Teardown of the Wyze Outdoor Camera (after a hurricaine)

My parents were hit by Hurricane Ian. They're okay, their dog is okay, their house is mostly okay. But they had a Wyze Outdoor Cam stationed outside. Long story short, it didn't make it. But it's somewhat hard to find a guide for tearing the Wyze Outdoor Cam down. So I decided to document some of the internal stuff.

State of the Blog - Abandoning the Format

My time has been mainly focused on my Youtube Channel and the iPod project, so I haven't been posting. But to all two people who probably read this blog, I'm still alive. Having this blog to keep me busy through college paid off in a multitude of ways, but I think the regular posts - even the once per month posts - are not sustainable given my current throughput on the projects relevant to this blog.

The Coronavirus's Toll On This Blog

I just wanted to pen a quick update about why I've been so slow and quiet on this blog. Sure, my interests have turned elsewhere (if you're not subscribed to my YouTube channel, you should be), but even progress over there has been slow. I blame the virus. Which is silly, because I haven't even been sick.

Replacing the Nand Chip on an iPod Nano 3G

I wanted to know if it was possible to replace the NAND chip on an iPod Nano 3G similar to how you can replace the hard drive in a bigger iPod. Turns out it's more complicated than that. I'm making a video about it, I'll post it here as well as more details soon.

Can You Video Edit Using The Cloud As Your Disk?

I've recently started using Davinci Resolve for my editing software. Something I found interesting about it was that it saved all of its project data in a Postgres Database instead of project files. This gives you the option of saving things to a remote work server so you can work on it from several computers. Video projects can generate a lot of raw footage and data, and keeping files and such locally can be a logistical nightmare. But the cloud is basically infinite. So can we edit video using the cloud as our storage? Probably not, but it's worth a shot!

Cooking on CPU While Folding Proteins

I made a video recently about using the heat generated from CPUs to cook some food. It actually went better than I expected. Check it out!

Better Firmware For A First Gen Polar3D Printer

I was given a Polar3D printer. You know, the old one with a serial number lower than 1000. Polar was offering an upgrade to a new printer for the price of the old printer and $400 extra dollars. That's definitely not worth it to me. I figured I could abandon the Polar Cloud altogether because they don't seem to support the old printer anymore (not shocking) and I can't slice things differently with the onboard software. So let's install and configure OctoPrint on here so I can actually use it in future projects!

The Future of the Native App (in my uneducated opinion)

As the world of software progresses, all of us have probably noticed a shift in how we interact with our computers. We find ourselves interacting with our phones more than our computers, the internet more than our software, and we've increasingly demanded access to everything always. As such, important concepts like "Web 2.0", "The Cloud", and "Convergence" have been developed to facilitate such a transition. But, with the advent of all of these concepts, is the art of the native application on its last legs?

Stream Raymarine's Multifunction Displays Anywhere

Raymarine's electronics are not very secure. This is no secret, but there really isn't a drive to reverse engineer or hack them. But the way they're selling their high end solutions for a large amount of money is ridiculous. What even is "SeaTalk"? It's a serial connection. They could have done the same thing with ethernet or just a few wires. It's all a market cornering money grab. So I decided to try and imitate what (I think) is one of their more expensive features: viewing the MFD on a TV screen.

Making a Computer Monitor out of an iPad

People want to upgrade their iPhones and iPads when the new versions are released. This happens pretty much every year. Where do the old devices go? Recycled or resold, often. Much recycled e-waste ends up shipped somewhere it's not disposed of properly. So whenever I can make something useful out of something that isn't useful and reduce the burden on e-waste dumps, I jump at the opportunity. So when I saw that I could make a display out of an iPad, I was excited, because I knew that there'd be quite a few of these available in the condition I needed them in.

More Optical Media Drive Salvage

I started writing this about two and a half years ago. I'm posting it now so I can clean out my 'Draft' folder on blogger. Lots of the stuff doesn't still apply, but I figured I'd finish writing it with what I had and just post it.

Reverse Engineering HP PCIe Mezzanine Cards - Part 1

This is a big project that's way above my electrical pay-grade. Am I going to do it? Yes. Will it work by the end? Maybe. I've heard conflicting rumors about how tolerant PCIe is supposed to be. One quote I've heard is that you can run PCIe over a wet string. But that might not be the case for server hardware like the HP Blades. But we'll burn that bridge when we come to it. For now, we need to figure out what we're doing and how we're going to do it.

100

This is the 100th post on this blog. It's nothing special, but I just wanted to take a minute to take stock of the things I'm working on and further confirm my decision to switch to a once-per-month posting cadence to make the blogposts better and more complete.

WiFi Enabled Alarm Clock - Part 1

Alarm Clocks are simple devices - they beep occasionally at a specific time. So it's probably not hard to make one. But what if we had a WiFi connected Alarm Clock? Something that would make "Internet of Things" an actual buzz word. Get it? Alarm clocks buzz... ha... okay, I guess not. Let's just get on with the build.

What Can You Do With A Broken LCD Screen?

Not much.

But there are ostensibly some things you can do with a broken LCD panel. I found a small one in my box of stuff that had its ribbon broken off during moving. Unfortunate and (for me) unfixable. But can we salvage parts from the LCD screen and, perhaps most importantly, make use of it

State of the Blog - Year 4

October is a month I look forward too for many reasons. Primarily: it's spooky season, and I love Halloween. But also it's because I get to write one of these shorter "State of the Blog" posts which gets me out of doing two projects this month. But that leads me to consider... should I only be doing one project a month?

Failed Attempt to Lap GPU Dies

Integrated circuits are beautiful. They are perhaps the most complex structures humans have created. The fact that they work at all is nothing short of a miracle. And if you've ever seen an exposed die of some of the more complicated chips like microprocessors or GPUs or things of that nature, you know that the structures printed on the silicon are absolutely stunning. Our mission today is to try and get at the structure of some chips and expose their beauty. Spoiler alert: it didn't go well.

Remote Audio Transmitter with an ESP8266

The motivation for this project was to have a wireless way to listen to my building's intercom remotely, be it from another room or from another state. Having the ability to do this doesn't necessarily add security to my residence like cameras would (maybe keep an eye out for a post on that), but it's interesting nonetheless. So what we can do is capture the audio over WiFi with an ESP8266 and capture it on a server. All with the power of Docker, of course!

Fixing a Broken Midi Keyboard

If you can't tell by this post and the last post, I'm really running low on things to write about here. So I looked around my room. What could be fixed quickly and relatively painlessly. Something I had been putting off for months. Then, in the corner of the closet, I saw it: a two octave Axiom keyboard that wasn't recognized by my computer anymore. Easy fix, right?

'Reuse' Comes Before 'Recycle': Low Power Server from a Scrap Laptop

If you know literally anything about me, it's that I believe that computers are only useless when they're off. They're still capable of a lot - even the old ones - but only if they're on and working. So when I see perfectly good computers going to waste, I try and figure out something to do with them. This was the case with a Dell Latitude E4300 I found in the trash a little while ago.