end up standing between the counter and the light source. So for Amy’s birthday, we decided to get her under cabinets lights.
Our cabinets are rather shallow on the bottom so unless I wanted a bunch of florescent lights jutting down all over the place I needed to find a better solution!  The answer came in the form of LED lights.  I had wanted to make my own strip using very bright LEDs but it turned out it was cheaper to buy a premade, waterproof LED 5050 light strip with 3M adhesive tape on the back by far than it was to make it myself. ($6.50 for a 1 meter strip ain’t bad!)  I measured it out and decided to give myself some wiggle room and got 2 meters worth

LEDs can’t be run of 120V AC power though, these strips need 12V DC.  I though about making my own convertor, but decided to let a professional do it and just bought an $8 AC->DC adapter off Amazon.  It takes 120V AC and turns it into 12V DC (up to 6 amps, which is more than I need for this, but it gives me the option of having up to about 6 meters of light strips if I ever chose to expand this out.)



My next issue was how to turn them on.  I really wanted a light switch to turn them on and off with but I have tile backing all around the cabinets!  Fortunately, there’s already a light switch that controls a florescent light above the sink. I cut off the power cord from the light and redirected it above the cabinets.  Then I cut off the plug from the adapter and twisted them all up together with a cable twist cap in a junction box neatly our of sight.

The two white cables on the left are the power in and power back out to the florescent light and the single black cable is the AC cord to the adapter.  As a side note, this is all really safe as I both knew and tested to confirm that turning off the light switch 100% killed the power to this cable.  I didn’t do anything with power running.



Here’s a shot of the ac adapter.  AC power comes in from the left and DC out to the right.  If you can't tell, this is basically a laptop power adapter, all that maters is that it puts out 12V DC and can supply enough current. I cut the end of the cable off the DC side and wired my cables to it.  I bought some red (positive) and black (negative) wires from Lowe’s for $10 total and wrapped them up in some white tubing from Fry’s Electronics for another $8 to make them look pretty against my white cabinets.



After connecting to the power supply, I sent the wires down behind the cabinets.  Conveniently, I had an empty space behind the cabinets where they met in the corner so I didn’t have to drill through the cabinets themselves!  I had 3 sections I wanted to light, so I sent a strand to each section.  This picture shows the white tubing I put the wires through



Once I finally got everything said and done, here’s a picture of the LED strip turned off under the cabinet



And here it is lit up.  You can tell they put out a lot of light.



Here’s the kitchen with no light and the curtains down (it’s around 2 PM so it’s pretty bright in our backyard)



And here’s the same area with the LED strip lit up!  The picture doesn’t really do it justice it looks *amazing* and since it’s so low profile, you can’t see the strip under the cabinet and the wires are nailed in place with some wire holder so you can’t see them either!



Here’s a picture with the lights turns on and the rest of the kitchen lights turned on too.  It really shows how bright these strips are!  I probably should have bought a “cool” white color instead of a “warm” white and the cool white is more of the yellow light that we’re used to and the rest of the kitchen uses, whereas the warm white (or pure white) has an almost blue tinge to it.  Still after a couple hours to get used to it, it doesn’t really make a difference.



Here’s one last picture I took.  It’s after dark with all the lights in the house turned off except for the light strips.  They are *really* bright!  And coming in at around $40 where other solutions I’ve seen cost $100 for just one cabinets means that the average I saved on these three projects is something around 85% the cost of buying pre-made items and doing them myself!

A D.I.Y. Kind of Post

DIY “Smart” Power Outlet

A long time ago (a little over three years ago), I wrote a post about how I modified my PS2 with a hard drive and some software that would let me back up games I owned to a hard drive.  The benefits being I have my entire game collection at my finger tips, as well as it saves the dvd laser (an extremely costly replacement if it ever goes  out).

Well I found a way to do this same thing with my Wii!  Rather than having an internal hard drive (or SD card in the Wii’s case), it uses an external hard drive attached via USB.  As a side note, the Xbox 360 has this feature built into its system rather than unfairly punishing its client base by saying such software should be outlawed.

Anyway, soap box ranting aside, I have it all set up in my fireplace shelf I set up (as seen in my last blog entry).  The only issue is that I really like the curtain my wife made and it’s a hassle to move it back and flip on the hard drive when EVERYTHING else is automated.  I even used a special type of remote (JP1, a subject I’ve also talked about previously) that I programmed the elaborate sequence needed to turn on the various devices in my entertainment system.

I could have left it on all the time but A) That’s a  waste of electricity and B) The external hard drive enclosure I use is passively cooled (it doesn’t have a fan on it).  It get’s a little toasty in my fireplace shelf and having the hard drive on for a couple hours makes it hot to the touch, so leaving it on 24/7 seemed like a very bad idea to me. 

So I began to search for for a power strip or outlet that would automatically turn on when the Wii turned on.  I was able to find some eventually, but they all cost in the range of 30+ dollars.  That’s when I decided it was about time to get out my DIY tools!

I knew my basic idea, I want my hard drive to turn on with the Wii, but the Wii doesn’t really have a lot of external outputs that I can work with… pretty much just a pair of USB ports really.  Well thanks to my job with Prime Controls, I’ve learned a lot about relays and there in was the solution to my dilemma!  I set out to purchase a Solid State Relay that would activate whenever USB voltage was present (or for those who care about the technical side of it.  I needed a SSR that would output a range of AC power that included the 120V AC put out by your every day home power outlet, and whose triggering input voltage covered the 3-5V DC power provided by a standard USB plug.  I know technically USB puts out 5 volts, but I didn’t want an under voltage on my USB to mess up my whole project.)

The only catch was everywhere I looked all the SSRs ran in the 20 dollar or more range.  All things considered, I suppose that’s not too bad a price, but it’s more than I was willing to pay.  If it would cost me $20 to do it myself, there’s not much point in not shelling out an extra 10 bucks to buy a fancy pre-made one.

In desperation I went to Fry’s Electronics, only to be met by a trio of dumb stares from clerks who had never even HEARD of an SSR, and they all work at a desk literally 5 feet from the relays!  Fortunately, one of the workers referred me to an electronic shop called Tanner’s Electronics.  I WILL be remembering this place.  It’s pretty much what radio shack and Fry’s both started off as before they ditched the small electronics and knowledgeable employees in favor of over priced wires and minimal wage high school kids.  It’s AMAZING.  They had what I wanted for 8 bucks.

So I spend some time assembling it all this evening.  I took one of the many printer USB cables I had lying around and cut off the printer end to provide triggering power for my SSR (it tells my relay to turn the switch to the on position).  Then I repurposed a computer power cabled to provide the AC power to the outlet.  I opted for a single outlet rather than a whole power strip because I didn’t need a whole power strip taking up space.

Here’s a photo of the final set up.

You can see both the AC plug and my USB cable.  They go into the first box where I have the SSR mounted to the lid of the box.   I had heard that SSRs need a heat sink to work without over heating so I’m using the box to act as a heat sink.  I also applied a good amount of thermal paste between the box and the relay to aid in getting rid of heat, but so far it doesn’t seem to generate much heat… but the amount of power I’m pulling down it is pretty small so I’m not too surprised.  Finally, the last cable goes from the SSR to my little outlet box.  Anything plugged into those outlets will only turn on when power is going over the USB cord.  Which of course means if I ever wanted to, I could just plug a power strip into one of the outlets and have my very own “Smart” power strip.  Total project cost?  Under $20 if you had to buy all the stuff I already had on end, for me I think it cost under $15  (and it was only that much since I had to buy the two enclosures rather than fitting it all into one box).

DIY “Smart” Power Outlet

On Shelves and TV Mounts

Wow, long time no blog, huh?  Much of the reason is because I’ve started a new job with a place called Prime Controls.  We program PLCs (the things that controls pumps and stuff at water/wastewater plants, oil rigs, and even Dr. Pepper!).  It a completely new field to me and its taking a while to get into the swing of things.

But enough about that!  As the title says this is about shelves and TV mounts.  Amy and I have constantly been working on the TV location since we moved into our home.  The only place for it really is on the fireplace, but there are lots of things in the way there. 

So the first thing we did was take the mantle down.  It protruded far away from the wall meaning the TV had to sit on the very end of the TV stand.  One good push from the cat would knock that TV right off to its untimely demise.

With the mantle gone things were good for a while.  The TV could sit far back on the stand and was safe from curious cats.  But the area itself  still created a lot of clutter.  Wire were strewn all about, the stand itself was large and detracted from the natural feel of the fireplace, it just didn’t work for us.

Ideas were tossed all around, we considered knocking a hole in the wall next to the fireplace and making a recessed shelf area where all the equipment could sit so we could get rid of the stand and mount the  TV, but we didn’t want to do anything so drastic to the home.  It didn’t really seem like the kind of thing that was good for the resale value of a home one day. 

Suddenly it came to us.  We already can’t use the fireplace because the TV is in the way (and because we had covered up the hole with Plexiglas to cut down on drafts), so why not build a shelf in the fireplace to hold the equipment?

But no no, it wasn’t enough to just slap some wood in there and call it a shelf, I wanted to maximize the space available to me.  So I talked to a co-worker (and the guy who got me this job), Colin, on how I should cut the wood to get it angled right (he’s been doing a lot of wood working too, so I knew he’d know) and lo and behold, this is the final product!

Yes, I packed it to the hilt with electronics!  But the best part of all, it Amy made a curtain for it to cover it all up!  So with the TV mounted it now looks like this:

  Yes for whatever reason when this house was made 30 years ago they put the fireplace off to the right instead of centering it.  We decided to center the TV on the wall rather than over the fireplace.  It’s hard to tell, but off to the left, behind the wedding photo is a little white cord cover that is filled to capacity with wires.  All in all, Amy and I are quite pleased with the way it turned out, it really brings our living room up to a much more modern condition and feels… adultish rather than college dormish.

On Shelves and TV Mounts

Does Anyone Else Hear the Sound of Water?

This Super Bowl weekend brought the following things:

1) An embarrassment to Jerry Jones as his ultra elitist stadium failed to have enough seating for everyone he sold tickets to (not to mention all the sound, and operations issues)

2) An embarrassment to Texas as our power grid couldn’t handle the influx of people and cold weather at the same time

3) The sound of rushing water and an impromptu lake forming out in my garage

That’s right, when the weather finally warmed up on Sunday, Amy and I were shocked to find that a pipe in our garage burst.  Fortunately, it was not attached to the water heater, but rather it led to a faucet in the backyard.  I had placed one of those nifty faucet covers over it, but apparently it just wasn’t enough to protect this poor little guy.

When we finally discovered the leak it had accumulated about 2-3 inches of water in our garage.  Thankfully, our garage is a step or two lower than the rest of our home so the only thing that got wet was some concrete floors.  After turning off the water to the house and sweeping the water out of the garage I discovered some interesting things.

The first was that the previous owner of this home clearly experienced this problem as there was replacement piece of drywall covering the exact location where the pipe had burst.

The second was a reconfirmation that the previous owner of this house, was not the handiest of men.  That or he always got his repairs done by the lowest bidder, which in this neighborhood is about 10 minutes east, you’ll find a group of very handy, hardworking men who will work dirt cheap all standing outside a gas station starting at 6 AM, and then bought sub-par parts for them to work with.

Here’s a picture of the pipe that burst. 

Now I’d like to point out that the shiny silver pipe in the wall is the faucet I purchased to replace this broken pipe and faucet.  I had to cut off the pipe at the elbow and sweat on a new piece (thanks again Mr. Pait for teaching me how to do that!).  Here’s a picture of the burst  pipe after the fact.

If you can’t tell, that pipe is paper thin, it’s really not the kind of pipe you should use in a location that is going to have to endure cold temperatures, but you could probably get away with it if you at least put some insulation around it.  It only costs 2 bucks for a six foot long section of copper pipe insulation, come on!

Regardless, in its place, I’m putting an anti-freeze faucet.  The concept with this faucet is that every time you turn the faucet off, it empties the pipe behind the faucet preventing the pipe from bursting from the cold (If you don’t quite get it, just google “Anti-freeze faucet)

Unfortunately, since I had to cut off some of the pipe, things didn’t quiet connect.  So I just brought the faucet inside the garage for a little bit until I have a Saturday when I can solder on a little extension.

The final thing Amy and I did this weekend was to take the mantel off the fireplace.  We have our TV there and the mantel is just in the way.  We were hoping to place it higher on the brick, but it turned out that rather than being attached via mason screws, they had actually replaced a layer of brick with wood and nailed into the wood.  So we decided just to put it into the attic until we leave the home or we decide we want it back.

We also decided that we wanted to prevent our cat from crawling into the fireplace, but didn’t want to shell out the bucks for a some sliding glass doors in front of it.  Amy mom’s had the excellent suggestion of putting Plexi-glass to cover the opening, a trip to Home Depot later and here’s the results!

(For those interested, other fun home projects Amy and I have done include putting lights in the attic, putting on a water heater blanket, and if the weather get’s warm and dry enough for us to finish it, rain gutters)

Does Anyone Else Hear the Sound of Water?

Circuits, Breakers, and Electricity. Oh My!

Amy and I are having a lot of fun doing home projects and getting everything just the way we want things.  Today, I was going to add a new circuit breaker to take power out to the front yard.  An area that is painfully lacking in an electrical outlet.

The plan, as always, was a simple one.  The pervious owners of this house had a hot tub (it was, thankfully, gone when we moved in).  I knew that dropping a new electrical wire would be a nigh impossible task with how full this circuit breaker box is, so we decided to simply high jack the electrical line that used to go to the hot tub.

Basically, we’d take the 30 AMP breaker that is presently in there and replace it with a 15 AMP breaker.  Then we’d take the electrical line that is sitting in the attic (attached to nothing, don’t worry) and simply attach the new line to the end of that line inside a junction box.

That’s when I was introduced to a type of breaker called Zinsco.  They look like this

They are also HORRIBLY outdated.  They are also, and more importantly, against electrical codes due to a design flaw in which the circuit breaker's connection to the bus bar becomes loose, causing arcing and subsequent overheating.

How did I find all this out?  I went to Home Depot where a kindly associate pointed me to the replacement breaker that cost 70 dollars!  OUCH!

The long story short is that I was able to purchase a replacement on eBay for 7 bucks and will continue this project in a couple weeks.  In the long run, I will need to replace the entire panel, but that’s a very expensive (though only slightly more than how much Home Depot would have charged me for the breaker) and timely, so it will be a project for much letter.

Ironically, however, I’m thinking about changing my mode of attack for putting an electrical outlet out there.  Where before I was going to drop the line through a water proof pipe out of my attic down the side of my house and into a waterproof outlet box.  I’m thinking that a better option may be to actually just boor a whole in my outer brick wall and tap into an outlet in the guest bedroom.

Then I’ll just flush mount the waterproof outlet and it will look significantly nicer.  It’s not like I need a huge AMP rating on this outlet either.  I literally just need an outlet out there to hook my weed eater up.  The only other things on this circuit (Amy and I mapped all the circuits last week) are the outlets in the guest room and 2 in the office and 2 in the master bedroom.  So unless I decide to hook a ridiculous amount of high Amperage equipment to each outlet at once, tapping in to the preexisting outlet should work just fine.

Any thoughts? (other than call Daniel’s father-in-law, our local electrician)

Circuits, Breakers, and Electricity. Oh My!

Sprinklers! (Part 3)

Not a to report on the sprinkler project took place yesterday. It rained the first part of the morning meaning I wasn’t able to really get started until almost 10:30. I was able to finish the tunneling under the wires with only a medium amount of frustration, so that was nice. The rain made the ground a little more workable and the heat a LOT more tolerable so that was a nice side affect of the rain.

Once the tunnels were burrowed, it was just a matter of laying the pipe down and gluing it all together. It was rather surprising just how much time it took to glue the pipe all together. Hopefully, I’ve done a good job and everything will stick!

I was also able to get the controller installed in the garage and the wires stretched out to the valves, I’ll hook the valves up to the wires first thing this morning. Here’s a list of the remain tasks.

1) Attach valve wires

2) Test system for leaks.

3) Attach Sprinklers

4) Cover up trenches

5) Install Rain Detector ( still might have to be delayed since it gets installed on the roof)

There’s not a lot to show visually about the difference from yesterday to today, so here’s a picture of the remaining parts in my house.

Sprinklers! (Part 3)

Sprinklers! (Part 2)

I realized I hadn’t posted the above photo before on the blog yet and today seemed like a rather appropriate day to do so.  The sign comes from my Grandfather Bennett’s (nick-named “Benny”) garage.  A couple year back us Grandkids were given an option to have any one thing of their grandparent’s that they just really desired.  It was, of course, a time in which everyone was saying something along the lines of “well, if no one else really wants this then….” For me, the sign in the garage was definitely what I desired.

My grandpa was well known to us for making stuff out of junk.  He’d take old pipes and such and make the most amazing things (Like a playground for us grandkids).  Anyway, I felt it would be rather appropriate to tag this projects I do with the above photo since I inherited a lot of his “I can build that” attitude.

So, yesterday saw phase 3 of the project (with phase 1 being the research, planning, and presentation for approval, and phase 2 being the last post about tapping into the water line).  I called up a local (and free) business that came out and marked all the lines that were in my yard (electricity, phone, cable, etc).  With the lines properly marked, I laid out my parts and went over my plans one last time to make sure I had everything.  Here’s a picture of the parts I’m using (minus the parts I used in part 1, and 620 Ft of PVC pipe)

Convinced that I had all the connectors, couplers, glue, and controllers I needed, it was time to head out to Home Depot and rent a machine I affectionately refer to as “The Beast”

This thing took three full-grown men to lift it into the back of my dad’s truck.  My neighbor, Mr. Stroope,  and I managed to impair its decent just enough to not destroy the driveway getting it out of the truck.  It is a wonderful machine though.  Rather than having to dig every last inch of trench myself (a nightmarish task), “The Beast” would dig a perfect, 2-inch wide, variable depth trench with the dirt laid up in a pretty little line right next to it.  It was, however, a beast to pull (because you couldn’t push it, you had to pull it) and I was quiet worn out by the time I had dug all my trenches.

I had hoped to get the whole project completed in one day, and at first focused on digging the trench for one zone than laying out the piping for the zone.  I realized after the first zone was complete, however, that I was really needed to focus on getting the trenches dug completely so I wouldn’t have to worry about renting “The Beast” a second day.  Mr. Stroope was very impressed with the machine and I personally think he’ll invent some reason in the near future to let him rent and play with it himself in the near future.

At the end of the day, I had accomplished the following on the sprinkler project

1) Attached the sprinkler system to the water supply

2) Dug the trenches for all the zones

3) Laid out the pipe for half the zones.

Here’s some photos of my very own Maginot line.

Side Yard (Zone 1 and Water Supply)

Back Yard (Zone 2)

Back Yard (Most of Zone 3)

Front Yard (Zone 4)

My Anti-siphon Valves that Control the Zones

Though this project has been largely “McCormick’s Law” free, I have encountered two problems.  The first is all the Cable/Phone lines that cut straight through my backyard.  The solution is simple in theory.  You simply buy an attachment for going under sidewalks glue it onto a length of PVC pipe, hook it onto a water hose, and let the water pressure burrow your way to success.  There are two problems with it though.  The first is it has a tendency to go… askew.  Primarily, that means down, but it also means left or right.  In one of the burrows I did, I went down by about… 4 inches and too far left by 2 inches.  It may sound like nothing, but it really adds up in a project like this, especially when you have no true method of finding the errant other than blindly digging.  The other was hitting rocks, water pressure just won’t cut through rocks as quickly as I need it to.  The second issue I encountered was this:

Don’t see the issue, let’s zoom in a little.

That funny little black thing is a TV cable.  One of two cables right next to each other that Time Warner failed to mark for me.  It specifically leads to my internet.  I’ll call them up tomorrow and have them come fix it after I lay my pipe there.  Since they failed to mark it, I’m not liable for it’s destruction, fortunately.  Also fortunately, I was able to hook up to a non-damaged outlet and keep internet in the house! 

Total time of the project so far (times include mid-projects trips to Lowes/Home Depot to get missing items):

Thursday: 4 Hours to cut through old pipe and solder on new pipes)

Saturday: 12 Hours

Monday’s Tasks:

1) Finish laying out pipes (Zones 3 and 4).

2) Test system for leaks.

3) Attach Sprinklers

4) Install Controller

5) Cover up trenches

6) Install Rain Detector (might have to be delayed since it gets installed on the roof)

Sprinklers! (Part 2)