This post has been spawned from my interest in pocket-sized tools, and trying to build the ultimate handy set of keys for my work keys. I have a few tools in my collection already, and I’ll write a short review of those, as well as showing some tools off my wish list. This list ignores multitools I have reviewed previously. Most of them are far too big to be included in this post anyway.

Gerber Artifact

my Gerber Artifact

I recently got my hands on a Gerber Artifact, which looked awesome. It has a small pry bar, Bottle opener, “x-acto” style replaceable blade, and a Philips head screwdriver on the tip. I had nothing like it in my collection, so i put in an order

When my order arrived, I have to admit I was a little disappointed with the build quality. The main body appears to be cast, and its hard to fault that, however the locking mechanism and pivot were a little ordinary. The blade is difficult to open and close. The pivot seems overly stiff. I’m not sure if this is the fault of the product, or if the tool was tightened after manufacture.

This brings me to my next point, the condition of the screws on the pivot and the ones holding the locking mechanism in place. It appears they have been abused somewhat. the torx screw in the pivot looks like it has had an allen key used in it to tighten it. To the tools credit this may have been done at the store I bought it from. Next, the two Torx screws holding the locking spring in look as if they had been beaten with a hammer, as well as having an allen key in them (the edges are somewhat distorted)

Really, when you consider the price which was paid, I can’t really fault the tool (it was $10 plus postage in a package of other stuff). It is solid, and very usable

Pocket Wrench II

The Pocket Wrench II is a neat little tool. It seems simple, with no moving parts, but has several useful features, such as a pry bar, a rule with inches and centimeters, and its main feature, the “universal” wrench, or as we would call it over here, spanner. I am yet to own one of these, but eventually, I would love to get my hands on one of these for my collection.

The Pocket Wrench II

 Peter Atwood

This one isn’t a specific tool, its a whole person. Peter Atwood is probably considered “THE GUY” when it comes to making small key sized multitools. his tools are better described as fine crafted works of art, and they are very exclusive. Peter releases the tools in small batches, which he announces on his blog, and the batches never last too long before they are all sold out. You really have to be on the ball to get one of his creations. I don’t own any of his tools yet, but eventually I might splash out for one, if i can catch  a batch with some avaliable

Swiss+tech Utili Key 6 in 1

the Utili-key is probably one of the first on mini, on keys tools I added to my collection. I attribute the discovery of this fun little tool to my sister, who actually found it first. I eventually found myself one, and has been on my keys ever since.

the Swiss+Tech Utili-Key

 Swiss+Tech Micro Plus

along side the Utili-key, I have added a Swiss+tech Micro-Plus to my keys also. these are a little pair of folding pliers, where, as you can see from the image, the handles are made up of a selection of screwdriver ends. The pliers on this critter are not in any way, needle point, they are quite wide, and short. The wide and short jaws come with the design, but can limit some uses of the tool. the biggest issue I have with this tool is that when folded out into pliers, there is no way of locking the handle into position. Again, this is really dictated by the simplistic design of the tools, and it is something you should be able to deal with.

The miniature Swiss+Tech Micro Plus

Swiss+tech make a few other mini tools – mostly variants fo the miniature pliers with more features. when I get around to it, I wouldn’t mind upgrading the micro plus to a Micro Max, which appears to be mostly an addition to some different sized screw driver bits as part of the handle

So there we have it. Short, and far from exhaustive, but I hope someone out there found it helpful or interesting.

So, i have a couple of guitars, a crappy acoustic, and a fender squire electric.

I have  a couple of guitar amps, My Squire came with a little 10 Watt amp, and I also have  a massive 40 watt cabinet, which is WAAAAAY overkill for my “playing”.

I usually find, even with the little 10 Watt amp, I’m never even close to cranking it. I only go the 40 watt amp because it didn’t cost me anything (well, it cost me a couple of bucks for a new IEC socket).

I have noticed lately a few places selling mini guitar amplifiers including local store JB Hifi, however, they seemed fairly expensive, for what looked to me to be a fairly basic chinese made plastic cabinet, and what i’m assuming to be, a fairly cheap speaker and internal amplifier.

So, as one does, I got thinking, and I thought I probably have enough stuff around the shed to make something equally as good.

The cabinet was made of 12mm MDF, and was held together with PVA glue. Measurements were made up on the go pretty much. below you can see a couple of shots of the enclosure being build.

When it comes to the electronics, i had a couple of options.

1. Computer Speaker Amp
2. Kit amp from Jaycar or other electronics kit
3. Build an amp from scratch

Each option had its pros and cons. The computer speaker amp would be the cheapest, and easiest, as i have a selection of them kicking around my house already. The problem comes with the limited output of these. The Jaycar kits are probably the more expensive option, however, i can get more power from them. Building from scratch is will take the most effort, but if I need to buy parts, should still come in under the Jaycar kits

In the end, I kinda went with option 2, and used a small kit. I Actually used  a small kit I had kicking about already, which was for a different project, which wasn’t suitable for. The kit is a small 2 watt amplifer, which I think came from Jaycar, but I couldn’t find it on their website now. The image above is of the amplifier wired up ready to put into the enclosure.

Also from my “junk box” was the speaker driver. I tested a lot of speaker drivers I have accumulated over the years(pictured above), most of which were fairly useless, and i’m not entirely sure why I keep. In the end, the driver I chose to use  was actually a brand new 4 inch Sony xplod speaker, which I initially purchased to put in my previous car, which has been gone for some time.

Had I went looking for speaker drivers before I started the enclosure, I might have been tempted to simply covert the speaker box in which I had the red Xplod speaker in, adding an amp, and leaving it at that. Making the box for the enclosure was at least half the fun of the project though, so I’m glad I had a go at making my own box.

In the end, the completed project worked, but I wasn’t entirely happy with the way it sounds. I’m happy how the enclosure turned out though, so I will likely do some further experimentation with drivers and amplifiers, as well as possibly adding headphone output, Volume control, and if I go nuts, Tone control and maybe even some effects, so stay tuned to find out what happens from here.

Take a look at the gallery below for larger pictures of the build process

Above, you can see the vice stand. I haven’t done much documentation of the process, so you get the finished product, and thats it unfortunatly. The black blob on one leg is a bunch of electrical tape, which i have used to take out the wobble from the stand, as the feet aren’t perfectly even.

This one came about from various projects where I needed to work outside, but needed something to hold and support my work, as well as having a couple of new tools to try out, including an auto tinting welding helmet, and an angle grinder cutoff stand near identical to the one pictured below:

In the end, the stand was a bit higher then i had planed. The stand was supposed to be about 90cm high,  but somewhere along the line, I made it 100cm

construction was pretty basic, with the feet in 3 pieces – one full length of about 50cm, the other two are half that and are joind to the large one in the center, a couple of bits of strap welded ontop of the crossed feet to give me somewhere to weld the main pipe, and then there was the main pipe itself wich was welded ontop of the cross. The end plate the vice bolts to was acually already on the pipe I used, so that made my life a little easier.

My welds were far from awesome, but they are holding for the time being. if they break, i can always re-weld the stand, and depending on how things go, I may end up cutting it off and making it shorter, and hopefully improving on my welds. My new welding helmet helped me aim my welds better, and made it much easier to weld. I’m very impressed.

Thats it for another one of my projects. so until next time, have fun, stay safe.
Matt

This is my latest project. It is a converter box that converts the 3.5mm stereo microphone input on my camcorder, into some common interfaces, Such as XLR, RCA, and dual 3.5 mono plugs.

Specifically, the driving idea was driven by the XLR inputs, and I was contemplating making a simple cable with 2 XLRs, but I decided to go with the jiffy box and extra inputs for flexiblilty

As you can see in the above diagram, Pins 1 and 3 of the XLR connectors are actually bridged, which makes the input an unbalanced signal, but should allow me to use the mic such as a sm58 for interviews etc… at least.

A future revision of this project will probably include a pad switch, to allow line level inputs into the camcorder, and version 2 if it ever happens would include a proper active XLR converter, maybe some kind of mixer, level monitor, and possibly if I wanted to go crazy, phantom power, and a headphone amplifier.

Another thing I’ve heard of in the other boxes is a feature that sends a high frequency audio signal thru to the camera to trick on-camera auto gain control into staying at a fixed volume.

Anyway, there wasn’t much in the way of progress shots, but below is a selection of photos of the finished project:

I will likely tidy up the box, maybe making my own custom labels & what not.

So, I’ve recieved the  tgimboeja little while ago, and I’ve been slowly getting around to going thru it properly, and documenting everything, and adding my bits and pieces.

OK to start off with, here is the box as it came, just opened up:

and then removing some of the bubble wrap to take a peak:

Here we see a selection of components from the box.

More bits and pieces, a floppy drive out of a laptop, some potentiometers, power supply wall wart, a power conditioner, some valve holders, and a mechanical counter

Next we have a container, largely full of valves of different types, with a few different things on top. For a more detailed documentation of the valves, I recomend you go to the original site of 440hertz. There you will find the valves all labeled up

These are the items in the top of the valve container.
we have some LEDs, a camera flash, some voltage regulators, a Light Dependant Resistor, a radio IC, and a couple of guitar effects (the details of those are on the above website also)

A couple of Phones, and a PSone controller. the nokia looks like it would be technically servicable, but the Dopod looks well and truly dead.

Playstation Two DVD remote (the IR reciever is in the box too). I almost kept this, as I do have a PS two, but I don’t really use it for DVDs, so didn’t see the point

A big old multimeter. Auto ranging. Looks pretty heavy duty

Things I’ve taken from the box

There are a few things in here I haven’t pictured above, but were in the box.

First up, we have a small selection of bits and pieces.  a few potentiometers, some RCA connectors,  a small relay, a speaker and a vibrator from a mobile phone, some infra red interuptor beams, a 556 chip (can we say Atari Punk. oh yea!), and an OPA3134 opamp

A couple of old phones. The Dopod looks well beyond saving, but I’m looking forward to cracking them open and salvaging some fun bits and pieces, like the microphones, speakers and the vibrating motor

While I do have a PSone, this controller is more likely to end up being re-wired. I am thinking of using this to control some future robotics projects. a picaxe or similar, and an IR LED will turn this bad boy wireless. like most things here, stay tuned to see what happens to it

This auto ranging multimeter looked pretty impressive. Once I replace the batterys (which i flattened by leaving it turned on when I first pulled it out) I think it can live on my workbench

And now we have the last of the bits i’ve taken from the box – some heatsinks, which i’ll likely use on some voltage regulators I’ve been playing with. Microswitches have always been a favorite of mine, as are toggle switches. The knob will likely find its way onto a potentiometer in some future project

Additions  to the box

First up, we have a 2 way power split for 2 floppy drives, a set of bright green molex connectors for someone looking to jazz up the inside of their computer case, and an old 4 battery battery charger, which still works as best as I know.

Then we have, a pedometer, a 12v charger for a 2way radio, a keyring torch, and an old ps2 mouse which is lacking its mouseball unfortunately. Hopefully someone can use it for parts, the rotary encoders and button switches would be handy for someone playing with robotics.

Here is an old CPU fan & heatsink, a little speaker from a box of nutrigrain, and a 10 cell AA holder

And here is a few press button switches. some have been soldered to, some haven’t. none of them have really been used.

Here we have a few screw down wire joiners

Hopefully someone will find theses remotes useful. at the very least, they have an infrared LED that could be useful

And finally, we have the box, packed up and ready to seal and send on its way.

As of yesterday, the box has been posted onto its next destination, and soon we should see the next stop off on its trip. I hope you all have found this interesting, and if you want to participate, I recomend putting your name down on the list at http://tgimboej.org/

So thats all for now, Until next time, have fun making things,

Matt

Todays blog is about something I’ve been looking at for a while. It is EvilMadScientist’s “The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronics Junk” or TGIMBOEJ for short.

Actually, it is not one box, but many boxes, circulating thru the postal system, full of electronic -treasure. If you want to get a good idea of what you can find in a box, I’ve included a link to the Flickr group right here

Reciently, I finally put my name down on the list as a potential recipient. Hopefully I will be contacted soon, as I look forward to receiving one

I was thinking of making another box myself, however, there is not a huge list of Australian participants, so I wonder if its worth it, or if the few people will just get overloaded with the same few boxes, so for now, I’m going to wait for a box to come my way, and find a good collection of bits and pieces to put back in it (which shouldn’t be a huge problem, I have lots of junk….)

Well, until next time, when hopefully I have some of my own work to post, Have fun making stuff.
Matt out.

So, I Haven’t really done anything worth posting reciently, however, I do have a few things on the brew, and I thought I would make a post hinting at what they might be

Synths

First off, I’ve been surfing around the Music from Outer Space website, and I’m feeling like tackling an ambtious project, that has lots of knobs, and shiny things.

To be a little more specific, I’m planning on starting with the Mini-Synth, So I can get a feel for things. I like things that make sound, and music, however, I lack the training and talent to make proper music myself, but I don’t let that stop me drooling over gear
To make this uber ambitious, I’m even going to attempt to create my own PCB, using the laser printer toner transfer method, which will be interesting, as it will be one of my first attempts at etching a PCB. I will probably attempt some smaller boards before I try the big one.

Mixers

I’ve noticed one of my more popular blog posts is my 2 channel mixer. I have since outgrown it, and now I’m back to using my behringer mixer to mix everything together. In order to free up the mixer again, and to give myself another project to play with, I plan on attempting to make myself an active multi channel stereo mixer – probably about 4 stereo channels in size. Stay tuned for that one.

I may also attempt to make an uber small pocket mixer for mixing various sound sources together, on the run

Pongsats

I am fairly interested in the pongsats of JP aerospace. For a while, I wondered if they still did runs with pongsats attached, as their blog and homepage doesn’t seem to be too up to date, however, I did find a few references to recient launches from my shuffling round the website.

I’m getting excited about making my own attempt at a “smart” pongsat. Similar in concept to the picaxe based one here. However, I’m not going to copy their design at all, I plan on using my own ideas, and hopefully, jamming as much as possible into the small space and weight constraints present. This means Surface mount components, and custom PCBs. both which will be learning experiences for myself.

Parts

For all these projects, I’m going to need parts that I don’t have. Originally, I figured I could pick most of it up from Jaycar, which is possible, and fine in most parts, however, at their prices, the little projects, like the audio mixer soon delve into the range it would cost to buy a cheap, professionally designed solution.

This is where places such as Futurlec come in handy, with prices for most components coming in at a dramatically cheaper price.

and just out of interest, for those australians out there, interested in Picaxe Microcontrollers. The place with the best range I have seen locally is MicroZed. they seem to be the main distributor of picaxe related gear in the country

So Stay tuned for more info on these, and other projects, along with Photos, step by step descriptions, Video, and anything else I can manage to include.
I hope you’re exited.

Matt Out.

So, this is a picture of my current work in progress. It doesn’t look like much , but it should be a cool little tool when done.

This post is mostly a test of the ability to post to wordpress from Flickr.
I’m hoping its useful, maybe making it easier to manage blogs with photos, but we’ll find out i guess

Anyway, thats all for now, I’ll keep everyone updated. Cheeers

So, This post won’t house any of my work, I’ve been a bit slack of late, so I thought I would add an interesting website I like to visit.

The website is Instructables

It is a website dedicated to making how-to’s on just about any topic you can imagine

Below I have linked to a few Instructables I have found recently on the topic of electronics

Homemade breadboard
Sure you can buy breadboards cheaply, but sometimes you want something of a certain size (eg. smaller then what you can buy) or maybe you just want to use what you have to make your own

Pocket Sized Soldering kit
I’m a bit of a fan of pocket sized things, and I Kinda liked this idea, and I’m already thinking of making my own, similar kit, hopefully with a few improvements. I haven’t seen the Altoids tins around here though. I’ll have  a bit of a harder look next time I’m at the shops for one, or  a similar tin, and then I’ll get to work

Maker tin
This one is less electronics, and more making things in general, Again, it is on the idea of keeping inside an Altoids tin. Its interesting, but I’d probably make in a little different

Audio Mixer
After looking thru this audio mixer, It got me inspired to have a go at making a mixer a bit more complicated then the 2ch mixer I made, stay tuned

Steampunk Pen Knife

This one is probably the one instructable i’ve been most interested lately. It is basically about making your own swiss army knife. I don’t know why its steam punk, seemingly if it has copper and wood in it, its steam punk. None the less, its still a cool one to look at.

Well, thats a few instructables I found interesting. This post was more to let people know about the Instructables site if they haven’t heard of it yet. If you like making things, I recommend going and having a look

After creating my multitool review, I thought it might be nice to make a short list of the multitools I don’t own, but hope to get my hands on eventually

Spyderco / Byrd Byrdwrench

Technically, its a Byrd Byrdwrench. Originally, Spyderco made the SpyderWrench in the USA, but due to expense of manufacture, couldn’t keep making it, so it got discontinued.

It was popular enough however, that after not too long, they decided to start making it again, but this time thru Byrd, their Chinese budget operation.

and thus the Byrd Wrench

Multitool.org has a good review of the tools. Actually, multitool.org has a lot of interesting reviews. I recently found it, and now it makes my multitool wish list even longer

The Byrdwrench is unique in looks, and in function. unlike most multitools, the wrench can separate into 2 pieces. That is the main reason I find it so interesting, its uniqueness.

SOG Paratool

the Paratool is again unique, this time in the way it folds up. where most multitools work on the flip the handles all the way over principal, the Paratool’s plier jaws come out from the side of the handle. It appears to make a compact multitool

Leatherman Crunch

There just had to be at least one Leatherman in the list, and the Crunch is where it’s at

The basis of the Crunch is a pair of locking pliers, or “vice grips”. This is a worthwhile feature for many uses.

As with most multitools, the jaws still fold up into the handles

Kershaw locking pliers

Pictured here with the Leatherman Crunch is Kershaw’s equivelant. the Kershaw may actually be older then then Leatherman, but i’m not sure.

As you can see, it is along the same lines as the Letherman Crunch, but the jaws don’t fold up. The one advantage the kershaw has over the leatherman is the outside opening blade. For me, this is the biggest win on any tool. Back in the day, the knife was my most used part of a multitool, and having to open the whole thing up every time would be a pain.

SOG Powerlock

Here is the second one on the list from SOG.

The powerlock looks like a big mean machine. It has SOG’s lovely power assisted jaws, which actually gear up the pressure you can apply to whatever you are grabbing onto. This can be handy if the nut – or whatever – is being stubborn.

Conclusion:

So, these are the main tools on my Multitool wishlist, they, Its not a final list, as its always changing – expanding mostly. I’m a huge fan of doing things a little different to the mainstream. The regular folding pliers has been done a million times. From an ease of use point of view, I believe the best tools are the ones that have the knife accessible in the folded up position (which few seem to actually do), but that’s not a criteria I’ve used here, generally, these come more under coolness than usefulness.

I hope you liked my review.
Cheers