Raspberry Pi Classroom Table Timelapse Documentation

After trying to document spring plant and tree growth with a Raspberry Pi timelapse setup I found the variation in lighting over long periods of time produced a lot of bad footage. But I figured using this in the classroom to do timelapse recordings of students working at the table could be useful and not face the same problem of changing lighting conditions. So I created a mashup of my old Replicator 2 3D printing monitor with the timelapse program that conveniently attaches to our hanging outlets and managed to bang out a pretty quick set up for this. I start the program by logging in to a headless Raspberry Pi Zero wifi and the pi waits for a button press to start snapping pictures at 5 second intervals for 15 minutes.

Reinventing the Mallet

I've been making scrap wood mallets for a couple weeks now and I can't stop. For one thing I do like them as a tool; multi-purpose, perfect for knocking things that a hammer would damage or require careful aim for. But also they are simple to make, yet require enough forethought to meet some basic requirements; that the head not fly off, that it satisfy size and proportion constraints, that it not split apart. There are many videos on how to make an awesome mallet and I did watch them. But obtaining just the right heft by filling inner pockets with BBs or creating interlocking parts with dowels is not what I'm after.