Surgu, part 2, the first fixes. Zi-10 and Huxley

Zi-10 next to sugru bags

To start with Sugru, I decided to hack something easy and useful. I have been using this Kodak Zi-10 1080P pocket video camera for making my youtube videos for some months now, and all in all it's really nice thingy. And for the price (about 60€ on Ebay) you can't really expect it to be professional quality or having all bells and whistles.

Perhaps the most important feature of this camera is 3.5mm stereo microphone connector, which allows me to use either Headset or other external microphone to record the audio with a improved quality. This may not sound much, but it's really difficult to find any inexpensive digital camcoder with external mic connector. Of image quality, it can't really be considered as a real 1080P system since the lens and imager element aren't really good enough. But it works nicely at 720P resolution, and that's what I use for my videos.  On the negative side (besides optics) is the mechanical design and ergonomics (lack of). The camera is made of shiny slippery plastic and don't have any kind of grip, so it's a bit hard to handle.

Five grams of blue Sugru

So, I decided to add some Sugru at the front side of camera. But there was the hard decision of colour to be used, since Sugru comes in five different colours (Black, White, Orange, Green and Blue) and for those more adventurous.. it's possible to mix them. In the end I decided to go with blue, black while obvious would been a bit too modest and shy.

 

Stylish? Not much, but it works.

One thing to remember with Sugru is the package type. Those small 5 gram aluminium foil bags are individually sealed and when opened, you don't have many hours to work with the material. So it's better to keep one or two smaller side projects ready in case you happen to have some excess Sugru after the main project is done. After all, why waste the good stuff?

Firstly I cut the aluminium foil bag open with scissors. Then I took the plastic and kneaded it a bit on my hands and made two balls out of it. First ball (2-3grams) I spread at the front side of the Zi-10 video camera. For texture the sugru at the camera, I used plastic comb and pressed criss-cross patterns for improved grip.

Feet of my Emaker Huxley 3D printer.

As a spare project I used Sugru for adding some flexible padding to the feet's of my 3D printer. The printed plastic legs tend to slid a bit at the tabletop, so the silicone-rubber like Sugru may keep the printer more steady.


While writing this post I once again remembered that I should really start taking proper high grade pictures for these blog posts. One of the near future posts I should write about using digital SLR-camera with home made light-tent / soft box. Otoh, I'll need to make it first. I know that some cheapish Chinese photographing tents are available at 30-50 Euros, but I think I'll rather use the materials I have here at home.

PS: If you notice typos at my text, please send send a comment. As a non native speaker of English, I know my lingo aint' 100%. 

Living in Freezer, or Got the package, 2032 batteries and other neat things.

Sorry.. It's been way too long time without updates, I'll try to be more punctual. Freezer related stuff will be At the end.. Just have to put one picture for a teaser.

The parts I ordered at the end of December have finally arrived. I'm sure I could have sourced most of them locally, but the price of projects could have raised a lot. The most important was the 20-pack of 3032  lithium batteries (under  3€) and single lens sunglasses  ... (these links open sellers page on new window, go see them. I'll wait here).

I'm sure someone clever reading this post may well guess what's I'm building, but if you'll comment this project, please don't spoil until I have the prototype made. I will then shoot a video of it, though I may need to find someone volunteering to be front of the camera :-)

According the feedback on sellers page, there can be some duds amongst those 3032 batteries. So I checked the voltages with a multimeter and they seem to varies between 3.1 to 3.4 volts. According the typical data sheet (pdf file) these voltage levels indicates these batteries are essentially new. The first voltage drop at the begin is really sharp and the nominal battery voltage is 3 volts.

During the use the battery voltage will keep  relatively steady around 2.9V until at the end voltage sinks rapidly towards 2.0V which is the official cutoff voltage. So, these batteries are just perfect to use with low power microcontrollers without need of any voltage regulation. And with low enough static power drain, there's not even need to add any kind of power switch at the circuit.

--- And Back to Freezer part.. These photos are taken with my trusty old E-510 digital SLR with Zuiko 14-54 lens. That does not sound like worth mentioning, until I remind that lately we have been having temperatures between -20 to -29 Celsius (-4 to -20 Farenheit) and I spend 2 hours finding the right shots. These images are Straight-from-camera Jpegs, with no post processing (website does scaling).


First two pictures are from University campus area and the last one from city harbour.