Car racing in stationary cars (#E25)

Well, it’s been a bit quiet here lately, as I went from very time-consuming car enjoyment at the very end of 2024 to very time-consuming car troubles at the very beginning of 2025. And while I can only share that the latter is FUCKING EXPENSIVE, I have a little more stuff on hand for the former. Since the battle for track times and fame in Beach Buggy Racing is currently flaring up in the German Tesla forum TFF, I thought taping a couple of runs would add value. So I went ahead and captured some…18 hours of it. To show off the best rounds (as there is very little content on Youtube), and to study things like item effects and the perfect racing lines (there’s none), and of course to compile dumb shit into funny videos. […]

12th January 2025 12th January 2025 By Bzzz In No Comment

Bosch (BSH) spare part packaging (#R24)

Hey Bosch!

Very recently, I repaired the induction cooktop of a former coworker. Bosch/Schott branded (PXV995DC1E?), large 90×50 field with 5+2 zones, somewhat on the more expensive side of things, but likely also available from the other BSH brands like Siemens, Neff, or Constructa. The fault was a partially unresponsive touchy-feely interface, and since those cooktops do not have separate hardware buttons and knobs, it’s a bit of a problem when more and more buttons die. Especially the one that turns everything on and off, but also heating on full throttle all the time isn’t very helpful. […]

8th December 2024 8th December 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

Blueendless External SSD Hard Disk NVME Enclosure 10G Online Reading Writing Speed SSD Case For M.2 NVME SD Docking Station (WHL #104)

Ah, well, it’s December already, the time for some larger hardware changes (when people have some spare time in case things go wrong, which they often do – and some even have a higher budget at that time).

Storage. Once again.

So I was pondering about my options. Yeah, the 836 Supermicro case with its 16 LFF bays is terrific, and I like the options in terms of computing power and hard drives (including the cheapo options of “small, but very many”) very much. But it’s inconvenient to use when powering off after access, or terribly expensive when running it 24/7 (electricity is 0.3€/kWh!). […]

1st December 2024 2nd December 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

Fluke product registration card (#E24)

Silly people doing silly things.

Today: Fluke product registration via snail mail.

In the dark ages of the Interwebs™, retail hardware often came with some registration post card. I think I never sent one in, but apparently this was how one would subscribe to real newsletters on colourful dead tree.

Five months ago, in a low-key effort to clean up the office for a) a cleaner office (duh!) and b) less junk around that needs to be sorted, thrown out or boxed before early January ’25 when the company moves to a new building, I sifted through stuff from a random rack. […]

17th November 2024 17th November 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

Processing a gigabyte of data (#E23)

Processing a gigabyte of work data…at home.

So?

Everybody had log files of mundane server daemons that spilled over, what’s the big news on a gig of data?

Will he post pics of tiny USB drives and say “look what I found”?

Yeah. Kinda.

At work, we’re preparing to move to a new building, purpose-built to our specs. We’ve been in the old one for like 30+ years and there are still plenty of coworkers that started at this era. It won’t be as pretty as the current one and it absolutely will not have a view like this (horses not included during winter) – but it will feature enough space for offices and production areas. […]

27th October 2024 28th October 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

Allit EuroPlus Flex assortment box label holders (#P45)

Once a more a simple 3D printing part. Today, that’ll go into one of the excellent yet affordable (10€-ish, depending on the size of the swappable containers) “EuroPlus Flex” assortment box made by Allit. One of those (yup, stolen right from the manufacturer):

Outer size of that specific product is fixed at 370mm x 295mm x 55mm, and the inside is, aside from the front part that integrates the handle, fully configurable. There are 1×1 boxes in red, 2×1 in yellow and 2×2 in blue. For really large items that still need to be inside a container, there are also 3×2 green and 4×2 gray ones (not shown here), but I tend to just stick them in there without a container. […]

13th October 2024 14th October 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

eSUN 3D Printer Flexible TPE 83A Filament 1.75mm Dimensional Accuracy +/- 0.05mm 1KG (2.2 LBS) Spool 3D Printing Material (WHL #103)

Printer filament. Well, not directly, but in a way.

I guess this could also be a rant since it’s not about the filament itself, but more an issue of packaging. This concerns eSun, which I avoid because of this, but for this very filament, I needed to buy eSun.

eSun makes TPU (they call it TPE, same thing really) filament in 83A shore hardness. I don’t think anyone else does, and very few do similar materials, especially in the 1.75mm DIY filament diameter and not for industrial use in the 3mm realm. The smaller the number, the softer the material is. […]

29th September 2024 22nd October 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

MicroQR scanner phone apps (#R23)

I’m not reeeeally into app recommendations, but that one bothered me for a long time…so here it goes:

For all your barcode needs on a mobile phone: Use the Cognex scanner! Available here for Androids and there for low hanging fruit.

Why the recommendation? Because, for reasons unknown to me, no standard camera app on both systems, nor any other barcode app that I could find for Android does support MicroQR codes. Basically everybody does Code 128 and 39, some do weirder stuff like interleaved 2-of-5, and 2D apps often support things like standard QR, Datamatrix or Aztec. […]

15th September 2024 8th December 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

For Dell Laptop DC Power Charge Converter Adapter Cable Cord 7.4*5.0 to 4.5*3.0 mm Female (WHL #102)

Here’s something not to burn your house down with: DC power supply adapters.

My lighbox currently draws power from the 3D printer power supply, which does work, but has its limitations. Sure, I do have to move down the gantry to take photos in the first place, so the printer will be on anyways, but I am not able to run it during prints (time lapse?) due to power constraints. The build plate heater is 400W and only gets pulsed on-off (so no linear “oh 200W will do at the moment” regulation), and the power supply is a 500W unit from MeanWell. […]

8th September 2024 8th September 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

Dreame W10 mop pad drill adapter (#P44)

Super quick and silly STL file for today: Don’t you hate it when your round mopping pads for the Dreame W10 (/Pro) cleaning robot are still dripping wet after the robot “dries” them by spinning them around for a bit? Don’t you think the automatic air dry function where it blows warm air over it, wasting 50 Watts of power for literal hours, is the most infuriating quirk of the entire system?
Don’t you worry any longer! Spin it yourself! Dry it with the power of the over-9000-RPMs! :D

In all seriousness, the warm air dry function is a joke and not being able to deactivate it completely is the single most annoying thing of their stupid software. […]

25th August 2024 13th October 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment