© Paul Hassall. All rights reserved.

Why work with Redgum?

Eucalyptus camaldulensis, commonly known as river red gum, is a flowering plant in the family Myrtaceae, and is endemic to Australia.
Such a beautiful tree, so important to the river systems with a deep red timber.
The timber is hard because it grows very slowly, living more than 500 years, yet its fate through modern history is to be cut down for fence posts, railway sleepers or burnt as firewood.
I work mainly with old redgum fence posts. If I can make something useful, hopefully beautiful, that will honor such a magnificent species.
(I do work with other timbers too.)

About

I (Paul Hassall) established this site to capture the various electronic and woodworking projects that I have completed over the years. Some practical, some whimsical, many for me, others for friends and family.It seems to be the circle of life, when I was in high school my favorite subject was woodworking and my hobby was electronics. As a retired engineer and project manager they both still give me much pleasure.

My Projects

Here are photo galleries of my projects.
Note: some have a short slideshow next to the image of the final product, please give the slideshow a couple of seconds to start.

Contact

It is very likely that you already have my contact details, in case you don't, send me a message.

Thank you

I read my emails often, so I will be getting back to you soon.

Early Projects

The project that started it all when I cut through a grey piece of old redgum and discovered the magnificent red colour inside!

Brett and Ali Speaker Stands

The speakers were made in 2008, but they didn't get veneered until COVID lockdown in 2021!

Various Projects around the House

Various Workshop and Garage Projects

Wireless Charger for Barbara

Objective: make it easier for a 93-year-old to charge their iPhone

Small Table for Lounge Arm

Objective: keep ya wine, tea, coffee and nibbles off the carpet, self and lounge

Charger for Paul's Mobile

Objective: wireless charging suitable for QuadLock case. Challenge myself to make a product without 90 degrees, nor straight, regular shapes.

Raspberry Pi Zero Computer Clock

Objective: create a clock for the lounge room that automatically fetches the time from the internet so that it remains accurate and adjusts itself for daylight savings.

What to do with an old iPad?

Objective: create a electronic photo frame with shared calendar (software is free version of DakBoard)

Clayfield Box used for Therapy for Autism Counseling

Objective: follow the instructions provided by Jo, marine plywood and 7 (seven!) coats of varnish because the clay is wet

Speaker Stands for James and Isha

Objective: make something elegant to raise the speakers off the floor

Cabinet for James and Isha's Caulfield Bathroom/Laundry

Objective: bespoke size to maximize the available storage in a small bathroom/laundry

Shield for Kate

Objective: humorous memento of role in BoM.
Known as 'Shutdown Sullivan' because of her very successful projects that had to shut down (and being back to life!) complex IT facilities.
A complex change process with 100s of steps and 20+ engineers dispersed across Australia.

Outside Table Repair for Les and Jenny

Objective: help Les repair his Jarrah outside table.
Jarrah decking boards were the source timber.I machined up the new boards, Les did the demolition of the old, and installation of the new, followed by oiling.

Redgum Computer Mouse

Objective: make a mouse from redgum after being sent a YouTube Video of a woodworker making a mouse.
It looked easy!
Wow! Lots of issues to solve:
How and what parts to reuse from a sacrificial Logitech M171 Wireless mouse?
How to achieve all that curvy body shape?
How to hollow out the right space for the mouse electronics, battery and mechanisms?
How to do the buttons???
Learnt a lot!

PiAlarm Clock project based on Raspberrry Pi Pico W (for Wireless).

Objectives:
1. Fetch UTC (Universal Coordinated Time) time and date from the internet to ensure that it is always accurate-> send to Display
2. Automatically adjust time for Melbourne (AET Australian Eastern Time) and for daylight savings
3. Re-fetch time once per day to ensure that RTC (Real Time Clock) in the Raspberry Pi Pico doesn't drift too much
4. Adjust the display brightness acording to ambient light - bright during the day, dimmed when lights are off for sleeping
5. Provide four pre-stored alarms and logic to do the Alarm Clock function
6. Provide code to handle reboots when UTC and AET are on different dates
7. Use non-volatile alarm time storage so that it is restored after power interruption
8. Use Watchdog to reset the system in the event of a software crashWork still in progress

Ardunio-based project to turn on Shop Vacuum when it detects power tool (drill, saw etc) is running

Objective: Automatically turn on the shop vacuum cleaner so that saw dust is immediately collected as soon as the 240V power tool is running.
This is a project I basically copied from a YouTuber (apologies I have lost his name). I made some minor changes only to his code.
Parts came from Jaycar Electronics.One of the first projects I did just before I retired in 2023.

Wireless Shop Vacuum Remote

Objective: with the move to battery-powered power tools, the shop vacuum controller no longer works because its designed for 240V tools.
So the use case here is to control the shop vac wirelessly. Handy if you are hanging off the roof with a battery-powered belt sander and the shop vac is 5 metres away!
Built using a module from Jaycar Electronics.

Raspberry Pi Pump Controller

Objective: replace the existing sump pump controller for our house rainwater tank (20,000 litres!) with a more functional device.
Avoid Paul getting wet in the rain when the pump is not working!Based on a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. As usual, parts from Jaycar Electronics. All the Micropython software written by me.

Arduino-based Machine that Goes Ping (and other noises)

Objective: when I worked for a private hospital group for 2 crazy years, the oft-mentioned comment was:
'Oh that's for the machines that go ping'.
So I built one, then secretly installed it as a practical joke in the hospital's new data centre. Jaycar Electronics components.I was able to sample the 'ping' sound from a YouTube of the original Monty Python sketch (John Cleese's voice I think) as well as Michael Palin's 'I see you have the machine that goes ping'. Then, on a roll, I added:
* Monty Python Rasberry Fart
* Submarine Sonar ping
* Sound of pinging a glass
* Morse code sounds
* The knights who say 'Ni'!
* 'We are no longer the knights who say 'Ni'"
* 'And, er, get the machine that goes ping', and
* The Liberty Bell March (for completeness, of course).
And 3 RGB LEDs to make random colours on the front panel.
Well, I thought it was funny, and it helped MY stress levels.....