Snow Time

Our first real snow shower this year.
February is usually the month we get our share.
Rain and sleet overnight now frozen to make the lane a skating rink.
Not a problem when I wear my old shoes fitted with snow/ice spikes.

Spiky Winter Pansies

The baskets of Winter flowering Pansies were looking a bit under the weather yesterday morning.



It had remained foggy or thick mist most of the day with the temperature struggling to get up to 0C

It surprised me when the frost on the Summer House roof melted but immediately re-froze as icicles:



We had a few flurries of snow last night but most had melted by this morning. The Pansy flowers have perked up and are back to a nice display of Winter colour. No sign of icicles with the temperature now at 2C.

Frosty

At -4C with freezing fog everything ended up covered in frost this morning.











All taken with an iPhone 6s

Fleeting Visit

Yesterday one Great Tit made a fleeting visit to the nestbox.
A snapshot from the 30 second video:



The way it was looking at the entrance I think it was hoping its partner would join it.

I'm waiting patiently for the female to perform a 'nestbox shuffle'  It always looks as though she is testing the overall size of the box and making sure the walls are strong enough. It appears to be a final test to see whether the nestbox is suitable for her.

This is one I captured about four years ago:

Great Tits Inspect Nestbox

I haven't seen the Blue Tit visit the nestbox since mid December.
Yesterday a pair of Great Tits gave it the once over.

Failure and Success

These 3d printed bits and bobs


fit together to make
    

a partly universal fitting to add a phone (camera) to the microscope.

It was to replace the one which came with the microscope
 

Whilst being very adaptable as far a suiting a vast range of cameras I was never happy with the idea of suction cups as a method of holding it in place. I did once have my iPod slide off.

Unfortunately the replacement design I had downloaded and printed out was
a) fragile - I snapped one bit trying to fit it together.
b) it didn't suit the iPhone 6s with its corner positioned camera.
    probably fine with phones with a camera nearer half way across their body.

I had a look round on the Thingiverse site and found another design which looked a better bet.
Here are the parts once printed out


I had already fitted together the three parts which make up the bit at the top of the photo.
On the V shaped section there is a ball and socket joint in which the end of the screw fits. This is three sections around the ball. One of those snapped as it was too close a fit but everything still holds in place.

All the parts assembled
   

Fitted to the microscope


With camera firmly held in place


Fortunately my phone has an added cover over the back and sides which protects the volume and power buttons or the clamp would press and activate them. I think I will add some of the old style adhesive foam strip we used to use for sealing gaps in wooden window frames years ago. That should cushion any possible pressure on the phone's buttons.

A photo of the hazel catkin with this set up


I did have problems with keeping the items stuck on the printer bed to start with. I think it was the overall low temperature in the unheated conservatory. Things were cooling down too fast. Increased the bed temperature from the usual 60C to 63C and the extruding temperature from the usual 200C to 205C and all worked perfectly.

A short video of the printer at work



I toned down the sound. The printer has four cooling fans and four stepper motors which can be noisyish at times.

My grateful thanks to user 'falconphysics' for publishing the design on Thingiverse.

Busy Creating

Just a quick photo of what I have been up to these past few days:



These parts have been made with a 3D printer.
I didn't design these but downloaded the files and converted them so I could use them.
A bit of final hand finishing tomorrow and I should be able to assemble them.
To make what?  If it works as intended then I will post about it in the near future.