Rat on a wall

 I've seen a rat around the outside of the house, and on the shed roof, but it then disappeared. Turns out they have strong enough claws to walk on walls.

siplec enrouleur automatique

 Bought this a good few years ago when Leclerc had it on offer.

Good enough, but recently it's not been winding back the last metre.

Rip out all the screws on this side. You can leave the black cover in place.

Carefully remove the screw under the rear sticker about half way. Balance it on securely on some wood chocks. Working from the front, it should just come off. If not keep undoing the rear screw a turn at a time. 

With it now open, keep pressure on the black cable reel. Turn the case, ACW holding the reel a until the cable block gets to the case, then add a couple of turns. Reassemble.

It wont matter if the black reel does come away - the spring will just pop out quite safely. But now you'll need to rewind it all. It can be tricky holding the tensioned reel in place and refitting the top. In that case remove the black cover and small centre screw. Then feed the cables through, place the slip ring north/south and refit the cover, passing the cables back through and matching up the square peg of the slip rings.

Sold the bikes

 After over 20 years of riding, we sold the bikes. It's not that we'll stop riding, it's just that we've barely ridden them in 2 years. Too hot, too cold, too many other things to do that we are enjoying more.

Received the money 27/4/26

Last seen at the dealer 😘

New HIFI project

I have a JVC cross media system that I bought in the mid 80s. It's slowly less relevant, and being old-school there is no remote! I started modifying the tuner to control the rest, but most radio stations are now streamed....

Found an old satellite TV STB and gutted it. A good compact size.

Before (mains lead removed)

The finished item. A bit of filler in the holes, primer and black top coat. 2 rotary encoders for main volume and sub volume. A RGB LED is green for on and slow blue flash for 'off' 

Server software is Lyrion Music Server.

2.1 amp. TAS5805. There are 2 chips stacked on the right hand side purple boards. Small board is a 3V3 psu which uses about 0.1W standby. A relay turns on the amp supply/external subwoofer. 

Power supply is an old laptop 19V 3A / 60W Took the top off for cooling, plus I wanted it earth free output. It means the metal emissions cage is missing. There's a built in Y cap which the cage shorted out, so this supply would appear to be approved for use in countries with earth free outlets. It's plenty to drive both chips.

A separate mains output for a subwoofer. It's a 50W 8R amp and cone. The TAS wont drive it hard enough, but I use the TAS loudspeaker output to drive the sub pre-amp. It's a nice 150Hz LPF output from the TAS. I could have used the i2s output to drive another DAC at line level, but let's be honest. It's a bass driver and a bit of HF/PWM noise from the D class TAS ain't going to be noticeable in a domestic setting.

Separate IR receiver as this project will be in a cupboard, and the receiver can hang outside. The range is over 10m. The remote is a random Philips RC5 one I was given that does more or less what I want and is easily configured on the server.

Software is heavily modified squeezlite-esp32 to give control to both TAS. TAS control software comes from here https://github.com/sonocotta/esp32-tas5805m-dac/tree/main

Hail

 Hail storm today 28/4/26 at 16h30

Rain works out to around 48mm/hour

Bosch series 4 washing machine remove paddle

How to remove the paddle/aerator on a Bosch series 4 washing machine.

There are lots of videos, but none show where the clip is. It's probably the same paddle design on a lot of these Bosch machines.

You can see the tab that needs lifting towards the bottom of the left photo. In the other photo, insert the screwdriver through the hole, under the tab arm and push down towards the drum. You're aiming to lift the arm.  Not too much. Then slide the paddle towards the front.

The access below the paddle is just enough to get a small pair of pliers through to the outer, and pick out bits of wire etc. Otherwise you'll need to pull the heating element.

For info, the heating element is fitted from the rear. If you look carefully through the drum you can see it stops about 10cm from the front.

Corona Mill for Crushing Brewing Grain

 There is another post where I tried to make a mill out of beech. It wasn't hard enough.

I got a Corona mill in the end. It takes a while to crush 7kg of grain, so the temptation is to use a drill. You need a lot of torque and slow speed. My Dewalt drill will do it, but the shaft is wonky.

I had an old break maker. Taking that apart gave some great parts to re-use. I have cheated and use a variac to slow the motor down, but it works well.