The Louie

The Louie

The Louie

The Louie

"I create stuff."

For a project I'm working on I wanted to test to oxidize copper to get it to look old and used so I read up on the internet and got some ideas. So I got hold of the chemicals I wanted to test with. Ammonia Table salt (fine, flake and coarse) Hydrochloric Acid Citric Acid Some texts indicated that you could apply Ammonia get the oxidizing to start of and add acid and salt to speed up the process and improve the patterns. The first three tests I performed was to soak a bit of paper towel in ammonia [...]

This summer me and some of my friends continued the tradition of over 20 years now to go to Netherlands and visit the hacker festival known under new name each event. This iteration was called May Contain Hackers or MCH2022. This was the first time we didn't sleep in a tent on the campgrounds but instead lived in the lovely hotel across the canal and took the ferry over each morning and evening. A new find this event was the excellent Gulf station just by the harbor from where we each morning [...]

After I've used my Lou1:e PCBs a while and I had some ideas for a PCB that was more suited for experimenting with crazy designs I started thinking about creating a new version. After talking to the user 4pplet on the Mechanical Keyboard Sweden discord I decided that STM32 had just what I wanted, a lot of extra IO pins and a somewhat beefy processor. I ended up using the STM32F072 since it requires very few external components, it even has a built-in oscillator. Version 1.0 of the PCB With all those [...]

After my failure with Lou:1c – my first keyboard and after the new PCBs arrived I started with a case to go with the PCB. Design inspiration I started designing several versions, and even halfway built some before I finally saw an image in a Discord channel. The image had no attribution but there was a name on the keyboard itself that pointed me towards Project Ursa, a project to create a keycap with "a deep dish spherical touch area with a flat top edge" by Andreas Chlupka. You can view more of [...]

After I received my new PCBs I wanted to get a feel for them and start using them as fast as possible. So I grabbed a 22mm thick sheet of MDF from the stack and started cutting in to it. For the tray to have a bit more strength I soaked it was watered down wood glue a couple of times before I painted it black. The result wasn't amazing, or above average. But it at least let me start using my new nice pcb and keycaps while I created the first proper case. [...]

After the failure and lessons learned with the design and production of Lou1:d I didn't give up. And started working on Lou1:e. I decided to skip the extra column of switches to the left, my idea was that I could keep the wirings and add solder points for an external 5 row 1 column PCB if I wanted (spoiler: i didn't do it). Also I wanted to use more common key switches so I created a new footprint that allows for both MX and Choc v1 and v2 key switches. It also has a cutout for reverse mount RGB [...]

A couple of years ago I saw that a store sold Kobo eInk readers relativly cheap and a quick google showed that it was possible to root them and do what you wanted, so I bought one, and rooted it. Unfortunately there were no ready made scripts or programs to display weather information on the screen so I made my own. The first version At this time I used Domoticz to control lights and collect sensor data from my house so the solution was to write a python-script that would use the API from yr.no [...]

While designing my own PCB I created some prototypes. To test my designs and the capabilities of JLCPCB. I wanted to test the newly created footprints, colours and silk-screen prints among other things. So here are a small gallery of those prototypes. The first, mainly footprint test The 2nd & 3rd, more footprints The 4th, different sized holes The fifth, more footprints, RGB and misc shenanigans [...]

I got a small vacuum pump to use with my projects using resin, and ofcourse me and the kids first task was to test to put different kinds of candy in it. https://youtu.be/jGdmLLrSNV8 https://youtube.com/shorts/ObA4UA7Tq50?feature=share https://youtu.be/4kXskGUJrmk https://youtu.be/fhccxxpRgLM https://youtube.com/shorts/4K-97uQMPw0?feature=share https://youtube.com/shorts/zyk3E-ICmgw?feature=share [...]

After trying hand-wiring i decided that I wanted to try to make a custom PCB. This would be the first that was a bit more advanced, with a MCU and USB. I also wanted a PCB for the vintage SMK switches I just bought from Ebay. SMK gen2 switches I used EasyEDA to design it since i would be ordering from JLCPCB and there is a nice integration between EasyEDA and JLCPCB which made the ordering a lot easier. Screenshot from EasyEDA, v1.5 of the PCB I created my own footprint for the key switches and [...]