Archive for August, 2009

Custom HDTV Mount

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Mount

Having a hackerspace has totally changed the way I look at the world. I just moved into a new place, and the best place to mount the tv is in a weird corner. Before hackerspace: “ugh. Where else can it go.  $200 for a swivel mount is way too expensive!”  After hackerspace: “$30 in steel and a welder. This is going to be AWESOME!”

Design

tvmount design

Originally the plan was to weld one solid mount, but when it comes to welding, and construction in general, things don’t always go according to plan. I went the safe route and used a sectional design: two arms lag-screwed to the studs, with cross runners bolted between them.

Construction

weldedpaintedmocked-up

Construction was pretty straight-forward:

  • Cut the steel to length with a bandsaw.
  • Use a milling machine to cut slots for extra adjustability. (Oh. Did I mention we have a milling machine?)
  • Weld it together
  • Paint it (to hide my ugly welds)

Mounting

L-Brackets on TVMount SlotsTV Attached

The Mounting procedure was pretty easy as well:

  • Do some pull-ups on the mount to make sure it will hold the weight
  • Mount slotted, slightly bent, L-brackets to the TV
  • Bolt TV to the mount
  • Make left-right, tilt adjustments
  • Tighten everything down

And that’s it.  I’m really proud of it.  Mostly I’m proud of the fact that my TV hasn’t fallen in the middle of the night.  Materials cost wound up being $40. 1.25″ slotted angle, 4 L-brackets, and a can of spraypaint. I probably could have done it for far less if I had used found materials instead of going to Home Depot.

flattr this!

DIY Bicycle GPS Mount – Done

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Mounted and Ready

Look at that sexy GPS Mount! I don’t know how it could have turned out better. In addition to figuring out how to attach it to the bike, there’s a nice coat of tool-dip sprayed on there. It’s an extra layer of scratch insurance, and it makes the mount blend in with the frame. Good stuff all around. Too bad I can’t take credit for any of it. Nice work Will!

Mount side-view

The main issue from the last post was trying to figure out how to get the holder on the bike. Looks like the old-reflector-mount path worked well.

Flush Mount Screws

lock-nuts

The holder is attached to the reflector mount using flushed screws and lock nuts, and mounted to the bike under the headset cap. I totally thought he was going to mount it on the handlebars, but I think this works better. It’s centrally located, and away from the hands.

flattr this!

DIY Bicycle GPS Mount – Take 1

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Locked_And_Loaded

A friend of mine came up for the weekend, and he had an idea for a GPS mount for his bike. We fleshed it out a bit, and came up with this. It’s made from sheet metal scavenged from an old toaster oven.

Insertion_Extraction

The GPS is held really snugly on all 4 sides. The top tongue is held in place by friction, and swings out of the way for easy insertion and removal.

Back_View

There’s one issue that hasn’t been completey ironed out yet. looking at the bottom of this thing, you have to ask, “How does it attach to the bike?” Don’t know yet. We didn’t have one handy, but most ideas revolved around using the mount from an old reflector; either JBWelding it straight to the bottom, or somehow using the bolt. Not sure yet. Once it gets painted / mounted I’ll post some more pictures.

DIY

We made this thing for a Garmin Nuvi, but this could be resized for any GPS. Or even – gasp – for the iPhone. Just cut the above shape out of sheet metal, substituting your device’s length width and height into “L”, “W”, and “H”. Bend along the dotted lines, with the yellow doing down, and the orange going up and over. (Click the image for a larger size.)

MAKE SURE to file down & sand all rough edges. if you do this, your device should remain unscratched. If you don’t… not so much.

flattr this!

Sparkfun Now Carrying Offset Headers

Friday, August 14th, 2009

SparkfunHeader
The title says it all. Their picture is much nicer than mine too. That quarter or theirs really gets around.

Here’s a direct link to the product page.

flattr this!

Sandal Retread using Fillet ‘o Tire

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

Sandals After

I did this once years ago, and it worked really well. Take an old tire, and recycle it to make indestructible shoe soles. Tire tread is designed to handle way more abuse than simple walking can dish out. My current sandals were starting to wear down, and it was time to do it again.

There’s just one issue when using a tire: there’s a steel mesh embedded in the rubber. It rigidly holds a curved shape, which is not what you want. The solution I came up with was to fillet the tire, keeping the tread and leaving the steel behind. Good stuff.

Beyond that it’s a straight-forward process. You remove the old soles and glue the new ones on. The rest of my sandals will fall apart long before the soles do.

I took a bunch of pictures. Should make for a decent Instructable.

flattr this!