Standing Desk Converter

I've been thinking a lot about health lately, thanks to Clairvoyant's health challenge. And I've been reading about the health benefits of a standing desk (or maybe not). You can buy standing desk converters like these:

But they start at $75 & they don't look great, so I decided to build one. I prototyped it with stacks of books and came up with a 12" rise for my keyboard and a 20" rise for my laptop on its mStand. The mStand isn't required, but I use it when I'm sitting so it might as well stay. 18" wide is enough to hold a keyboard and trackpad comfortably.

I built it out of some 3/4" cherry ply I had leftover from the desk. I routed the edges so they're rounded and I put a brace at the top of the back to hold everything square.

If I were to build it again, I would change some things:

  • move the legs in about 3/4"
  • have shelves overhang the riser by about 3/4"
  • blend the roundover more carefully into the lower shelf
  • use a wider brace so it's more certainly square

But that stuff is minor. I'm pretty pleased with it.

Leather Headphone Wrap

I'm still happy I tried out 3-D printing by making a headphone wrap, but the device itself leaves a little to be desired. A perfect headphone wrap would be:

 
 
  1. Small   shirt pocket size at the biggest
  2. Easy to wrap    or I'll never use it
  3. Easy to unwrap    or I'll curse at it
  4. Secure    it needs to hold the headphones while preventing tangles

My 3-D printed model scores a 3/4. Unwrapping is a pain, so I started looking for alternatives. Instructables user amalkhan has this model, which I like a lot. I also saw a few others that were more like a headphone wallet.

So I'm going to make one out of some scrap leather I have that matches my satchel. It comes down to 6 steps:

1. Make the Pattern

I picked a size that seemed reasonable and cut it out of cardboard to make sure it seemed right. I traced the cardboard on the leather. I want it to be 2 layers like the bag.

2. Cut the Leather

 
Rough cut leather
 

This is where I realized that two layers really complicates things:

  • The inner layer has to be shorter
  • The stitches have to be radial; not all parallel through the leather
  • Once you glue it up, it will never really lay flat for you again.

Still, I want the extra weight of 2 layers.

3. Glue and Trim

Put glue on one end of the leather and keep it secure. It's best to wait until it's all set before you continue. I did not do that. Once it's secure, clamp it around a dowel or something and glue it the rest of the way.

After it's all glued up, trim off any over-hanging leather corners to even up the edges.

4. Stitch

 
All Stitched Up
 

Another reason I wanted two layers of leather is that I could put cool stitching around the outside of the thing. This is the part that takes the longest; it took me 42 stitches around the whole thing.

5. Add The Snap

To hold it together, I punched in a line 24 snap.

6. Finish the Edges

I started the edges by sanding with 400-grit sandpaper, then I put some glycerin saddle soap on a rag and rubbed it into the edges. It came out looking like this:

 
 

That's about it. So far it has stayed in my pocket one day without tangling.

A Slingshot Ammo Catch Box

A while ago, I got a slingshot and started trying to scare the doves away from my pool so they will poop somewhere else. It didn't scare the doves away, but it turns out shooting a slingshot is challenging and fun. It also scares the neighbors less than firearms or air guns.

The Problem: Lost Ammo

I can shoot the same airsoft BBs I shoot at the doves, but bigger ammo is much more satisfying (and results in less hand-slap from the bands). The bigger ammo isn't as cheap as the plastic BBs. At 80¢ each for .38 cal steel balls, it's sort of important that I get to shoot each one at least a few times before it gets lost.

The Catch Box

 
 

It's made from the cabinet that used to be my coffee shrine before I built a new one. I just stapled a towel to the ceiling inside it to arrest the shots. It already had a screw that used to hold a power strip in place, so I used that to hang an aluminum can from a wire.

Turns out an aluminum can isn't really a good target for a steel ball flying at a couple hundred feet per second. It gets sort of shredded after a couple of hits. Steel cans work better. They still look destroyed, but they actually hold up pretty well. This one has been hit at least a few dozen times.

It Works!

 
 

The box is performing well. It traps about 1/2 of the shots inside. Another 40% can be found on the ground right in front of the trap. The remaining 10% get away and I have to go track them down, but none of them have made it 33 feet back to where I'm standing to hit me in the eye.

Industrial Chic Lamp

I needed a lamp for my new desk, so I built one.

The One I'm Sort Of Copying

Industrial Chick Lamp

My lovely wife found this lamp that she liked the look of. At the time of this post, it was available from Shades of Light for $225.

Looking at it, you can see it's just made of steel pipe parts. It doesn't even look like any are custom cut & threaded. It looks like there may be a union in the middle of the longest pipe, possibly to make shipping and assembly easier, but it doesn't look like anything I couldn't do with a trip to the Orange Store or Blue Store.

I had a few hours to spend on a project on Labor Day, so I gave it a shot.

The Deal

I'm doing this because I feel like doing a project. If I can build a lamp my wife likes as much as the one on the web site, we'll keep it. If my silly project turns out looking cheap & crappy or if she just has her heart set on another one, I'll abandon mine in the alley and buy her whatever lamp she likes.

Finding Parts

I decided to use a pendant light that's designed to hang from its cord, because I don't actually know what kind of hardware converts from plumbing to lamp fixtures. If it hangs on its own wire, I can sort of cheat and just run the wire through the pipe.

I was hoping to have something that comes out looking like this one from Restoration Hardware, but made out of pipe like the first one.

I went to my local Orange Store and picked out  a vintage-looking pendant lamp. It's made for mounting to a box in the ceiling, so (as with all good projects), I'll have to start by cutting up a perfectly good product.

The rest was just parts.

Parts List

Building It

Take the perfectly good pendant lamp and pull the cord out from the ceiling mounting fixture. This will leave you with a lamp & wire, but no housing to hang it from anything.

To make the head assembly, thread the pipe fittings over the wire in this order:

  1. 90° elbow
  2. 8" nipple
  3. 45° elbow
  4. 8" nipple
  5. 45° elbow

Screw everything together, being careful not to twist the wires on the inside as you do so. Now is a good time to check the height. I wanted mine hanging 3-4" below the pipe. Adjust the lamp until you have just enough exposed wire to hang right.

Cut the receptacle end off of the extension cord (that's 2 perfectly good things we've ruined so far!) and fish it through the tee fitting. The wire should make a 90° turn inside the tee. Next, feed the wire through the 6' pipe. This was tricky for me because the stranded extension cord wire wasn't rigid enough to push through all 6 feet. I had to tie a screw to a string and send the string through first. After that, I could use the string to pull the wire back.

Tee Fitting

Don't attach the tee, the 6' pipe, or the head assembly yet.

Split the wires on both the lamp and the extension cord. Thread heat-shrink tubing over the wire. I always forget that part. Figure out which side is the common wire  and hook the wire going to the wider prong on the extension cord to the white wire on the lamp cord. Strip a lot of the wire (like 1") and twist them together. Solder it up. This is going to live forever inside a pipe where you'll never be able to inspect it again. It's important that you get a good mechanical and electrical connection between these wires. I put heat shrink over each wire and a bigger one around the whole connection. Shrink the heat shrink.

Test the lamp at this point. If it's not working, cut your work out of the middle of the wire and start over.

Attach the 6' pipe to the 45° elbow of the head assembly. Try not to twist the wire as you go.

Attach the tee to the other end of the 6' pipe. Again, try to keep the wire from twisting as you do this (it's a bit tricky and a few turns over 6' of wire will be fine, but don't let it get kinked).

Attach the flange to the base using wood screws. Insert the close nipple into the tee fitting and have someone hold the lamp so you can screw the base on.

You're done!

I was going to paint it a cool hammered bronze color, but the galvanized came out looking pretty good, so I'm just going to leave it.

The Cost

It took me 2 trips to the Orange Store (I built the lamp too short the 1st time; the 6 foot height is much better).

I spent about $150 on parts, including the pipes I didn't use and the paint that we decided not to apply.  The whole thing came together in about 3 hours.

The Verdict

We can keep it! It doesn't look as cool as the $600 Restoration Hardware lamp, but it looks pretty good and it lights up the desk just like a lamp should.

Solving A Dove Problem

We made a small design mistake when we were installing our spa. It has a knife-edge border between the spa and the pool. It's like the Riviera for neighborhood doves, who like to dip stale bread in our water and poop on the tile.

Owl

1st Solution: Scary Fake Owl

Naturally, I wanted to prevent doves pooping in my pool. So I got this scary fake owl.

It didn't even work a little bit. If the doves noticed it all, it just helped them relax and move their bowels more freely.

2nd Solution: Scary Real Dog

When we were having some plumbing work done inside and outside our house at the same time, I parked a 90 pound dog inside the pool fence. I figured she would scare the doves away for at least a little while.

It didn't even work a little bit. She slept calmly in the shade and the doves seemed glad for the company.

3rd solution: A Slingshot

Slingshot

I went on eBay and bought a "hunting slingshot." The slingshot is plenty powerful to destroy a dove, but there are 2 problems with that: 1) a missed shot would probably break a pool tile and 2) cleaning up dove carcasses is not much better than cleaning up dove poop.

So I got really light-weight ammo: Airsoft BBs weigh in at a fifth of a gram and they can't really do much damage. I also have some practice ammo. They're also lightweight and mostly harmless, but they bounce really far when they hit a hard surface.

This actually worked well. You don't even have to hit a dove. If a fast-moving projectile hits anywhere near one of them, they all fly off in a rush.

2nd Problem: Doves are quite stupid

It turns out you can hit doves with airsoft bbs over and over and over again, and they keep coming back. They just land on a power line above the alley and wait a minute. Then they all descend on the pool again.

I deem this problem unsolvable.

Chess!

My son has been in his school chess club since preschool. He loves playing it. I’m not very good at it (he’s 6 and can beat me sometimes), but there’s one thing I’ve always loved: big garden chess boards that you walk around on top of to move big chess pieces. So I decided to build one.

The Design

I decided to build the pieces out of flat stock because it’s easy to get, affordable, and I know how to work it. I decided on a hinged base so they would fold and lay flat.

Aside: I discovered http://amazonsupply.com/ during this project. It's awesome!

My son helped me design the pieces. He drew what he thought they should look like on Post-It notes and I sketched them on big butcher paper to make templates. The King is three feet tall. The Pawns are 2 feet tall and everything else is somewhere in between. It only takes 6 templates to make all 32 pieces, so that went pretty quick.

Then we traced the templates on to 1x8” pine. I bought 6’ pre-cut boards of select grade stuff and put 2 tall pieces or 3 pawns on a board.

Cutting

This part takes a while. You have to carefully cut 32 pieces out of 8” boards with a jigsaw or bandsaw. I bet if I had a bandsaw, I could cut out a stack of 2-4 pieces at a time. I don’t have a bandsaw. I bet if I transferred the templates to a piece of hardboard first, I could have cut them using a straight-cutting router bit with a guide bearing. I didn’t do that. I cut all 16 pawns the hard way.

Then I sanded everything and routed the edges so they’re rounded over. It makes the pieces feel nice in the hand.

Painting

My son picked the colors. He said the white side should match the rocks in our back yard and the black side should match the pool fence. He got his design skills from his mom. We put drop-cloths in the yard and put 1 coat of primer followed by 2 coats of paint on both sides of all 64 pieces (including bases). This was a good family part of the project: no power tools or loud noises, just a lot of painting.

That's a philips-head screw he's holding. I'm not actually drilling a hole in my son's hand.

Assembly

This was another good family part of the project. Each piece needed a hinge attaching the base to the figure. Then each base needed an angle bracket and each figure needed a threaded insert. When you stand the piece up, a thumb screw goes through the bracket and into the insert.

The Board

The base of each piece is 9¼” wide. I went with 12” pavers to be the black squares on my board. The white squares are just the same gravel as the rest of the yard. It didn’t look quite right until I added the border of bricks all the way around. It makes it look like the white squares along the edges are part of a chess board, not encroaching yard.

Playing

Dude. It’s strangely satisfying to walk around on top of a chess board, stepping between the pieces, looking at the game from different angles. Then you pick up a rook and walk it 6 feet. It’s really fun even if you’re not good at chess.

 

All together, this set took about 10 weekends of work (not totally full, just... a lot of work), but I'm glad I did it.

Cherry Tower Desk

Sometimes I make the joke that I build stuff because there’s stiff competition: my wife made two people. I’m just trying to keep up. We need a new desk. My wife really liked Ana White’s Parson Tower Deskand she bought me a Kreg Jig (she’s the best!). I liked the construction technique, but the dimensions were a little off for us. I also tweaked the materials.

I found great 30” cherry wood turning blanks at Woodworker's Source. They're 2” x 2” square and surfaced on all 4 sides. They are a little pricey (especially since I needed like 16 of them for this project), but I don't have a planer or jointer at home, so I needed something already surfaced for a nice clean fit. They also had a gorgeous sheet of ¾” cherry plywood to make the shelves.

I'm particularly proud of this little feature: I added a cable tray underneath the back edge of the desk and I got a Big power strip that stays in there. Everything is plugged in to the strip, so there’s just one power cord coming off the back corner of the desk. The back still looks like this:

 
nest of snakes
 

But the front looks like this:

 
Nice & pretty
 

My wife found a stainless desktop at Ikea. I think its name is SANFRID. Put it all together and add several coats of Maloof oil/poly blend, and you get a desk!

 
Finished Desk
 

I still don’t feel like this evens things up. My wife made two people. All I made was a desk.

Coffee Shrine

There are few things in life to which I am more devoted than coffee. For me, the proper way to show devotion is maniacal control over as much of the coffee production process as I can muster.  And that means a coffee roaster. And a coffee roaster has to live outdoors so the smoke doesn't kill your family or pets.

We had this really useful little (little!) counter outside our kitchen window. I put a half-screen on the window, so we can use it as a pass-through from the kitchen to the back yard. I want to make that into a huge counter over spacious cabinets.

I assembled and leveled the cabinets on adjustable feet to keep them off the ground. I added a power strip inside so I could leave everything plugged in. Then I put plywood and backer board over the whole thing, rented a tile saw and tiled it with 20” ceramic tile and a fetching bull-nose around the edge.

I think this shows an appropriate level of devotion.

Go to Stanley's Immediately

Now look, this is very easy:

  1. Go to Stanley's Homemade Polish Sausage on McDowell Rd in Phoenix.
  2. Approach the woman behind the counter and say "I'd like some bacon, please." Be firm, but polite. Do not risk losing your Stanley's privileges.
  3. Take the bacon home, remove the skin, and cook it.
  4. Eat it.
StanleyBacon
StanleyBacon

It's awesome. Meaty like ham. Not at all salty, not sweet, and nicely smoky. Buy more than you need because you'll eat more than you should.

Weekend Project: Book Rack

I've been reading Knock-off Wood a lot lately, and they had these plans for a book rack. They're great for my girl's room for three reasons:

  • The books face straight out (so you can see 'em)
  • It sits flat to the wall (12"), so I can put it behind her door.
  • It's sturdy enough that she could climb it (not that she should)

Here's the finished product:

I deviated from the original plans in a few places:

  • No arches. I didn't want to cut them so I tell myself they didn't match her room anyway.
  • Routed outside edges and rails dress it up a bit
  • Taller shelves (15" instead of 12")
  • Notches for her chair rail & baseboards

I'm particularly happy with how the baseboards came out, but I sort of messed one thing up: when I routed the outside edges, I didn't stop at the baseboards. The round-over goes all the way to the floor. Whoops.

This was a great project. It took me 2 days of carpentry (with the assistance of a 5-year-old), plus a day of painting.  I spent about $90 on materials & a few tools that made it go smoother. I'd recommend it of you have an unused wall in your place.

There, I Solved It

I was inspired by http://thereifixedit.com. I feel a kinship with the innovators whose work is featured there. After all, I just expanded my universal remote, and they built one from scratch. I decided to document my own attempts at problem solving. Hopefully the engineering is better than theirs, but I feel confident my problems had less reason to be solved in the first place.

The Problem

Sometimes I forget to close my garage door. I've left it open all day and all night. This is a perfect example of a problem that barely needed to be solved in the first place. Right in my wheelhouse.

Solving It

What I need is an unmissable indicator of my forgetfulness. I'm thinking of a light that comes on when the garage door is open.  Ideally, one that I can see while watching TV or laying in bed.

Design

The concept is simple: That's right, I use MS-Paint for circuit diagrams.There's an LED, a power source, a switch, and a couple resistors.

Parts

The switch is a magnetic reed switch. It's normally open, but if a magnet cozies up to it, it gets all closed. Perfect. I don't know the model number, because I just found it in my garage, left over from when they installed the security system. You could get one for about $3, and you could go wireless for $50.

The power source is a couple of AAA batteries. I happened to have a battery holder that size lying around, so that's what I went with. I think you could get a new one for $2.

The LED is a panel mount model I bought just for this. It is green, and snaps into a 1/4" hole.

According to my math, I need a minimum of 40 Ω of resistance to avoid burning up my LED @ 3V. All I had were a couple of 100 Ω resistors, so I went with that. In parallel, that gives me 50 Ω plus the resistance of the wire & switch, so I won't burn the LED up.

Then there's some miscellaneous wire, solder and heat-shrink tubing to keep everything neat. Oh, and a magnet. I happened to have one of those too.

Assembly

Most of the stuff sits inside the house. I picked out a nice location in a closet and drilled a hole for the LED. I soldered up the battery pack, resistors, LED, and the leads to the switch and fed them through into the garage.

At the other end, I just had to stick the switch in place and mount the magnet to the garage door. And by "mount," I mean "stick it to the garage door because it's a magnet."

Victory is Mine

After just a little tweaking to get the position of the magnet just right, I have a working light. It has already reminded me to close the garage door once, and I expect it will have a long life saving me from myself.

The "Do My Job" Button

a.k.a. The USB Easy Button

It's A Fundamental Truth of Requirements Gathering that the longer you talk to someone about custom software, the more their answer boils down to two requirements:

  • Make me a button called "Do My Job."
  • Make it do my job.

Then they get thoughtful for a moment and add a third requirement:

  • Make sure only I can press the button.

Some of them will even joke "You know, like an Easy Button."

Those Easy Buttons from Staples are awesome, but they have one small flaw: they don't actually do anything useful. It's my aim to change that.

Let's Make a Button!

What we need is an Easy Button Hack, so I'm going to build a USB Easy Button. I found most everything I needed from jro's project on instructibles and a flickr photoset by tommybear. Plus, I've been dying to try one of these U-HIDs.

What you'll need:

  • An Easy Button (or Botón Fácil if it suits you better) $4.99
  • A U-HID Nano and USB Cable (with shipping) $42.00
  • A Modular Harness for the U-HID (optional) $9.00
  • Soldering iron & solder
  • Wire (if you didn't buy the wiring harness)
  • Dremel or a chisel
  • Hot glue or silicone
  • Small phillips screwdriver
  • PC running Windows XP

Step 1: Program your U-HID Nano

Plug the USB cable and wiring harness (if you're using it) into the U-HID Nano. If you're going to have the button send a single command like me, just leave the black (ground) wire and the gray (pin 10) wire long enough to reach the PCB. We won't be using the other 7. If you want to use the button to close more than one switch at a time (for example, to send "Ctrl + Alt + Del"), leave one wire per button, plus the ground wire.

IMG_0683

I hooked the wires up to a temporary switch at this point for programming the thing. You could go ahead and hook it up to the Easy Button. Just scan down a little to see which contacts to use.

You program the U-HID Nano with U-Config, a software package available from the manufacturer. It's a pretty easy process, and the Technical Manual was easy to read.

I'm not going to go into the details here except to note that a driver install and firmware update were required to get it working on my machine. Both of those processes are clearly documented on their site. I set it up so that when pin 10 goes to ground, it will send the macro "L Alt, F8". It seems to send the scancodes fast enough that my machine counts it as a combination keypress.

Step 2: Take the Easy Button Apart

Turn the button over, and you'll see four black pads on the bottom. Pull them off to expose the screws. Be sure to save the pads so you can stick them back on. Go ahead and take the batteries out while you're there.

IMG_0690

Remove all 4 screws to release the silver ring and red button from the assembly. You'll be left with just the guts of the machine. Inside, you should see a white button. That is the heart of the Easy Button and the only part of the original electronics we're actually going to make use of.

All of these things have to go, so desolder and discard them:

  • The black capacitor
  • The resistor closest to the button
  • The red speaker wires
  • The black & white power wires

If you don't know what those things are, don't sweat it. Take a look tommybear's photos on flickr. He's better at this than I am.

Remove the 2 screws, and take the PCB off of the assembly. Set the metal spring aside. We want to keep that because it gives us a satisfying CLICK when the button is pushed.

Remove the 4 screws that hold the little mezzanine level on. You may have to pry it up just a bit if the hot glue below is sticking it down. Take the metal slugs out and discard them. They're just stuck in there with a little hot glue and you can pick them out without ruining anything. I guess you could leave them if you have the room & like the heft. Remove the speaker too.

Use your dremel or a chisel to take out any little plastic bits that are in your way. Just remember that you have to leave the 4 posts that hold the mezzanine level up.

Step 3: Put the U-HID in the Easy Button

IMG_0694
IMG_0695

Find a way that the whole U-HID assembly will fit inside the button, then use some hot glue or silicone to stick it in place.

Replace the mezzanine, metal spring, and PCB. Now comes the soldering. The U-HID Nano is going to just sit there and wait for pin 10 to touch the ground pin. We're going to use the normally-open momentary switch inside the Easy Button to interrupt that connection, so the circuit is only closed while the Easy Button is depressed. Solder the gray and black wires as shown.

It would be a good idea to test it at this point to make sure it works before you put everything back together. Use a little hot glue to make sure the wires do not interfere with the holes in the PCB. Those are what keep the button aligned properly, and if they're blocked, you can't push the button.

Step 4: Let The Wire Out

Cut a slot for the wire

Cut a slot in the silver ring that's just big enough for the wire to get out of the enclosure. I made mine a left-handed Easy Button (made to sit in the left side of the computer). You could hook yours up backward or cut a channel through the battery compartment and have it come straight out the "front."

Step 5: Replace the Ring and Button

It should only go back together one way: with the battery compartment farthest away from you, the "easy" label should be right-side up and the Staples logo on the ring will be directly toward you. Replace all 4 screws in the bottom of the case and use a little hot glue to stick the rubber pads back on. You're done with the hardware: you've built an Easy Button that actually does something.

Step 6: Write the Software that Actually Does Your Job

If you're able to buy software that does your job, you could use that too. Implementation of a security system so that only you can push your button is left as an exercise to the reader. For extra style points, make sure your software ends up playing a "That was easy" sound effect when the job is done.

Step 7: Assign a Hotkey to Your Software

If you are having the button send a key combination that is recognized by the system already (like Ctrl + Alt + Del), you can skip this step.

Create a folder in your Start Menu called "Easy Button" and create one shortcut inside the folder called "thatwaseasy.lnk". Right-click the shortcut and select Properties. Click the "Shortcut key" field and press the hotkey combination you told the Easy Button to send (in my case, Alt + F8). This shortcut has to be in your start menu or on your desktop. You can set the shortcut property of any shortcut, but it only works if the shortcut is in the right place.

TA DA!

A Finished USB Easy Button

For about $50 you could have one just like this. If you pay close attention to jro's project, you could use a recycled keyboard instead and do this for about $5. Now get out there and build your own.