The place where I document the stupid stuff I do
I bought a 7 inch display that the Raspberry Pi connects to. I wasn’t entirely sure why I bought it but I thought it would come in useful at some point. Oliver had the bright idea that we could make it into a mini-arcade game for his room. Turns out he was right.
The speaker was a gift from a long time ago that has just been gathering dust and the USB joystick was a cheap purchase from Amazon to test using joysticks on the Raspberry Pi before building my cabinet.
Oli got a new bike for his 6th birthday. A Specialized MTB, red. Loves it. Since we were planning a trip to the caravan Oli decided it would be great to take our bikes along and go for a cycle along the coast. The only minor fly in this ointment is that there’s no way Oli’s bike, Amelia’s bike and my bike will fit in my car. So we bought a roof rack thing and three cycle carriers from roofbox.co.uk
On my drive back from London my car started losing power. I just about managed to limp home, got up before dawn the next day to start assembling my roof rack and cycle carrier, mounted my bike on the roof, took the kids to breakfast club and then dropped my car at the garage and cycled home again. The garage couldn’t find anything wrong. They cleared the engine warning light, took it for a test drive, seemed fine to them, suggested it may have been dirty fuel causing a blockage and that maybe it had worked it’s way through the system. Horseshit. Their suggestion was to drive it for the weekend and see if any warning lights come on or anything.
Against my better judgement I did what they asked. Up early on Saturday morning and got all the bikes on the roof whilst Emma packed their suitcase.
Emma set off to London for Catherine’s 40th. The kids and I set off to Wales. We got to the end of the lane and the car completely died. Dirty fuel my arse.
Wales trip cancelled. Local garage received a bit of a telling off. Roofrack and cycle carrier yet to be used in anger.
We had to have our cats “done”. Thor had his bits whipped off and was back to normal 24hrs later. Willow, on the other hand had a much more serious operation and has been moping around the house feeling sorry for herself for a week now. Also, she does look a bit daft in her jumper but come xmas we may put it back on her with tinsel and baubles and stuff.
Whilst in Vegas we took some time out to rent some Polaris RZR’s and go driving through the Mojave desert. It all got a bit messy
The end result…
Continuing with the “crap that I’ve built” posts…I built a raspberry pi based robot. I didn’t design the circuit boards and cut the metal using a laser or anything. It’s more like a grown-ups lego kit. I’m considering arming it with some visual recognition code, some weedkiller and then letting it loose on my dandelion population.
