Expanding our tiny armory to make teeny crossbows as well as swords and axes.
The kids have been collecting the little strips of spring steel off the street that the street sweepers leave behind, with the hopes of someday forge welding them into a mighty sword. I’m not sure if that would work but those spring steel strips do work well for little bows.
I’ve heard those strips are useful for making lock picks
Yes they are. If you want to make a torsion wrench you usually have to heat the metal before making the bend or they will snap off before reaching 90°. But other than that it’s just a matter of filing them to the right profiles and thicknesses, they work great!
Yes, I learned about that from the same guy who taught @frauenfelder to lock-pick. Good times!
Lazy web: are there analog dials, like old voltmeters, which have multiple pointers that can be controlled by a microcontroller?
I’d like to build a small weather station visible from the kitchen table. It would tell me the current temperate, high for the day, and maybe a couple other things, depending on how fancy (and simple, at the same time) I could get it.
I know I can hook up simple voltmeters like the link below, but do any exist with two or more needles that can be independently controlled?
So if I understand correctly, you want to find one analog indicator gauge with two needles that can be controlled seperately? And you want it to be visible from a distance, so about 3 inches in height. And using two seperate gauges is not an option?
Gotta say, two separate gauges sounds, well, inappropriate to this time and place.
Could we perhaps needlessly complicate matters by making it work for four total inputs, two of which are null? I’d suspect Bayesian random walk would do a great job for randomizing the null inputs in a suitably brain damaging manner.
Apologies if the attempt at humor falls flat!
That’s the idea, yes.
I’ve seen some builds that have a series of gauges next to each other, but that isn’t as appealing to me.
Hmm that’s a tall order. I may be able to rummage a pile at work next week but dual-displays will be rare.
A word of caution: dont try to drive the output to the meter directly using one of the microcontroller analog IO pins. You could damage the controller. Run the output through a buffer.
Just about done with the chaise lounge I was making out of reclaimed wood from old pallets people discarded around my neighborhood (thus the “Property of Coca-Cola” mark).
Reduce, reuse, relax!
What it should look like:
Did you rip the slats out of pallet wood, too?
What kind of neighborhood do you live in where people discard pallets? Are you in Florida?
Yep, I cut the slats down to size on a table saw and rounded the edges on a router table.
Two of the pallets were discarded along a green corridor in San Francisco. Another may or may not have been liberated from a Home Depot parking lot after I saw that the line to get inside wrapped halfway around the block.
Good looking rig you got there. Steering wheel on the right? 
Garden beds complete:
Now I just need to build a pademelon-proof fence and give the soil a few weeks to settle in [1], then I can start planting.
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[1] There’s a hefty amount of blood & bone, dynamic lifter and cow dung in each bed; if I planted now, it would cook the crop.
I had to look that one up:
Looks like an evil miniature kangaroo
