Learn the harmonica!!
It’s such a cool instrument. It’s small, and it’s not percussive like other pocket-size instruments. And it’s more respectable than a kazoo, which comes across as more of a party favor than a real instrument.
Imagine waiting for a train, not many people around, and you start playing the blues on your harmonica. Not even for money–just for fun. No one would expect that.
I can attest to that. In 2022 my wife was about to buy yet another vacuum cleaner. I asked her to be patient with me and wait a week. Over 20 years we had accumulated seven carpet / wood floor / tile floor vacuum cleaners of one sort or another, and I had stopped paying the £50 per visit twice per year to the Dyson cleaner man because we could have bought a new one with three years worth of maintenance bills. I cleaned out two of them and asked her to use those two. I then took the other five to our workshop and proceeded to watch Youtube videos. It was summer so in good weather, our workshop was a good place to be. I have just thrown out all the junk and we have three perfectly working Dysons, and one Hoover (battery model). My son knocked over another working one and it cracked on the motor housing.
How we ever accumulated seven vacuum cleaners is beyond my imagination. I was so busy working away I no longer did all the Mr Fixit stuff around the home. It was a good feeling to get back to some real electrical engineering. That is the downside to spending time on consulting and pursuits like investments. Now the weather is getting better, its time to tidy up the workshop and force myself to throw stuff away if I haven’t used it for over 2 years. That will be a challenge.
I wanted to be good at chemistry. I dropped it since Highschool to do other things but I have recently been researching it, being able to make my own chemical substances, extracting compounds from household items and collecting many elements.
I recently bought ‘starter fluid’ which contains ether, which is an anaesthetic. I breathed some of that stuff in and in a few minutes, I started to go dizzy, I lost sense of touch and went numb, my ears were ringing loudly, it was quite unpleasant, I was too scared so I stopped breathing any more ether before I became unconscious. I have never been unconscious and this experience told me that being unconscious is very different from sleep. .
Remember that safety is part of any lab work.
Good job! That sounds like a nice challenge. It’s a pretty cool feeling to get a device working again!
Circuit boards! I remember doing those back in college. You really need to have skills in electronics, programming and troubleshooting to make sure everything works.
Yeah. A great companion for those quiet moments! I love the sound of harmonica because it’s more soulful.
Yikes! Make sure to wear safety gear when you’re experimenting!
You can really learn everything on Youtube! That sounds like a fun and very productive way to pick up new skills!
Being good at chemistry would be really fun. Cool party trick, too! Like a magician, almost. Except it’s science, of course.
Mix mustard, bleach, a tampon, and a few drops of nail polish remover, then POP, it turns into a big ball of foam!
That would be so cool!
Then you could drop a short, amazing yet still confusing explanation about beta-alcohol 6’s spare electrons, blah blah blah, and everyone says ¨wooow.¨
It is actually one of the most difficult subjects, especially organic chemistry (one that deals with compounds of carbon) is a total nightmare, even for professionals. It is also a dangerous subject. Some of the chemicals are poisonous, some of the chemicals are explosive, others are corrossive acids, but it is not alchemy.
So I started to clear the loft on the weekend ahead of moving home in a couple of months. Not surprisingly, I found two more of my wife’s vacuum cleaners. That could be 8 or 9 - I have lost count now. These are going straight to recycling depot.
Are they the ones with the second hidden filter inside which tehy don’t tell you about ? - Always thought that was a stoopid design !
Have you tried mending Lithium ion batteries yet ? - here’s one I’m in process of doing - off a GTech Air Ram _ stone dead because of a single defective cell ! - Actually replaced 2 because another was weak (the green ones are replacements out of an old laptop battery. )
Cool!! Is this your first time doing this kind of repair? It seems like you’ve done this before…
well yes 
I got interested in these things about 2-3 years ago - can’t remember why exactly - maybe my laptop refiused to charge - yes I think that was it ! - worked fine then I got another and mended that - Left the old one for several months and when I came back to it - would not run on battery ! so I watched a bit of You tube like @Mondeoman with his dysons - cut my way into the battery and charged the cells individually and now it works fine. - so £50 saved !
Thing is tho’ it’s relatively easy - but you do need to understand them. The GTech one pictured first has 6 cells in series - so The dead one killed the battery completely but the quoted voltage of teh machine is 22.2 volts - When you divide 22.2 by 6 you get 3.7 volts each and most of teh machines quote the power as a multiple of 3.7 so divide voltage by 3.7 gives you the number of cells in series. More powerful (longer time to going flat) have several cells in parallel so that battery is a 6S1 (6 cells in series) - but could have been a 6S2 (12 cells - 6 in series but 2 sets in parallel) - Bike batteries and the like may have 5 or 6 or more in parallel) - Now fully charged each cell will hold 4.2 volts so this battery fully charged will measure 6x4.2 (25.2 volts) and depending on how the parameters are set on that circuit board - they will shut down somewhere around 3 volts and the battery will be “dead” - if the bettery goes much lower than this the circuit board (Battery Management System) will prevent the battery from taking a chatge “Safety Feature”… doncha know ? 
So then you have to buy a new battery and 65% of the time throw a perfectly good battery away ! - or charge the cells up to say 3.2 volts each (Each cell MUST be very close to exactly the same voltage else the BMS will still prevent them charging) - then you can just plug in your charger that came with the equipment and it will take over the charging and treat the battery as tho’ nothing had happened!
Now to charge the battery cells you will need charger - I use my bench power supply which I can set to the 4.2 volts (or any other up to about 25) and set the CURRENT LIMIT - that is highly important ! so you can’t just use a “normal Battery charger” whatever you use must be one you can set the voltage accurately and a CURRENT LIMIT - to prevent over heating. (Bech Power supply should not cost more than around £45 for one which will do the job.Thinking about this it MAY be possible to HACK an old phone charger to charge 1 cell at a time since they were LI-ion cells so It will have the right output and a safe current limit preset. However I’m not sure - I have never tried and they may not co-operate with a very low voltage cell - I may try this one day just to see ! - or You tube may already have a video where someone has tried !
The reason I’m so interested (Other than savoing money for family and friends) is ‘cos I have a Mobility scoooter With dead Lead-acid batteries - which I’m going to put Li-ion batteries (Home made) onto and maybe give it a wee-bit extra OOMPH ! 
- and just bought an Electric bike which someone had stoilen the battery off - damaging the connectors (well actually they stole the whole connection board too ) - but I got it for £12 and it’s worth 750 working - But I may hack it a bit and keep it - If I can work out the wiring (They’re quite complicated because they have a DC motor but they chop the DC into 3 phase and use the 3 phase to turn the motor and feedback to switch the polarity of the internal coils to keep it moving ! - All Mosfets and Hall sensors and switching ICs ! - but those bits are still there ! - IFFN’ they work ? 
Oh you will absolutely need a Multimeter - but then everyone absolutely Needs a Multimeter !
Here ya go - Little bit of solder to put leads on and this wioll do the single cell charge !
Don’t get me started. 
Before I waste your time and everyone elses, this was yet another of my “get rich slow” schemes, when I bought an ancient electric bicycle for £35 and replaced the lead-acid batteries, seat and serviced it. I had all of 55 miles on the clock and was in the garage of the daughter of the original owner. I had this idea of using it for local journeys to save using the car. I must have ridden it all of 10km before I decided my ass was too sore even thought I fitted a spongy seat. My engineer brain got ahead of me and before I knew it I was designing a modern Li ion pack to fit into the housing of the old 3 cell lead acid pack. As usual, I bought all the kit - the plastic spacers, the spark welding kit, the slow chargers, and I think I bought as many as 300 cells in junk laptop battery packs. Great hobby in summer out in the workshop, but then it gets boring so I ended up throwing it all away (except the Li ion chargers and the test equipment), and stopped dreaming about building my own Tesla powerwall.
36 volts ? - 10S30 ??? - What 100 miles Plus range ? 
What welding kit did you buy ? I’m still struggling with getting a decent one at a budget cost !
Gonna need a garage for that–a driveway won’t cut it. I’d certainly learn a lot along the way.
Another skill I’d like to pick up is learning the piano. For this, though, a full size piano isn’t necessary. A simple keyboard will suffice.
Besides saving space, another benefit to learning with a digital keyboard is that you can plug in your headphones or even just turn the volume down. You can play any hour of the day without bothering anyone!
