Today I used Kapton (okay, Koptan) tape for one of its common purposes for the first time, to stop insulation melting and disappearing while I was tinning leads. I got the leads out of an old parallel cable, and they probably weren't meant to be soldered at all. Old computer cables are bar none the cheapest source of highly multi-colored, small-gauge finely-stranded wire I know of. If you pick them up from thrift store warehouses or flea markets you can get them for less than a dollar, and get yourself a meter or more of 20+ different colors of wire.
About this time last year, I built myself a SK450 quadcopter to cheaply familiarize myself with the hobby and gain a fun new toy. That project came off very well, and I was pleased with the results for the money spent. This time, I'm upgrading that copter into a "dead cat" configuration, using some new parts and some old ones — but mostly new.
When I was offered a $300 1998 A8 Quattro parts car (for my 1997) I leapt at the chance. By the time I got it home, though, I thought better of my plan to swap the electrical harness from that car to my car, and decided that I would swap the transmission from the old car into the "parts" car because it was in such better shape. But this presented a problem — how do I pull the engine and transmission out of one car, and put it into the next, given my lack of a perfectly flat and level place to work? The answer as I see it is to build an A-Frame or a gantry.
I decided that I would like to have a programmable temperature-based fan speed controller for a fume extractor I am building from scrap parts, and the logical thing to do seemed to be to use an Arduino Nano as modern fans use a 5 volt PWM signal to control their speed, and also report back their speed with another 5 volt signal. They are also wicked cheap if you are willing to use clones.
A little while ago I acquired a Walkera Devo 7e from a friend, for use with my assorted R/C aircraft. This is a pretty dandy little radio in its own right, which speaks the Walkera Devo radio protocol. By doing nothing but reflashing it with Deviation firmware, you can add support for the Spektrum DSM2 and DSMX protocols. But if you're willing to pick up a soldering iron, you can accomplish a whole lot more for not too much money.
Micro-rant: when you preface a game with an unskippable video featuring your logo, people begin to despise you by the fourth or fifth launch. I don't even know who ASPYR is, but I know they do Linux gaming and that they're annoying.
Long, long ago, when I first heard of Philips Ambilight, I thought it was one of the coolest silly things I'd ever heard of. Today, much later, I finally have gotten around to rolling my own Ambilight clone using an Arduino Nano and WS2812B strips. I did not have to write any code, because other people have already done it for me. Figuring out which people had done what properly took me the better part of a day, so I will now share my knowledge with you here. This should be a cross-platform (Win/Lin/Mac) solution, but I have only tested on Windows.
For quite some years now, my main mode of transportation has been a 1982 Mercedes-Benz 300SD, a base model-plus-sunroof 3 liter turbo diesel. This represented the budget version of the Mercedes flagship sedan, if you will, but still cost as much as a small house. I am finally moving up to something slightly newer, a 1997 Audi A8 Quattro. Like the Mercedes, when it was new, its price was similar to that of a small home. There are other similarities and differences, and only recently have I had the opportunity to make any kind of comparison.
Look, it's not that I regret buying the Audi... wait. I regret buying the Audi, any time I'm not actually driving it, which has been less than two months in a year so far. But maybe those regrets will vanish as I continue to iron out problems. It's that I really miss my Impreza.
Quite some while ago, I bought an Audi A8 Quattro for what seemed like a good price. It was not a bad price, it just wasn't a good price after all. It's been a learning experience, which is automotive slang for I should have spent more money. I haven't become an expert by any means, but I've got a good overview of the vehicle, especially the engine. This is partly because I used Google to translate VAGVW/Audi Group SSPSelbstudienprogramm, or Self-Study Program 105, 161, and 162, which are "V8-Motor", "Audi A8", and "ABS 5 ... Audi A8" respectively, and partly because I've replaced both head gaskets. The following text is adapted from some text I wrote in response to an email question, which came in response to a post on QuattroWorld A8 forum. I thought it might be of interest to others thinking about doing a head job on the 32 valve Audi V8 Motor.