Nick’s “Documentation”

Commute Time by Neighborhood

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Our neighborhood is in a suburb of Houston that is just off of a major highway that many people use for commuting. It’s a convenient place to either commute North into…

DIY Reef Tank Flowrate Monitoring

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For about $10 I was able to add a sensor to my return line and monitor flowrate using ESPHome and Home Assistant. I used a cheap hall effect flow rate sensor off of Amazon.…

DIY Reef Tank pH Monitoring

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I added pH monitoring to my reef tank for about $80. I bought a pH probe and the associated PCB from Atlas Scientific and integrated it into my reef tank controller using…

Automating Reef Tank Temperature Control using ESPHome + Home Assistant

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The next step in my reef automation is adding temperature control. I started off with a cheap $30 standalone thermostat module – it works well but it’s super basic and the…

Adding WiFi Control to an LED Reef Light

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A few hobbies I’ve been getting into recently are saltwater reef aquariums and home automation. This little project was a bit of both. I bought 2x 165W LED lights off of…

Self Diagnosis of Periodic Limb Movement Disorder Using Python & OpenCV

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So for years I’ve always felt excessive daytime sleepiness and fatigue. Once I finally got a job after school I now had health insurance and money to start looking into the…

Nixie Clock

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This project was a birthday present for my dad. I saw nixie tube clocks online and decided to build one from scratch. Before this project I had barely soldered anything…

Pixel Clock

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A large (~20” × 30”) wall clock I designed and built. A 3D-printed array of ~1” cubes lines up with cheap APA102 RGB LED strips. An Arduino controls the lighting and reads…

Building RepRap 3D Printers

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A small gallery of the 3D printers I built around 2012–2013. The first was a Prusa i2 and the second was a Mendel90 (Sturdy). In true RepRap fashion, the i2 was used to…

Translating Visible Light Spectrometer

The gallery below shows a translatable visible spectrometer I built in grad school. I used this to study CdSe nanoparticle synthesis in-situ at relevant conditions (up to…

Laser Cutting Gaskets

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I recently got a new 3D printer (Ender 3) and completely stopped using my old one (Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus). Rather than let it collect dust, I strapped a 450nm 2.5W laser…

Repairing the Z’s Compass and Acceleration Gauge

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Before I started this repair, the combination gauge with the compass and acceleration readout didn’t do anything — the arrows and backlight didn’t even light up. Here’s an…

My Driveway Paint-Job

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My Z has looked rough since the day I bought it. Clear coat was peeling and cracking, the bumper was destroyed, etc. I would’ve loved to paint the car properly but I don’t…

1986 Nissan 300ZX HVAC Repair (Part 1)

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This is part 1 of a series of posts documenting the HVAC repair on my 1986 Nissan 300ZX.