Music Box/Carousel

A wedding gift for two very close friends. ❤️ Key Facts: Kick Off: 01.03.2024 Finish: 02.06.2024 approx. Cost: undisclosed This project involved two major parts i had to develop. A music player and a motor-driven carousel. At first i tried to let one arduino control both the music and the motor. Since i had gathered lots of experience controlling various stepper/dc motors in the past, i knew the bigger struggle would be the audio-part. Many iterations of buying -> testing -> failing lead me down different paths of exploring sd-card modules, active amplifiers and speaker combinations and various arduino boards. In the end i concluded it would be simpler to acquire a used mp3-player & mini-speaker, dissasemble them both and reincorporate their components into the project. ...

June 15, 2024 · 3 min

Webcrawling with Python & Selenium

In a recent project i had to extract data from a website which did not offer any API-access. To make matters worse, the data gets loaded via JS, so trying to automate python-requests would be a huge pain in the butt. If you have come across the same problem, you probably also stumbled upon Selenium. While the official Docs can be pretty bad at times, especially if you’re just starting out and have no idea which modules you need to import, there are lots of stackoverflow-threads which will get you going along. ...

June 12, 2024 · 2 min

Claw Machine

The second installment of finished carnival games. Key Facts: Kick Off: 01.11.2022 Finish: 01.10.2023 approx. Cost: 600€ Controlling-Boards: Arduino Uno & Arduino Mega Claw Model: Thingiverse: servo robotic claw The idea was born while working on the meanwhile abandoned project “pinball-machine”. Continuing to work on a 3+ year old project base seemed no longer like a good idea. My manufacturing capabilities and process-standards evolved a lot during these years, while doing various other projects. Notably the “smart-home/security” project, which kicked off my production of homebrew parts through 3d-printing and evolved the planning & execution of electrical components. So it became clear that the “pinball-machine” wouldn’t be wise to continue, with the realization that i would need to rework all components to fit my self-obliged production-standards. ...

March 2, 2024 · 9 min