Making Stuff Work

That little $500 ebike in the image replaces a car for me.

I've been tinering for as long as I can remember. Getting into my dad's tools, taking apart the new VCR and putting it back together, occasionally fixing things, building stuff, and just trying to see how things work and what I can do with them. I've never personally had access to proper, nice, or expensive tools and materials, outside of a few specialty items I saved up for and bought myself. I've repaired multi-million dollar machines, using parts and tools that cost as much as a car or house, but that was always one the company budget. Not my own.

My personal tinkering has been done on either a very tight, or non existent budget. I've never been wealthy. I've always tinkered though. From rigging a Power Wheels car up with a full size car battery and fixing lawn mower engines as a kid, to designing, building, programming, and using a custom water heater controller in an off grid camper I built, or even living off of an electric touring bike I built from cheap parts, I've always just found interesting ways to make stuff work for me.

That ebike project was one of my most interesting, as any "enthusiasts" I spoke to told me that a fairly cheap bicycle, with a super cheap Chinese ebike kit could not possibly be reliable and practical. I immediately proved them wrong by spending $1,000 on a bike, $1,000 on an ebike kit, and $500 on clothing and upgrades, and replaced my car. I actually got rid of that car after a while, because it just sat there, siphoning off money for the insurance. Over 6,000 miles, and about 3 years later, that bike is still going quite strong. Outside of it constantly breaking spokes on the rear wheel, it's been rock solid. It's chewed through brake pads, rotors, and tires as you would expect, but it's had almost no issues or major maintenance otherwise. I even neglected it and abused it for quite a while by pulling a loaded trailer, weighing it down with heavy saddle bags, and riding on some truly horrid road surfaces. The broken spokes are likely my fault for not building the rear wheel properly and keeping up on spoke tension. It doesn't help that I'm heavy and the bike has a high torque motor built into the wheel, constantly twisting away at the spokes. In the end, I was right about the combination of parts and materials that went into that bike, and I can recommend a few things, knowing that they're likely to be useful and reliable. I also seem to be the only person who has done a long term stress test of that bicycle. I've found I'm often the only person testing things and reporting back on them. I seem to find weird problems to solve. I recently went searching online for how to install some software on a weird Linux operating system, and found but a single guide on the internet: the one I had written two years prior. It was still valid. Go figure.

On the more stationary side of things, I've done some interesting work with computers as well. I like to work with video from time to time. That usually requires a very powerful computer for editing and converting the original video files and creating final videos. It can take a ton of processing power to make for a smooth experience. When my budget for things outside of survival was basically zero, I still had to be able to edit videos. I happened to have this weird, $100 educational computer built into a keyboard. A Raspberry Pi 400. It's got about as much processing power as a 10 year old low end smartphone, which doesn't seem to be enough to work with these video files at all. It couldn't even play them. Most people would think it would be impossible to edit 4K video on such a device. It was all I had, so I just started working on it. What I found was that you could do all of the processing at the very beginning and end of the editing process, meaning that when you sat down to edit on this computer, it was perfectly usable, when it really shouldn't be. The tradeoff was long waiting periods before and after editing, but it was possible. My process became to load in the video files, let them process while I did something else, edit the video when it was done, then let the final processing run while I went to bed or work. I came back to a finished 4K video file, ready to upload to YouTube. It should not have been possible on such a low powered computer, but proxy clips made it possible. I'm the only person I've ever known or read about who edited 4K video on a Raspberry Pi 400. I find that quite fun. That was also my only computer at the time, so I did all sorts of other weird stuff on it. These days I run a Raspberry Pi 5 as my main computer, inside of an old Packard Bell case. You can see that weird contraption in a previous post. It's weird and wonderful.

These days, I'm working on far more complex problems, on a very tight budget, all while trying to manage my annoying modern life and job. I've got a proper modern cartridge based computer system in the works, a custom cinema camera project, custom Linux operating systems to build, a few card and board game prototypes that need refined, a cargo ebike that needs a solar power system, and tons of videos to produce as I tinker and travel. Without endless money to just throw at problems, I find myself forced to just make stuff work.

I'm also starting a little business to make and sell useful and interesting things, which will require tons of packaging material. I'll buy new shipping boxes, but I make my own packaging material. I bought two used heavy duty paper shredders, hooked them to a power drill, and used them to shred three 55 gallon drums worth of cardboard. It's soft, sturdy, free, recyclable, non toxic, reusable, and good for starting campfires. I could just spend money on manufactured packaging materials, like foam or bubble wrap, but that cuts into profits, which could fund further development and such. I just can't bring myself to buy packing material when I can just shred the random paper and boxes that show up at the door all the time. I can spend around $100 to put a much stronger, more permanent motor on the paper shredder and just shred boxes as I get them. If I have too much, I can use it in a worm farm to create useful worms and complete to grow my own food. I even spent a few hours, in the middle a desert in California, talking to a worm farmer. It was fascinating. Anyways, I suspect the shredded cardboard will be better than buying plastic bubble wrap. It does require time and effort, but I'm ok with that. It's kind of relaxing to break down boxes in front of a TV, then feed them into the hungry mouth of an over powered paper shredder.

Another area where I just make free stuff work is computing. I need all sorts of design software for things like electronic devices, physical devices, software, and video production. If you were to pay for the name brand stuff, for commercial use, you'd likely be spending thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars per year in licensing fees. Especially with companies like Adobe jacking up their prices and providing terrible software at the same time. You could even end up on Microsoft Windows as an operating system, with its endless bugs, security threats, system wide advertising and data collection, and general nonesense. I ditched Windows back around 2017 and have never gone back. I ditched AutoDesk software around the same time. I've been using a Linux operating system ever since, loaded with free and open source software (FOSS). These days I use Pop!_OS Linux with KiCAD, Kdenlive, Firefox web browser, and all sorts of other free software. It's all managed by users who volunteer their time and knowledge to keep it all working. Life on Linux can be hard at times, but it's been well worth it to actually have access to the kind of software I need, but could never afford.

I realize just how long I've been typing this, and I think it's time to wrap it up. My point with this post is to let people know that there are other options in life, outside of what's forced on us by various corporations, employers, ads, and even other people. It's well worth learning some new skills and using them to escape the various traps of life and save some serious money. Not everyone can replace their car with a bicycle or an ebike, or take the time to learn Linux, but everyone can replace some of their spending by learning basic skills and putting more time and effort into doing things differently or for themselves. As a tow truck driver, I met many younger folks who had no idea how to change a flat tire, refused to even try, and sat around waiting for me to arrive and change it for them. Oftentimes they would wait for multiple hours, in terrible weather. It was sad. I'd hate to see the world go that route, but it looks like we're well on our way. I'll do what I can to prevent that future. I'm always willing to share and teach. I don't have anyone to teach right now, so these blog posts will have to do for now. I'm planning to make some useful guides for the site soon, based on the random knowledge gained from a lifetime of experimentation. For now, I'd be happy to get people thinning about what's out there.

If anyone needs me, I'll be tinkering with something, trying to find interesting uses for stuff, and seeing what kind of nonsense I can get into. Probably with bicycles or computers. Go tinker. It's good for ya.

Cheers,

Dustin