What I had been doing

It has been more than a year since I posted in CTP’s WordPress Blog. First of all, I hope that everybody is doing good and is keeping safe. These are challenging times, the best we can do is stay strong and ride it out. Like everyone else I am not used to be cooped up at home. We all have a routine that we stick to that gives our days worth and purpose. Despite everything, we have to keep ourselves busy. This helps us prepare to return to normalcy and finally put this pandemic behind us.

Aside from the duties and tasks that I do with regards to CTP while classes are suspended, I decided to take on some projects that I did not had time to do before. This involved things that needs done around the house as well as pursuing some curiosities, interests and hobbies. Some of these things may seem irrelevant or even childish, but for me it gives me a sense of fulfillment.

First, the backyard was unattended for a long time and the grass had grown quite high. It took me 3 days to clear the overgrowth mainly due to using a rechargeable weed wacker which discharged quickly and was slow to recharge. This worked since it gave my body time to recover. I also trimmed off the branches that were hitting the side of the roof when it was windy as well as the rose bushes that were blocking the sidewalk. I installed two outside lights fixtures that were broken, replaced two door knobs and a wooden porch rail that rotted. We also had a repairman replace a broken window while I organized the garage.

Next is an an ongoing electronics project. It is no secret that I hate throwing stuff that can still be repaired or re-purposed. I sometimes buy and sell stuff on eBay mostly collectible toys. I have seen this Wall-E robot toy mostly sold with a missing remote or broken. I had repaired some of them in the past – which involved replacing broken gears and other parts. I did try to repair a broken remote once with no success. The chip it used was not commercially available and was programmed by the toy manufacturer.

Wall-E Robot Toy

So I worked on duplicating one by capturing the signals from a working remote. I used an arduino to create a prototype used code to recreate the infrared signals.

Arduino prototype
Original remote and Arduino prototype

I will share the results on my next post since this one is already long. Learn more about this project and others in my succeeding posts.

Take care!