Vindriktning air quality sensor

I have a Home Assistant server setup so I thought I would make an wireless air quality sensor using Ikea's Vindriktning and an ESP that so it can be monitored. But I ordered a few ESP32-C3 which is at the moment bleeding edge tecnology and isn't compleatly implimented in ESPHome. So.. at the moment this project is on hold.

Ikea Billy short bookcase

Okay so I have a wall with some bookcases on it and  clearly I need more shelves but I also want to keep the short bookcase in the middle as kind of a display area. Also I would love for them to all look the same.

The problem is, I do not have room for 3 bookcases without covering up a light switch. If I just had an extra 4 inches I could squeeze them all in. Now Ikea does sell a slimmer one but... (I often wonder what's the point, I mean I am sure it has its place but 15 inches is just not big enough.) Anyway I think it would just look odd.

So the plan is to make the short full width bookcase that Ikea sells a little skinnier. But after purchasing it I wonder why I didn't just buy a full size and only fill the bottom half with shelves. I would still have to make it skinnier but for the price and future movability it would have been the smarter move. Always second guessing things after it is done and cannot be returned! Or maybe It will just have to be version 2, oh well. Better luck next time 🤨? This is why I never get anything done!

But I digress, back to the plan! After measuring and then sitting on it for a day or two I measured again and realized I was off by almost 2 inches. Thankfully I had not made any cuts yet, but now I am mostly absolutely positive maybe that I need to take about 4 inches off the width of the bookcase. Maths is hard! Oh that made me remember the book I read Humble Pi, It's good and funny.

Yeah so... back to it... again. This is where I am currently with the project but I'll update this post and maybe add some pictures of the process once I'm done.

===== Update 6/??/2024 =====

So it's finnaly done! I finish the bookcase months ago but it has a wonkyness to it I'm sure one of my angles are off by a fraction of a degree causing it to skew just right jutting out one of the top corners by about a quarter to half an inch. I know not a big deal, but it is; it could be better. The second issue was the getting the shelves to fit right and drilling the holes for the Ikea shelf "pegs" on the shorter shelf planks. Which is what took so long, as I wanted to make sure they were square (eventhough the bookcase is awry) and I didn't have the equipment to do it and apparently I was having a difficult time asking a "friend" to use their table saw (I swear I don't have social issues). Anyway it's done, I wish I had done things differently, but I guess we can't know everything before we start a project.

SDR HD Radio

This was saved as an unfinished daft from a few years ago... figured I would post it anyway.

I just spent a ton of hours getting nrsc5 installed on my macOS without using ports or brew. The question is was it worth it?

Dependencies
- git
- cmake
- autoconf
- libtool
  - help2man
  - xz
  - automake
- libao
- libfftw3
    ./configure --enable-threads && make -j8 && sudo make install
    ./configure --enable-float --enable-threads && make -j8 && sudo make install
- librtlsdr
  - libusb
  - pkg-config
      ./configure --with-internal-glib
  edit CMakeLists.txt
    cmake_policy(SET CMP0075 NEW)
    set(CMAKE_MACOSX_RPATH 1)


nrsc5
edit CMakeLists.txt
  -check_symbol_exists (_Imaginary_I complex.h HAVE_IMAGINARY_I)
  -check_symbol_exists (_Complex_I complex.h HAVE_COMPLEX_I)
  +check_symbol_exists (I complex.h HAVE_IMAGINARY_I)
  +check_symbol_exists (complex complex.h HAVE_COMPLEX_I)
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/libtoolize /usr/local/bin/glibtoolize
cmake -DUSE_COLOR=ON ..
make -j8
sudo make install

and it works...

Would I do it again? Probably, but only now that I have this info on what I needed and what to change for it to work. Heck you could almost make a script out of it...

WHY

Soo… it's been awhile, and well right now things are tough. Simple things that most of the population seem to have no issues with tend to bog me down and imobilize me. Nothing gets done, nothing progresses, and it sucks! It's not like I don't want to do things I just don't want to do anything. For example I have a few projects that would be great if they were done, meaning that I would personally enjoy them being done, but every time I look at them I just feel overwhelmed and give up. I don't even try! And it feels pathetic, I feel like I'm pathetic and not worth anything. And I know that's the shame talking but it still takes it toll. It's buggy that what should modivate just overwhelms me and pushes me further down. Perfection is a hinderence and struggling doing a first draft, a failed run, just seems wrong. I know… well I understand that failure is one of the ways we learn but school taught me that failling is bad and I'm bad for doing it. WHY? Why does living have to be so hard? What's the point? Simple daily tasks like getting out of bed, finding food, or showering shouldn't be this difficult! And it is, it is…