our son has
gotten into soldering and he's done very
well at it and remind us how old is he
just turning 12. just turned 12. all
right um
but yeah he's done very well with it and
uh
he's soldered two calculators so far um
and one of them he's taken to school
which his teacher was completely blown
away by yeah i'm thinking 12 years old
and he's already making a calculator
yeah yeah he made a calculator we got a
diy kit from
amazon and he built it and it maybe two
hours
of work it was really phenomenal unreal
and his soldering job is
really really clean excellent like looks
pro
but anyway he's been asking how to do
other stuff and as we're soldering he's
like
what's this and what's this and how's
that work and i'm going
i want to be able to teach him these
things i want to be able to
explain to him how a circuit board
actually works
not just soldering it but understanding
the components and the routing and all
that kind of stuff
and i mean i know you can buy um
just plain boards that are just rows of
of of little connection points but i
want to be able to make our own board
yeah and so he's asked specifically if
we can find a diy kit
for a useless box you know that's the
box when you push the button yeah
the little thing comes out and pops it
yeah give it a try
what do you do are you serious
oh my gosh that is hilarious
hello it's like having a kitten in there
it's like my cat
hey hey now so i've been looking for one
haven't found one but i found a bunch of
people like oh you can make one using an
arduino you can make one using this
and i was like if i'm gonna do a diy
box useless box i want to build it from
the ground up
so i've been researching how to make my
own pcbs at home
okay it's actually not that difficult
and i was blown away that all i need is
a laser printer to set my routing
like where the paths go so you're going
to actually
etch it i'm going to actually etch it at
home oh man
that's way beyond me jeff it's really
that involves
chemicals it does but but a really
simple process so i've found
i've done a bunch of research into it
and so i found a
really simple easy way to make my own
pcb
and that's what we're going to be doing
so my project for the next probably a
couple of months
because i have to learn how this stuff
works is to design a circuit board
which i've never done before make the
circuit board
and then my son's gonna solder it
together and we're gonna make our own
useless box that i'm hoping to also 3d
print the box as well
oh that's cool yeah you're just diving
right in i
when i do something i don't go small
and you know my approach is a little bit
different because i am very much
into like i like to learn something
first
and then increase my investment in
that process and and you're like talking
about jumping right to pcb
creation so i would back up so you know
if this is you thinking hey maybe i'd
like to be able to make my own circuits
and things like that
my starting point is a breadboard yes
and the breadboard allows you to lay out
your circuit that you've designed or
that you've
downloaded like a circuit blueprint from
the internet or however
however you've got that lets you lay it
out on a
on a basically a mock pcb
that will function like a pcb but then
you can just take it all apart and
put the parts away right and it's cheap
very cheap and it just gets you started
and then the next step for me is what's
called a prototyping board so you get
pcb boards that have all the holes
that's right and they've got solder
um like points but there's no
interconnection between them so you
actually run wires
or you run a little bit of solder
between two different joints for example
and you do it that way so that's my
second step yes then i would look at
maybe going the route of actually
etching your own
pcbs because then you're getting into
like the chemical processes
the and i'm i haven't researched it but
um
it's a much more intricate process so i
like to start
a little bit simpler my first pcb i
built on a breadboard
very very basic but i designed it right
okay
and all it is is it takes a five volt
signal
and when it has five volts the relay is
closed
so it has a relay right okay when it
does not have five volts the relay opens
so it disconnects so the reason that i
created that
it's a purpose-built application so i
built it on a breadboard
and feeding at 5 volts is coming from
any guesses any guesses spc no
it's another three letter acronym usb uh
usb
usb pulling a five volt signal off of a
micro tick
router okay and so then in the micro
tick i programmed code that said
that basically to dumb it down if the
internet goes down
kill the power on the usb oh so then
that
opens up the relay and what is the relay
control but
the power to my modem so my modem
if the internet goes down will
automatically turn the power
of itself off because of my relay right
and
wait five seconds and then power back on
so it's essentially a virtual version
of did you turn it off and on again
because what do you do when you're in an
internet goes down you pull the plug
from the momentum you wait five seconds
and you plug it back in and
you know eight times out of ten it's
going to come back up and be working
right so that was the circuit i built so
i built that on a prototyping board once
i had it working and i just soldered it
together and it's a very very simple
circuit
very cool and it worked great i like
very cool so tools what have you got so
far where are you at
uh well like i said i've just been doing
the research this past week oh so
i'm um i'm at the buying stage
uh so we've got all the soldering stuff
i'm gonna be buying the board buying the
chemicals
i've already downloaded the um software
for
designing the pcb wow um
and i've got a component kit that's on
the way with all the
resistors and capacitors right yeah all
that kind of stuff that's a neat thing
too is that these
these days i mean you can't really walk
into a radio shack like we used to be
able to they're no
there are still stores like here in
barrie we have one called seaal
which is a brilliant store that's kind
of like that old radio shack where you
go in and
it's like i just need one capacitor yeah
and it's like
here you go yeah you know it's like
drawers and drawers of capacitors and
resistors and everything else diodes and
whatever
but just to get a kit for 20 bucks that
has
all the kind of like the common stuff
and it's a kit that comes with a
breadboard
and it comes with a breadboard and that
was one of the things is is i wanna like
yes i'm gonna be designing it but part
of the planning process
is just like you said using the
breadboard to figure out how the
circuitry is gonna go
that's gonna be a great learning
experience for luke because they'll be
like hey this is
how does this work and let's try this
and let's do that and then
you know we'll be able to trial an error
without actually making our own pieces
that's really neat you mentioned also
arduino and arduino is kind of
like it's a controller so yeah you know
whereas
a raspberry pi or other single board
computer is a true
real computer with an operating system
and everything an arduino is like you
just program it to do
a very specific task it's a solid state
it will respond to and i think this is
why it would work really well an arduino
uh for a useless box is because it's
it's either on or off that's right and
if it's on do this
and then it will turn off that's right
so very very basic programming
digital write four
comma hi hi semicolon and then we're
gonna delay for one second which is one
thousand milliseconds
uh and then we're gonna copy that line
now what do you think high means versus
low
which is what i'm going to put here just
a guess on or off
yes so that's what my circuit now looks
and i'm going to simply plug this in to
usb power so i'm not plugging it into
the computer i want to actually power
this device
and see if it runs my program and if it
does
we should see this light flash
there we go that is neat every one
second so
we actually created the circuit fairly
quickly
uh and created the program to now tell
this light
what to do and we told it just very
simply
turn on and off again but if you're
making your own circuit you've got to
like do
ics you've got to program it yourself
yep you've got to figure out how
wow i i want to see this project as a
work in progress
okay and then see how uh how it comes
together yeah sounds good
we mentioned the community here on our
show
and uh our discord server in particular
i've tapped into our community jeff to
go in and and share my ideas for
circuits and
things like that and there are some
folks in our community who are just
like way up here as far as their
capabilities and understanding of those
types of things
so it's been really helpful for me as i
learned so
oh i'd even i fully plan to use the
community work me through bugs
yeah and if you're one of those folks in
the community right now just hey raise
your hand
and say yeah i understand how all that
works i'd love to help
and uh and that's something that i think
that i think that'll make a really neat
feature for the show as well as you
learn
yeah for sure keep us posted on that
jeff definitely i'd really be interested
to know how things go
yeah i'll be posting things behind the
scenes a useless box any other
do you have any ideas yet
i get excited when i invent like when i
think of something have you had any of
those moments where
i'm like i really wish i had something
that would do this but it doesn't exist
this is where 3d printing is interesting
to me because i'm creating things that
don't exist yet i i haven't really
thought
that far as to what exists and doesn't
exist
no i haven't really thought that far
come up with some ideas
yeah and share those there's a ton of
things for sure yeah like i've always
wanted to do
um a housewide sound system
that links up to um you know
our our amazon device and stuff like
that but i would like to have
sensors where when i walk from one room
to another
the motion sensor kicks in and it will
shut off the one room speakers
and add it to where i've just gone
that's way more advanced but that's
probably the only thing i can think of
where i'm like i want to do this but see
you talk about that and then i think
okay well
you could use a passive infrared sensor
yep which is used in motion sensors
you could use a laser sensor but
pir is very very cheap yes yeah and it's
just a little sensor that it's like okay
there was motion
do something yeah so you could create
something again with a relay
that controls just whether the speaker
has a completed circuit or not
yeah so if it was just a bunch of
speakers connected through an amplifier
you could have relays set up with pir
sensors that you'd be able to control by
motion
yeah good and if there's no motion for
10 minutes turn off the speaker
automatically or something like that
yeah
exactly so like these kinds of ideas
like there's so much stuff that you can
do
when you start to understand and then
there's the whole flip side of it where
something breaks and you can fix it yes
that's a good feeling
and that's done we've done that already
yeah nice so
you know you get those little battery
testers uh like to check the charge
yeah so we had one of those and it's
funny when my son was building his
calculator we weren't sure if the
batteries were working and we weren't
getting anything
i'm like this is odd that we're not
getting usually even if it's dead it
pops into the red but there was nothing
so we open it up turns out the actual
connection had broken apart
oh now i have no clue yeah and my son's
like oh i can fix that
and he fixed it and we put it back
together and then we and it works and
it's like oh yeah that's a dead battery
yeah i can relate to that too i use a
pillow speaker for podcasts
okay and uh because it's you know
connected by a wire to my phone
it gets pulled yep and it got pulled
right out so
it's such a simple thing but i totally
what did i do didn't buy another one no
no no i took it apart and i re-soldered
it
and reinforced it so it wouldn't happen
again oh beautiful made it better than
it was
he's he's turned his mind towards things
like uh e-waste
yes and he's like if somebody's gonna
get rid of their tv
or computer monitor chances are it's
still working dad it's just something
inside broke he's like i can fix it i'm
like yeah
you think about that and so his wheels
are turning and lasts and he's like
could i do these things and then sell
them
12 years old that's a career
in a number of trades are really a
valuable
uh like it's really valuable to have
those capabilities
so i'm gonna train him up for the next
uh well he's 12. so
in eight six years i'm retiring he's
gonna pay for the rest
i had a monitor come in i don't know
maybe a 23 inch or 24 inch
wide screen beautiful monitor came in as
e-waste
and um so i'm like i'll take a look and
so
my daughter and i looked at it and there
was a
single capacitor that was burnt out
so it went online and i bought one of
those capacitors they sell them in packs
of
three and it was twelve dollars so for
twelve dollars we got a pack of three
we replaced one of those capacitors and
that monitor is now sitting on my
daughter's desk
oh my gosh that's amazing it's wonderful
and he's absolutely right but not only
can you fix stuff jeff
let's say something comes into e-waste
or you you know you find something at
the side of the road that someone's just
discarded because they can't they don't
know how to fix it
um and maybe if fixing it is more
expensive than buying a new one in a lot
of cases too
um you can even if you can't fix it
you can do what's called desoldering
that's right so you can remove all the
good components from that
and put them in a drawer organizer yes
so that you can then have your own radio
shack at home where you've got the
drawers of all these different parts
and then when something breaks you don't
have to spend 12
online to buy them i wish i hadn't known
he was going to get into this
because in the summer i had about four
computers
a couple projectors we took them all the
so it's like oh i could have dismantled
that oh sure yeah got them oh
the parts out we live and learn yeah
exactly
very cool well keep us posted on that
chat definitely and hey comment below
tell us about some of the exploits that
you've had uh with regards to
to these kinds of topics and and if
they're
if it's something that interests you
that you've never gotten into hey
comment below as well we'd love to hear
from you
and we'd love to have you as a part of
that process as jeff is learning
um as i'm also learning and getting more
and more into those types of
like component repairs and and uh
circuit boards and everything else
it's a lot of fun yeah it's a great
hobby and a wonderful career if you
really want to do it as well so it's
true good for your son i'd like to hear
how he
enjoys it so when he's um i guess
13 plus so next year you can bring him
into the studio
and uh he can show us how he's how he's
making out
sounds good very cool make it happen
[Music]
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