DIY / Arts & Crafts

[hobbsyoyo]

Let's talk about the various DIY projects and arts and crafts we're working on.

Project 1: Total Television Domination
I've been working on setting up a DVR and an over the air (OTA) antenna for a few weeks. This morning I got it all set up. For the first day or so that I had the antenna mounted on top of a book that was placed on top of this flimsy lamp:

Spoiler Original Antenna Stand :

Then I moved it to the back bedroom on top of this chest of drawers:

Spoiler Second Antenna Stand :

The antenna is the huge white box facing the wall. That is the direction of the transmitters that I want to get signal from and it does pick up signal through the wall. However, after playing around with it this morning, I found it works best if pointed toward the camera so that the front of it has a view of the window, even though this is roughly 180 degrees offset from the transmitters.

Once I settled on orientation and location, I thought to myself that higher is better when it comes to antennas, so I swapped this short chest of drawers for a taller cabinet:

Spoiler Third Antenna Mount :

This was kind of a disaster. It took a lot of effort to pull everything out of the cabinets and drawers and move it all around. When I finally got the antenna mounted, I found out that at this height, it was getting direct interference from the TV to the right so it got no channels. I had to move everything back.

I also had to sort out the wiring from room to room. So this is what the routing looked like this morning:

Spoiler Cable Routing :

-->Versus the end of the job:

Spoiler Final Cable Routing :

I also had to use this splitter to run two TVs off the same antenna. I tried routing the signal through the in-wall coaxial cabling but it did not work. I am pretty sure I know why it didn't work but the fix for that was more complicated than running cabling between the rooms so I did that instead.

Spoiler Splitter :

This was the final as-built installation of the antenna:

Spoiler :

As of right now, I'm getting all the channels I want but that is still largely dependent on weather conditions. This is pretty much the best I can do with the location of my unit.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Project 2: The Standing Desk of Doom
I keep thinking that I am done with this project, but then I get bigger cardboard boxes in the mail that allow me to replace books, containers and clusters of small boxes. As of right now, the desk is finally made up of completely junk boxes. Before today, I would have to periodically take the desk apart to get at a book or open a container to grab something out of it. I am going to move that light on the left down onto the floor as the glare in my line of sight is too much in that location. The computer it is currently standing on also needs to be broken down and recycled, hopefully soon now that I can't stash it in a closet and never see it.

Spoiler Standing Desk :

I did have to cluster some smaller boxes to put my mouse on, but I taped them into one unit and they are the exact size and shape of box that I needed so I'm fine with it.

Spoiler :

Project 3: Grocery List
This one is pretty straight forward. My old grocery list clipboard got flimsy and greasy. New board is to the right and below.

Spoiler :

Project 4: Patch Display
This project is still ongoing as well. This Christmas (after I put this together), I got 5 patches that I had earned but not yet collected and they will fill out this display. I plan on adding them in next weekend. There are a bunch more missions I have worked on but haven't yet collected the patches for and when I get the rest of them, I'll have to order a custom frame to put it in. This frame can't handle any additional patches and I don't want to have more than one of these displays at the moment. I also want to swap out the cloth I used for some felt. I'll probably go with a dark green felt as I feel the black tends to make the patches sort of disappear if they are predominately black-colored. Being space-themed, the patches usually have a lot of black as you can see.

Spoiler Patch Display :