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![]() My neighbour's outside light suddenly stopped working a month or so ago. I immediately thought it might be the bulb, however when this was changed it was clear this was not the only problem. I removed the lamp housing from the wall and bench tested it. While it was on the bench i dismantled the internals and cleaned it up removing corrosion from the external casing and dust and debris from the internal parts. While doing this i discovered a quite shocking construction practice concerning the mains parts. The mains filter capacitor has two other discrete components mounted beneath it! Click here for more details on this repair project.
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![]() Over the past couple of years i have been renovating and repairing the panel and corner seals around my mother's caravan. I prefer to do this now before the seals fail allowing water in causing serious rot damage. I have heard of too many caravan owners coming across serious water damage after a long wet winter. Usually the water had been getting in for some time before the damage internally became obvious. I switched to using the original caravan sealant for the corners as these require much more flexibility and movement than the Soudal Fixall i previously used for other repaired joints. Click here to see more details on this project. The Begonia's provided a very colourful and consistent display throughout the summer however they are vulnerable to cold weather. This year they provided an excellent display until a single short over night frost at the end of October. By morning the entire garden display of Begonia's had turned to 'mush'! Although this happens each year it was disappointing that it happened relatively early this year compared to previous ones. The plants did not go to waste. They were gathered up and put into the compost bin to provide part of the 'green' soft part of the mix required. ![]() Although the Begonia's were wiped out in one frosty night the Alyssum continued on unaffected and continued to flower up until the first week of December 2018. ![]() In early 2017 a friend gave me an old XBox 360 she no longer had any use for. After refurbishing it and getting it working i had no immediate use for it. I salvaged the 120GB SATA hard disk from it along with some other components and then sent it for recycling. I retained the 150W PSU from the XBox and developed this simple breakout box providing +5V @1Amp and +12V @ 12Amps using some components i had to hand. This will make a great PSU for lots of experiments, projects and prototypes. Click here to find out more about this projects. ![]() My parents had a couple of wooden barrel style plant tubs that had not been used for a few years and were starting to look a bit neglected. I decided to salvage them and hopefully will be able to put them to good use next year. Click here for more details. ![]() After a very good summer in Edinburgh we were hit with some unusual windy weather in the middle of September. Sadly it did a lot of damage to many tall plants including wiping out all my Lupins although they were past their best at the time. Worst of all was the damage to the great display of Begonias i had this year. This picture shows the remains of what was a beautiful upright well shaped plant. The storm force winds literally ripped it apart scattering blooms and plant parts around the garden. However, looking on the positive side the plant should have produced a good corm/bulb by now which will be used to produce a strong healthy plant next year! ![]() I recently discovered that my bird table needed some work. I had hoped it was simply a case of re-varnishing but it turned out that some of the wood had rotted due to water getting into a gap where steel pins were used to secure a decorative moulding in place. The corrosion of the steel pin greatly accelerated the rotting of the wood. To find out more about this project click here for the details of the work carried out. ![]() I recently came home from a business trip to find out that my Linksys/Cisco RV042 Router was not working and the power supply appeared to have tripped also. I have a backup plan for my network so it was not critical to have it fixed immediately and i was not offline for more than a few minutes once the backup plan was implemented. I suspected the problem to be within the router so dismantled it and investigated further. Click here to find out more about this project. ![]() The door bell button on my mother's front door self destructed a couple of days ago!. It is old but still in good cosmetic condition so i thought it was worth trying to repair it. Click here to find out more about this very short simple repair. ![]() I recently discovered that the damage to the garden shed was much more serious than i had originally thought. I had planned to repair it this year and having cleared the greenhouse to store the shed contents while it was being repaired i was very fortunate to have a run of good weather that allowed me to get on with the serious repairs, including having to jack the shed up on a car bottle jack while working on it. Although the shed was over 50 years old it was well worth repairing as the damage was very localised. Click here to find out more about the repairs carried out on the shed and how they were done. |
AuthorAllan Faulds is an Electronic Design Engineer who develops Hardware and Software on a professional basis. He has a strong interest in applying his design and development skills to his areas of interest such as bicycle lighting and plant growing and greenhouse and garden control technology. Archives
March 2024
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