Any question answered...

Oh - and if you're taking a bike and want to fit in with the teenagers get practicing your wheelies (this seemed to be a local craze whilst I was there)

How come BMX hubs are so expensive compared to hubs for other bikes?

Thanks, I went into the post office in the end.. was cheaper than I thought it would be. £5 standard, £10 signed for.

How come BMX hubs are so expensive

To the extent that it's true (i.e. genuine like-for-like comparison), the answer is probably economies of scale, BMX being a niche product compared with road and MTB

Thanks @Landslide @goodhead, great suggestions.

One for Tester or other engineering types...

I have a mill with some linear calliper things on each axis and a DRO box, but the cables are shot.

Every cheap set of digital calipers in the world seems to come with a “data output port” which is what I’m using, but for the life of me I cannot find any cable or loose plug that is designed to fit said port. The DRO side is RJ11 I think.

Do these cables exist, what should I be Googling? Or do I rip it all out and buy a £250 eBay DRO kit from China?

https://hackaday.com/2010/12/15/reading-a-digital-caliper-with-a-microcontroller/

https://hackaday.com/2014/09/25/digital-caliper-sacrificed-for-dro-project/

http://www.robotroom.com/Caliper-Digital-Data-Port.html

Should get you started! Not sure if it'll interface directly with the DRO (doubtful) but I'm just looking for the cable now.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Data-Cable-for-Digital-Calipers-Linear-Scales-SPC-Custom-DRO-Project-Arduino-DIY/252491415529?epid=727227520&hash=item3ac9a93fe9:g:SYMAAOSwYutauN9G

do I rip it all out and buy a £250 eBay DRO kit from China?

If you don't want to disappear down the rabbit hole after Brian Block, starting fresh is probably a good idea. His mill is probably slightly bigger than yours, so he needs to keep his existing scales :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tdlIjv0C18

Colleague of mine has this nice old Dutch bike but the brakes are awful. Bike shop tried to order pads (drum pads) but failed. Anyone know where I could find some?

1 Attachment

This guy might be able to help, or at least point you towards someone who can.
http://www.torpedo-coasterbrake.com/

https://www.dutchbikebits.com/sturmey-archer-hub-brake-pads ?

I've put up a bird feeder. I'd like to put up a motion activated camera to see what birds I get. At the minute I suspect its pigeon. I have a server running to store the images. What type of camera am I looking for?

marching bands.
How can I hire a small one in london to go past an address?

Revenge or celebration?

Celebration of course!
No flegs though.

This is probably a good place to start https://www.lastminutemusicians.com/search/brass_oompah_marching_bands/london.html?sortby=distance
You’ll probably find the price varies hugely dependent on how many musicians you want but a starting idea is probably ~£100 a head for a couple of hours.
Alternatively you could try and charm an amateur local BB outfit if there are any near you. My old one only really did competitions, village fetes and the like but coffers were kept topped up by the odd private gig.

Ultimately you can use pretty much any camera and something like https://zoneminder.com/ to handle motion detection/recording (modect/mocord)

I used an old USB webcam attached to a RPi with wifi. Zoneminder in a Docker container on my server.

I got a load of images of neighbours' cats.

Found what look a bit like stress lines / cracks on the seat clamp of a bike I’m about to build up.

My question is should I do something about it? They seem a bit long to file out.. or should I stop worrying, as long as there’s enough seatpost in there it might be ok..?

https://imgur.com/a/QfNamRo

Yeah, I'm expecting a lot of cat pictures. Don't think I've got a webcam anywhere though.

I haven't actually tested for this purpose, only other techy projects, but old PlayStation3 Eye cameras are available from your local CEX for about £3 and have a pretty good frame rate.

Good info. Cheers.

Certainly a stupid question but can tubeless tires (like WTB horizon for exampl) be used as "classic" tires with tubes?

Yes.

thanks!