Projects

These are the making and repairing projects that are complete. Click on the title or picture to read more.

Babbages Baggage

Inspired by Terry Pratchett's The Luggage, the Babbage's Baggage is a remote controlled treasure chest with legs.
Babbages Baggage

Badge

For the MakerCentral exhibition I made myself a name badge that showcased some of the skills I know. The base was wood which was framed with brass. The detail was my name in EL wire and a 3D printed logo.
Badge

Bezel

A circular bezel to mount around a shower fitting. An early lathe project where I upcycled an old piece of computer case into a stylish cover for a friends bathroom.
Bezel

Booknook


Booknook

Christmas Tree Trinket

A Christmas decoration in the shape of a tree with flashing and multicoloured LEDs driven from an Adafruit Trinket board.
Christmas Tree Trinket

Circle Jig

A jig for a woodworking router for cutting circular slots.
Circle Jig

Cut off disk mandrel

An upgraded mandrel for cut off disks used in a mini drill
Cut off disk mandrel

Dolls House

A kit dolls house that was painted and fitted with some stronger parts.
Dolls House

Dragon Detector

An electronics project to build a device that detects dragons and alerts the knights to spring into action.

The project was entered in the Qualcomm Maker Month Contest 2016 and was featured on their Developer of the Month blog.
The detector is activated by a passive infrared detector which activates the webcam to take a picture. The webcam image is passed to a computer vision library called OpenCV which determines if a Dragon has been detected. The defences in the form of lights and motion are activated and the operator is notified using the IFTTT maker API. The brain of the device is the DragonBoard410C running a Linux operating system, the control code is written in Python with libraries for the GPIO access.

Code for the project is on GitHub
Details of the electronics can be found at Element14
The mechanical aspects and enhancements are detailed here.
Dragon Detector

Enchanted Cottage

The Enchanted Cottage was built for the Element14 Enchanted Objects Design Challenge. A weather house was stripped down and fitted microcontroller, WiFi, 3D printed mechanism, fibre optics and an RGB LED.
Enchanted Cottage

Face Plate Dogs

Low profile clamps to hold work onto a faceplate
Face Plate Dogs

Flea Chariot

A metal sculpture in brass, mounted on an 1800s French Coin
Flea Chariot

Footstool

A small wooden stool that was made from the posts of a 4 poster bed. It took a couple of attempts to complete this and plenty of things were learnt along the way.
Footstool

Furnace

Making and using a flowerpot furnace for melting aluminium
Furnace

Gate Pin

A metal pin to support the catch on a metal gate. The old pin had rusted away and needed replacing.
Gate Pin

Hearth

A small hearth for treating metal and other hot project
Hearth

Jumbo LED

A giant-sized LED and Resistor that actually works.
Jumbo LED

Magnifier Lamp

A magnifier lamp to help with SMD work, made with scrap materials and 3D printed parts.
Magnifier Lamp, Work in Progress
I've tried to use as much as possible from my "scrap box". The aluminium components are things I cast from old hard disks back in 2008. The base was found dumped outside a furniture shop by Euston, I squared it up with a saw and surform before drilling, sanding and varnishing. The arms were from an old garden parasol that had got worn out by the weather. I believe they are teak. They were planed and sanded to size before drilling. These will likely be left in a natural finish. The 3D parts are designed using OpenSCAD and printed with a Cel Robox printer.
Magnifier Lamp

Obelisk

A welded garden obelisk
Obelisk

Potions Rack


Potions Rack

Potting Bench

A garden workbench made from a simple plank construction
Potting Bench

Printing Stamp

A wood and lino stamp for printing a logo
Printing Stamp

PSTOIC Medals

PSTOIC is the alumni association of the Student Television of Imperial College. Each year for the PSTOIC dinner we have a "Something" competition where people can bring along an item or items that fit the theme. These are then judged and the winner is awarded a medal that I've been making since 2015 (with a gap in 2021).
PSTOIC Medals

Radiator Tool

A hexagonal tool to be used with a socket wrench to open a radiator plug within a restricted space
Radiator Tool

Remote Temperature Monitoring


Remote Temperature Monitoring

Repoussé Medal

A medal formed in brass sheet using repoussé and chasing
Repoussé Medal

Sandbag

A leather sandbag for forming metal
Sandbag

Stainless Steel Unicorn

A stainless steel unicorn robot based on a cardboard template from Ross Atkin of The Crafty Robot and controlled using his new SmartiBot controller and software.
Stainless Steel Unicorn

Stainless Steel Washer

A large diameter washer for a mainsheet horse on a sailing boat
Stainless Steel Washer

T-Nuts

T shaped nuts for securing parts to a slotted table. These were milled on the lathe and are used on the drill table.
T-Nuts

Topsy Turvy Clock

A mantel clock with the numbers in Topsy Turvy locations. This project is a mixture of mechanics, electronics and embedded firmware. It won a prize in the Maplin Arduino competition.
Topsy Turvy Clock

Triwizard Wand Rack


Triwizard Wand Rack

Valve Amp Feet

Turned aluminium to replace plastic feet on a valve amplifier
Valve Amp Feet

Articles

HAL-exa

HAL-exa

For a recent Element14 Presents video, I wanted a device that represented a modern voice assistant, “A black box with an LED on the top”, a HAL-exa.

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Web Camera Gantry

Web Camera Gantry

For an upcoming talk, I need to show a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino on camera. So I built a frame to support the webcam.

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Triwizard Wand Rack

Triwizard Wand Rack

On a family visit to London, we stumbled across an alleyway full of interesting shops including one selling wands and other wizarding equipment…

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Real life logo

Real life logo

I would love to claim the logo was made from planks from the old Workshopshed, but it has more humble origins. The build started out with some of the offcuts from when I made the step to our tv room.

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Halloween Projects

Halloween Projects

Here’s a couple of projects that I did for HackSpace Magazine last year. You can find all the code on my Github repo, https://github.com/Workshopshed/HackSpace Skull For HackSpace #12 I teamed up with The Kuriologist and we created this monkey skull

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Elephants and Servos

Elephants and Servos

This week sees the release of Diyode magazine #26. I’ve been working on a project for them for a few weeks now and it’s been split up into 3 parts. The first 2 are in this edition. The main project

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Wand practice

Wand practice

The other week we visited the Harry Potter experience over by Watford. For some pictures see Instagram or Twitter. In the shop, there were some replica wands made from plastic and they were £32 each. Much as I love a

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HackSpace Magazine Projects

HackSpace Magazine Projects

HackSpace magazine is in it’s third edition now and I’m happy to say that I’ve another article in this one. All of the editions can be purchased or downloaded from their site. XMAS Light In the first edition of HackSpace

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