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Let's Build Stuff


Jman4117

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I have a homemade antenna on my roof that's roughly 10 years old and parts are starting to degrade. One thing that didn't really exist was mainstream access to 3D printers. So right now I'm printing spare parts to rebuild my antenna.

 

lIhL4lG.jpg

That's what I've printed so far, a few things are a bit off and I'm optimizing things.

 

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Currently going with this setup as my likely final product.

 

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With this being an alternate design if I change out the bow-tie antenna for a Gray-Hoverman.

 

YKLtfEy.jpg

Current work in progress.

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Well, Jman, that's very impressive and all, but does it print pizza? :laugh:

 

Those parts you've fabricated to spec do look serviceable. I take it their structural integrity is up to snuff for what they're being employed.

 

I suppose you'll find out soon enough. ;)

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Forgive me for asking, but why not just buy some galvanized 3/4" pipe clamps from the hardware store? Those are certainly cheap enough. Is the pipe for your antenna too small? If yes, you could bend the metal clamps to fit better, then drill out one of the screw holes so that everything is tight. Or replace the pole for the antenna with new 3/4" pipe. I'd suggest galvanized conduit as that is much stronger than aluminum or PVC. My 2 cents. ;)

 

- Zombie

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This is for insulating the elements from the mast. The plan is to end up with the 25mm aluminum nested in the top of a 1in EMT conduit. Getting roughly 19ft of mast. I'm running no reflector since I'm directly between two markets that I want, so this thing shouldn't turn into a sail. Current mast is a 3/4 pvc conduit driven into the end of the 1in EMT. PVC conduit hangers connect the elements to the mast.

 

Also printing out parts to allow me to stack two of what I have now down the aluminum pole, with two jumper wires bridged out away from the antenna.

 

Current setup is basically a copy of this guys:

M4%20Kit%20assembled%20not%20mounted.JPG

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Cool! 3D printing is definitely a concept that will have an impact on economy as a whole. With (A LOT of) time. I haven't bought one yet nor do I plan to, but things I see my neighbour print are pretty awesome. From free designs, already available on the internet... One of them is a "track guide", I'm not sure what the actual term would be - sort of tracks for managing the movement of cables of an automatic saw. Probably this would not even be available as an end product to be bought.
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  • 1 month later...

Got all the parts made for a double stacked version of what I have now, just haven't put them up on the pole.

 

In the meantime I've been playing with Arduinos of various types. Mainly some Nano clones and ESP8266 and ESP32 boards.

 

Right now I'm working on a automatic nightlight project that switches things on/off based off of light levels instead of having to connect to the internet and get the time:

 

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At this point I was doing ok, but when I flipped the board over....

 

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I totally butchered it and had to stop and rethink it :P

 

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Something more like this, where I hide components in the valley of the homebrew socket.

 

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With the leads run around under the board to the transistor bases:

 

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Such as this. Makes things WAY more compact than having to do this with jumper wires going around two separate boards.

 

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Then there's power to be added. A 5v regulator powered from the same 12v power supply that will power the lights so I only need one cable to power the whole project.

 

ltvksR4.jpg

And there's the Arduino controlling the lights through the transistors.

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  • 9 months later...

tC1c2E7.jpg

Current project is a servo aimed camera. The goal is to have the camera with variable tilt, with a servo that lets you pan it.

 

N3HRbUK.jpg

The ribbon cable and power run through a gap behind the servo.

 

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The camera is going to bolt onto the hinge on the front, with the ribbon cable doubling over to connect it.

 

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For testing, I'm using an ESP32 that's running a web server that lets you operate a servo through a web page. This is going to be screwed under the top of a window frame so the servo can pan a camera when I want to look around, then go back to the default angle periodically. The hinge should allow for fine tuning the tilt angle vs other cameras I have where I simply had a fixed angle.

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