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Automatic Cat Feeder

After waking up many mornings to my cat walking on my face to get me to feed him, I decided to build an automatic feeder. I wanted it to have several features: Weight measurement for portion control Easily adjustable feeding schedule System for identifying the status of the machine Food and water dispensing contained in one unit There are many similar projects on Instructables, Thingiverse, etc. Most use a motor and a paddlewheel cereal dispenser or a servo/motor and auger to dispense the food. Some use other novel means but one feature that was missing in all of the feeders I looked at was a system for measuring the weight of the food that was dispensed. This was of the highest priority in my design because it allows me to accurately adjust portion size to help my cat maintain a healthy weight. Mechanics I started by designing the box and dispensing mechanism. The box is a simple design with a hinged back panel so I can easily access the electronics and mechanisms i...
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Mini Hotliner

Here is a project I did a while back. My uncle was cleaning up his workbench and as a fellow RC modeler he gave me some random wings and fuselages. One of the wings was about the size of the wing on the Slipso400, a small hotliner I found on this RCGroups thread:  Slipso400 . With a few modifications I managed to get it to be about the same wing. For the ailerons, I decided to try a linkage which keeps the servo in the middle of the wing and joins both aileron surfaces to the motion of one servo. The fuselage was built off of the plans provided in the RCG thread. The bulkheads are lasercut from 3mm plywood. The side walls, top, and bottom are 6mm depron. I wanted to make the tail a little stiffer so I shaped some thin pieces of balsa to the profile of the tail. I left a small space in between the two pieces to run a plastic tube to route the push rod for the elevator. After putting in the servo and gluing it all together, I rounded the edges wit...
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Tigermoth

Back in the spring I started a build of one of my favorite full scale airplanes, the DH-82 Tigermoth. I found plans made by an RCGroups user named Chris3D in this thread:  RCGroups After a busy summer, I was able to finish it a few weeks ago. Everything is made from 3 mm depron just as Goodychrischild, the author of the thread, did in his build (Thanks for the great build log Chris). Overall, the build was pretty simple; the plans were really nice and easy to understand. The only part I had trouble with was the depron bending. The wings weren't bad, they just took about 5-10 mins of slowing bending on a rounded edge. The fuselage really stumped me. I tried bending it a few times but each time I broke the piece. I guess I was too aggressive with the bending. So instead I put some packing tape on one side of the foam and creased the other side in several parallel lines and made a pseudo-bend. The tailplane was pretty simple. I joined the to horizontal...
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New Workbench

I have recently been building a workbench for all of my projects so that I can move away from using my desk for soldering and cutting stuff. I was starting to really mess up the surface. It's a pretty simple bench put together with 2x3's (2x6's ripped in half), some plywood, and particle board for the top surface. It is held together with bolts mostly to make it easy to take apart for semi-portability. I still need to make a battery charging station and put up an overhead florescent light and some outlets. Update 9/27/2017: I was able to get some some outlets installed to plug in my battery charger as well my soldering iron and hot glue gun. I also put in a super bright LED light overhead. It really brights up the bench at night.
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FPV Ground Station Part 3

I designed a case for the electronics circuit board tonight. It will be laser cut out of 1/8" plywood and then glued together. The ports are for (left to right): 3s battery, TX signal to Dragonlink by servo cable, video RX to the 5.8 GHz repeater by servo cable, window for digital voltage indicator, and antenna for the 5.8 GHz repeater. The case will then be secured by screws into the back of the biquad antenna so everything but the Dragonlink module can be removed from the tripod in one piece. I will update this post with pictures of the final product but it may be awhile because I still need to order the digital voltage indicator.
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FPV Ground Station Part 2

Today, I got around to designing support structure for the biquad antenna. I also cut some PEX tubing to make quick connect flexible clamps to hold the antenna to the tripod. This will allow for quick assembly of the ground station and will make it fast to pack up. I countersunk the holes so the flat head screws didn't stick out and touch the tripod legs when snapped on. Also, I needed to file down the points on the other side so they wouldn't stick through to the reflector plate.
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FPV Ground Station Part 1

Since I live in Illinois it is hard to get out to fly in the winter due to the dreadful weather. So I decided to use my time indoors building a ground station so that when the weather becomes more bearable I will be ready for some fun flights. Setup will look something like this I have about a five foot tall tripod that I will use as the base for all of my equipment. To start I drew out a general schematic of how I wanted to set it up. Dragonlink V2 for control on the top of the extendable head, 1.3 GHz biquad antenna for video on the top of the legs, and an electronics box somewhere in the middle. This will have a 2.4 GHz FrSky D4RII receiver to use as the link from my transmitter to the Dragonlink. Also, I will run the video out from the receiver through a DVR and then into the 5.8 GHz transmitter to repeat the signal to either my goggles or monitor. To reduce the wiring I decided to build an electronics box. This will hold all of the components mentioned and using ...
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