Pieter

Painting my cargobike

In spring 2021 I had to electrify my cargobike. The combined weight of 2 kids just became too much. It’s a “bakfiets.nl”, first generation, so the Bafang engine didn’t easily fit. Nothing a bit of cutting and welding couldn’t fix :-).

I also upgraded the back brake and strengthened the cargo part.It used to be painted with Shaun the sheep, but Shaun had shed a lot of his wool so the kids were allowed to choose something new.

The fat unicorn is based on a internet GIF, that I can’t find the correct source for. The shark is my own design.

After 9 months and ~3.500 km, the biggest challenge is that I have to recharge often (really not that superb quality battery-management wise). Bolts and stuff tend to come loose faster. On the other hand I only had to invest ca. € 800 to have a functional and very unique electrified cargobike.

Pieter

MobiWürst Posters

On my last job, I managed to become the “party committee chairman”. It was a very serious responsibility to cheer up my colleagues with cheap after-work events. Thus I developed the concept of the “MobiWürst”: barbecued sausages, buns, sauces and weird vegetable options that you had to combine yourself. Each time a big success. Only drawback is the cleaning up afterwards.

After the first edition we started to give them a theme, as you might* be able to deduct from the posters.

For the last one I learned to kill my darlings:

* might be my faith in the average internet user’s not that high 😉

Pieter

Schoolbadge

Somewhere in 2020-2021 one of the school’s teachers proposed the idea of “lending” each kid a fluorescent jacket. The goal is them getting used to wearing it. Always.

There are existing systems to stimulate this, with stickers or stamps on a savings card. However, this is something they can only do for a few weeks because of extra workload involved.

Enter me: “Why don’t we just attach some RFID tags and read ‘m? Should be easy! Maybe the thing can play some movies, it will motivate the kids themselves to wear the fluo thingy.”

Guess what, it took me some time to get it all working. By ~1 November 2021 to be exact. It now exists of:

  • RFID tags on all of the fluorescent jackets (only data being the serial number).
  • 2 permanent units at the school (raspberry pi 3, 7″ screen, USB powered speakers).
  • When reading successfully, the screen shows an image, a video, or black screen with sound.
  • I made sure the same tag cannot be repeatedly read.
  • I can download the .csv with all the registrations via tightvnc .
  • I made a power query in excel, so the school is able to combine everything into a pivot table (very GDPR-savvy, me!).

There’s still some work to do:

  • By next school year I’m making a mobile unit (based on a USB power bank).
  • Some error handling is required. Currently the best practice is to … cut the current. Very old school but also quite satisfying.
  • Automating data transfer.
  • Making playback conditional based on tags. Would require tags to be categorised / year. (Still no personal data, I’m safe, GDPR-man!). Opens a lot of possibilities, especially regarding involving the older kids.
  • Making the whole thing deployable (underlying raspbian install has gotten a bit bloated because of all my experiments).

In time I will probably add the source code to this page.

Demonstration – There was a version that counted the last 5 badges until you could badge again. NOT fun to test :-|. Shown media was used for testing purposes.

Pieter

Zynthian Build

Zynthian is a nifty raspberry-pi powered open-source synth. Go to https://zynthian.org/ for more info.

I ordered the breakout board + 4 rotary encoders from them, the rest I sourced myself. The case is designed in Fusion360 and printed with my Ender3 pro. I still have some work to do on the back panel and the kickstand. I also have to connect the 4 buttons. It’s not ready for gigging yet.

Pieter

Mud Kitchen

In the very beginning of Covid-19, lockdown march 2020 in Belgium, I made some mud kitchens for the school of my kids. Preschool age: 2.5-5 years old. All shops were closed, so I ordered a bunch of pine wood & screws online.

Before I could order, I made a concept with Sketchup:

Once I started building, I changed quite a lot of things. I dropped the idea of bolting everything to a bottom plate. I also made 4 separate elements instead of 2 big ones. A lot more easy to transport or to move around!