About

About this site:


I will publish some of the projects I have done over the years. I hope that they can come to use for others as well. Please note that most projects were done for me, I have not spent time to comment or clean up the files or code to reach a commercial level.

Feel free to copy, alter or get inspired.

Creative Commons License
Unless stated, all work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License.

About me:

My name is Johan von Konow and I’m a Swedish engineer with knowledge within mechanics, electronics, software and industrial design. During daytime I work within cyber security. During nighttime I develop my personal projects. I have quite a few projects that I think can be useful for others, my biggest problem is to find a balance between publish old projects and work with new ones :)

Equipment:

For 90% of the projects a good solder station and a Dremel will get you far. You can use breadboard, stripboard, make PCBs yourself (most of my projects are single sided) or order PCBs online.

Privately I have a decent workshop, solder station, a small CNC mill/ scanner and equipment for PCB manufacturing. This is sufficient for most of my projects. I am however fortunate to have access to a lot of advanced equipment through my work.

  • FDM 3D printer (BCN3D Sigma).
  • SLA 3D printer (Formlabs Form 2).
  • Really good solder stations.
  • Electronic and model workshop with most of the tools you need.

27 Replies to “About”

  1. Wow, thats some equipment you have there….

    I was thinking about purchasing a JBC soldering station myself, specifically the compact CD-2SB model for hobby use and projects. It looks a decent little unit but they are very few reveiws out there.

    Interesting website by the way…

  2. I think that the CD-2SB is a great option (but I have not tried that exact model). Previously I preferred Metcal (I have a sp-200 at home with an angled 0.5mm ssc- x26A tip). It is a really good all-round solder station but for ultra precision SMD work I think JBC is slightly better. SP200 is cheaper and have a lot of quick power, but you don’t get the adjustable temperature setting. On the other hand, the MHz skin effect technology that the Metcal uses gives you an extremely tight temperature (although for a fixed value)

  3. Was wondering if you had done any other Lego figures? We have a Dimensions 1200es printer and would like to make a few large figures for my son. Figured I’d see if you had any files I could get from you to try out on our printer.
    Thanks
    Kyle
    816.550.2929

    1. Hi Kyle.
      I have made a few other minifig models that I will try to publish in the future. Unfortunately, they are about the same size, so I don’t think that they are suitable for FDM in scale 1:1… One Idea could be to scale up the model. I am not sure about minimum wall-thickness and distance between parts for the 1200 model. If you find a way to make it work on your dimension, let me know!

  4. I love what you did with the TP-link router! I agree that the usefullness of this device is almost equal to the Raspberry Pi on many occations..

    You shoule look into PoE (Power Over Ethernet) more! Quite some thinks out there that needs to be converted into PoE cabable devices (like the Airport Express for instance..:)

  5. hi john, do you have yahoo messenger account? I should know.? I want to learn a lot about electronics with microcontroller from you. please reply to my comment if you like..
    cearazdhanee@yahoo.co.id

  6. Hello Johan,

    I’m writing an article about your Roland mill hacks for a German IT/Hacking website.

    Can we use the picture you took of the two PCBs inside the machine for the article? As we are a commercial publisher, your CC license does not allow us the use at the moment. (Of course the picture would be properly credited to you and not reused.)

    Regards
    Philip

  8. Can I get in touch with you sir? because out project is about web enabled home automation system with automated scheduling. Thanks!

  9. Hi Mr. Johan, very nice projects!
    I’m a student of Electrical Engeneering from Brazil and we are starting a group of Arduino projects at my College. We manage to make our own Arduino board once there is a lot of info about in the web.
    The choosed project is the Arduino Severino, because there is easy info about in the web. The main difficult is to make usb to serial converter without SMD, because the serial output is quite rare in notebook these days. Do you have some advice? We really need to have machine to to SMD ?

    Regards,
    André.

    1. Hi André.
      Yes, it is difficult to find through-hole mounted usb2serial chips. I don’t think that ftdi makes any versions. Personally I prefer the smd, since they take less space and you don’t need to drill any holes. But they are slightly more difficult to solder if you don’t have the right equipment… Maybe you can find a chip similar to the atmega16U2 that is used as an usb to serial converter in the Arduino uno?

      Otherwise I think it is easiest to use a dedicated usb2serial module or cable. Personally I would not choose the severino version, since I don’t see the point of converting 5V to 12V and back to 5V again unless you need long cables. Use a simpler version like the diavolino with an ftdi usb to ttl cable instead and you will get less components and lower cost. I made a single sided PCB for this a while back, let me know if you are interested!

      Good luck with your projects!
      /j

      1. Hi Johan, sorry for late answer.
        Made a quick search about Diavolino and found this site: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2010/diavolino/
        The model seems simpler than Severino and I like it! Using the Atmega328p-pu, better than the Severino and I think I can find the usb to ttl cable in the internet.
        One thing seems unclear to me: Arduino works with 5V, but the source is 12V?
        Did you make the whole Diavolino or only the PCB?
        Please, send one photo for me,
        Regards,
        André

  10. What is the improvement of using UV light during the PCB manufacturing?

    Thanks!

    1. UV light is used if you are using photo etching method (by exposing photo resist covered PCBs with a photo mask). The method allows high precision, but can be a bit more tricky then other methods. (Professionally made PCBs are made this way)
      You can also use direct transfer method or mill the pcb if you have access to a cnc mill.
      http://vonkonow.com/wordpress/2011/11/milling-a-pcb/

      1. Hi Mr Johan,
        I liked the Nanino very much! I bought a Atmega328p-pu with the same bootload of Duemilanove Arduino. Due to different architecture, is it compatible with Nanino?

        Thanks for your attention

  11. Hi Johan, Can you send along your contact details? We’re interested in writing an article about the laser cut gingerbread house. Thanks, John

  12. Thank you for posting your experience fixing an Apple Airport Express. It appears that my AE unit may have died and I just learned that Apple (in its infinite loop wisdom) no longer makes the travel-friendly all-in-one unit. Do you fix these units for others? I am not an experienced tech fixer so any recommendations for a reasonable repair option will be appreciated!

    1. Hi
      It’s a pity that the all in one unit is no longer available… I live in Sweden, so unfortunately I don’t think that sending a broken unit here makes much sense, especially since we don’t know the type of error, or even if it can be fixed.
      I see two options, repair, or find a different unit.
      For repair, I would recommend a local TV/radio repair center, or check if you can get help at a hacker space.
      http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces
      To buy a new or used unit check sites like ebay:
      http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_nkw=apple+airport+express&_frs=1

      Good luck!
      /j

  13. Pingback: Laser-cut gingerbread house is perfect … if you don’t taste it | Funny & Odd News

  14. Congrats for your website lots of cool projects there.
    Would you have an email adress to discuss a small project? Cheers

  15. Hello,

    Among several projects I am in the middle of ( many of which I see you have already concord … I have an old CNC milling machine with a dead controller waiting for me to build a new controller for it) ,,,, is home automation.

    My wife is paralyzed from the shoulders down. We are just about ready to move into a new house we build (19 months living in an RV in VT …not ideal but we did it).

    I knew X10 was “old technology” so I stayed away. I looked at several systems that used “programmable” switches. I found two problems. First, they are expensive ans second, they all seem to disappear after a few years … meaning I would need to change them all out after a few years.

    I home ran every light switch using 14/3 to a control enclosure. I also ran every light to this enclosure using 14/2. My plan was to use a “cheap” industrial PLC ( they can be had for a few hundred $’s). I would use a monetary push button for on and another for off ( thus the three wires to every switch) and the output of the plc would be the lights.

    This much I can do. My problem comes when I want to control the PLC using a tablet ( or laptop, smartphone, …). I figured the easiest was to make a web page running on a PC and interface this with the PLC. I did not realize that even “cheap” software to do this is $1500!!!!!!

    My question is, how would you recommend doing this? Is there some sort of break out board I could get for a PC that would interface with a web page or is an app I could somehow write ( or more likely “steal” and modify)?

    For now I have just used two of the three wires to the switch, put a standard switch in place, and “jumped” this over to the light. It works but it now time to automate and I am not sure what direction to take. I have pictures I could send of my panel if this helps.

    Thanks so much ….

    Mike xtal_01@yahoo.com

    PS … you are welcome to moving in with us for a year or so … I have a dozen projects I had to put on hold to build the house. I am hoping to get the mill up using a PC controller and MACH3 software (still thinking about drivers for the the servos), I am also changing a fork lift into an elevator for my wife ($40K for an elevator … so far less than $1K in the forklift …. can see on our blog). You can see the RV I converted for wheelchair use at mcsele.shutterfly.com/2299

    1. Hi
      Your question is hard to answer since I don’t know what kind of connections your plc has. I would guess that it has a RS232 serial connection for direct control. Then you could just connect it to a serial port on your PC/server. If the server has a web connection you can install a web server and control the serial port thru the webpage (like I did on the router). Personally I think that a router running open wrt or a raspberry pi is a better option than a PC, but use whatever you think is most convenient.
      It seems like you have a lot of fun projects ongoing. I really wish you good luck!
      /j

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