Raising Awesome
Welcome to the Raising Awesome Website. We are a 10+ year father and son Maker team. Here you can find
all our projects from various contests, magazines, and Youtube channels. Check out our daily tips
and highlights just below.
When Connor was 5, he thought it would be cool for us to make an R2D2. Little did we know it
would change the trajectory of both our lives for the next 12 years. We went on to a journey to learn all Maker skills. Although, as his dad, I
brought to the table years of programming and practical experience working on my cars and homes, I learned along with him on
electronics and metal working. Our journey continued through his teen
years. We are now down to less than a year until the big launch to college.
Along the way, we learned 3D printing, how to solder, how to weld, how to design with Autodesk Fusion 360, and on and on. The projects covered home maintenance and construction, mechatronics, IoT, and automative repair. We also matched our projects to life principles to help illuminate the best person he could become.
We consider our time on these projects very well spent. It gave him insights and a life plan for the world ahead. The result is a great repository for new parents to take on such a journey with their children. Or, at the least, it's a great site to find great Maker projects and learn to become a jack of all trades (which is way better than just a master of one).
Along the way, we learned 3D printing, how to solder, how to weld, how to design with Autodesk Fusion 360, and on and on. The projects covered home maintenance and construction, mechatronics, IoT, and automative repair. We also matched our projects to life principles to help illuminate the best person he could become.
We consider our time on these projects very well spent. It gave him insights and a life plan for the world ahead. The result is a great repository for new parents to take on such a journey with their children. Or, at the least, it's a great site to find great Maker projects and learn to become a jack of all trades (which is way better than just a master of one).
Tip of the Day: A great way to cut stone is simply with a 3 inch chisel. Tap a line that you want to cut on and keep tracing it. In just a few passes, even big stones will suddenly split right on the line. Way quicker than getting out a saw. Works great to size pavers.
Highlight of the Day: Sparkfun - When we first built our R2D2, sparkfun provided the proximity sensors and mp3 player. They are really awesome and were born out of the Maker revolution of the late 2000's. They also were crazy and posted their designs. These are great references to make your own circuits that give you trouble like amplifiers that tend to be noisy without some serious test gear and development.
Raising Awesome Maker Blogs
These are general blogs to help you do what we do - and help us remember what we did to do it again.
Here is the index of our mechatronic and programming projects published across the web and various media.
ASP.Net Core 5-Showing All Request Headers
Sometimes you need to see the stuff that is being sent behind the scenes in the Request Headers. These are text variables passed as part of the header of the hyper text transfer protocol (aka HTTP).
Setting Up an Amazon Web Server circa 2021
This is a head-to-toe instructions on how to set up your own free web server hosted on Amazon Web Services running on .Net Core 5.
Streaming to YouTube on a Raspberry Pi
After miles of research we finally found the one-liner it takes to stream one's Raspberry Pi to YouTube.
People love their phones. So, if you can have the user interface (UI) of your Maker project be their phone, do it. It also makes your project less expensive and with less parts to troubleshoot and maintain. This guide takes you through setting up the Pi as an ad hoc Wi Fi module so one can connecct. It then provides a simple web server example to serve as the interface.
ASP.Net Core 5-Getting the User's IP Address
Now that ASP.Net Core can run on Linux - often it is running under a reverse proxy from a web server like Apache. So, the default references to a users IP return the local IP of the Apache server. This makes for a very hard Google to figure out. Luckily, we nailed it, finally.
If you are having trouble getting PC games to consistently work with Microsoft Game Pass Ultimate, this might be the trick.
Blog Stream - A Diary of What We are Up To...
2023/05/01
I've been using Javascript since Netscape Navigator. Over the years, I'd learn new platforms that come along. It never clicked as to why bother with them beyond JQUERY. It finally clicked for me.
2023/04/30
I wanted to see just how fast you can make a full development framework for an enterprise web application if you didn't have to go through corporate red tape. So, I created a free tier and found out the truth.
2022/12/10
We've honed in on Microsoft's .Net Razor and Blazor pages as our go-to web app engine. Although when read out loud, it's simple to set up multiple sites under one IP address, but it is very hard to remember. This blog serves as a memory jogger on how to do so.
2022/12/04
Our refrigerator started to make a thumping sound that final resulted in lack of cooling for both the fridge and freezer side. This blog covers how we fixed it.
2022/11/13
SMD components are now so cheap, its like they are free. They allow one to make a super small PCB for their inventions and projects. This blog covers my tips for making the transition to SMD components and the reasons why to do so.
2022/10/16
We are building a drone from the ground up, the Rawpter (aka Raising Awesome Copter). The goal is to learn every detail on quad copter tech and autonomous flight. So, we are building it from the ground up with the exception of motors and the ESCs. Everything else to get it in the air is uniquely our own built with our CNC, 3D printer, and Autodesk Fusion 360.
2022/09/05
Sparkfun made an excellent comparison of various GPS modules. Although very much dated, it gave a really good education as well. I added it here just for future reference.
2022/08/03
We researched all over the internet to see if MDF was as good as wood for an electric guitar. The consensus was no. But, we elected to use it to hone in our design - the results amazed us!
2022/07/31
I bought a very good charger on Amazon. It being super versatile, I needed to research the best settings for it for our various batteries. The table below summarizes our battery inventory. We'll grow the info as our battery collection grows.
2022/07/25
A very versatile CNC for wood, metal and laser milling, carving, and etching.
2022/07/23
With today's energy needs across the globe, industrial steam trap health has never been more important. This project provides a stream trap monitoring system under $100 that will save THOUSANDS per year and lower Carbon Emissions!
2022/07/16
Unknowingly, I built a CNC with Shapeko stats. So, a little googling and I found a good source for feedrate settings to use with Autodesk Fusion 360 to generate GCode.
2022/07/15
With 10W (2 laser) Designs on the market, those smaller, non mirrored, no tube designs are cutting faster. I went on a quest to see just how fast I could cut poster board. However, I quickly hit a wall.
2022/07/15
If you want to show up in search engines, Google and Bing have a site where you can describe your website. This basically registers with them for web crawling your content to make searches easier.
2022/07/13
Our first adventure with acrylic wasn't too impressive, but we did end with a really cool pickguard for our replica of Eddie's guitar from Stranger Things 4.
2022/07/09
After a lifetime of fly tying, Jess Miller perfected a bass catching streamer. We share his secret design to the world here.
2022/07/09
The Arduino IDE has many boards defined for exploration of their dev boards. However, to make your own custom SoC product, you will eventually want to design a very lean board with your own ARM Firmware. This blog will get you started.
2022/07/08
The nice folks at Wiznet sent a contest solicitation. They offered to send us a module for entering, so we thought we'd take a look. We found a very fast and useful wifi component for our future boards!
2022/07/02
With mobile phones in everyone's hands these days, single page apps seem to now be the logical approach to Web App development. This guide will show my approach to an elegant single page app that runs great on the largest of desktop monitors to the smallest of headless devices.
2022/07/02
For security purposes, .Net will prevent web pages from posting a form to a different domain and page. Sometimes, you want to do this, though, for development or for centralizing code.
2022/06/30
This guide shows one how to set up SQLite3 for the first time for use with .Net applications under Linux.
2022/06/30
Sometimes it's relaxing to kick back on the couch with a laptop and get your thoughts out on your projects. So, I made a blog editor to do so.
2022/06/26
We liked our real life smart home lights so much, we made a framework for our dollhouse.
2022/06/22
Our first exploration into the world of CNC. We built a light weight, portable Jumbo Laser Etcher (3' x 3').
Recent Comments
Have a question or comment?
2023/01/04
Page: DollhouseLights
Question: I am trying to figure out how to do exactly this for my huge 1:24 scale apartment building project. I want to install ceiling lighting in all the apartments, offices and stores that can be individually controlled from an app. I have NO idea what I am doing. I WILL actually need around 60/65 lights, so it sounds like what you did would be perfect. Any chance you have a tutorial of how you set this up? I would be more than willing to pay for a detailed guide or something.
Answer: Hello. Sorry I hadn't got back to you sooner! I'll be glad to send you a board that I designed and had made at PCBWay. They give you 10 of them with each order - 9 more than I needed (lol). Use the "Contact Us" link in the upper right to zap me an email.
Question: I am trying to figure out how to do exactly this for my huge 1:24 scale apartment building project. I want to install ceiling lighting in all the apartments, offices and stores that can be individually controlled from an app. I have NO idea what I am doing. I WILL actually need around 60/65 lights, so it sounds like what you did would be perfect. Any chance you have a tutorial of how you set this up? I would be more than willing to pay for a detailed guide or something.
Answer: Hello. Sorry I hadn't got back to you sooner! I'll be glad to send you a board that I designed and had made at PCBWay. They give you 10 of them with each order - 9 more than I needed (lol). Use the "Contact Us" link in the upper right to zap me an email.
2022/10/16
Page: rawpter10_16_22
Question: Is it cheaper to buy the frame or build it?
Answer: It's definitely cheaper to buy it, unfortunately. But, we wanted to develop the feel for quadcopter design which, for us, comes from hands on experimentation. So, we did a combination of 3D printing and CNC to make a frame from acrylic and PLA.
Question: Is it cheaper to buy the frame or build it?
Answer: It's definitely cheaper to buy it, unfortunately. But, we wanted to develop the feel for quadcopter design which, for us, comes from hands on experimentation. So, we did a combination of 3D printing and CNC to make a frame from acrylic and PLA.
2022/09/05
Page: GPSSelection
Question: What are you going to use the GPS for?
Answer: We are building our first FPV drone. We thought it would be good if it could return on its own when the battery hits a certain range. We'll have it go up to the max ceiling and then head back to the start point.
Question: What are you going to use the GPS for?
Answer: We are building our first FPV drone. We thought it would be good if it could return on its own when the battery hits a certain range. We'll have it go up to the max ceiling and then head back to the start point.
2022/08/03
Page: mdfGuitar_08_03_2022
Question: Is the neck MDF?
Answer: No - it is maple. We bought it for $50 on Amazon actually. It had no tuners, but had an installed truss rod, frets, and dots. Almost too good to be true. If you zoom in to the tuners, you'll see where we laser etched our own logo.
Question: Is the neck MDF?
Answer: No - it is maple. We bought it for $50 on Amazon actually. It had no tuners, but had an installed truss rod, frets, and dots. Almost too good to be true. If you zoom in to the tuners, you'll see where we laser etched our own logo.
2022/07/03
Question: What did you use to build this website?
Answer: VS Code, which is a text editor with all kinds of bells and whistles for code formatting and connecting to remote locations. The site was written from scratch and could have just as well been written with Windows Notepad. lol
Answer: VS Code, which is a text editor with all kinds of bells and whistles for code formatting and connecting to remote locations. The site was written from scratch and could have just as well been written with Windows Notepad. lol
2022/07/03
Page: cors7.2.22
Question: How do you keep from someone hacking form data into your site without Antiforgery turned on?
Answer: I only turn off the anti-forgery for troubleshooting, where I'm protected by authentication, or where the post could not inherently result in corrupted data.
Question: How do you keep from someone hacking form data into your site without Antiforgery turned on?
Answer: I only turn off the anti-forgery for troubleshooting, where I'm protected by authentication, or where the post could not inherently result in corrupted data.
2022/07/03
Page: LaserEtcher
Question: What did this cost you to build?
Answer: Around $350 US dollars in 2021 - with about $180 being just the laser. The rest was very affordable.
Question: What did this cost you to build?
Answer: Around $350 US dollars in 2021 - with about $180 being just the laser. The rest was very affordable.
2022/07/03
Page: WoodCNC
Question: Where did you get the crossbar?
Answer: Amazon.com from the vendor OpenBuilds. It's called C Beam.
Question: Where did you get the crossbar?
Answer: Amazon.com from the vendor OpenBuilds. It's called C Beam.
