Scrap Your Projects And Cut Your Losses

About

Recently I decided to clean up my project backlog by either finishing or scraping the projects. A lot of times when I start something it eventually ends up being sidelined for months(or even years) for a multitude of reasons (being busy with other stuff, waiting for parts, forgetting about them, not feeling like it). In this post, I will document some of the ones that I decided to cancel/scrap, how far along I got and the reason I started the project in the first place and why scrapped it.

When you have too many projects and not enough time to finish them you should just cut your losses and scrap some of them. I think that a project should be fun, educational and produce something useful at the end. In general, I’d say that if a project should be at least two of those else you should probably scrap it. Obviously there are some exceptions and there will always be tedious and not so fun parts in every project that you just have to push through and get done.

DIY Laser Engraver

I started this project many years ago and worked on it from time to time. The idea was to make a DIY laser engraver including the PC software into which you would import an image and subsequently engrave it.

The image would be converted to black and white and it would be resized to the number of steps the steppers have(one step = one pixel). Then I would transform the brightness of the individual pixel into a combination of the lasers power and time over a certain area. Next, I would generate the code some sort of “G code” that could be used to specify the X and Y coordinates and set the power of the laser. Finally, the information would be sent over the serial port to the Arduino which would convert the “G code” into X/Y steps of the stepper motors and laser power/time over target.

I got as far as 3d printing and assembling the hardware, hooking up the stepper motors to the Arduino via the stepper drivers, and writing a test program that would move all the steppers from start to end.

In the end, I decided to cancel this project as I had no real use for it and at this point, I had nothing new to learn as far as software or electronics go.

Arduino Game Console

I started this project a few years ago purely for fun and never finished. I wanted to make an Arduino game console with a few games(like pong for example). I got as far as making the circuit on a breadboard and wrote a bit of the software. At this point, I had nothing to learn hardware or software wise by finishing the project so I just scrapped it.

Netduino

This board and the whole Netduino project is now obsolete and not supported anymore. The board used an ARM Cortex-M 32-bit ARM processor and could be programmed with C# by using a .NET tech stack for embedded devices(.NET micro framework).

This meant you got all the nice C# features like for example garbage collection and you get Visual Studio as your IDE which in my opinion, it’s far better than the Arduino IDE(but bit more complex for beginners). However one of my favorite features was that you had an actual debugger for step by step debugging.

One of the few projects I have done with the Netduino was a 7-segment display multiplexing driver that you can se in the images above.

OS Development

Writing a simple OS is something I always wanted to do as it’s both very educational and interesting. I followed this tutorial on OSDev and got as far as booting from a floppy and printing out “Hello World”. Then I put this aside and a few years went by. This is a project I still kind of want to return to and finish. Maybe I will if/when/ I have some spare time… Note: This youtube channel is another great resource I found.

Camera From Computer Mouse Sensor

This was another one of those projects that I started because it just seemed fun and interesting as opposed to being useful or educational. I started this many years ago(and then left/forgot about it) when I saw this video. I intended to use an Arduino to read the values from the mouse sensor and send them to the PC where they would be arranged into an image.

In the end, I decided to go the easier route and ended up using this software instead. This way there was no coding involved just some simple connections to a parallel port. I was able to get an image but it wasn’t as nice or readable as the ones the creator of the software was able to make(images below).

Carbon Monoxide Smartphone Sensor

This is yet another project I started years ago. The idea here was to make a sensor that could be attached to a smartphone via USB OTG(on the go) and would measure dangerous gases like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, LNG, … If the concentration would get too high it would warn you with a buzzer. If you wouldn’t respond and the phone wouldn’t register any movement from the accelerometer it could call for help on its own.

The interesting stuff I learned during this project was how to make an Android app and how to use the IOIO board to read the gas sensor.

To read the sensor you have to turn on the heater inside it. Then you turn it off and measure the resistance of the filament as it cools. Finally, you can use the measure resistance values to figure out what type of gas is present and in what quantity. You can do this by looking at the cart provided in the datasheet of the sensor.

I used linear interpolation to find the appropriate PPM value from the chart. However, before that, you also have to convert the logarithmic scale to a linear one. I did this in Excel using the LN() which gets the log of the number you input. After that, you get a more or less linear graph which you can use to interpolate the PPM value from.

I scrapped this project as it would take too much time and effort to complete. On top of that, the IOIO board I’m using is outdated and I’m not interested in learning Mobile App development or Java.

Solder Dispenser

This is another project I started a while ago and haven’t touched for years. The idea here was to make a solder dispenser that would make it easier and faster to complete larger soldering jobs.

A stepper motor is used to pull solder off the spool and push it into a plastic pneumatic tube. The electronics and software are very straightforward. When the button on the end of the tube is pressed an Arduino with a stepper motor driver is used to turn the motor.

I scrapped this project as I had nothing new to learn from it. And the automatic solder dispenser isn’t something I need that much anyway.

The video below has a demonstration of the prototype.

ESP Firebase Temperature Sensor

The idea here was to make an IoT temperature and humidity sensor that sends its values to Firebase(Google’s cloud NoSQL database) and then have those displayed on a webpage. I used a WeMos D1 development board with the ESP-8266 module and the DHT11 sensor.

I started this years ago and I got as far as sending the values to the database. I never finished it by making a web interface to display the values. At this point it’s pointless to finish as I wouldn’t learn anything new and I have no real use for it either.

DC Electronic Load

I wanted to make a DC electronic load controlled by an Arduino. I was going to use the MCU to generate a PWM signal which would be converted to an analog voltage using an RC filter. This could then be used to control the constant current load. Additionally, the MCU would also measure the voltage and current(by using a shunt) and send this over the serial port to the PC where it would be recorded in an app.

I got as far as building the electronic load itself before I scrapped this project. I scrapped it because I wouldn’t learn anything new by finishing it and I bought a DC electronic load online(images below) for around 10$ which has everything my DIY load would have so I really didn’t need to make my own.

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These were some of the half finished projects I scrapped. There are also some projects that were just on my to do list I didn’t even start that I scrapped as well. And I might yet add other projects I scrap in the future …

DecentBin a Decentralized PasteBin Clone

I was planning to use/experiment with either Moralis(middleware for building web3 apps) or the SiaSkynet non-relational key-value pair database for storing the data. Then I was planning on using the SiaSkynet decentralized CDN to host and serve the app. In the end, SiaSkynet went bust(they didn’t get any more funding) so, I kind of gave up on this little project and moved on to other stuff.