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Firewood Discipline

I always get carried away with Spring/Summer projects and forget about firewood until Fall comes around to remind us that it gets cold around here. I’m trying a new regimen that’s worked pretty well these past few weeks. Each week end I spend 1 day cutting trees no matter what projects are happening. Then during the week I split & stack the logs. Hopefully I can stick to it long enough to have an extra year or 2 worth of wood piles.

Now big enough to come pick up logs with me.

The smallest of 2 piles, we’ll be fine.

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Introducing Curious Kraken

For a while I’ve been wanting a more capable Internet Enabled RC car, something that could go outside. Well, I finally got working the Wild Thumper I got a few weeks ago.

This is still very much a prototype

I initial tried controlling the motors with 3 L298Ns for each of the wheel pairs, but they overheated. So I tried a couple of other motor controllers, the ones that did the trick are a couple of BTS7960s.

Rated for high current, heating is simply not an issue

I ported the Nosy Monster code to work with them, and I improved several things,  mostly around smoothing controls. You can’t just start these motors are full power, you need you ramp up and down. This is to be mechanically gentle on the motors, but it also helps with piloting.

Outside!

We’re figuring out the wifi range around the house, it’s worst than I thought, well, for live streaming video at least.

Iterating on a case for the electronics

 

The suspensions are excellent, the motors could be beefier

More to come…

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Yellow Jackets Sapwood Oasis

The day was hot and they were exited to find several logs oozing sap. Their diligently staying on the sapwood made it clear sap is what they were after. I left them a few logs I’ll pick up later.