I agree. I was pleasantly surprised with how inexpensive and accurate it was. When I was testing the water level meter, I used both the Lidar and an ultrasonic sensor, and compared the two readings. When everything was perfect, they tracked closely, but it was clear that the ultrasonic sensor was much, much more finicky. I was worried that the Lidar wouldn’t be able to reliably detect the surface of crystal-clear water, but the tank is in pitch darkness, and it seems to work fine.
I have nothing technical to add, but just wanted to say I’m enjoying your kitty inventions! Cygnus is so cool!
Glad you like them! Cygnus seems to be enjoying the dispenser as well.
I did get it hooked up to Alexa after all. I ended up using IFTTT, which has a much simpler integration interface. Easy to get it to fetch the magic URL to dispense the treat.
This was very, very cool. I showed my wife the whole thing, and she wondered if you had a chart showing usage (either counts, or distance) by date. Is Cygnus ramping up, or hitting steady state? 
I am almost finished doing my own font:
It has the <RAND> attribute, that is, with the right programs the letters are selected randomly among the different variants (usually six) I have drawn, so it looks like hand lettered. Well, it would, if it was finished and really well done. But it is getting there, after about 1,450 different characters (klick on foto to see them all, I guess, four different pics) and much adjusting of heights and widths, only j, g, p, q and y seem too long on the vertical axis and set too low. And then there is kerning to be set for some hundreds of letter pair combinations. And some details here and there, I guess I will be done in a couple of additional years… 
ARGGGGH, kerning pairs!* Haven’t they come up with some “Optical Kerning Pairs ON” shortcut?
.
*Back in the 90s, I had a client who, as the Big Brochure Booklet was going to press, said “I’m not happy with the spacing… I’ll send over my requests.”
A cab pulled up with a stack of pages, each with about thirty “spacing corrections” in red. On page one, she didn’t like how much space there was after this e and that k (but the other k’s were fine), and an oi and a dozen or so other e’s … for a twenty-page brochure, there were over 500 corrections to do before the printer closed.
We’d only been using QuarkXpress for a year or so, but I knew there had to be a quicker way, so I actually opened the manual and discovered… kerning pairs. So I could tighten up all those e’s that came before n’s, etc.
And Ms.Stick Upbutt was happy (well, as happy as she could get, so less miserable).
Just added it to the results page! I’d already had it, but hadn’t updated the page yet. It was slightly trickier to implement than the other ones due to the need for an intermediate table, but it should now show up to a 30-day history. The current snapshot:
That burst of activity on 2/21? That was the day I enabled the treat dispenser. Anyhow, glad both of you enjoyed it.
Very nice! You need to finish this off so we can finally replace Comic Sans.
That’s awesome, thanks!
I just helped my coworker replace the 7 4x4 posts holding up my lanai. I gave up on saving the screens since they were in poor shape even before Ian. Same with the screen frames. I learned a few things on this project: 4x4 posts are actually 3.5 x 3.5. The elevated post bases are $30 each. I painted the bases of the posts ahead of time to reduce future rotting. I should have painted as much of them as possible ahead of time because it would have made painting them so much easier, even accounting for touch ups for hammer and nailing damage. The process was a lot easier and more straight forward than I thought it would be. However, a lot of that may be due to my coworker making it look easy. No pics right now because I don’t want to link to my FB page. But I hope to get new screens with 2-foot high kick plates all around to keep out dirt and grass from the lawn mower. I also want to tear out the crappy outdoor carpet and put in cobalt-blue hexagonal tile.
Cross-linking to a thread I just created because there may be people here who can offer me some advice.
So here is the completed milk wagon for my wife’s middle school production of Fiddler on the Roof. As I mentioned in the thread linked above, I started with these instructions and made an open box with holes through it for the axle, a 1-1/8 inch dowel. (The odd diameter was dictated by the center holes in the decorative wheels I bought for the project.)
Based on a suggestion by folks in the other thread, I found some split shaft collars to hold the wheels onto the axle, but since none were readily available with 1-1/8 i.d, I had to rout grooves in the dowel so they would clamp down tightly.
I screwed 2x2 rails around the outside of the top of the basic box, drilled with holes for the 3/4-inch dowels that make up the upper half of the wagon. The dowels are glued only to the top rail so that three separate comb-like pieces can be removed for transportation and storage.
The front handles are broom handles threaded at one end, and here’s where one of my “clever” ideas didn’t pan out. I hoped I could make them easily removable, but some testing with the mating broom heads made it clear that it wouldn’t be simple to mount them firmly enough to be practical. I ended up just cutting off the threaded ends and screwing the handles to the bottom of the wagon with long wood screws. I would have preferred a more durable solution, but expediency won out.
Here’s the wagon after initial construction was complete. (Click on the image if you’re not seeing the whole picture.)
Now, obviously Tevye’s wagon is not supposed to be brand new construction. So next I had to age it.
It may be a little hard to see, but I dented the wood with a hammer and heavy chain, and used a saber saw to slice wedges out of the edges of most pieces, then sanded the cuts smooth.
At this stage my wife made a passing remark on the size of the wagon, so before moving to the next step, I shortened its length by a foot and the height of the dowels by about eight inches.
A nice, clean, new finish would also be anachronistic, so I created an aged look by applying dark stain and, while it was still wet, brushing on a little light blue latex paint we happened to have, then blending them together with a wide scraper.
Here is it with the faux antique milk cans we bought.
I put gallon-sized ziplock bags filled with sand in the cans to give them some heft. That worked nicely, but after shortening the wagon, their weight made the front of wagon a bit too prone to tip up when they are at the very back, behind the axle. Removing half the sand helped somewhat, but I think I’m going to screw two pieces of 1x2 across the floor, above the axle, spaced so the cans fit between them. This will keep it balanced better and also prevent them from sliding around.
New tools acquired for this project:
- Wen drill press (A really nice tool, but way overkill for this project. I should have bought a much smaller and lighter one.)
- Ryobi router (Goes with my other Ryobi 18V tools.)
- Set of Forstner drill bits
- Set of router bits
I’ll be calculating the total materials cost for reimbursement in a few days, but I think it came to roughly $400. Total construction time, not counting design, research, planning, etc., maybe 30 hours?
I’m pretty happy with it, and my wife is very happy, which is all that matters.
That came out great. I’m really impressed.
Nice job!
Maybe it can be used as a real milk cart for the next time the school needs to milk some cows for lunch.
My Little Lady story.
I went to a thrift shop looking for something cheap that I could make into a coffee/SodaStream bar. In the storage part of a thrift shop I found a cute little lady. The owner of the shop said he was trying to clear out the (really very large) storage space because he wanted to start doing auctions and was like, “Just take it-- ten bucks.” When I got her home I was shocked to find that she was made of solid wood. Me, a Bob’s Discount/Ashley Furniture type girl was shocked. You may think I’m exaggerating but I don’t believe I’ve ever owned a piece of furniture made out of solid wood before. Here she is when I got her home and, upon finding out she’s wood, I took a picture of the stamp on her back.
And I was all, '1962? She’s older than I am!" and I put my PhD in Google Research to work and got. . . nothing. I did find out that the legs are Marlboro style. Then I found out that Marlboro style legs were used on Hepplewhite style furniture sometimes. And then I thought about it and looked up furniture stamps and found that they are almost always month/year and the Little Lady was actually a whole lot older than I was. And then I found out that Michigan was famous for furniture makers at the turn of the century and this was a table stand style that was made then and there. And you can find exactly this table stand for sale on line for a thousand dollars.
She was in excellent condition. Look at the inside of her drawer after a bit of rub with some homemade wax paste.
So I put away the cranberry and black chalk paint, removed the finish that was failing (only on the top, really, but once I did the top I had to do it all), and began the rub down.
The stamped brass hardware got a clean and shine and a coat or two of lacquer for protection. The metal glides on her feet got the rust sanded off and a coat of Rustoleum clear coat AND sticky felt pads. And then coat after coat of the mineral oil, beeswax and orange essential oil furniture butter I had on hand. The inside and upside down raw wood parts suuucked that stuff up, the Little Lady was so thirsty.
And here she is all cleaned up.
Still have to get something to put the coffee and SodaStream on because if you think that’s going on top of my 100 year old, ten dollar Little Lady, your crazy!
Wonderful restoration work, @Biggirl 
I’ve never heard of a “Little Lady” before (I’d have called it a nightstand or an end table) but it’s lovely!
I just started calling her the Little Lady for no reason except, well, she reminded me of one. And thanks!
And here’s a small DIY project. I noticed the gardener I had in my Silver Falls potted plant must have run away with a squirrel, so I made it a new one now that it’s waking up this spring. He was dubbed Cthulhu Gnome by someone who did not appreciate his beauty. He also has a stick up his butt so that nefarious nature doesn’t make away with him this time.
Very nice!
There is a TV show out of Britain called The Repair Shop, where the crew restore old stuff for folks. They do incredible work – in particular, the young man named Will Kirk is some kind of freakin’ wizard with woodworking. Watch it once and you will be hooked.
I have seen it on Netflix, I think. I watched all that were available but it’s sporadic on there.