A non-clock post

-
I figure I should post something non-clock related.  One of my other hobbies is collecting firearms and target shooting.  It's a hobby at this point as I'm not shooting competitively yet, but I have wanted to build a target rifle and/or hunting rifle for some time.

I ran into a guy at my last range trip that was praising his Millett TRS scope.  I took a look at it and also liked it.  I also liked the price.  For $300 you get a 4-16x50mm scope with illuminated mil-dot reticle and other nice features.  I ordered one from Cheaper Than Dirt and it arrived very quickly.  I just ordered a mount for it from Wilson Combat.  I got the Accu-Riser scope mount for 30mm scopes.



My plan is to see if this will fit on my current AR15 carbine, and if so I should be able to play with it for a while.  If it won't fit (it's a large scope) I plan to get a new 20" upper and be able to switch out the carbine or rifle uppers at will.  Right now I'm leaning toward this one from Palmetto State Armory.

Eventually, I would like to get a new lower as well.  I either want to get the Magpul PRS stock or the CAA ARS stock.  Right now I'm leaning toward the CAA stock.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

V-22 Osprey Project - Design Changes for v3

-
Image
It's been a busy end of 2021, and as we start 2022 I'm getting closer to building version 3 of the Osprey wing.  The single biggest problem I've faced is the amount of backlash in the direct spur gear drive of the tilt mechanism.  It introduces some nasty instability that, left unchecked, would likely destroy the model in flight. I've investigated other tilt mechanisms, but the one I keep coming back to is the rack and pinion design that Tom Mast uses in his model at Rotormast.  His design uses a high-torque digital servo with a small pinion gear driving a rack attached to the rotor nacelle.  The servo has been modified with an external potentiometer that's driven by a gear on the translation tube to give positional feedback to the servo.  I like this design a lot because 1) It works, and his model is proof, and 2) it requires less torque from the servo and has less backlash. I ordered the pair of modified servos, potentiometer, and rack from Tom's site and star...
Read more

Whereabouts Clock Update

-
Image
After a few months, Life360 has gone the way of Apple and locked down the API I used to get location data from the phones.  This is disappointing, but inevitable. I found on a forum for Home Assistant that the app OwnTracks might be a suitable alternative. It's a neat little app that will trigger the phone to send its location data via MQTT to a server that you specify. I had to rework the code a bit, but the new operation is as follows: OwnTracks on the phone will push location data per its configuration to the MQTT server (Docker container) The Mosquitto (MQTT Broker) container will receive the data and forward the data to its subscribers The MQTTWarn container is a subscriber and translates the received data and adds it to the MariaDB database The Apache web server hosts a Python CGI script that is checked each minute by the Arduino microcontroller.  If the data has changed, the hands are moved to the new location. The only exposed port to the Internet is TCP 1883 for...
Read more

Whereabouts Clock: New Clock Mechanism

-
Image
 When I made the first mechanism of the Whereabouts Clock I utilized sail winch servos to get a motion that was at least 360 degrees.  Most RC servos are limited to about 180 degrees before they hit a physical limit.  I always wanted to create a clock with motors that weren't limited in the number of rotations, such as a stepper motor. However, stepper motors don't retain positional accuracy after a power loss.  The motor drivers only know "left" or "right" and a number of steps.  If the motor is moved, or power is lost, it has no idea where the motors are any longer.  In most control systems using stepper motors there are limit switches that are triggered to "home" the motors to a known position. Also, the Arduino Uno is limited in the number of IO pins.  Most stepper motor control requires at least 4 pins and additional lines for motor enable, micro switches for positioning, etc. A while back I purchased an Arduino Mega and a six-pack of 28BYJ48 ...
Read more