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Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#191

Post by tinco »

soco wrote: post #55
tinco wrote: post #51

I bought a house that was sold as "uninhabitable" in Amsterdam, pulled out all the interior walls, applied insulation, then taught my self plumbing and did the plumbing, redid the wiring, installed the gas heater, laid radiant heating. I built new interior walls and did all the interior finishing except for plastering downstairs and pouring cement over the radiant heating, which I had professionals do. Coolest single…

If I was an absolute beginner (which I am) I would be definitely very wary to do by myself the electrical wiring or the gas connections... while half-assing the rest can only look bad, those can kill you and your loved ones (neighbors need not apply).

I had the gas heater checked by a professional who agreed to do the yearly maintenance.

The electrical wiring you shouldn't do if you're not serious about electrical safety, and not reverent to the industry standards. I read the Dutch standards for electrical wiring, but it's actually hard to do it wrong if you have a small house and no complications like solar panels because building stores don't even sell wrong materials.

I agree with the other person, the plumbing was definitely more error prone. Who knew that PVC glue has a (very) limited shelf life after opening?

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#192

Post by mkovach »

I still get a bit impressed with myself when I build a new Cigar Box guitar. Build something that can actually make music, using nothing but, usually, spare parts and almost completely out of wood is pretty cool.

One of my neighbors recently had their move away to college and him and his wife were finally throwing out some of his old things. There was enough things to make them a nice three string using bits of an old desk and a metal arts and craft box.

Gave them them the completed guitar around Thanksgiving and they ended up giving it to their son, who had started playing guitar while at away at school, for a Christmas gift.

I like to think he'll continue to own, and use, those small bits of his childhood as he moves further into adulthood.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#194

Post by Freak_NL »

irrational wrote: post #88
soco wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was an absolute beginner (which I am) I would be definitely very wary to do by myself the electrical wiring or the gas connections... while half-assing the rest can only look bad, those can kill you and your loved ones (neighbors need not apply).

Gas? Yes. Electric? Eh, if you are smart enough to program a computer, you are smart enough to read and learn how to do electric properly.

There was a comment here claiming that doing your own wiring is illegal in the Netherlands, but it was (rightly) deleted. It is completely legal to do.

I do my own wiring too; it's not hard to do this safely in most of Europe.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#195

Post by LeifCarrotson »

cushychicken wrote: post #99

I'm an EE by trade, and my work has shipped in numerous consumer products. I was lead hardware designer for Sonos Amp, Sonos Port, and a few of the IKEA/Sonos collaboration products. I've since moved on from that job, but it's a very cool resume item. It's also a pretty cool shameless self promotion thing to point out when I need to. Was asked by an executive why I should run a hardware development effort at my curre…

Similar story in manufacturing automation, with a lot of automotive especially.

It's fun to drive around and see F150 doors and Subaru seats and Toyota mirrors and BMW center consoles and on and on that I assembled.

Or rather, that machines running code I wrote assembled a small part of. It's definitely a different feeling of satisfaction when a machine I was a critical part of for a few weeks years ago churns out value while I sleep versus something I made with my hands and hand tools which would take an identical amount of time to repeat.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#196

Post by xyzelement »

This may or may not fit into the OP's intention but some of my favorite physical achievements are repairs that might be impressive for a random suburban dad :)

1. Two years ago our basement flooded a week after we bought the house. I ended up tearing out the now-saturated carpet and put in vinyl plank flooring. Mainly straight forward but requires planning and at some points tricky sawing. It's cool when people come in and un-prompted say "wow that's a great floor you have here"

2. Maybe 4 years ago, I completely disassembled and repaired a through-wall heating and cooling unit in our NYC apartment because it wasn't producing a lot of air. Previously, repairmen came out and said it was working as normal and just wasn't meant to produce more air. This taught me a lot about electronics, HVAC, testing, and shopping at vendor-supply stores. People are shocked that a civilian was able to do this repair.

EDIT: I'll add one more:

3. Replacing the screen on my Pixel 6 Pro. It fell out of my pocket while biking, and although it wouldn't have been the end of the world to just get a replacement, I thought it would be fun to try and repair. I normally stayed away from stuff like that because I didn't want to deal with removing/applying adhesives but it was really not a big dea.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#197

Post by phdelightful »

It’s far from what I do now, but as an undergrad I built an automatic guitar tuner. It had a PIC32 microcontroller that read the sound waves on GPIO pins and did some cross-correlations to figure out the frequency (sort of a poor man’s FFT, but faster since it was less general). It used an FPGA to drive a stepper motor to turn the guitar pins towards the correct frequency. Code was all C and Verilog.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#198

Post by leipert »

cushychicken wrote: post #99

I'm an EE by trade, and my work has shipped in numerous consumer products. I was lead hardware designer for Sonos Amp, Sonos Port, and a few of the IKEA/Sonos collaboration products. I've since moved on from that job, but it's a very cool resume item. It's also a pretty cool shameless self promotion thing to point out when I need to. Was asked by an executive why I should run a hardware development effort at my curre…

What do you think about the longevity of these Sonos products? I got sucked into the ecosystem via IKEA/Sonos collab and now added one to my TV setup.

The ecosystem is nice _currently_ but do you think the hardware+software will be useable in 5,10,15 years from now? Do you think it could be liberated software wise. Thinking about this because I am contemplating moving my vinyl setup to Sonos as well.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#199

Post by dylanlacom »

dirtybirdnj wrote: post #117

A few years ago I worked at a startup that let you send handwritten notes via an API. The machines that did this were basically 2.5 axis 3d printers, aka pen plotters which is not a new concept. I was a software dev on one floor of a building working on the platform, and on the floor below us there was a fleet of about 100 of these machines that were producing the notes. Edit: There was a team of folks that maintaine…

Really cool! But your site could really benefit from having more examples. One image is not enough. Maybe you can link to an instagram account with examples that users share with you. I could see this being a fun activity at a wedding event.
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