#kaunasmakerspace

Algardas made a remote-controlled drone-rover. He used a Raspberry Pi, wheels from a hover board, and even some parts from an ice-cream machine. Rover is equipped with several 'eyes': an infrared and a normal webcams, it can be controlled via a WebAPI and a smartphone with no lag over 4G connection, and it runs from a battery from his old tricycle.

Renardas retrofitted a VEF Spidola 232. He upgraded to LiPo battery, bluetooth module and replaced speakers and added an amplifier with intention to keep the original design of the device. He then changed some buttons to respond to functions and included a charge LED, it also shows how much battery charge remains.

Kęstas figured out how to make his estate Volvo car (which is a rather large vehicle) make a beeping sound during the reverse when the hazard warning lights are on.

Giedrius made a bunch of multi-functional paint and brush stands for his desk. He designed models from scratch and used laser-cutter to make parts.

Darius presented Drowex, a pixel-art project he was brewing for 6 years and took 6-7 months to code. The idea came from nostalgia for retro games and the need to calculate how many post-it notes it would take to make a pixel art picture on the wall. The initial project was lost due to a hard-drive failure, and a newly re-written Drowex is no running on the Docker in the VM. Heres the link to the project: https://drowex.com/

Renardas told us about a TVIP box for TV that was running an old android and about to be thrown out as it allegedly didn't work as intended. Renardas made his research, some reverse engineering, and figured how he could replace android with something that works a lot better like  LibreELEC, and also control the module with a phone. A longer description can be found in his blog: http://9v.lt/blog/tvip-s-box-v-410-libreelec-installation/

Kęstutis went on a long-winded description of a deconstruction of an Opel Insignia gearbox and things he learned and discovered while doing it. His conclusion was that it can be repaired if needed while this part is often discarded due to a lack of understanding of how it functions.

Martynas V presented his visual code interpreter that generates a moving pattern - by changing different values, the visual will change. Projects support coding in C++ and use WebGL to display the result. You can n find live demo here: https://gi.ro.lt/static/toy/toy.html

Architect Ingrida presented her research about Kaunas residents. She made a poll about how people feel in their neighborhood and in the city in general, and tried to determine how is this feeling influenced by different aspects of infrastructure, geography, sociopsychology etc.

Doctor Indrė told us about home first aid kit. What is the best place to for it; what tools, consumables and  medicine keep in it; how to use all that stuff.

Engineer Arvydas showed his quarantine baby – Hi-Fi stereo speakers. Calculating acoustics, selecting components, designing wooden structure and building it.

Auto-sport enthusiast Donatas had a really rich presentation about auto-sport – what are race types, what place auto-sport takes in Lithuania and in his life, how he bought a race car and rebuilt it from scratch.

Engineer Andrius told about his tulip care. He built a cabinet for tulip wintering and wanted to see if the thermal isolation is sufficient. So he made a small temperature measuring and logging device for that.

Renardas re-arranged and optimized 25 odd server racks around the university and dorms he is working for. He had no previous experience and was lacking some resources so project included a lot of learning. A lot of previous wiring was chaotic, haphazardous, and sometimes even unsafe.

Kęstutis Motekaitis made an oven that controlled and sustained temperature with an Arduino micro-controller. As a nice bonus - instead of a usual sound signal it can chirp a different musical tune. Box has a Bluetooth module so the temperature can be monitored from a mobile phone.

The other Kęstutis fixed hinges on his laptop as they were broken and could not support display anymore for around 3 years now. The repair is rather crude-looking with machine screws and nuts but robust non the less.

To achieve automation I need to look at the back of the device and follow the data from the USB port.

Inside I found a dedicated board for USB communication.

The RS232 side of the board is not populated but the USB side is. And it even has data line isolation with optocouplers.

Chip for USB to RS232 conversion is CP2102 - very common in cheap USB-RS232 adapters.

After figuring out that I'm dealing with a simple UART I prepared an ESP01 module with the same connector used in the device.

For more details on the preparation of this module see this post: https://makerspacelt.tumblr.com/post/624341530736459776/wifize-everything

After preparing the module, came the time to install it into the device. While following wires going from the USB board I discovered a very convenient 4 pin connector on the mainboard which contained exactly what I needed - RX TX Vcc and GND.

So the installation was extremely simple. I've just unplugged wires going to the USB board.

And plugged the esp module in the same socket.

After that, it's just a simple task of finding a place to put the module itself without a metal case interfering with WiFi signals.

At this point I thought it’s kinda done, just close the case, put the screws back and the project will be completed!

Unfortunately, communication wasn't working and I reconnected the original USB board just to figure out if it is a hardware or software problem.

As the original USB communication wasn't working either it was clear now that the problem is software-related.

Documentation is kinda simple and I chose the simplest command to test on `*IDN?` which should return the device's model. Sadly enough device did not respond to any command on any baud rate with any line ending.

Long story short - I accidentally sent characters `\` and `n` instead of new-line character and the device responded. Not sure how much more time I would have had to spend to try this intentionally :D

So in general it was a pretty easy project, hardware part simply begging for this upgrade - I didn’t even need to cut or solder anything in the device.

I also did a presentation about this project on the Hack and Tell #38 at Kaunas Makerspace.