Our laundry machines are in the basement, when we remodeled our 1932 two story home, the staircases were sound insulated. The cute chirping of our front loading machines doesn't stand a chance of cutting through. My wife mentioned that our machines have some sort of phone connection for servicing, why can't they tell her when the cycle is complete.
That started the build.
Lately I've been building a homemade CNC platform intending to be a light mill / router / printer / laser cutter / fill in the blank. To start its setup to be a CNC Router, which has started to make some parts for itself to increase stiffness. I've made it to the first milestone, a running machine I can control that cuts aluminum to reasonable tolerances.
I put a short video on You Tube of it doing the fun task of sketching a SoftPro Logo using a SoftPro pen.
![clip_image001[4]](https://i2.wp.com/danvanfleet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/clip_image0014.png "clip_image001[4]")
The last 2 days have been technically a fantastic year. It started with 2 Harris Butt Sets and ended with a fixed Vizio 47" TV. I had recently failed a cap replacement on an Insteon device, so my electronics repair road was on a bad path. It felt good to relive my roots.
The TV a Vizio SV470XVT1A was an interesting one, it intermittently displayed video, the back lights always worked. Lots of documented voltages finally lead to a voltage regulator U10 on the daughter board, 0101-4072-0044 which showed a pin hanging at .4 mv when the set failed, and came up to 1.1 mv when it worked. What a deal, the daughter board is near the cheapest one in the unit. Amazon had a seller with a used one for $8.
Today was the day that the laser printer died. For the fifth time! This time it's staying 
dead and being replaced. I've been partial to both HP and Lexmark laser printers for use in land title operations. We need features like multiple input trays and sometimes multiple output trays. I settled on a nice 52 page per minute HP Laserjet Ent 600 M602N Printer
Today I needed to provide a recommendation on a Wireless Keyboard and Mouse combination. Years ago I was in love with the Focus brand of keyboards, their model 2001 was a great fairly priced keyboard. Well that is if you liked the IBM Selectric style keyboard, long travel with clicks.
Lately I've used a few of these Brother MFC-8910DW Printers in the home office and small branch office use. Printing speed is 42 Page per minute, automatic duplex is available to save paper. Scan to email, and fax round out the features that most of my clients are looking for.
I've been into electronics for 40 years. The cost of batteries has had me try many different brands, and types. I use some rechargeable batteries, they are not always the best choice. For the battery sizes of AAA and AA, I look for a cost per battery of about a quarter. It is important to purchase Alkaline batteries at a minimum, don't get the cheaper, Heavy Duty batteries. They leak more, don't have the shelf life of an Alkaline, and product less power.
