Adding enclosure for Xiaomi Aqara light switches

There are some pretty good smart light switches called Xiaomi Aqara. It’s basically a light switch with a relay and Zigbee wireless interface inside. They are integrated with Xiaomi zigbee gateway and can be remotely controlled. Zigbee gateway uses them as a proxy in case the battery-powered sensor is not in the direct range. This post will be about adding a better wall-mount box for those little things.

Continue reading “Adding enclosure for Xiaomi Aqara light switches”

LineageOS + Magisk adventures

I use LineageOS and Magisk root (A magic tool that help Android Pay and root access coexist). With Lineage you can receive updates every week on monday (for my Oneplus 5T) and so far they’ve been really stable. All was good until the last update of may bricked my cellphone. As it turned out Lineage build was perfectly fine, the bug was with Magisk (Once I removed it and flashed the update – everything worked, except for Magisk). In this blog post I’ll tell about Magisk’s epic fail, and will provide a link to fixed Magisk version that doesn’t turn your phone into a pumpkin brick.

Continue reading “LineageOS + Magisk adventures”

Getting rid of wireporn in the bathroom

I have four devices in my bathroom: electric razor, phs sanitary bins, trimmer for my beard and an electric toothbrush. Each of them comes with its own power brick and compete for a single 220v outlet. As a result I caught myself multiple times when at as one item of these is completely out of charge. Or, worse, the power bricks end up in a huge mess-o-wires you have to untangle. (like, the one you see on the left side of the photo below). Installing a glass direct shower can make the bathroom look more spacious and organized. And, since I deal with this in the morning when I’m in a rush to get myself out to work it’s even more annoying. At some moment I decided to fix that. I didn’t want to add more 220v outlets, since:

a). It’s quite difficult in that particular case
b). I didn’t want to keep all power bricks plugged all the time any way – I never really trust cheap power bricks and for a reason!
c). The total length of the wires gathering dust would re
main intact
d). I needed a shelf for these anyway 😉

Therefore,  armed with a 3d-printer or three d pens and aliexpress I decided to make it a bit different. The result you can see on the right half of the photo below. Build details follow.

Besides, if you liked this design, you can grab it on my thingiverse (link at the very bottom of this post).

Continue reading “Getting rid of wireporn in the bathroom”

Cloning complex 2d shapes with inkscape, freecad and 3d-printer

This small tutorial will cover how to clone complex 2d parts with a flatbed scanner, inkscape and freecad. You may use this for any complex shapes that are too tough to measure using calipers. This technique can also be used to reverse-engineer complex PCB shapes to aid in creating custom enclosures. As a small example I’ll clone part of my archery fingertab.

 

Continue reading “Cloning complex 2d shapes with inkscape, freecad and 3d-printer”