(no subject)

 I had a breakthrough for the laser scarecrow project. Everyone involved has been fighting with the problem of spinning the laser and also making it go up and down while not completely murdering the wiring. PVC pipes, gears, stepper motors, all this jazz we've been trying. 

I was laying in bed sunday night and I thought, someone has wanted to spin something and also tilt it. And it turns out that there are a bunch of people out there attaching cameras to drones and taking footage and they have things that are pan and tilt mechanisms so they can remotely control or program cameras to take footage. That pan on the horizontal and tilt. So I solved every issue because the servos run the mechanisms entirely, so no other motors needed, and the wiring runs from the servos through the base and I can attach them right into the motor shield/arduino board instead of having the stepper motor run the pan and all the associated fiddling with that. 

I ordered a 360 pan model for this and it was only 60 dollars. Fingers crossed that it works the way I'm hoping because then I can set up a laser scarecrow for like, maybe $150 or $200? That way I could build a couple really easily and cheap and keep one for my own grain production. 

I'm not sure on the lasers though. The one used for the official project is a green one inch diameter laser that is out of stock. So I don't know if I should buy one around the same size or just do two small ones or what. I've got one itty bitty one right now. The biggest issue is that 99% of lasers ship from China and that's going to take too long for my liking. Adafruit has tiny ones and they ship to me within a day. So maybe I just buy like four and attach all those in slightly different directions. That'll scare the birds. 

(no subject)

 I forgot to post that I seeded my second round of seeds the other day. It's the tomatoes (new ones that I didn't have the A Farm grow for me), sesame, and some random things to space things out. So two of my sesames are up fast and so is my basil. We'll see when the tomatoes get going. 

One of the issues I'm having with my first set of transplants growing is that my room is too cool. I keep my windows open at night because the downstairs apartment heats my room super well and I overheat very easily at night. The plants are growing right by the windows to take advantage of the sunlight it gets. So I suspect they get cold at night and don't like it much because most things aren't getting any more growth than their cotyledons, although they could just be going very slowly. Although now that I think about it, last years tomatoes only had one or two sets of leaves other than cotyledons. 

Maybe next year I'll get some heat mats. I still need to start the rice, although that will be in at least a week. They are going in tiny plug trays and will be planted out within three weeks.