picotherm: Controlling an OpenTherm Boiler with a Raspberry Pi Pico
Introduction In our old flat, we had control over our heating from our phones: I’d reverse engineered the RF control protocol used by our Salus thermostat. I never got round to blogging about that, but the code is available here. Now we’ve moved, we wanted the same control. The new boiler is a “Baxi 600”…
Power Monitoring with a Raspberry Pi Pico
We had a smart meter installed last year. It’s kinda useful to observe long term power usage. However I really wanted to be able to see more detail; like turn off this device, what happens to the power usage? I didn’t find the wee standalone meter module thing that came with it very useful. Luckily,…
Turning Bowls
I bought a “luxury selection of exotic wood blanks” from ebay to try turning some bowls. Some of them worked! Bowl 1 + Bowl 2 These were a success, although I think bowl 2 is better from a shape and finish point of view. The groove I’ve cut into the bottom is how you hold…
Afternoon Experiment with Veneer
A friend, Sandy, suggested trying laser cutting wood veneer (he has plans for a complex design). However, I’d not tried that before, and it sounded like an interesting idea. I’ve often watched people on Youtube restoring veneer, for example, the excellent AT Restoration. I ordered some cheap samples of veneer from Amazon, and, when they…
Hardening Steel
I was watching some of Uri Tuchman’s excellent videos, and he mentioned making his own tools; sounded fun, and I now have a garden I can safely try that sort of project in. Kinda fancied making some sort of engraving tool; mainly for the fun of making such a thing. I ordered some 8mm spring…
Resin 3D Printing
I recently received an Elegoo Saturn 2 resin 3d printer, so I thought I’d document my initial testing: These printers print using a 2d array of UV leds which cure a liquid resin held in a tank where UV is shone. The more/smaller the LEDs, the higher the resolution of the print. I’d assumed that…
Lasercutting Lathe Toolbox
One problem with the lathe is I now have a whole set of chisels lying around the place, which is kinda annoying. I spent yesterday designing a quick tool support to attach to the lathe bench in Fusion 360 as usual: I cut it on the laser cutter out of 5mm MDF: Unfortunately I made…
Wood Turning Lathe!
I’ve always wanted one of these. When I was wee, we went on tour round England visiting various relations, and I remember being very impressed with a lathe. I’ve no idea which relation it was, unfortunately, but I do remember the lathe. I decided to order one from the UK rather than direct from China,…
Making a Hammer
Nicola bought me a present for my birthday: a hammer making course at Athelstaneforge! I really enjoyed it! It was a pretty intense few hours though: hitting chunks of hot metal with a sledge hammer to shape the head, followed by grinding and polishing it, and finally adding the handle. Would very much recommend it!…
Boring 3d Printing: Ceiling Cable Covers
Time for some slightly boring, but useful, 3d printing. The Problem When I wired the house, I was planning on adding ceiling mounted wifi access points. However, in the end, I didn’t use them. So we were left with a few cables hanging out of the ceiling. After a while, we stopped noticing them :D…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
About Me
I’m interested in doing interesting things with all sorts of technology: I thought I should write some of it down.
By day, I’m the Chief Architect for TVSquared, the leading TV analytics company (we do CTV/OTT/VOD as well as traditional linear TV).
Subscribe to My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
adq 