Re-purposing Things

Just over three years ago I wrote about a 3.5in TFT colour screen I had bought for use with the Arduino Mega. You can read about it HERE. The last thing I used it for was to try to show the minute changes in the Earth's magnetic field. That worked but the magnetometer (the bit of hardware which detects the changes) needed to be buried at least 3ft deep away from any other influences, like passing traffic as the metal vehicle body is enough to change the magnetic field.



I gave up on that idea for now but when I bought the Airfryer I found myself forever looking up recipes, especially temperatures and cooking times, for various foods. I started to write them down and then a flash of inspiration! Re-purpose the display to show a list of the items of food I will be airfryijng. Well it rook a lot longer than I thought to get an Arduino sketch (program) to work as it was the first time I had worked with arrays which contained more than one character in each entry. As always it was my lack of understanding when and where to define static, unchanging, and changeable integers, arrays and character strings. After the best part of three days reading and testing I finally made it work as I wanted.



Powered by two lithium rechargeable cells. The green and blue buttons on top allow me to scroll up and down through the list.



Three days of muttering, reading, rewriting code seems a lot for what ended up as less that 100 lines of code but I learned quite a lot and am finding it a useful addition to the kitchen clutter.

Monday Mystery

Last Monday I showed:



Yes Ellen D., it is some sort of cooker.



Wilma was spot on in saying it is an Air Fryer. I've only had it a short while. My old deep fat fryer was past its best before date and I was going to replace it but then decided to give an air fryer a whirl. My thanks to any who had a look and had a go at guessing.

This week I have something I spotted yesterday.



If you would like to have a guess as to what this little blue 'ball' is please leave it in the comments. They will be revealed, with the answer, next Monday.

Monday Mystery

After it being 'one of those days' I have finally got round to writing this post. Then I find I haven't even transferred the new photo to the laptop. Oh well, all done and ready now (I hope). Last week I showed:



To the best of my knowledge the correct answers were given by Wilma and Ragged Robin. As far as I can remember I have a couple of these which were advertised as containing tiny fossils of creatures which died in the seas millions of years ago. Thanks to all who had a go at guessing.

This week's close view may well be easier to work out.



If you would like to have go at guessing please leave your guess in the comments. They will be revealed, with the answer, next Monday.

Unidentified Bug

A group of dwarf marigolds needed dead heading. On one I spotted an insect I had not seen before today. For quite a while I thought it was a fly but looking at the poor photos I managed to get I think it may be more likely to be a weevil or similar.





The greenish V shape on its back should have made it easy to identify but an hour or so scouring the 'net' has proved so far to be fruitless.

Monday Mystery

Last week's close view ...



... didn't fool Kev Scott and Ragged Robin who both sussed out it was part of a cricket practice net.



Well done to both and my thanks to all who had a guess.

Struggling to find something I was totally satisfied with for this week but here goes.



What, in general terms, made the patterns in this rock? As always, if you would like to make a guess please leave it in the comments. They will be revealed, with the answer, next Monday.

Gardeners' Friend

Where I used to have two Hedgehogs visit the feeding station every night I now see just one which visits two or three nights a week. Early this morning the visitor earned its free meal when it found some natural food - a nice bug juicy slug.



That is one less to worry about! No sound from this camera.

A Tad on the Warm Side

I was reading about the local highways department sending out their hot weather gritter to spread a thin layer of sand on roads where the tarmac is melting and thought what is it like here?

The ambient air temperature seems to have peaked about 38C so I took a couple of photos looking up the lane where I live.

A screen shot displaying the Seek thermal imaging camera view and measurements alongside as near a match I could get of the same view in visible light:


The temperatures for each colour in the IR photo are shown down the left hand side. Lane surface up to 59C! Nice cool hedges on the shade side.

Ellen D. ... an apology. I found your missing comment in the spam folder. Chances are I carelessly hit the wrong icon. Now rectified and published.