Dave Akerman

Dave Akerman

@daveake.bsky.social

Retired. Campervan owner. 3D printing shop. High-altitude balloonist. Radio ham M0RPI. PC/mobile/embedded programmer using Delphi, Python, Lazarus/FPC and C.

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This is an ePaper display connected to my van WiFi and Pi4 running HA. Some icons faked awaiting actual hardware. The weather picks up the van's GPS location using an Uputronics GPS HAT. Schedule is from Google calendar. Sensors are switchbots (temp/RH) and Mopeka (levels).

As a lone engineer, having chatgpt by your side is like being surrounded by a large team all of whom are willing to answer questions, with answers from perfect down to completely wrong, all delivered with equal confidence.

Designing for printing, minimizing or eliminating supports or the need to print in parts, can be a challenge with the solution not always being obvious at first. But it is rewarding.

New toy. Er, I mean, vital workhorse. As always, the first things to print are models designed by users to fix design issues left by the manufacturer. That said, it's a lovely piece of kit.

Loving this "easy nylon" from Overture. Nylon has a rep for being hard to print but this was my very first attempt, using the recommended settings, an enclosure for the printer, a heated container for the reel, and a PTFE tube from there to the printer.

I've managed to connect a pair of BM6 vehicle battery monitors to Home Assistant, via an ESP32 running an ESPHome script to poll them. So now I can tell when I need to charge the motorhome batteries :)

This is the fireball that I saw last night at 23:08:50 ... it was out of range of my meteor camera, but I forgot that I also have a PoE camera watching out west over our field, and that did capture it!

Saw an amazing meteor at a few minutes past 11 this evening. Totally at random when I popped out to get something from the shed. Bright green and broke up. I'll check the meteor camera network in the morning!

I use a web "to do" app which lets me type in the day/month/year for when it needs to be done by. The year box accepts up to 6 digits. I guess it's future-proofed but hey, even my list doesn't reach that far out!

1 - Design novel rotatable fitting. 2 - Try to explain to other half. Fail. 3 - Print it then show her. 4 - "Oh, like that thing on my vacuum cleaner?" 5 - Oh. Yes. Like that.

3D printing is a constant learning process, and my current thing is to print complex (for me) ABS parts in several pieces and solvent-weld them together. This can help with avoiding overhangs and supports, both of which are problematic with ABS.

3D printing peeps - I have 2 models of the same printer (Creality Ender 3 V3 SE, so pretty basic), one much newer than the other, and the newer one is printing the same gcode file and same filament rather more quickly than the other. What's the reason likely to be?

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