diy
**Hi! Did you bump into this post from the pin on [!diy@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/c/diy)? Check on my current progress on my [user posts](https://hexbear.net/u/410757864530_dead_follicles?page=1&sort=New&view=Posts)! This account is a dedicated alt for this project alone, sorting by my new posts will show the latest on this project.** Hey 🥰 I'm a transfem who's been working on something that I think might be of interest here and I'd love to share, because I believe that we can share a very mutually beneficial relationship. This post is about permanent hair removal. *I am going to use the term "transfeminine" in the following as an abridged version of "transfeminine, non-binary, and any other individual, queer or not, who would feel more confident and affirmed with less facial or body hair". This is a project for everyone.* A little bit of background on permanent hair removal: Really, the only two options on the table are laser/IPL and electrolysis. Speaking to the former first, laser/IPL is without a doubt the most accessible of the two options, but it comes with a lot of drawbacks. For one, laser/IPL is neither permanent nor complete. This may sound like an immediate dealbreaker, but the ability to delay and diminish hair growth down to light wisps for months to years at the cost of only a handful of sessions makes it a valuable instrument in transfeminine gender affirming hair removal. The drawbacks don't end there though; another serious and deeply unfortunate drawback of laser and IPL hair removal is that they don't work on all skin tones and hair colors. The mechanism of action depends on light passing through the skin and being absorbed by hair roots (which then heats up the follicle, damaging it, hopefully, to the point that it is unable to continue growing), meaning both light skin *and* dark hair are requirements for eligibility. This is deeply unfortunate for all but People of Pasta.  There are other drawbacks, like an increased incidence of adverse skin reactions relative to electrolysis, but the two issues noted above make it a non-starter for black and brown folks and extra-bleached-flour crackers. These issues in mind, laser/IPL is a tool that can be relied on at times, but for trans folks, **laser/IPL is a non-starter for bottom surgery preparation due to the incompleteness and temporary nature of the procedure.** Electrolysis is permanent, 100% complete, works on all skin tones and hair colors, and has a lower incidence of skin-related side effects. Perfect! What's the catch? Electrolysis is expensive as *fuck*. Where a complete course of bikini area laser or IPL may cost hundreds of dollars, the same area with electrolysis will cost thousands, [sometimes as high as tens of thousands of dollars](https://www.transgendermap.com/guidance/medical/hair-removal/how-much-does-transgender-hair-removal-cost/), due to the fact that unlike laser/IPL, which takes a second per exposure and can be done in areas of hundreds of hairs at a time, *electrolysis must be done hair by hair*, which is a lot of time to spend with a licensed cosmetologist/electrologist. Costs are similarly prohibitive for facial electrolysis, and even more wildly exorbitant for body hair removal due to the large surface area, so much that it is virtually never even discussed as an option for this. This won't do either. What is to be done?  The mechanism of action of electrolysis hair removal is to insert an electrode in the form of a fine needle down the hair shaft and pass a current through the electrode, into the hair root, and out through a return electrode elsewhere in the body. This causes an electrochemical reaction in the hair root that produces a few nano/microliters of lye, which super, definitely, for sure kills the hair. (if you know the difference between galvanic, blend, and thermolysis, you're way ahead of the class, good eye but I'll bring it up again later.) [At home electrolysis exists, but it is not easy or cheap as it currently stands.](https://www.transgendermap.com/guidance/medical/hair-removal/electrolysis/do-it-yourself/) Issues with machine quality, battery consumption, and power make this an option, but an undesirable one. My hope is that we can make it easier, cheaper, and safer, by designing an option that is more robust, more available, eats through fewer batteries, operates with greater power, and is designed with constant dynamic community dialog. One thing I didn't lose in my transition is my audacity: surely *I* can make a device that applies a small current through a fine needle-like electrode in a short burst, right? So I got to researching. Can I buy professional-quality electrolysis needles without a cosmetology license? ([yes, I can!](https://www.ebay.com/itm/255570617942)) Are there readily accessible schematics for precision low-amperage current sources widely available? ([yes, there are!](https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/how-to-design-a-precision-current-pump-with-op-amps/)) Are there resources available not paywalled behind cosmetology/electrology programs to learn to use this thing once I have a prototype? ([yes, there are!](https://www.sterex.com/resources/perfect-electrolysis-insertion/)) *Has anyone tried to do this before?* ([Yes!!!](https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/8ek9dt/i_built_an_electrolysis_machine_epilator/) [Twice!!!](https://github.com/IvanBarayev/hair-o-matic) [More than that!](https://hairtell.com/forum/c/hair-removal-methods/do-it-yourself-electrolysis/33) Reddit user /u/abbxrdy, Github user ivanbarayev, the folks on the Hairtell forms, and Andrea James at Transgender Map, I have so much love in my heart for you. Here's to hoping that your work forms the foundation to bring accessible hair removal to all.) My goal is to make a highly buttoned up, safe, accessible, and presentable electrolysis solution for transfeminine people to use on themselves, each other and for others to use on them. I want to cut out the cosmetologists, or specifically those in the electrolysis chain that take the surplus value from transfeminine people, like salon owners and machine manufacturers. I also want to avoid reliance on [sparsely available, weak, and poor quality machines](https://www.hairfacts.com/tips/home-electrolysis-purchasing-info/), which are the current sole option for at-home electrolysis. Ultimately, the goal is to bring **safe, highly effective, and accessible** electrolysis hair removal to all. Currently existing solutions generally fail on at least one of these. My objectives are as follows: - Develop a circuit that can administer a 0.1 to 10 second pulse of current between 0 and 2 mA at a voltage between 0 and 25 V through an electrode upon each press of a button, foot pedal, or even [bite switch](https://www.airturn.com/products/airturn-bite-switch), with no wall plug-in for safety reasons - battery power only. - Make it into a printed circuit board that can be ordered and built out with no more than a soldering iron and YouTube tutorial level soldering skills. - Develop a design for a probe that can hold an electrolysis needle, that can be actualized at home, without any advanced tools. - *Create a high quality and easy to follow manual for the build and usage of the device.* This is missing with all current DIY solutions. This has to be something that is truly accessible to all - no electronics knowledge, wiring, debugging, multimeters, or anything else like that necessary. - We're shooting for a budget under $100, but in general, cost is a deciding factor. It's not accessible if it's expensive. - For now, my intention is to start with a galvanic only electrolysis machine. Blend and thermolysis produce *much* faster results, but I don't feel as confident working in high frequency electronics, and with galvanic being the most reliable option, despite being slower, it's the obvious pick for the 1.0 version. If this takes off, the plan is to continue with a blend or a mode-selectable version, which would *really* democratize electrolysis. If this works, blend electrolysis provides ten times faster hair kill time, and it's next on the menu. 👀 Here's what I'm capable of doing by myself: - I'm an experienced multidisciplinary engineer. I have the skills to see through a basic version of this project to completion. - I can also write a nice assembly and usage guide, I have experience in guide and technical writing for laypeople. - I can bankroll all R&D and prototyping. Here's what I would definitely benefit from community help on: - I work *terribly* alone. I find it hard to get motivated if I don't have a team to share the work with or at least bounce ideas off of. I'm also not *deeply* experienced in this, and community collaboration will get rid of a lot of stumbling blocks that are probably easy avoidable. If you're experienced in analog electronics, you're the number one type of person I'm looking for, but I'd also love to work with digital/embedded folks when it comes to interface/UX time, or additionally anyone with electromechanical design experience for the probe. - Saving the above, I still do much better with folks on the sidelines cheering me on, asking me questions, and keeping me accountable than I do alone, even if I'm working by myself. - If you're a professional electrologist, I'd love to know what you like and don't like in a machine, what features are mandatory, what features are nice to have, and what features are pretty useless. If you have any other tips and advice, let me know! - If you've tried DIY electrolysis before, please tell me how it went and how I can do better than whatever your most recent attempt was! - I need help discussing the licensing. Do I want to go hardline GPL to prevent this from being picked up by manufacturers? Do I make it as open as possible with the hopes that someone can fabricate nice ones? Do I allow for manufacture with the provision that royalties be paid to some entity, which can then be redirected to some mutual aid project/charity/Maoist insurgents? Maybe even use a personal use only clause so I reserve the option to sell units as a worker's cooperative? This is all cart before the horse shit, but it's stuff that needs to get worked out before I make a github. - What do I call it??? Going forward, I plan to post regular bi-weekly updates to keep this alive, days of the week pending Maybe Thursday and Sunday?. Look forward to the first journal entry/post tonight where I show off what I have so far! I think /c/diy is the most applicable place to post due to the comm purpose, but this initial post is getting cross-posted to /c/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns due to the relevance in that community. Let's stay in touch! This is an alt but I'll be checking it frequently. Thanks for being an awesome online community and I hope this can happen in a way that results in material good for my comrades. 
This is a really cool project he's been working on for a while. I love how he's keeping it extremely low tech too.
Today, I set up a fixture in the dining room and it took some 5 hours from start to finish. Not even really sure where all the time goes it just sloops away. Doing it with my friend who is a builder with some electrical experience. She's giving me a good rate but it's going to add up to do the whole house.
Context: I got it in my head that I really REALLY wanted a doorbell. I have light switches by my frontdoor (shown in image), and a porch light directly opposite them. Because of the placement of the porch light relative to the light switch, and some tapping on the wall, I could tell that the space above the switch was hollow, and I assumed that my electric lines passed through that way. I have a doorbell transformer that I need to install - I figured I would open up a space to the left of the switches for a box where I would install the transformer. Well, I started cutting out the drywall when I discovered that nope - that's where my electric lines are (I damaged the jacketing on the cables, but I should be able to fix that with some ~~shrinkwrap~~ heatshrink jacketing, I think). So I broke open the hollow space, found that once upon a time, there were electric lines there, but they've long since been cut. So, at the least I now know where I will install the transformer, and should otherwise be able to get this doorbell installed. My question: After I've finished the install, I don't know how to close up these holes I've made - or more specifically, I'm not sure what product is right for the job? I imagine some sort of plaster? Or mortar?
Mostly for familiarizing myself with the tools. I don't think i need to print anything but PLA and PETG to start with edit: i bought a bambu labs a1 mini
 Designed in FreeCAD and printed on a custom Ender-3 V2. A couple more details / photos in the [Mastodon thread](https://toots.matapacos.dog/@porkroll/113058780432660321).
This is a long shot, but I'm trying to replace the water pump on my wife's 1988 Toyota pickup. The guy who put the last pump on used a TON of RTV liquid gasket to seal it on, and it might as well be fucking welded in place for all it will move. It's an aluminum engine, so I'm trying not to attack it with a chisel or anything too violent. Any comrades here with car mechanic experience got any tips? I'd prefer not to drop the $400+ the mechanic is going to charge to do it.
heyyy friends  It's been longer than I wanted it to be, I've had a hard time lately, everything from work stress to coming out to my highly conservative family to some particularly nasty dysphoria, had me cruise right into a nice little light to moderate menty b - I'm fine, it was a growth opportunity, sometimes you just indulge these things and get in your car and drive with the music up real loud and hop out somewhere you can watch the sunset and you cry alone for a while and you savor it and you come out of it cleansed. I'm good. Being a girl is hard. Still figuring it out. <3 This is a light update in terms of work I've accomplished but it's a big update in terms of how this project becomes something more community related. the title of this post is actually a double entendre, you see - not only do I have issues, but the sphynx project also has an issue tracker.  **Issue tracker for `sphynx` (the electronics): https://todo.sr.ht/~_410bdf/sphynx?search=status%3Aany** **Issue tracker for `sphynx-site` (the website, both content and style): https://todo.sr.ht/~_410bdf/sphynx-site?search=status%3Aany** This changes a lot. I've been stressing with each post about ways I can ask y'all for help, because I 1) want to take some of the load off of myself, and more importantly, 2) turn this into a truly community project, where people all across the world leave their mark and have this be something we do as together as we can. Now that I have an issue tracker, I can start unloading my brain asynchronously from these posts, providing all the information in a neat compartmentalized fashion per issue, and teeing things up for community members to take on. It also serves as a great work journal, I still make, comment on, and close issues that I work alone, so it's a good place to check in to see that I'm still doing things (even though it's been a minute ) I've done some electrical work since last post too, pretty much just bug fixing and improvements from RC1, and if you'd like to read about it, it's all (albeit very tersely) captured in the issues! Go dig around and have fun! The site is a little fresher too! Just a bit, it's still not inhabitable yet, but we're getting there. https://sphynx.diy Huge shoutout to [@Edie@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/Edie), it put in a really a lot of work and sent me more than a few patches, including fixing some bugs I had spent kind of not a little time on, plus, of course, doing the entire original Jekyll port and the entire original CI pipeline. You're real for that, thank you  **OH! And message me on matrix??? [@410bdf:matrix.org](https://matrix.to/#/@410bdf:matrix.org) say hi! I love hearing from y'all! Or say hi here!** Huge shoutout _again_ to [@Edie@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/Edie) for reaching out on Matrix and talking with me and hyping me up and talking about the project together with me! Not much else, this is a quick one to let y'all know I'm still alive and to share out the issue tracker so I'm more confident to ask for help and have it be effective. As usual love y'all. I've been using RC1 and it still works but it's only getting better from here. Byeee 🫶
Hi comrades! I'm back! Sorry for the delay! I've been keeping busy, with this project, with work, and with getting familiar with a new town. This update is fun because it's actually entirely devoid of electrical engineering nerd shit! Since last update, I've focused on two things - getting the framework of a website together, and actually getting usage hours on the device so I can know how it handles, what it's missing, what it does well, etc. I'll break this update into those two sections. ## Device usage I think I have about 5 hours in the device so far, with I'm guessing a couple thousand or so pulses. I've tested my face, eyebrows and beard, I've tested my hands, I've tested my arm, I've tested my leg, and I've tested my chest. The general routine is as follows: - Get clean and get comfy. - Get all the peripherals in order and get the board set down somewhere stable. For me, this is getting good direct bright lighting, getting the foot pedal in a good spot, getting a clean (or at least clean_ed_) probe in the probe holder, getting the return electrode connected [1], and for some work areas, particularly with vellus hairs, getting a magnifying headset on. - Dial in estimated power levels. The thickest and darkest hairs I've tested on like about 2 mA at whatever voltage it takes to feel the burn, usually >= 10V, and pulsing for the whole 10 second duration. I've gotten facial hair kills at 1 mA/6 V/6 seconds, and vellus hairs on my hands can typically take 0.5 mA/6 V/5 seconds. These are determined by trial and error and I almost always fiddle with them multiple times in the middle of a session; there's no rigorously defined science besides the Units of Lye calculations, which are very loose. More current leads to faster kills but it hurts more and it's easier to accidentally overdose and get a hyperpigmentation scar. I've never managed to do this accidentally, only on purpose, see below. - Put in the probe and hit the pedal. Wait out the indicator light [2], feel for the burn, and at the end of the pulse, pull out the hair. - Repeat! Some areas are clearly not regrowing, others, it's too early to make a call, but I'm pretty confident that it'll be minimal, possibly even better than salon electrolysis, due to a number of advantages to self-work that I'm finding that I'd love to detail here. There are some cons too. - pro: you can feel the power. You very quickly get a feel for what a good follicle kill feels like. A well killed hair will cause a burning sensation strong enough that it lasts for a few seconds after you stop applying current. You can also feel overkill - I did this a couple dozen times to experiment, the follicle isn't any deader than any of its neighbors, but one or two of the deliberate overkills has what appears to be a hyperpigmentation scar that looks like a freckle. They're already fading, but they might be permanent and might not. I have never accidentally overkilled but it's definitely possible to do so, especially if you have a healthy appetite for pain and/or are working impatiently. An overkill probably takes at least 3 times the current*time that the minimum safe kill does, so it's not super close. - pro: you can feel the pluck from both sides. I do have minimal testing on another person and feeling the hair pull on one side is helpful (a dead hair slides out with a pretty constant slide, a live hair tends to hold on and hold and hold and then break loose all at once). However, when you're both feeling and plucking, you can feel for the signs of a killed hair more effectively - killed hairs tend not to hurt on the way out and you can give them a light test tug and not feel it. A hair that hasn't been killed will hold on and cause a little bit of pain with a test tug, allowing one further way to check your kills. I strongly recommend both parties having experience (just a couple hairs) on both sides when doing co-work to foster this kind of mutual understanding that allows for better communication. - con: obviously you're not getting a lot of your body. You need a friend to get everywhere, particularly a lot of the spots that are really important. My biggest issue has been trying to self-work my neck. It just doesn't wanna go, the angles do not hit. I believe it's an area that will be possible with more practice and dexterity, plus a smarter setup - I'm going to try a mirror setup to see while lying on my back, but it's frustrating. :angery: - con: fatigue. When you're working on someone else, you can get comfortable. When you're working on yourself, you're very often uncomfortably contorted. This poor ergonomics greatly shortens session time and poses an issue for our comrades with disabilities. My DIY sessions usually last an hour tops; I have some pain issues in certain positions and this does NOT help. I also have some notes on equipment: - [1] - I had a good idea that I'm a thousand percent recommending for self work. Salons typically use a holdable piece of metal for the return electrode. I am using an ECG electrode. For partnered work, this is nice because it allows your recipient to get more comfy and do things with both hands, but for self work, this is almost indispensible - it lets you keep both your hands free. I'll put instructions for making and working with both on the website. - [2] - Visual cues suck. You do not take your eyes off of the hair for the whole cycle. I initially had the lights hard-wired and the buzzer switched - the lights absolutely should be switched, they're not useful most of the time. I'm working without a buzzer due to the soldering mishaps in the previous post and it sucks, the beep cue is almost certainly a thousand times more useful. - Pedals are great for a salon-like context of a laying recipient, a seated operator, and personal space. For every other configuration - standing in front of a mirror, laying on the couch next to your bestie, etc., you probably don't want a pedal as much as you want a hand switch or a bite switch. This isn't all inclusive, but I'm definitely happy to get thoughts down prior to starting work on the manual! which leads us to... ## The Website It's on jekyll now! We're finally ready to start hosting actual, real content there! So, so many thanks to [@Edie@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/Edie) , who actually single-handedly ported the old single page splash screen to Jekyll and on top of that pushed out a bunch of fixes for my sloppy half-assed jekyll code. I really, really appreciate you, you're genuinely helping both to motivate me by both making indispensable contributions, and also just by being a person out there in the world doing this with me.  The appearance and organization are both super preliminary, and there's not any actual content, and the design is also very much a prototype. The important thing is that now I (or anyone else!) can just write markdown and have it reflected online in an easily readable and shareable format. Email patches are a great way to get both code and content on the page, I try to review them at least twice a week or so. Now that things are set up, it's extremely convenient to put content up. I think to pilot the website, I'm going to make a more formal tutorial for the pencil based probe to start. The one I made per [@YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/YearOfTheCommieDesktop)'s instructions is still doing phenomenally, thank you for your research and development. Similar thanks for being a part of the project in a meaningful way and making this a team effort.  Come take a look! [https://sphynx.diy](https://sphynx.diy) ## What's Next So the project is hitting a bit of a fork, where we finally have multiple parallel work streams at a time - the online manual needs to be designed/written, and the RC2 version of the PCB needs to be designed and ordered. I have a list of changes from working with the RC1 that I'll be rolling in, that'll be the next post. I'm also going to start using https://todo.sr.ht to track issues, both to keep myself organized and to publicly advertise what we need to get done in a neat encapsulated way. I'll have details for that up on an #8.5 post in a couple days. For now, honestly I feel bad for drastically overrunning my two week timeline and leaving y'all in the dark for so long, so this post is going up ASAP. I've been busier than usual and probably busier than I plan to be in the future, so I'm more optimistic for a timely #9 post, although that may be in three weeks and not two due to some plans of mine. I love y'all. RC2 might be the release. We're just weeks away from other people benefiting from this project materially, it's just refinements from here. Thanks for the support, and you know the drill, stop by, say hi, ask questions if you want to understand things better, make suggestions, all of it. See ya next time. 
I am looking for screws for the Inspiron 15 5559 - it's motherboard is fine, but everything else is broken, and I don't have a laptop, so I'm trying to revive this device. I've managed to find some parts for them, which I'll soon be buying, and all I need new are missing screws. How do I deal with this? Laptop-specific screws are only available in the USA, and I'm not paying 100$ just for the shipping. Here's the [list](https://www.parts-people.com/blog/2015/12/16/dell-inspiron-15-5558-screw-kits-guides/) of screws I want for my device. So far, no luck on any online hardware pages in India.
https://subium.com/profile/eustace.link/post/3kw3a43u33a2q
youtu.be
This dude is experimenting with some neat stuff here. He created a stable, non-toxic PCM that can be recharged with the cold of a basement (or a hole in the ground!) using inexpensive ingredients (food-grade sodium sulfate, table salt, water, and xanthan gum) that reheats more slowly than ice. He shows how to make little packs you can use in a cold vest and larger, torso-sized packs that could help a person with heatstroke using a towel soaked in the PCM and contained in a trash bag. I think this is pretty exciting and could be a great project for mutual aid groups - would be awesome to have some of these cold packs to give out with a FNB meal.
it's in and it's built and it FUCKING WORKS, at least like 80% of the way - I haven't fully put it through a full round of testing yet but every single functionality I've tested - including things that were first-time builds that I hadn't prototyped yet, like the adjustable LDO on the output and the double schmitt trigger falling edge detector, all seem to work! I even splurged a little bit and got some trans knob caps  . ## What I've been up to  I don't know what to tell you, read 'em and weep. The board is built, you see it, it goes hard. Pretend my soldering isn't shitty and I cleaned the flux off.  Full list of things that work: - Output voltage control knob works, tested open loop (top end is supposed to be 16 and it's closer to 15.5, I might just not worry about it.) - Output current control knob works, tested through a 1K resistor. - Timer and knob work from 2 to 10 seconds. - Lights work*, although I think I killed the 555 timer by soldering near it with the board powered . It worked great for a few minutes and then I soldered in S1 and it stopped working. - Foot pedal and probe work. I don't know if it has any new bugs when specifically connected to a human being. I suspect that if I were to try to use the current sink on the low side of the probe, which I'm bypassing right now, it'd be whacky - I never made an effort to resolve that bug, and I think I might just descope that to get this thing done at all. I'm already longing for a fresh start on some things that I think I can get by launching into the microcontroller-based version of this. There are already enough redundant safety measures in place for me to feel comfortable, although I'd really like to test the JFET current limiter, which I didn't populate because I couldn't source a good JFET and I also couldn't be assed to determine the correct resistor value. I'd really like either that or a current limiting diode on the high side of the amplifier before I call this done. That's going into the next rev. There are also some non-breaking bugs that I still need to design out, like for example I designed in 20K potentiometers for the current and time control, but Alps Alpine only makes 20K potentiometers in audio trim, meaning the knob angle isn't really one to one with the output. I need to replace those with different values. Other little things like that too. ## Next up I'm going to work with the board for a bit and see how it handles! I need to get some hands-on time with it to truly learn how it works, what it's missing, and what I need to change. I'm also kind of just looking to reap the benefits of this thing personally to be honest, I'm getting really tired of shaving  (plus i'm meeting some girls who are kinda into this thing and might wanna go hour for hour on some mutual aid electrolysis time over comfort shows and snacks on the couch  ) I think the "alpha" model of releases was a mistake. Because of the nature of hardware development, I think I'm going to change to a "release candidate" model - it makes it clear that any RC board isn't ready to be used, and it allows me to promote any one at any time once I've designated it good enough. So, I'll begin work on RC2 once I'm deeply familiar with this board! I'm also deeply neglecting the site, mainly [@Edie](https://hexbear.net/u/Edie)'s jekyll port that I really deeply truly appreciate and I never figured out how to apply the patch for. I'm sorry friend 💔 Can you work with me to get that patch applied? I tried to tackle it on a super low executive function day and I just made so little progress applying your patchset and I wanna have it up so bad but it was fighting me and I needed rot time and I quit trying after like twenty minutes  ## Any ways to help? There are kind of a few things actually! In no order of priority, with loose guesses at difficulty: - Getting the library I'm using updated with 3D models. It's not super necessary but having cute renders is always cool, and it'd be handy for anyone who wants to design an enclosure. Not hard, not easy. - Fixing some of the footprints, particularly making sure all the knobs look the same, making the font nicer, etc. Not super easy. - Doing a JLCPCB cart catalog audit. I think I'm close to everything being in JLCPCB's catalog? I'm not sure though! If there's anything missing I'd love to know so I can try to design it out in RC2! Kinda boring but not too difficult. - some more?? i'll edit them in in the morning i'm up LATE If any of these things sound like a thing you want to make an attempt at, let me know! I'll work with you to get you started. sloppy post today, this is deeply not accessible for non-technical audiences and leaves a lot out, so please let me know if you want deeper explanation on anything and i'll add detail! I just wanted to make sure i got my post up to let you know I'M STILL FIGHTING BABY  i'm still very not settled with the move, and burnout is closing in with my job and my new trans social life, but I'm at equilibrium, I'm okay to keep spending the amount of time I am on this, but I wish I could be spending just a little more. Life is okay though. Great, even.  --- As always, stop by, hang out, say hi, ask questions, tell me what you've been up to, design review me, however you'd like to be involved is good by me! I'll see you in the comments 🥰
hello comrades! It's been a minute! I'm back with my first tech update since upending my entire life and getting re-settled! Let's talk  # What I've been up to See for yourself, pictured is the first alpha of the Sphynx Lite. [Schematics are on git](https://git.sr.ht/~_410bdf/sphynx), go check it out (and if you want to set up KiCAD to view or edit but aren't quite sure how, say so in the comments and me or someone else will help you out!) Issuing guidance on the usage of these things is complicated. I'm always going to be a little apprehensive recommending that people use this, because I'm a very cautious person. For now, I think my official guidance is: - you should understand the circuit - you should have basic debugging equipment - you should have the time to work with it extensively - if you meet all of the above, I provide this with no warranty and no guarantee, knowing you full well have ideas as to what you might want to use it for - If you have a decent working knowledge of electrical engineering and want a walkthrough, I might make a Matrix so I can actually communicate with people looking to get it going?? As it gets more mature and I revise and revise until I drop the alpha, I'll trust it more. This was a push across the finish line. I optimized for getting something testable done with the correct topology, layout is a little dicey (cut off silk screen in the bottom right ) and subject to change, I just needed something to test on. I was gone for over two weeks from my last post here, mainly because it was just a lot of work with nothing intermediate to report. But now it's here! This has all the working parts of the last boards merged into one, with the new additions of: - power conditioning - 9V battery holders - additional safety measures, like the redundant current limiting JFET - configuration jumpers! and test points!! !!! Oh, and I whipped up a cute lil logo. :3 ## Schematics ::: spoiler schematics in here    ::: ## Board Layout ::: spoiler board layout in here   ::: ## Board Renders ::: spoiler board renders in here   ::: # Next up I have a lot of really good work from y'all that I need to capture and incorporate. Particularly, my immediate plans while this board is fabricated and shipped are to: - Incorporate [@ComradeEd@lemmygrad.ml](https://lemmygrad.ml/u/ComradeEd)'s patchset porting the site to Jekyll - really thank you so much for this, I've been extremely focused on the board, and now that I have a minute, I can get the site going so I can use it to show off, post guide, aggregate educational resources, etc. This is going to be absolutely necessary for the project to have the reach and accessiblilty I'm hoping it gets. Thank you.  - Build a probe per [@YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/YearOfTheCommieDesktop)'s [work into coming up with a probe holder](https://hexbear.net/comment/4739736). I have a handful of the Yasutomo's to experiment with. This is going to be a game changer, currently I'm doing self-work with an alligator clip and it's extremely irritating. An ergonomic and reproducible probe with an extremely cheap parts list is critical for the project to function. Thank you.  - More of you provided meaningful help than just these two, these are the two who's work I'm directly interacting with this minute. Thank you to everyone who has stopped by and made suggestions, I've read them all.  The next post will be me building this out and reporting on how well (or whether) it works, and documenting changes for the Lite Alpha 2. I also badly need to make a BOM. With some effort, anyone who's built a board together can buy all the parts for this and make one, but it'd be a thousand times easier if I just made a single cart that you can buy that includes every single component. If you want to make an alpha board for fun or debugging, maybe hold off until I have that out. # Any ways to help? Honestly, those of you who are following this pretty closely have a good read on what's going on, what's needed, and what's upcoming - keep being interested! If anyone wants to make one, I do recommend waiting until I release a BOM, but very soon we miiight be at the point where other people besides me get one of these in their hands. I could also use some polish on the logo. It's _fine_, but it could be cuter, and the lines are a bit funky. I'm going to put SVGs on git soon and if anyone feels like cleaning them up, rearrange the kitty cat face so it's cuter, fixing my wonky paths, let me know! Also, and I simply cannot stress this enough - when I've been exhausted, when I've been deep in executive dysfunction, when I've been not feeling up for it, I've read through all your encouragement and support throughout the duration of this project and it's helped me to keep pushing. I would unquestionably not be this far without y'all. Thank you all so much.  --- As always, stop by, hang out, say hi, ask questions, tell me what you've been up to, design review me, however you'd like to be involved is good by me! I'm thinking I want to make the expected cadence of posts once every two weeks, just because I'm busy and I don't want to cause alarm when I miss a week. I can always surprise y'all with more frequent posts too. --- P.S. - I have no hair regrowth in test areas. 
Hi comrades! I'm ✨relocated✨! I just unpacked my project stuff a bit ago and powered up the boards and tested them out to see that I haven't forgotten everything! we're *back!*  Instead of jumping right back in with what I was doing (partly because I had some process issues and partly because I'm still kind of reeling from the moving/new job stress), I'm going to take the rest of this week to regroup a little bit and figure out my strategy on how to make the best progress on this moving forward. Since I'm a dirty labor aristocrat now, I need to do a little bit of shopping to identify what I was kinda scraping by with that could be done faster with better consumables and tools like actually buying a real set of breadboard wires and scope clips and stuff instead of dealing with the few bent up old ones I'd found laying around. I'm also gonna rework the boards into something a little more functional for test, I'm missing labels and spots for jumpers and I learned newer and better design practices through this and I'm just all around ready to do better than I have been before (shoutout to test points, you know who you are, i appreciate you more than you know for bullying me about this) here's a pic of my current test setup:  as you can see, I'm working on a folding camping table with slats - not great but fuck it we ball. I do have a 4 channel scope now though! In the fifteen minutes of fucking around I did with the scope, I learned more than I did in several hours of banging my head against the problem with a multimeter, and that's probably like the best thing that's happened for this project yet. No conclusions yet but it's only a matter of time. I'm not back in full force yet but I'm getting back the momentum I lost and then some. Hopefully I didn't lose y'all and hopefully I catch some new folks now that it's been some time and new comrades have trickled in. To everyone who has been eager to provide time for the project, I appreciate each and every one of you more than you could know and while I do feel a little bad at times for not having clear and concise ways to get your labor into the project, I'm happy you're here.  One thing I'm going to do differently is to make sure if I'm asking for help I'm more clear about exactly what I'm looking for, how it fits into the project, and what my plan is to incorporate your work into the whole. Including everything everyone has already done, retroactively. ily comrades. Talk to you soon 
So, I'm about to go on a trip and we wanted to bring the canoe. My new car doesn't have the side rails to put cross bars on, but after a little digging, I found out that it has built in holes ready for putting on a roof rack. I don't like paying a ton of money for stuff, so my question is: can I not just bolt a couple of 2x4s to the roof using washers to elevate it over the contours of my roof? The plan in my head so far is to cut two pieces of wood that are a little over 3' long, and drill a hole through at the right spots, and use the holes on my car to bolt those suckers on. I'm planning on putting the canoe on, then running ratchet straps through the inside of my car, so the canoe itself is strapped to my roof and not the Red Green ass roof rack. The boards are more for support so the canoe doesn't slip around. Someone let me know if this is a bad idea.
This is plasterboard or something with a void about an inch back This is the wall plug  The hole here is actually so big that the wall plug would fall through into the void if I put it back I can't move the radiator up or down or left or right because it is fixed and even if I knew how to disconnect it I wouldn't want to spill black water everywhere and ruin the carpet, so I am thinking I should use the same holes but get a bigger plug What about the plastic ones for plasterboard that sort of butterfly out when you fix them in?
www.youtube.com
This seems like it could be an important development
I have built a container for my cat litter tray in the hallway to keep it out of sight and out of mind and it is looking pretty good, but wondering about the long term viability in terms of build up of cat piss. The litter tray itself is a massive stainless steel one with tall sides so not super worried, but wondering is there anything at all I can do for a bit more peace of mind?
garageland.co.uk
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2436041 > A partscaster - as you might guess - is a guitar that has been put together from parts. [PARTSCASTERS - ARE THEY WORTH IT?](https://righteousguitars.com/blogs/news/partscasters-are-they-worth-it)
I’ve had these for a while now and broke them an a few months back, but continued using them taped together. I decided to replace the tape and superglue the broken part, then I sanded down the glue until it was flush, then I added a vinyl skin to cover up the glue. I also changed out the old battery with a cheap higher capacity battery I found online, and I swapped out the ear muffs with better ones I found online. I did have to spend a little bit on this stuff to fix them up, but still a fraction of the cost of getting even a refurb pair. I think they turned out pretty well.
Putting up a kitchen backsplash. Wife thinks adhesive mats are the way to go, I would prefer thinset. There's a section that will go behind the stove so will likely see a good amount of steam. Not sure if that would qualify as a "high moisture location" where adhesive mats are counterindicated
heyyy friends! it's been a minute!  I don't have tech updates since the last post, although my oscilloscope did come in! I poked around on my board and got some really good insight that will fuel my debugging the next time I sit down for some real work. My goals for my next work session are the same as detailed in the [previous post](https://hexbear.net/post/2191451). In the, what, 13 days since the last post, I have: - interviewed for and accepted an offer for a job that is much better than my current one - agreed to move a thousand miles away for it with three weeks notice - changed my HRT routine - my brake light came on, I decided to DIY it, and I found other broken parts inside to fix as well, in the car that I'm driving a thousand miles in two weeks - stalled on my taxes and had to cram them all in during this so I'm, yeah! feeling *good!*  I'm expecting to be situated first week of May and probably will have enough work done to get post #6 up second week of May. I'm not worried about dropping this project, this is not the kind of project I intend to throw in the work in progress bin - I was a month deep when I started posting and I have a month of posts on this project, the momentum is there and *I will* finish this one. But expect some silence from me while I  I love you all. Good things coming. I'm stressed but it's all positive changes and once I have stability I'll be better than I was before. 
Youtube - [Mason Bee House](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQklc1D4h_M)
Anyone got any recommendations for nicotine? I bought too much a few years ago and finally ran out. Now I can't get it anymore because of the PACT Act? None of the decent retailers sell it anymore and I can't find any new ones that aren't sketchy as hell or they charge 1000% more than I used to pay. I refuse to pay $35 for a bottle of liquid from a shop when I was making them for less than 35¢. I know the obvious answer is "quit" or "just make 0 nic liquid" and I will if I have to, just curious if anyone has a plug.
>Instead of fapping I forged a dagger. saw this on reddit, can't tell if it's ironic or not [dagger](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fsp1kvvopy2tc1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D3024%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D120a9415ac30f374fd7187b6de730514b253d1d2)
https://bsky.app/profile/sardonicus.eu/post/3kpi75dqfyj22
Hey friends  this week has been rough for this project, not gonna lie, I have a killer bug that I haven't solved yet (that I will likely solve as soon as I write all this out complaining about it, lmao) so I'm a little behind where I wanted to be. I also have a little bit of scope creep coming for me. Not a great week, but there was progress nonetheless. At least the good news is that there's no discernable hair regrowth in the one small area that I tested - it's only been a week or two, but it's reason for optimism! [Last Post](https://hexbear.net/post/2141809) # What I've been up to Last time we spoke, I said I was gonna be designing and ordering the Lite Alpha 1. Sadly, I'm not there yet. I did implement fixes for all of the bugs mentioned in the previous post into the start of a Lite Alpha 1 schematic. Unfortunately, a lot of that was low hanging fruit. I have two more daunting challenges ahead of me before I can order boards and actually make a Lite Alpha 1. The first, which is really deeply killing me right now, is a bug, the second is a feature that I'm kind of deciding is necessary that I'll mention in new developments. I wired the two boards from last time together to test as one unit, here's what it looks like:  Here's the bug behavior: - Power on the board, everything looks OK. Active light off, done/ready light on. - Put the probe in a follicle. No current draw. - Push the pedal. Active light on, done light off, current comes from the probe. Good! - Timer finishes, active light goes off, done light comes on, *current doesn't stop flowing*. Bad. Even after removing and reinserting the probe, current starts flowing again. Until you power cycle the board. - On paper, this sounds whack but very possible to debug, but crazily enough, I can't reproduce it with a 10K resistor instead of my body. Next paragraph is kind of jargon-y word barf that I didn't bother to make explicit or clear or referenced to the design, sorry in advance, I partly just needed to complain, but: I'm worried it has something to do with the fact that the return line of the probe is technically not ground and instead a current sink floating just a little above ground. If that's an issue, then I need to idunno make a negative supply or something and I really really don't wanna. It could be a thousand other things too. My only big lead is that if I physically disconnect the Pulse line with that switch you see in the photo, it doesn't sink current any more, so it's probably something wrong with the digital timing board. The voltage appears to be 0 even with it connected, the light is off, and it's even tied down via the potentiometer on the current source board, not to mention the LTC6993 says it can sink current through the OUT pin so even if there is something driving it high it should get pulled low. The mechanism of action here is that the potentiometer that divides the voltage that goes into the current source input is driven directly by the pulse line. I'm completely lost. It doesn't help that I'm doing this all with nothing but a single multimeter to debug. I think I'm going to buy an oscilloscope for this. I've wanted one for like a decade now and this is as good of a reason as any. It delays things, but hopefully this will speed up all testing I do from here on out forever. Oh, and I caught and fixed another easy bug - I noticed that every time I turned off my soldering iron, the board would trigger. Luckily I knew right away that that's a noise thing. I added a 1 uF capacitor filtering the pedal line to ground and I don't get false triggers any more. Cleaner pedal signal, one less source of false triggers. yay  # New Developments I've decided that if I go ahead with the design as it is now, operation will kind of be firing blind. The user has no way of knowing how much current or voltage is coming out. I really want to keep the Lite simple, but I don't think it's acceptable for the user to not know if current was even getting delivered through the hair follicle. So I think it's in order to add one more part to the design before making an Alpha to debug and iterate on. Basically, what I want to do is make a status light that goes on if you are delivering >90% (arbitrary and subject to change) of the current that the knob is actually set to so that the user can know if the device is working with each pulse. I'm lucky I put that current feedback instrumentation amplifier in the last design, I had a hunch it would be useful and now it is: all I need to do is compare the voltage on the input of the high-side current source with the measured current times some factor, probably done with another instrumentation amplifier on the middle leg of the potentiometer on the current sense board. If the current feedback is 90% or higher of where the set voltage has it set to be, the light comes on. It adds a few parts and some complexity, but in testing, I was finding that moving around, having a bad insertion, or any number of other things could make the current drop and deliver an incomplete hair kill, and without a light or an ammeter hooked up, the user has no way of knowing whether each pulse works, and an entire session could turn into wasted time. I hate to make things more complicated when I'm already having problems, but I think this one is necessary.  Outside of electronics, last time, [@lilypad@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/lilypad) mentioned that sourcehut has a site hosting feature - thank you lilypad!  You're so right and I set it up and put up a splash screen and I think this is a good solution! She also mentioned that printable manuals are probably a good idea - I 100% agree, my thoughts for this were to ensure that whatever site generator we use, should we make our own theme, we make sure that it's print-optimized. Static site generators usually have Markdown-based pages and that's also compatible with Pandoc, so it'll probably be pretty doable to get them over to LaTeX too for that beautiful, beautiful formatting. Good looking out  https://sphynx.diy [@ComradeEd@lemmygrad.ml](https://lemmygrad.ml/u/ComradeEd) also did a lot of good thinking about static site options in the comments last time - thank you as well  probably gonna link its post down below in the comments when we talk about how to make a site! Also - shout-out to [@YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/YearOfTheCommieDesktop) for their amazing work figuring out a probe design in the comments of the last post! I haven't started building one out myself yet but I have some of the parts on the way in the mail and it looks like their work will probably be the basis for a needle holder probe, something that's necessary before we can fully release a Lite. Thank you bestie  # Next up Obviously I need to fix my bug and implement my feature. Besides that, there's not much else to mention in electronics. It's still too early for enclosure stuff, and the electrical design is too much of a moving target to start trying to port to JLCPCB, so I just have to fight through this one. All other new developments outside of me bashing my head against these two new problems will be in both the site and the applicator probe. # Any ways to help? I think it's time I opened up site development to interested parties? We're not in a rush but it's on the table! If anyone wants to mess with Jekyll/Hugo/something else and sourcehut's build system, I set up a repo to connect to it, so with the right configuration, we can have a build job generate with Jekyll or Hugo or something and automatically deploy. That's here: https://git.sr.ht/~_410bdf/sphynx-site I'll make a top level comment to aggregate people who want to work on that below! We can work out what static site generator we want to use together and then we can start getting it set up! Also, 100% looking for ideas on things to test on my bug, if you're good at electronics debugging, throwing some test ideas at me would be greatly appreciated. --- As always, stop by, hang out, say hi, ask questions, tell me what you've been up to, design review me, however you'd like to be involved is good by me! All the love and look out for my next post in a week or so! 
Hello, comrades! I'm mostly not sick any more! Sorry so much for the week plus since my last post, most of the time I spent in that timespan was doing other things while I waited for components to arrive (especially because there's stuff I forgot in the first order and had to make a second one ). Components got here, I put everything together, and things... work more than they don't work  [Last Post](https://hexbear.net/post/2085333) # What I've been up to Behold:   The boards are in and I made them and they work  This segment of the post is going to be dense and technical, so feel free to skim and ask questions if you feel lost and want to get caught up! Both boards have minor bugs that I will be addressing in the next revision - the next revision being *the Alpha 1 version of the Sphynx Lite.* The bugs I have are as follows: ## Current pump bugs: - The knob is wired backwards. fix: make the knob go forwards, or more specifically, switch pins 1 and 3 on VR1. Ez. - The knob doesn't have a zero offset - instead of 0.1 mA to 2 mA, it goes 0 mA to 2 mA. This is annoying; if you turn the knob all the way, the device won't do anything, you have to bump it a tiny bit. The solution is to put a resistor of roughly ~~11~~ ~~5.5~~ 1 kiloohms on the low-side leg of the potentiometer (exercise for the electronics-curious reader to figure out why! check the schematic from my previous post!). The wide tolerance on the potentiometer means there will be somewhat of a range on the *actual* minimum current, but it should be a pretty small variation, around 0.08 mA to 0.12 mA worst case variation. Since this error 1) gets stacked up with the error of the user's body being different from everyone else's, and 2) is only error on the low side, not on the high side, I'm deeming it tolerable. - Not a circuit bug per se, but I designed this around a INA350*CDS*, which has 50 times gain, and then I accidentally bought some INA350*ABS*es, which only have 20 times gain. This part is a new addition that uses R1 as a shunt for active current measurement. It works exactly as intended, just with 20 gain instead of 50 gain. This can be used for a lot of things, but particularly, an automatic shutoff of the board if the current draw ever goes above, say, 2.5 mA. More safety! However, this component has another problem, which is... - The INA350 is fucking impossible to solder  All these new space saving packages are absolute nightmares for hand assembly. I didn't even need space savings, it was just a cheap instrumentation amplifier that worked nice. I think I might have to ditch it because it doesn't come in a usable size. The same thing can be done with a dual opamp and some bonus resistors, which is less than $0.50 and I already have them on the board. ## Digital timing bugs: - Backwards knob again... - Ignoring backwards knob, the range, instead of being 2 seconds to 10 seconds like I expected, is actually 2 to 7.5ish seconds. I haven't actually figured out why on this yet - I think it's because of the relatively simpler resistor divider thing I did with R2/R4/VR1, and there's some other current path I haven't thought about yet through the potentiometer. Could be something else too. In any case, the move here is probably to do something more like in figures 8 and 9 of the LTC6993 datasheet with an opamp current sink and a potentiometer, and something less like what I did, which came from the unlabeled figure on the last page of the LTC6993 datasheet. Again, one more part, but opamps are pennies and I use them elsewhere, which drives the cost down further. - The LTC6993 is one of the microtiny packages too. This is a little worse than the other microtiny package in the INA350, in that I can just buy another inamp or an opamp for that one, but the LTC6993 is fairly unique and I can't just shop for another part that does the same thing. I'm not sure what to do about this. It's too late to add a microcontroller, but this timing issue just won't let up. I think the difficulty to solder this one might just be a thing to fix in the Lite 2. Technically, you need this level of coordination and fine motor skills to do the actual electrolysis hair removal anyways, and I was able to do it with nothing but an iron, a solder sucker, and a magnifying glass, so it's not *impossible* and anyone with even slightly better tools than me should be okay, but it's still a bummer. From now on, new rule, nothing smaller than a DFP package. If I get rid of the INA350 and this, then there's no more. - The done alert doesn't work. The intention was that LED D3 turns on and buzzer LS1 beeps for half a second when the current pulse is done, alerting the operator that it's time to move to the next hair. This circuit is everything connected to U4 in the schematic in my last post. Not only did I pick the wrong kind of buzzer (very easy fix I just need to shop better), but the whole timer sticks on forever instead of just flashing on for half a second. I didn't know this at the time, but if I were to *[read the damn datasheet](https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/ne555.pdf)*, I would have seen on page 10 that: "Monostable operation is initiated when TRIG voltage falls below the trigger threshold. Once initiated, the sequence ends only if TRIG is high for at least 10 μs before the end of the timing interval." Basically, the 555 wants to see a super quick off/on to start the timer, and I'm just giving it an off with an indefinite delay after, causing the timer to stick on. I don't really know how I'm going to handle this to be honest - my current best guess is to make some kind of quick and cheap RC high pass filter thing hooked up to a transistor that turns a high to low edge into a high to low to high pulse. I'll have to breadboard or simulate it a little bit, but if I can make this work it's a very cheap fix to the problem. I'll be fixing this list of issues and moving both circuits to a new united design *with test points and jumpers this time* (thank you [@macerated_baby_presidents@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/macerated_baby_presidents)  ) that will be, if it works, the first alpha version of the Lite. Progress! I also cleaned up git - not sure if anyone has tried to pull down the repository and look at the boards yet, but if you have, it was broken - it should be fixed now, but you'll probably need to re-clone. If anyone tries this, let me know how it works! # New Developments I bought a domain name! Meet [sphynx.diy](http://sphynx.diy)  Currently empty, just points to the git repo, but you have to start somewhere - this is where I want to host blog posts like this one, the assembly guide, and the usage guide and resources in the future. I'm not going to be doing much with it immediately myself, but having this makes it so we can start working on an actual site! I was thinking GitHub pages for hosting with a cute Jekyll theme, or maybe readthedocs like mentioned last time - thoughts? Also! **I used the boards above to remove a couple square centimeters of hair as a proof of concept!** It's only been a couple days but I'm optimistic - I tested by tugging on the hair with tweezers, observing it tightly connected to me by the follicle, applying about 10 units of lye per Figure 2 of [this very helpful resource I found](https://electrologynow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/English-GUIDE.pdf), and then after current application, pulling again, for the hair to slide out with no resistance, which is a very strong indicator that it worked! Stay posted to see if they stay gone or if I need more juice, 10 units of lye is on the very low side but I'm playing it safe. # Next up I'll absolutely be fixing up the boards as mentioned above and making and designing an Lite Alpha 1.0 next! I don't want to suggest that this one be used on human beings, but once I make it, it might be fun to buy and assemble for research purposes? Probably not, maybe best to wait until I at least make it to a beta version, but in any case I'm excited for it! It's also not too early to get work on a manual started - this is something that I'm going to try to lean on community help for. I'm also exploring JLCPCB assembly - it would be *much* better for accessibility if I could keep 100% to their parts catalog (plus I wouldn't feel bad about using microtiny packages any more), and for now I think I'm close, but I know that there's at least a potentiometer I use that isn't in their catalog. # Any ways to help? There are starting to be more things to do! I'm kinda feeling like it might be time to start pulling in folks for web stuff! If anyone has GitHub sites or Jekyll experience, getting going on a place to host an assembly guide would be awesome! This is also something that should be doable even without this particular experience if you know web stuff, so don't feel intimidated - I think this is accessible with a bit of new learning for anyone with intermediate web knowledge. Another thing I could totally use help with is BOM management - I have links for all the parts, but I don't have them linked anywhere and I don't have them automated, tallied up based on cost, in a convenient one click buy cart, or anything else like that - if anyone likes making bills of materials in KiCAD, let me know, that would be super helpful! In a similar vein, having an audit and maybe a port of my design to 100% JLCPCB catalog compliance would be extremely nice, if either of those things sound interesting to you, let me know! --- As always, stop by, hang out, say hi, ask questions, tell me what you've been up to, design review me, however you'd like to be involved is good by me! All the love and I'll talk to you in a week or so! 
Hi friends - still sick, feel like ass, but I did a lot of work recently, and if everything goes according to plan, within 2 more journal entries, I'll be able to report on my very first hair removal test! # What I've been up to This week was mostly board and circuit design. I just ordered two more circuit boards I designed, here they are: ## Current pump, mk2 **Schematic:**  **PCB:**  **3D PCB:**  I talked about this one in [Journal Entry #1](https://hexbear.net/post/1992685?scrollToComments=false) - since then, **I received the board and the parts for mk1, and it works**  Technically, this means I can test hair removal on myself, but I'm going to try and wait until I have the new board, for a lot of reasons. Here's what I changed: - Before, the current went out a current pump and went in to ground. If the current pump were to malfunction, it would cause more current than expected to leave the probe, which is a safety issue (not electrocution level, but possibly a scarring issue - very bad). I added a current sink hard-wired to 2 mA on the return of the current probe so that even if the current pump fails, the current sink will still cap the max current at 2 mA. - I added feedback so that I can measure the output current from a microcontroller. This is pre-work for the Sphynx Uno, and it can also be used as a safety measure - if the current goes too high, I can cut board power and flash an angry red LED as an error light. - I added a current knob! This is one more thing to test for the final version. - I broke out and very neatly labeled parts of the schematic so that this is an easier resource to learn from as an outsider. - I changed up some resistor values to make the current pump and current sink more stable. My highly scientific outlook on this one is that there's a 75% chance it works as intended first shot. This is the board I'm going to use to test hair removal on myself (if it works)! If it works, there aren't really any other current pump related changes to make and this one can get incorporated into the Sphynx Lite! ## Digital timing, mk1 **Schematic:**  **PCB:**  **3D PCB:**  [@macerated_baby_presidents@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/macerated_baby_presidents) game me some really good feedback on this one in [Journal Entry #2](https://hexbear.net/post/2050796?scrollToComments=false). I since figured out a better way to make the timer work by actually reading the manual for the part I'm using. This means the knob I'm using will actually be accurate and not have a dangerous failure mode! yay! This one is a little less likely to be perfect on the first try - it is all new, unlike the current source, it's also a little more complicated, and because of that, I'm giving it 40% odds to work on the first try. When I get these two boards, ***if they both work as designed***, I will be able to plug in a benchtop power supply, rig up some kind of weird holder for an electrolysis needle, and go for a spot of hair on my thigh I've been growing out for this moment! Journal entry 4 will probably be me designing and ordering the battery submodule, so journal entry 5 will be my first report of actual hair removal! # New Developments We're on git! Specifically sourcehut! https://git.sr.ht/~_410bdf/sphynx It's somewhat empty right now, it's also especially clunky because I just set it up and all of my commits are just dumping in all of my files, but now people can actually look at my files and mess with them for themselves, or even contribute if there's anything that anyone feels comfy adding! # Next up As mentioned above, steady progess, waiting for boards to come in, making the battery board, and probably before the end of March I'll be starting to get rid of some body hair. End of April is a very reasonable timeline for a beta version of the Sphynx Lite to be available for enthusiastic individuals to order, build, try, and review! We're getting there! # Any ways to help? Calls are out for a Sphynx logo for sure! Design review is always appreciated as well! Besides that, I'm just working through the early stuff, things are a little too turbulent at the moment for me to ask for much because things are moving too fast. Once I'm working on the Lite, it'd be SO sick if anyone artistically inclined would want to design [some cool silkscreen](https://nitter.privacydev.net/GregDavill/status/1166664600755924993#m) for the Lite, maybe with a Blahaj, some trans/commie logos, possibly some original artwork - the possibilities are endless  This one's a little terse because I'm sick and tired, but as usual, from last time - *If you have any questions, please ask below! It doesn't matter if they're technical or non-technical, it doesn't matter if you think they're basic, dumb, not worth my time, or anything else - I want people to get excited about this and I would love to take the time to communicate the inner workings of this to y'all so that everyone can be included!* I can't guarantee I'll reply to everyone but I'll do my best to reply to comments that are asking something directly or I have something to add to!
here is some free and unsolicited advice. agree/disagree? situations you will want a cordless drill: - you are working where there is not guaranteed convenient electricity available - you need to be *extremely* mobile and a cord would be hazardous or very inconvenient - wet environments? idk examples: rough construction, outdoors, drywall racing benefits of a corded drill: - no batteries to charge - no batteries that can be stolen - no batteries you can lose or break - no need to plan around charging batteries - no batteries which allow the manufacturer to twist your arm into buying a new device when the old one works just fine; less susceptible to planned obsolescence - no batteries to weigh the tool down: lighter and more comfortable to use the tool and better balance - tool is smaller and easier to use in cramped situations - don't need a case, charger, extra batteries or other junk - one less thing to go wrong; more repairable if it does - more powerful you are in a comm called "DIY" = you are *probably* always working near a power outlet and not going very far. consider a corded drill instead of mindlessly going cordless. Make sure you get a decent extension cord. I used heatshink tubing to add an extra 6ft to my cord, that makes it long enough for many applications. Sometimes I tie on an extra one.
Hello! It has been a week! I did some work on this! Not as much as I'd have liked because I'm sick (I believe not COVID, it's been fairly mild and if it is COVID my vax is fresh but I'm still avoiding doing a lot). # What I've been up to The main engineering achievement of the week was finishing drafting a schematic for the timing part of the circuit. Brief step back, in terms of development, I am breaking the first version into 3 separate pieces: the power board, the current pump frontend, and the timing board. I'm doing this so I can debug them all separately; if one of them ends up being broken and I need to wait on a new PCB or components, it doesn't block me from working on the other two. Once they all work, I will unite them all into a single PCB that will form the final version of the first release. The timing board is the most complicated of the three, and it itself breaks down further into three more parts (all on the same PCB). These are: **Power conditioning**:  All this is is connectors to hook up inputs and outputs and a basic voltage regulator to turn the input voltage into a clean 5V to do logic circuitry with. **Pulse timing**:  This is the part of the circuit that activates the current pump I drew, layed out, and ordered from my previous post. This thing has a 6.35mm jack that you plug a sustain pedal from a keyboard into (deeply proud of this idea - transfems are literally known for their audio equipment!), and on press, it will start a 5V pulse that is anywhere from 1.5 seconds to 12 seconds long, depending on the position of knob RV1. This 5V pulse will activate the current pump frontend. Notably, I am not using a 555 timer. I spent so. much. fucking. time on this fucking part of the circuit, the 555 was utimately to imprecise to feel good about including it. I was going to use a fucking crystal oscillator to keep good time at one point, and then finally I luckily found out about the LTC6993, which is an awesome 555 replacement that every amateur electronics person should get comfy with because I am never using a 555 ever again. There's still fairly sizeable error from RV1 being +/- 20% tolerance, but at least it's not stacking up from several parts, depending heavily on temperature, or any of the other problems a 555 has. This part would be a thousand times easier with a microcontroller, but at least it doesn't need to be flashed. [@macerated_baby_presidents@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/macerated_baby_presidents) you tried to warn me and I didn't listen lmao **Feedback**  Basically, as soon as the pulse is done, this board will turn on a little "OK!" LED and, if the switch is on, make an audible beep. This one can be a 555 timer because I don't care precisely how long the beep is. Right now it's about a half a second. These three are all on one board. I still have to identify components to use for some of these (LEDs, buzzer, switch, 6.35mm jack, maybe more?) before I can lay out an actual PCB like I did for the current pump, but that's what I have coming up next. That's been my week! Not a bad run if I do say so myself. # New Developments First and foremost, I made some tough choices about how I want to plan things going forwards. I have a long and often times self-conflicting priorities list, so I wanted to come up with a road map that satisfies as many of the goals of the project as possible. So, the road map going forward from my side will be as follows: 1. First, I'm going to make a push to release the first iteration, the minimum viable product to providing safe, accessible, and effective electrolysis for anyone who wants to make one, with no bells and whistles. This will have a lot of cuts (full list below) but it'll be 100% sufficient to perform electrolysis with and I'll only release it when I've confirmed that it works and it's safe. I'm going to be calling this version the Sphynx Lite. 2. 1. From here, once the Sphynx Lite is released, things open up for contributors to do more things for the project. This is where I'd love a couple of particularly passionate and initiated folks to get involved and start doing things like writing documentation, designing enclosures, revising the circuit to release a Sphynx Lite 2, and more. Hopefully with the board and a minimal instruction manual I'll provide for its operation and making rudimentary peripherals, we can get an ecosystem going. 2. Once the Sphynx Lite is out, start work on the Sphynx Uno (Sphynx Ein? just "Sphynx"? Sphynx один? still workshopping this one a lil bit) that will roll in all the nice to haves that I left out of the Lite, while keeping a lot of things I've put effort into and would like to keep, like the current pump. 3. 1. With the Uno, there'll be firmware - this is where community folks will really be able to shine, for one, this is the thing that the most people expressed interest in helping with, and for two, this is the thing that allows development to be distributed, people to work on multiple things at a time, and the project to really start picking up steam. 2. Once the Uno is on a clear trajectory across the finish line, that's when we can start working on the final boss, the Sphynx Wave. Rundown of the 3 models I could ever imagine intending to make: - **Sphynx Lite**: Takes 2 9V batteries. No microcontroller, no screen, likely not even a 7 segment display unless there arises a good safety argument for needing visual feedback on voltage and current, just a knob for max current, a knob for max voltage, and a knob for pulse time, with a beeper and a couple LEDs for feedback, and connectors for a foot pedal activation switch and a probe. All digital and analog electronics - no flashing required. - **Sphynx Uno**: Add a microcontroller, rehash a lot of things that will benefit from having a microcontroller, like timing, input method, and whatever else comes up. Replace the 2 9V batteries with a LiPo with a proper power infrastructure, including boosting, possibly to a slightly higher voltage than the Lite, USB charging, and more. - **Sphynx Wave**: Everything that the Sphynx Uno is, except instead of just the DC current pump on the frontend, add an RF power applicator circuit to the output as well (this is nerd talk for "Uno is galvanic only, Wave is galvanic, blend, or thermolysis"). (thank you to [@lilypad@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/lilypad) for suggesting the Sphynx name! I think I'm gonna keep it! ) I've also decided that [open hardware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware) is probably the move licensing wise. It doesn't preclude me ever getting something together to start selling units, but it also keeps this a community project and allows anyone to build it as cheaply as they want to, remix it, or do anything else they'd like to themselves. # Next Up The components to build and test the current pump are waiting on my bench. I have to build that, test it, and then honestly I can fake the rest with an Arduino and a benchtop power supply to test the output parameters and kill a test area of hairs if there's no bugs in my circuit and start the waiting game to see if they come back. I also have to lay out the timing submodule, and I have to both design and lay out the battery/power submodule. Once they all play nice tied together with wires on the bench, I'll dump all 3 designs in the same file and start weaving them together to make the Lite. # Any ways to help? Audit my circuits above for sure, I'm being dumb and ordering a PCB before testing most of this on the bench. I'm going to add some more debugging features to the design before ordering the design, but still it'd be nice to catch as many mistakes as possible early. I also have an interesting request: https://synopticproducts.com/collections/f-shank/products/ballet-f-and-k-shank-needle-holders?variant=40311122100305 Synoptic seems to be using a modified mechanical pencil as a probe - does anyone recognize this make of mechanical pencil? I'd love to get some and see if they lend themselves well to being made into probes. I owe you all an actual drawing of what the probe should look like and do next time too, it'd be awesome if someone could figure out how to make the probe work. If anyone feels like taking a stab at it now though, ask anything you'd like to know, but in short, all it needs to do is hold onto an F-shank needle with electrical continuity in a way that is easily replaceable and can be held like a pen. Bonus points if there's some type of shroud to cover the tip when not in use, but that's not a huge deal, it's more important that this doesn't require any advanced tools - accessibility. Now that I've committed to a name, we can start thinking of a logo too! The added bonus of using a cat is that it's extremely reasonable to incorporate a ":3" into the logo. I would love to see suggestions if anyone's bored and looking to help! My only ask is that it should have a good monocolor representation and that it doesn't have any tiny features so I can put it on the PCB itself. If you can draw it with a sharpie, it'll work perfect. ***If you have any questions, please ask below! It doesn't matter if they're technical or non-technical, it doesn't matter if you think they're basic, dumb, not worth my time, or anything else - I want people to get excited about this and I would love to take the time to communicate the inner workings of this to y'all so that everyone can be included!*** I can't guarantee I'll reply to everyone but I'll do my best to reply to comments that are asking something directly or I have something to add to! Tag list is in my top level comment below, reply to that comment if you want to be added or removed. Love you. Thanks for being here. I hope I can do good by my favorite internet people. :trans-heart:
Yea, yea, I know, no ethical consumption under capitalism, but presuming that I want to not have skin that makes me want to scratch it off like it’s a band-aid, where would I get Shea butter to minimize the slave labor involved? I know you can get coffee that isn’t slave labor coffee if you buy it from the Zapatistas, does anything like that exist for Shea butter? I like making DIY body butter, Shea butter based ones feel amazing and are relatively cheap when made myself PS I know it’s silly and liberal to be this concerned about the origin of products, but it sort of dampers your moisturizing routine when every time you put on your products it reminds you of the horrors of this world
diy
!diy@hexbear.netFinally, a comm for that one user who hand-makes longbows. This ones for you, comrade.