Your Coronavirus projects.

[LanghamP]

Since almost everyone has been sent home and most businesses are closed, what projects are you now doing?

Personally, I'm rotating between my violin, my piano, my guitar, and my ukulele. I'll do 10-20 minute lessons, switch to the next instrument, and so forth.

[ABEhrhardt]

Back to writing: the second novel, NETHERWORLD, in the Pride's Children trilogy. Mainstream. Now that we're in lockdown at our community, I have no excuse not to write. Finished a scene today.

The news it depressingly similar every day - too high a diet in bs to be sustainable.

Plan on playing the guitar and singing on the balcony.

[mike_bike_kite]

I'v already fixed the garage roof, serviced most of the motorcycles, cut a drainage channel for the garage and have just finished servicing the bicycles. Thinking of taking out the windows at the rear of the house and replacing all the hinges as they've been bad for a few years now. My main hobby is programming old style arcade games so all this has allowed me to finish off one or two. Reading (a lot). Trying to set up an outdoor gym and other amenities on the local park. Thought about taking up piano but the rest of the family voted me down on that one.

[Planemo]

The time has given me no excuse not to get back into my online Scotts Bass Lessons membership and get the Steinberg XT2 back out.

The Mrs also has me pulling down my rickety old shed and then sort a base for a shiny new bigger shed.

Theres 101 jobs on the house the Mrs has earmarked me for though

 

[LanghamP]

I've been cleaning out the garage with soap, simple green, a powerwasher, and a scrub. I am not happy with the amount of mouse poop I have found. It took over four hours to just do 1/3 of the garage.

If something is older than six months and hasn't been used, I pitch it with few exceptions.

[RetroThruster]

Shoot, not me, I'm a mail carrier, they handed me a bottle of hand sanitizer and said get back to work:/

[.....]

Polishing up on audio mixing skills, trying to learn about video editing, riding the euc more and avoiding the honey -do list. Maybe I'll even bang on some drums and power up the old synth. Guitar needs strings... the list can keep me busy until warm weather. Who knows what mayhem will ensue once its too nice out to avoid it. oh and of course... trying to get eucw to work reliably on my lemfo

Edited April 3, 2020 by ShanesPlanet

[esaj]

Not a project I was really looking forward to, but I bought a 55" LG 4K OLED tv from a friend last summer, as he was moving to Norway for helicopter pilot training. Unfortunately it broke two-three weeks back. Not totally broke, but anytime a video was supposed to play (ie. a TV-channel, or one of the apps, like Youtube or Netflix), all it was showing was "snow" for the video, while audio was still playing, and all overlays still worked (like WebOS menus, Netflix menus and subtitles etc.). Searching online, it seems to be a somewhat common issue and I found out that the usual culprit is the big XD Engine BGA-chip on the mainboard:

it seems that over time, as the board gets hot and cold, the thermal fluctuation breaks the contacts underneath the chip. Re-balling is an option, and the chips are available online with the firmware already in place, but I don't have the necessary equipment to work with BGAs. It might be possible to just reflow the chip in-place, but the board was too large to fit into my small toaster oven I use for reflow, plus I was worried that the components underneath the board might come off, and then there'd be little hope of figuring out what goes where  I managed to find the service manual online, and luckily I read it, because it tells you to write down the RGB-channel gain/cut-values (which are factory-adjusted for the specific panel on the tv, as there's some variation from one to the next) from the service menus of the old board if possible, otherwise it may be necessary to readjust with special equipment.

All in all, I managed to get a new board through a local tv-repair company (they could have of course fixed it for me, but the TV is too big to fit in our car with the box! ), and after swapping the board and correcting the values through the service menus (you need a special "service remote" to even access it, which I didn't have, but again luckily the IR NEC -codes are available online, and all it took was an Arduino and an IR-led + few other components to build my own) and exiting the service mode it's now working again.

I must say that servicing this thing is unnecessarily difficult. The panel has a curve, so laying it flat on a hard surface without any support, it might break under its own weight. The stand has to be taken off before the back panel can be opened, so you can't just open it up in place. Despite a lot of screws, the plastic cover for the hardware still has pretty annoying plastic "clips" inside. For testing, you need to put it back together, because you can't see the screen if it's laying down... you could just install the stand and leave the back cover open, but you can't put the back cover in place without removing the stand again first  Hopefully I won't have to deal with this again, but seeing that the cooling on the board is sub-par, I guess these things do break down every few years (the warranty is only 12 months, usually people have had these break down 2-3 years into use), of course depending on how much it's being used, ambient temps etc.

Edited April 4, 2020 by esaj

[Rehab1]

1 hour ago, esaj said:

and after swapping the board and correcting the values through the service menus (you need a special "service remote" to even access it, which I didn't have, but again luckily the IR NEC -codes are available online, and all it took was an Arduino and an IR-led + few other components to build my own) and exiting the service mode it's now working again.

  Congrats! Add TV repair guy to your long resume. 

[LanghamP]

I'm painting my house. It is dreadfully boring, yet surprisingly dangerous.

[mike_bike_kite]

5 hours ago, LanghamP said:

I'm painting my house. It is dreadfully boring, yet surprisingly dangerous.

It's all relative. Last year I had just finished a beginner bee keeping course when the local park asked if I could remove a large swarm from the top of an ancient tree in their yard. The only ladder we had was one of those extendable ladders that bends and creaks horribly when it's at max extension. The ladder was fairly tall but unfortunately the bees were higher which meant I'd need to stand on the last couple of rungs to reach them. Worryingly the ladder only just touched the final branch. I also couldn't hold on to anything as I was clutching a box in one hand and would be using my other hand to try and push the swarm into the box. There was a definite difference between reading how to do it in a book and being there. There was a bunch of people watching, all videoing what looked like it could easily become a youtube classic. They seemed a bit disappointed when it all went OK. Fortunately I was sent a photo - the top of the swarm is about 2 feet above my head and I was just building up my courage before going up the final few runs of the ladder.