Its been quite a while since my last post, so here’s a big one….. I’ve been doing a lot of 3D printing since I received my FlashForge Creator Pro 2016. I learned OpenSCAD and FreeCAD, my designs are here. I’ve made various enclosures for Arduino’s and Raspberry Pi’s, as well as USBASP cases, voltmeter cases, solder tip holders, calliper battery savers, resistor forming tools, soldering helping hands, bottle openers, trolley tokens, SD card holders, PIR cases, Dremel accessories, various 3D printer upgrades and the usual calibration prints.

I fancied figuring out if it was my cat or the neighbourhood cats pooping in my side alley (oh er missus!) so thought I’d find a use for my PiNoIR camera and that spare B+ I usually use RaspiMJPEG for webcam sorts of things like timelapse or somesuch, but it seems in a state of flux – the internal motion-detection system simply doesn’t work it would seem, and the external system is still using Motion and not the MMAL version, so its slow and can only cope with about VGA resolution on a B+, and it doesn’t seem to work in timelapse mode, and seems flaky at best anyway.

After looking at wireless print servers costing £35+ I decided to make my own using my spare Raspberry Pi Zero (original without camera connector). I needed a wifi dongle and USB connection for the printer, so have bought a Zero4U USB hub HAT and case, in fact I bought two of each as the shipping was fixed, so it came to £23 shipped from the Czech Rebuplic, so shouldn’t take too long to arrive.

I thought I’d write up my findings when using the TP4056 Li-Ion charging boards as a lot of people seem to be interested in them lately for charging circuits containing ESP8266 wifi chips which are rated from about 3.3-3.6v. Ideally a Li-Ion, LiPo or LiFePo4 battery. Note that the TP4056 can’t be used to charge LiFePo4 batteries (or NiMH, Alkaline etc). First up, a couple of links to Julian Ilett’s videos of the older unprotected USB-mini board and another video comparing the newer protected USB-micro board which some people refer to as MP1405.

I’ve ordered a few gadgets to play with: PL2303HX USB UART cable 2x Samsung ICR18650-26F Li-Ion batteries 2x GTL Li-Ion batteries Quad MAX7219 8×8 LED matrix 5x USB 18650 protected chargers 300x 0603 resistors (100 each of 1k2/2k2/2k) Round 18650 USB power bank Square 18650 USB power bank LED tap filter Raspberry Pi camera mount Mobile phone wide angle macro lens Mobile phone fisheye/wide/macro lenses Mobile phone microscopic lens Micro USB hub/ethernet dongle 3x RPi3 heatsinks I plan to make another LED matrix clock and either use my Raspberry Pi camera or Android phone as an inspection camera for soldering.