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Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
471–480 of 694 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#472You guessed it, boats. I have built a stitch and glue (plywood) sea kayak[0], an Aleutian-style skin-on-frame sea kayak[1], and a skin-on-frame canoe[2]. All were fairly approachable and straightforward projects (I built the first two with basically some hand tools, a drill and a jig saw, on my deck, but a table saw is highly recommended for skin on frame). Tons of fun and the feeling of being a couple miles offshore…
Now that you've built a boat, who's gonna carry it? ;)
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
And here we have the person who knows how to graft one onto the PCB. Is that possible?
Probably, but I don't have the time, interest, or access to the PCB files any more. I think you'd be out of luck in most cases anyway, as we almost always used I2S as our audio interface of choice. If we didn't have a use for the RX line (i.e. The audio input line) of the I2S interface, it generally wasn't broken out of the SoC fanout. What's more: we didn't generally enable driver support for I2S receive in products…
I'd settle for a line-in straight into the power amp. No integration of any kind into the existing Sonos ecosystem. Make them dumb - because the speakers do sound great for their size.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not sure how much a PPL will run you these days. As of 2019, about 10k (more if you needed extra time).
It depends greatly on where you are. I LOVE airplanes and being in the air, and everything at all to do with aviation, so I once entertained the idea of getting a PPL. I called around to the various local airports and clubs to get an idea of what was involved. Although I could technically afford it, the price tag was eye-wateringly expensive for what would realistically amount to an expensive and non-trivially danger…
Once you get past your checkride there is virtually zero math involved in flying. I regularly fly in and around the SF Bay Area and I don’t do a single math problem when flying. I would not let that fear stop
You. Flying is too awesome.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#475After doing the vanlife thing for a few years and rewiring the auxiliary battery system in my rig a couple of times I decided to scratch an itch and created a PCB with Wago connectors to greatly simplify the process and eliminate as many crimped ring connections as possible. Nearly everything for a small 12V auxiliary system plugs directly in on the PCB: DC-DC charger, start battery, aux battery and all accessories.…
There's a near limitless number of things of this nature to be designed and built, running the gammut from little gizmos to electrical distribution boards like you've designed. I've had ideas for an in-vehicle weather station (internal/external temperature and humidity), a music system hand-off switch, and a variety of other little things that somebody building their own overland rig might want. Speaking as part of y…
Oh for sure, at least in the USA though FCC review gets pretty sticky so I'm actively avoiding selling anything for the moment that would require RF testing, etc. Unfortunately anything with a microcontroller or radio isn't going to be on my website for sale any time soon. I have to imagine most of the people in this space that are skipping testing/certification are just banking the FCC won't come after them. I support the FCC testing requirements, especially as a ham. But I wish the process wasn't quite so... expensive to be compliant. Especially when I'd rather put my money into product safety and reliability testing given the use-cases.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#476I made an injection molded product with almost no CAD background. came out alright ;)
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. There are a lot of kit manufacturers out there, offering a wide range of aircraft styles and purposes from back-country to aerobatic to long-range cruise airplanes and more. Materials can include aluminum, fiberglass, wood-and-fabric, and others. The EAA[1] has a lot of information about the various kits. I went with a Vans[2] which are very popular kits with a huge volunteer support/help community online and o…
> Not sure how much a PPL will run you these days. As of 2019, about 10k (more if you needed extra time).
If anyone is thinking about getting the PPL, the cheapest way is also the fastest way - take a month off work and just go to a school that specializes in it.
The easiest way is the slowest way, two hours a weekend or so over a year or so, you'll end up with many more flight hours before your license, but arguably more prepared.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am I understanding this correctly, basically a Colo was acquired by Amazon? It’s pedantic but colo existed for decades before AWS. It’s the software layer from AWS that made it “The Cloud” (quicker access to hardware & billing by the second, not month)
> It’s the software layer from AWS that made it “The Cloud” That's one way of looking at it, but no one would have used that software if OP had done a sloppy job with the electrical system. I'm sure there was plenty of boilerplate code in that software (and some very innovative code) and plenty of sophisticated work done to create the physical datacenter.
> OP had done a sloppy job with the electrical system.
Everyone always wonders why us-east-1 shits the bed more than others. Now we know why.
/s obviously.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#479To me, it was Aidlab, a smart chest strap that collects and analyzes various biosignals, which I co-created.
This is a picture of my co-founder Karol and me, holding the first prototype of Aidlab : https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-44d4794da932b128c2bf6...
(plot twist - it wasn't a chest strap at first haha)
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#480A shoe sole cleaner, which I call the "Sole Glo". Made out of mahogany and oak for the body, a small reclaimed motor, a couple toilet brushes, and some basic wiring with a pressure switch. It actuates when you step on it and does a great job of cleaning snow off your shoes. I've made 4 of them, plus the prototype.
A play on the hair product in 'Coming to America'? :)