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CATEGORY: DIY

Smartifying and automating a cheap fog machine

The cheapest fog machines typically come with a wired remote control with an indicator light and a button. The indicator light signals when the machine is at its operating temperature and ready to emit fog, and the button makes it emit fog while pressed. However, this turned out inconvenient once I found myself repeatedly running to the machine to trigger it. And even if it were wireless, it would still need manual handling. So this calls for automation, and it’s quite easily possible without DIY electronics, with a Wi-Fi Shelly switch and a relay. Watch the demo video below and read on for build instructions and a Home Assistant automation.

High-Precision Audio Drift and Frequency Measurements on a Budget

Conducting high precision audio drift or audio frequency measurements doesn’t have to be expensive. In this guide, I’m showing you how to do it with an ordinary computer, an audio interface, a GPS receiver, and a little bit of tinkering.

High-Precision Audio Drift and Frequency Measurements on a Budget

Conducting high precision audio drift or audio frequency measurements doesn’t have to be expensive. In this guide, I’m showing you how to do it with an ordinary computer, an audio interface, a GPS receiver, and a little bit of tinkering.

Fixing a Leaking or Stiff Vitamix/Kuchef/Omniblend/etc. Blender Blade Assembly

Buying a cloned device for a small fraction of the original’s price is often not a good idea, unless you’re handy and like to tinker. One example are cheap Vitamix blender clones, made out of the cheapest parts the manufacturers can find. This guide shows you how to replace the ball bearings in a blade assembly of such a clone (probably works for a real Vitamix too), if your jar is leaking brown oil or the blades became stiff. This saves you from buying a complete blade assembly unit and upgrades the drive train to better durability and smoother operation.

Replacing the Nexus 5 Power Button

About one week after the 1-year warranty of my Nexus 5 expired, its power button began to fail out of the blue, showing the following symptoms:

  • The phone would often show the power menu, or lock itself and turn the screen of
  • It often shut itself down, and got stuck in a bootloop, making it even impossible to access recovery

This seems like a frequent problem and results from a defect power button signaling its pressed state, without being pressed or stuck. Hard tapping on the phone around the power button can temporarily help to get it back to its normal “unpressed” state, which makes it usable again and interrupts bootloops. Still, this gets more and more annoying over time.

Seat Leon 1P 2010 Facelift AUX Mid-Tones Fix

Some early Seat Leon 1P Facelift cars with Media-In functionality (AUX, USB & iPod support) suffer from a problem where the mid-tones on the left channel are missing when listening to analog audio through the AUX input, which includes listening from an iPod with the iPod adapter cable. This can be resolved in a couple of minutes by replacing the old AUX port with a new and fixed revision.

The problem is a faulty circuit board in the combined USB/AUX port (CUP) panel, where the lines of the 3.5mm stereo plug are incorrectly wired. The left channel is flipped with the right channel, and even worse, the right channel is flipped with ground.

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