Here at Provide Your Own, we love LED lighting. We also believe the best use of LED lighting is by making your own custom fixtures rather than going out to buy a manufactured light bulb.

An Italian company has the same idea. They have a product where you make your own LED desklamp from a pizza box. In the great spirit of open source, they even provide downloadable plans for cutting and folding your own.

Their version of the lamp uses only a 4″ LED strip for illumination. That comes out to about 60 lumens or the output of a 4 watt bulb. We recommend using at least a 12″ strip (cut into two 6″ pieces), which would provide about 180 lumens or 12 watts equivalent.

Here’s what you need to build your own:

• Pizza Box
• 12″ LED bulk strip – (requires soldering)
• or
• (2) 6″ LED pre-made strips (no soldering required
• Terminal to Barrel Jack adapter
• 12v A/C adapter
• 12v Dimmer (optional)

For your convenience, we offer a complete kit (no soldering required) for only $24.95 (over 30% saving over buying the parts separately).

You don’t have to be limited to cardboard either. It is simple to repurpose an … Read the rest

This additional capability is not provided by default. This article provides clear instruction on setting up your own Power Over Ethernet (PoE) network, including making custom adapters for injecting & extracting the power.… Read the rest

My sister in-law has taken to washing her dishes by hand because her dishwasher no longer gets them clean. Millions of other Americans have had the same problem. Many have vainly replaced their dishwashers with new ones only to face the same problem. The problem is not your dishwasher. It is your dish-washing detergent. It has changed. It is not the same product it used to be. A vital ingredient is missing.

While you may have noticed the effects of this missing ingredient in your dishes, you may not be aware of the same problem with your clothes. That is because this vital ingredient was taken out of laundry detergents over twenty years ago. That is so long ago, that most of us just think clothes are supposed to be grungy after a few washings. I am old enough to remember clothes staying clean, but didn’t understand why they didn’t any more until recently.

The Missing Ingredient

The magical ingredient that is no longer present in commercial detergents is tri-sodium phosphate or TSP as it is commonly known. This natural ingredient is made from phosphate deposits primarily found in Florida.

In general, it acts as a detergent, but in the … Read the rest

Circuit simulation is a great way to design and debug a circuit without spending all the time to prototype it. One problem in the past was the difficulty in setting up the simulation – picking models, etc.

A new simulator called PartSim changes all that. It is online, free, and drop-dead simple to use. It even links to Digikey parts and has some vendor parts available as well. It also has a nice schematic capture and even does diagramming.

Give it a try.… Read the rest

Sometimes you have a sapling or other type of woody perennial coming up where it is not wanted. Getting rid of them presents a problem because if you cut them down, they will just grow back again.

I have a few areas on my place where I haven’t been able to mow for a few years, and I haven’t known what to do because of this very problem. Short of tethering goats on the spot all summer, I found another means to getting rid of these perennial weeds.

This video demonstrates the solution:

• Cut the plant down as low as you can/want
• Immediately (within a minute) paint the cut with full strength (concentrated, not diluted) Round-Up.

I have considered trying this technique for some time, but haven’t. In the video, Greg asserts that it never fails him, whether the tree is large or small.

While I am not a big fan of using herbicides, a judicious application as indicated in the process seems both environmentally sound and safe.

A quick word about Round-Up. This is the brand name of the original product made by Monsanto. The patent recently expired, so now you can get a generic version from another company. … Read the rest

Conspiracies abound – there is no doubt about it. The media propaganda delights in lampooning anyone who believes that men would conspire together to further their interest (at least men in government; everyone else is fair game). While I am very skeptical of anything coming from either the mainstream media, the pharma industry or government agencies, I don’t throw everything out either. Two examples come to mind – free energy inventions (including 100+ mpg carburetors) and the Apollo moon landing.

In the case of free energy inventions, when they clearly violate the known laws of physics, they must be viewed very skeptically. It doesn’t matter who believes in them, what fantastic story is told about how the auto manufacturers strong-armed them out of business (or the oil companies), or how realistic it appears, it is very, very, very likely to be a hoax. Human gullibility knows no bounds, nor does human ingenuity to fool and exploit it.

Houdini spent years debunking séances. James Randi does the same with charlatans today. By all means keep an open mind, but when something sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

In the case of the moon landing, just because the government … Read the rest

This fascinating video shows how lumber was harvested from giant redwood trees before the chainsaw.

Nowadays, some people get smug about how advanced we are. We might have some high-tech gadgets, but are we better for them, or worse? Looking at these fellows scaling a tree almost as fast as one can walk, and then to chop it down with an ax while suspended from its trunk is absolutely amazing.

Modern technology has not made us any better. In most cases, it simply removes the requirement of skill. Anyone can fell a tree with a chainsaw, but how many can fell in with a foot or two of precision as these guys could?

If we are to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on corporations and experts, we must learn new skills. Avoiding technology is not an advantage as some may think. What is important is not avoiding technology, but rather avoiding learning useful skills and relying on technology as a crutch.

We must be the master of technology, not its slave. Thoughts anyone?… Read the rest

Have you ever wondered how digital cameras detect faces? If you thought that computer vision was rocket science and too difficult, that notion is no longer true.

There is this wonderful open source library called OpenCV that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android and now RaspberryPi. Sophisticated visual algorithms are no longer limited to only high performance desktop computers. Using either your smartphone or a RaspberryPi, you can embed image detection in everyday life.

To get started, download the software needed for your device. Here are some nice tutorials to get you up to speed on using it.

Anyone using OpenCV? What are you doing with it?… Read the rest

We are pleased to announce the grand opening of our online store. It is a store unlike any other – either online or brick and mortar. Reflecting the diversity of the ProvideYourOwn website, our goal is to provide the resources you may need in your quest to reclaim your life from big corporations, crummy products and boxed-in living.

Our initial offerings are just the beginning. In the weeks and months ahead, we plan to add even more resources to help you. Here is just a taste of what we currently offer as well as future solutions we have in mind:

LEDs & Lighting

Here at ProvideYourOwn, we think that LEDs are the greatest thing since sliced bread. We have written some already about their wonderfulness, and will continue to do so. While LEDs still excel as indicator lights, in the near future we will be seeing them lighting our homes, landscapes, providing festive decoration and even personal ornamentation.

As is so common with many consumer products these days, most LED products available  are poorly designed; providing a woefully inadequate and sickly blueish light. This realm is one where you can provide your solution that is far superior.

A … Read the rest

Have you ever wondered what a far away place looks like, but can’t find the means to go see it? Now you can. Google (who is constantly releasing new stuff that no one ever knows about) is now adding Street View panoramas of the world’s wonder spots.

This blog post from Google highlights their latest addition – the Grand Canyon. I gave it a spin, and it is pretty wild stuff – you can pick where to start and then hike down the trail, looking around as you go. It does get a little old after a while, so it might be nice to offer a side-by-side map view as well. Maybe they do, I just don’t know about it.

Google probably has lots of other scenic places photographed as well, but how you find them is up to you dear reader. Happy treasure hunting.… Read the rest

The problem often faced when merely gluing the plastic piece back together, is that when under stress, any repair made will be weaker than the original one that broke in the first place. Matthias’s technique is to wrap the repair joint with nichrome wire that he melts into the plastic. His video shows how he does it.… Read the rest

I thought this idea was really clever. Have you ever needed to keep some lotion on hand while you are out? Instead of dealing with a messy liquid container, these easy to make lotion bits are great to have on hand when you need them. They just melt in your hand.… Read the rest

I have been thinking about DIY charging docks for awhile now, and I think this one can be improved by fashioning an actual docking base from Sculpy. Then glue the charging plug into it, and you can then just drop your phone into the holder.

Any other ideas out there?… Read the rest

When I was a young man, I badly wanted to design and build my own stuff – even my own color television. One of my primary motives was a means to save money, of which I was sorely lacking. I was told by my elders that such thinking was incorrect. There was no way I could design my own television – that took a team of experts and that, in any case, I could not save any money in the process. I was better off to get a good paying job and just buy a television.

As I look back on that conversation, I have learned that the first statement was false, the second one true, and the third false. Let’s look at each assertion in more detail.

Building Your Own

In some ways I was ahead of my time. Designing and building a color television set was a daunting proposition back in the 1970s and 80s. Not impossible, but certainly difficult. Even with an electrical engineering degree the resources regarding color television design were slim to say the least. There was also no support from others for such a project when problems were encountered.

In modern times these limitations … Read the rest

Its author also gives a good summation of why we prefer to do things ourselves – to obtain something that meets our needs; something we can’t get from corporations. The reason for DIY is should not be to save money. Mass production and the division of labor is what gives us the abundance we have as Matt Ridley in his book posits.

What it doesn’t give us sometimes is something that meets our needs. Mass produced goods are only half-suitable for everyone and rarely ideally suited for anyone. Before you go camping again, be sure to check out this article first.… Read the rest

This article describes some wonderful new applications envisioned for LED lighting. While many of the links don’t work, it still contains some great photos of LEDs being used for decorating buildings, night-time gardens and more.

I can’t help commenting on the article’s main premise – that LEDs will lead to greater energy use than incandescent lights. This is absolutely true, but it is not a bad thing. As pointed out in their excellent book any time energy efficiencies are achieved, greater energy use is the result. The main reason for this effect is because of new applications found for the new technology. LEDs are a perfect example.

Some might be saying, “but we are in an energy crisis, don’t we need to conserve energy?” The answer is that the energy situation might be in a state of flux right now, we are in no way in a shortage. The US is on the verge of developing massive petroleum deposits which will make it a leading producer in a few years, and the price of solar is dropping to the point where powering our lights and appliances is now at the point that almost everyone can afford it – even the … Read the rest

I have been wanting a 10″ Android tablet, but they have always been too expensive. Sure, there have always been cheap Chinese knockoffs, but they have always been pretty junky affairs – until now.

My family recently bought me a . While this manufacturer does cut some corners, amazingly it didn’t cut the ones that count. It sports stereo speakers that sound better than the original Kindle Fire and has more memory as well. It even has a front facing camera and an HDMI output jack. Speed is decent and WiFi works just fine. It lacks the sensors of high end tablets and cell phones, but does have a microphone and accelerometer. It is perfect for viewing movies, PDF files, web browsing and Skype – typical tablet stuff. It also has USB input so you can easily attach a keyboard as well. You can also charge it via USB as well as using the supplied fast charger.

As for the downsides, there are remarkably few. Its ARM-based processor is only single core, and battery life is a tad less than the Kindle Fire, but decent. The biggest issue with this tablet is the lack of the Google Play store. Polaroid … Read the rest

When collecting any data on the Arduino, it won’t be very long before you need to calculate some statistics on that data. While statistics can be a pretty intense mathematical field, some very basic statistics such as calculating the mean and standard deviation can be invaluable for many applications.

Fortunately, it is not only easy to make these calculations, but its usefulness can extend beyond just statistics. Many times data from a sensor may not be stable. Touch sensing is a good example. Each individual value (data point) can vary quite a bit, making it difficult to make an accurate determination. By averaging these values, a better decision can be made.

In a similar vein, by calculating the standard deviation, you can assess the quality of the values obtained. A large deviation from the mean can indicate problems with your sensor.

Design Challenges

Because statistics often require some extensive data collection, normal methods can be too memory intensive for small microcontrollers like the Arduino or ATtiny based designs. Normally each value is stored and, when all the data is collected, various calculations such as the mean and standard deviation are calculated on the data set. Storing this much data can … Read the rest

When I lived in Florida, I belonged to an exotic fruit tree club. In this club we collected exotic fruit trees and tried to get them to fruit (the fruit of our labors were quite delicious). I wanted to grow this particularly tasty fruit, but all the literature said that it could only be grown in cool, high-altitude locations. When I mentioned this to a veteran member he told me to not pay any attention to what the common wisdom held. His words were – “You don’t know if it will grow or not. You won’t really know until you have tried.” Indeed, many of the wonderful fruits we have today are the result of adventurous souls trying to do what was said couldn’t be done.

Do as the article says and perform experiments on yourself. The rewards can be incredible. For example, I have cured myself of three incurable … Read the rest

If you have any interest in either electronic circuits or micro-controllers, you have probably heard of the Arduino. Unless you have actually worked with the Arduino, you may only have a vague idea of what all the excitement is all about. If you are one of those who have wondered what the Arduino is, would like to know more about it, this article will answer most of your questions and give you a good grasp of the concepts.

Since this article is geared toward those with no or little prior knowledge of the Arduino platform, you may be inclined to skip it if you are more experienced. There is however, some useful information for the more experienced. You may often find yourself at a loss for words when describing the Arduino or your Arduino based projects to your family and friends. In that case, you might find this tutorial provides a good framework for improving your communication.

What is an Arduino?

The Arduino is a microcontroller based platform. It is not a microcontroller, but is an entire development/engineering environment and eco-system based on a family of microcontrollers from the Atmel corporation.

There are many microcontrollers from various corporations available, and … Read the rest

Don’t let naysayers discourage you from pursuing your ideas or dreams. Just do it – what have you got to lose?… Read the rest

Even though there are two diameters that determine the size of the jack/plug, usually only the pin diameter is specified. For example, the popular 2.1mm jack has a barrel diameter of 5.5mm. The barrel diameter is assumed in most cases.

Despite the total lack of standards for household stuff, for the hobbyist, some popular sizes have emerged.

For low power connections, the pin diameter is 2.1mm and the barrel diameter is 5.5mm.

For higher current connections, having currents greater than 2.0 amps, the pin diameter is usually 2.5mm with a barrel diameter of 5.5mm.

Barrel length on the plugs seems to have settled at about 9.5 to 12mm long. The length match is not as critical as long as the plug is sufficiently long to … Read the rest

Although the article is geared toward boat builders, it contains good advice for all of us. Frequently we make a big mistake in our project. It then leaves us frustrated and we often abandon the project. Abandoned projects are very hard to come back to. Instead of being stymied by setbacks, we should correct the mistake as best as we can and continue on. It is the overall quality in a project that makes the difference – not the absence of any mistakes. Don’t let perfectionism stand in your way.… Read the rest