I recently bought a LoRaWAN antenna that I mounted in my balcony for testing. The antenna works very well, although my balcony is just a few meters above the ground.
The antenna was temporarily attached to my wooden shelf. I wanted to build a proper mount and set about modeling.
The result of this work can be found on Thingiverse.
Continue reading LoRaWAN Antenna Holder for Balcony Rail
The Internet of Things is a term for objects, sensors, “things” that sit around somewhere and send data to a network to build applications or business models with that data.
The LoRa network and LoRaWAN as a protocol is a very exciting technology that promises to send sensor data over an energy-efficient wireless network. “LoRa Gateways” are used to receive these signals. The gateway has access to the Internet and persists this data in an application server of a LoRaWan network. “The Things Network” (TTN) is an open LoRaWan network where anyone can provide their gateway and where anyone can connect their sensors with existing gateways around the world. Also there is “The People’s Network” with which you can even earn passive income as a gateway operator. I recently purchased several LoRa modules and a gateway. In this article I would like to discuss the different aspects of LoRa and evaluate it in the context of my battery powered interet devices.
Continue reading Introduction in LoRa, LoRaWAN, The Things Network and Helium MiningOur work in the XR Venture at SAP continues to bear fruit today. Recently, Unity released a video that included a snippet of our development (see 00:28).
A somewhat older article here also describes a bit more in detail what’s behind it. I summarized more details about the XR Cloud in this post.
We recently had a hot water bottle, which no longer served it’s duty. How can a hot water bottle can no longer work? The seal on the cap wears out. The hot water bottle drips when you fill it with water.
Another small plastic part, which leads to the unusability of the whole object. For us, an object does not end up in the trash because of such small parts. It’s time to get down to business.
Continue reading Recycling: Hot water bottle sealingFor developers and tinkerers working with electronics, it has become a permanent condition that there are no more Raspberry Pis or Arduinos in stock at reasonable prices. According to announcements, Raspberry Pi parts are going so fast that they only sell to B2B customers.
It’s time to permanently look for alternatives. I would like to present a few good alternatives that are currently in stock and are at least as good (or even better) than their Raspberry Pi or Arduino counterparts. Watch the video here.
Everyone has some things lying around in the kitchen. In our kitchen, these are things like rolls of garbage bags, rolls of aluminum foil, towels or cooking spoons.
This needs a solution to organize the items. I built a modular design, which provides a solution for all this. This solution can be attached to the wall, but also via modules to any furniture such as Ikea kitchen frames. This is the first product from my local-manufacturing venture. In this blogpost I want to introduce this solution. The Modular Kitchen Organizer can be downloaded on Thingiverse. Here is my Youtube video about this project.
Continue reading Modular Kitchen Organizer“Kintsugi” means “golden joinery”. It’s the japanese way of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with golden joins. Kintsugi is not only an activity, but also a way of life and a mindset.
Breaking things are an essential part of the lifecycle of objects. My passion is repairing things which break in every day life. Plastic is an essential part of our modern day lives, but throwing plastic into the trash or waters is polluting our world. I see local-recycling and local-manufacturing as the solution to save our planet and live the Kintsugi lifestyle.
Continue reading Kintsugi and its meaning todayOn a relaxing weekend, I was making sandwiches when something unforeseen happened.
The clip of my sandwich maker broke. Because of such a plastic part, of course, the whole device is not thrown away! In my part-time job as a recycling expert, I made it my business to save items from trash. It’s time to get back to action! In this blogpost I want to talk about the repair process.
Continue reading Recycling: Sandwichmaker ClipI am convinced that we can solve the global plastic problem only with local measures. For this reason, I have spent the last weeks/months experimenting on various projects and am working prototypically on a DIY recycling plant that I can operate at home to extract new raw materials from plastic waste that accumulates daily from various packages.
I have long tried to build a plastic shredder at home with the least amount of resources. I had the idea of applying heat to plastic, softening it and thus reducing the size of the plastic with less force. Unfortunately, my first prototype failed.
After some thinking, I decided to order a Precious Plastics Shredder Kit with all the necessary parts already included. I have to assemble the shredder and can start with it. In 2-4 weeks the shredder will arrive. I am looking forward to my little recycling business!
Yesterday I was back in the office at SAP for the first time in a long time, relatively spontaneously. The office experience during the pandemic period was not particularly pleasant. So I had my concerns and was afraid that we would continue to have restrictions and that no one would be in the office anyway.
But that was not the case. In fact, almost all pandemic restrictions are lifted in the SAP campus as well. There are no distance rules in the cafeterias, the coffee corners are open again, there are more colleagues in the offices again.
It was an incredible experience. I got to meet new colleagues again. It actually feels like some normalcy has returned. Currently, I am planning to work from the office at SAP Campus once a week. This weekend is the 50th anniversary of SAP headquarters in Walldorf. I am looking forward to the upcoming time!
