Beekeeping is one of the many and varied interests of TOG members. Our member John is a keen beekeeper, and he recently captured a swarm to create a new colony.
As the number of honeybees in a hive increases, the usual natural way to prevent overcrowding is by swarming. A few scout bees will find a new location, and the old Queen will leave the hive with about two-thirds of the bees. They often cluster on a tree branch before settling into a new location.
One way to catch a swarm is to put a box containing comb frames in a tree. Drops of lemongrass oil act as an attractant because they resemble the pheromone of a Queen bee.
In this case, a swarm of honeybees have gathered under the box, rather than inside. These bees were removed by gloved hands and placed in the box. The Queen will start to lay eggs and establish a new hive. The bees remaining in the old queenless hive will raise a new virgin Queen who will fly out, get mated and return to lay eggs.
Taking some inspiration from our aquarium project in the space, John is planning a monitoring project for a hive, including some sensors and a camera to watch the bees remotely.
Over the years, I’ve collected several rare machines and long dreamed of building add-on devices for them, something to expand their memory or load software from modern storage devices like SD cards, or even over Wi-Fi. These vintage devices typically load from tape or floppy disks, which is a painfully slow process. However, due to a lack of time and experience with complex electronics, I hadn’t been able to complete any such project.
That changed last month when I met Roman, a new TOG member. He offered to help and turned out to be much more experienced in electronics design. Using KiCad and modern components like an FPGA and ESP32, Roman designed a custom board. These chips are incredibly small and require special tools and techniques to work with.
We had the board manufactured at JLCPCB.
While I have a general understanding of electronics, I had never soldered such tiny components before. Roman had some experience with small parts, but even for him, this was a new level of precision.
We found a preheating plate at TOG and ordered a stencil to apply solder paste. Yesterday, we met at the space to try soldering the smallest chip on the board.
The first step was applying the solder paste using the stencil. This turned out to be trickier than expected. We had to align the stencil perfectly with the board’s pads, spread a thin, even layer of paste, and carefully lift the stencil without smearing it. It took us several tries. Sometimes the stencil shifted, and other times we applied too much paste.
Before soldering the actual chip, we did a test run on a spare board without placing any components, just to see how the paste would behave during reflow. That helped us understand how the solder would spread and whether it would stay properly on the pads. It was a useful trial that gave us more confidence before working with the real part.
Eventually, we decided to go ahead and solder the chip, even though some areas had a bit more paste than ideal.
We used a special hot plate that gradually heats the board to around 240°C. As it warms up, the solder paste melts and flows onto the pads, guided by surface tension.
The process is slow, so the whole operation took a while. But in the end, the chip was successfully soldered. You can see it in the photo, though there’s still some leftover flux that we’ll need to clean off with isopropyl alcohol. Unfortunately, we ran out of time on Monday evening, so that step will have to wait.
We can’t fully test whether the chip is working yet, as other components on the board still need to be soldered. However, we’ve checked for shorts between adjacent pins, and everything looks good so far.
This was just the first step, but it already feels like a big achievement. With a bit more work, we hope to bring some of these old machines back to life, with modern upgrades that keep the retro spirit alive.
Check out this cool aquarium project by our member Hussam. This is an aquaponics project called ”PIPONIC”. The system can be monitored and controlled remotely. Aquaponics combines fish and plants in one self-sustaining setup. In this case, the fish and plants are goldfish and mint.
The system runs on a Raspberry Pi 3, with a few key components: • A light sensor that turns on LEDs in the dark • A 12V water pump that cycles on/off to keep the water moving; • A MAX31865 sensor that monitors water temperature for the fish (16–24°C); The system logs data to a CSV file and sends it to Hussams website via an API for real-time monitoring. A camera connected to the Pi allows a visual check the water level.
Hussam is currently working on automating the water level and would love to team up with others to explore new ways to expand the system and make it even more sustainable and smart. TOG has been the perfect place to experiment, learn and share creative ideas about projects like this. The aquarium is in our kitchen in the space. You can usually find Hussam at Electronics Night on Mondays. Feel free to drop by if you’d like to chat, share ideas, or collaborate on improving the system!
USB-C conversions are becoming a bit of a thing around here. We repaired a faulty work light earlier this year, and we took the opportunity to upgrade the charging socket to USB-C. A few other items have had the same treatment over the last few months. This latest one is an old-school light box for viewing film negatives and slides. We’re still keen on our film photography at TOG, and we still have all of our dark room equipment.
As-built, this particular light box came with with a foot-long fluorescent tube. Inside, there is a driver PCB for the tube, and a 6x D-cell battery compartment. It also has a 3.5mm power input socket if you want to run it from some kind of adapter.
The small driver PCB inside takes the ~9V battery voltage and bumps it up to the high voltage required to to run the fluorescent tube. The switching transistor on the driver has already failed once in the past, and its heat sink gets very hot during operation. Probably not a very optimal design or power efficient.
A bit of work with a Dremel and we have a nice oval hole for the new USB-C socket. A few touches with a soldering iron to melt the plastic, and the socket is now joined firmly to the case. The intention was to feed in 5v, and then bump it up to something closer to 12v to charge the batteries via a current limiting resistor. A cheap voltage converter sourced from the usual websites would look after that.
That was the intended upgrade, but a bit of feature creep came along last night. We thought that it would be nice to replace the fluorescent lamp with a more power efficient LED one. This would also allow us to eliminate that iffy driver PCB. Rummaging around the space, an old emergency light fitting had a nice LED strip ripe for harvesting. Check back in with us over the next while to see the finished article. If you have anything that you think might benefit from a USB-C upgrade, drop in to our regular Monday and Tuesday open nights.
With energy prices climbing and smart homes becoming the norm, having a clear view of your household power usage has never been more valuable. That’s what motivated me to create a compact, real-time energy display powered by an ESP32 and a 2.8″ TFT touchscreen—fully integrated with Home Assistant for accurate, live data at a glance.
Why I Built This I already had a power monitoring system installed through my home energy provider. While it gave a general idea of usage, it was far from ideal:
It only updated every 30 minutes to an hour, making real-time decision-making impossible.
It didn’t show live solar production, even though I had solar panels installed.
It lacked any visual clarity—just vague numbers with no context on where power was flowing.
Most importantly, there was no breakdown of grid vs solar vs battery usage. – Without opening my phone
Also existing power monitor does not do negative number so any feedin from solar does not show.
That’s when I realised I needed something more flexible, accurate, and immediate—custom-built to show the exact figures I cared about.
2.8” TFT Touch Display (320×240) – A colourful and responsive screen with touch input, perfect for compact dashboards.
Home Assistant – My existing setup, which already tracks energy through integrations like the Energy Dashboard or MQTT sensors. Shelly
What It Shows
The display cycles through or organises a simple dashboard view with key stats:
🌞 Solar Power: Current generation in watts.
🏠 Home Consumption: Real-time power draw.
⚡ Grid Usage: Whether I’m importing or exporting electricity.
🔋 Battery Level: Charge percentage and power flow.
Water temperature in boiler
These are live, accurate figures from my energy system—not delayed estimates.
How It Works The ESP32 fetches data from Home Assistant using either its REST API or MQTT feed. I chose to parse JSON data from Home Assistant’s /api/states endpoint, which allows me to pull specific sensor values and display them on the TFT screen.
To keep it fast and responsive:
Sensor values update every few seconds.
Touch input can be added for toggling views or brightness.
The layout is clean, using large fonts and colour-coded elements for clarity.
Check out this reflection from our member Jeffrey Roe on returning to a project he first worked on over a decade ago.
Back in 2009, I moonlighted as an art technician, working with artist Liam O’Callaghan on an ambitious audio-visual installation involving vintage record players, relays, and looping vinyl. At the time, I didn’t give much thought to cable management. I just wanted it to work, and it did.
Over a decade later, that same installation was pulled out of storage for a new showing at the 2025 Drogheda Arts Festival. Rebuilding and repairing something I made in my early days was a humbling and hilarious experience. I was faced with mystery wires, unlabeled plugs, cryptic C++ code, and lots of “why did I do it this way?” moments.
The Technical Overview
The installation is made up of eight vintage record players, each with a unique vinyl record acting as a sound sample. They’re all triggered in a choreographed sequence, starting and stopping in time to form a layered mechanical symphony.
To achieve this, two Devantech USB-RLY16 relay boards (8-channel, 16 Amp) control the power to each turntable. A C++ program communicates with the boards over serial to switch them on and off at precisely timed intervals.
Audio from the turntables is routed through a M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R into AudioMulch, which is used to smooth transitions and apply real-time effects like fades and filtering. The whole thing runs on a laptop with Windows XP(yes, really), using the Windows Scheduler to automate playback sequences.
The Refurbishment Timeline
Here’s how it all came back together over five repair sessions:
Night 1: Repaired two record players, replaced worn-out speaker wires, and rewired new plugs. Night 2: Fixed a turntable spinning in the wrong direction, replaced a few needles, and swapped out a failed unit. Night 3: Reconfigured the soundcard defaults and added much-needed labels (finally!). Night 4: Final testing and adjustments to get everything running smoothly. Night 5: Automated the entire performance loop and added safeguards for show reliability. That meant rechecking the schedule triggers, failover behaviour, and adding some emergency manual controls in case something went wrong mid-show.
Lessons From the Past
Seeing my younger self’s wiring choices was a reminder of how far I’ve come and how much I’ve learned. If I were rebuilding this today, I would:
Use modular smart nodes like ESP32S with MQTT or OSC for cleaner communication
Create a simple web-based interface for testing and configuration
Avoid the cable jungle with proper labelling, documentation, and good cable management
Still, there’s a charm to seeing something so handmade still working after all these years.
The Show and What’s Next
Bit Symphony was exhibited over the May bank holiday weekend at the Former Methodist Church on Laurence’s Street as part of Drogheda Arts Festival 2025. The response was fantastic. Visitors were fascinated by the tactile, analogue-meets-digital nature of the work.
📸 Check out a gallery of photos from the rebuild and exhibition here: [Photo Gallery Link]
Thanks to everyone who stopped by, asked great questions, and appreciated the slightly chaotic beauty of eight record players making music together. Who knows, maybe in another 10 years, I’ll be repairing it again (with better cable ties this time).
