Lab Work – Perhaps, the best way to show ‘work’ or work in progress; in most cases, the purpose is to highlight the struggle to find a solution, the test effort and the learning that takes place when fixing stuff. Or another way to share various phases of the problem solving process – hypothesize: test, learn and apply.
Torch
Side Projects – Working on this little widget… cleaning up some old solder welds… reskilled. Thought I would put a little video together, something simple, little and it lights up the room. A torch? Flashlight requirements – 2 large paperclips, D battery, flashlight bulb and two solder points(a. solder two paperclips together b. one on the negative side as a larger touchpad). Simple right?
On The Bench – TH2
Back from the airfield, part 1… what a day, got the TH2 out/up in the air no problems. The landing and the flight was another story. Damage report, minor issues: 2 LED strips out, severed, Antennae, severed, Power lead loose (+positive lead), Burned/malformed poly frame, Fix – clipped and prepped for new wires, new led strips, new poly frame ordered, replaced antennae, re-soldered leads and shrink wrapped wires were applicable.
On The Bench – EMAX Tiny Hawk 2
Back from the airfield, part 2… practice makes perfection. Not in my case. Soldering these nano/micro drones takes serious patience. However, got into some trouble, minor issues: 2 LED strips out – severed, Antennae – severed, Power lead loose (+positive lead), Burned/malformed poly frame, Fix – clipped and prepped for new wires, new led strips, new poly frame ordered, replaced antennae, re-soldered leads and shrink wrapped wires were applicable.
Lego Board Housing by Borg2Borg
Need to start our own @LEGO_Group. Anyone? Anyone? The goal of the group? Lego + Tech, bring the two together… Those of you who enjoy SciFi or StarTrek? You might appreciate the Borg references. So, Legos… IoT boards… BAM! I want to introduce the #starTrekBorg, #theBorg.
Although small, the Lego BORG housing takes the cake. Literally, this is my version of the BORG spaceship. This one, this particular BORG housing holds two IoT boards, both the @Raspberry_Pi #RPi4 And @Qualcomm #Snapdragon410C. Including a picture of the original Snapdragon case by Arrow – Snapdragon. Two, if you get a chance, look at the touch screen housing as well Arrow – Touch Screen Housing…both devices are running the latest version of Ubuntu IOT OS. Now, I can flash/re-flash Android and Ubuntu if ever needed. Pretty cool.
As usual leave a comment below, let us know what you’re thinking?
DJI Gimbal FIXED
Fixed Gimbal, flight test sequence begin… need to put the drone through its paces… We take the DJI Phantom 4 out for test run following it’s time ‘in the DJI shop’ for repair. See our previous post specifically on the gimbal issues. Unfortunately we were not able to revive our video capturing the gimbal issues. So a quick synopsis and a few photos will have to do en lue of the video. Anyhow, if you have a similar issues, its best to reach out to DJI if the device is still under warranty. If not, give me a shout.
As usual leave a comment below, let us know what you’re thinking?
Back To The Field FIXED
Airfield day is here… After 25+ days or so, received this beaut in the mail. A package arrived with some sense of anxiety. What was fixed? How long would it take to get the drone fixed if this didn’t get fixed the first time? What was added to my drone? Is this my drone, or some other drone? IS THIS MY DJI P4ProV2, and is it in working condition… are the gimbal, gimbal motors fixed. Will the gimbal motors fail again? I hope not, cause it is field day.
Update to come, will include video of the airfield, highlight different maneuvers and views. Or just check the above post… Also a repost.
Repost – On The Bench with the Lego Tablet Base
Re-post, similar to the Gimbal repost (had to repurpose some content, goal was to better utilize material posted in various places around the web). So, I’ll start with the Legos®… Gotta love Lego®.
In short, we were looking for a quick solution, accessible materials – allowing for various solutions, an iterative build process, and tabletop/desktop friendly. Additionally, the new iPad/iPad case purchased separately did NOT come with a handy, integrated stand. This too will be a future piece of content. Perhaps we can review a few cases which have integrated stands. Recommendation if I may… the Brenthaven.
Moving on, this case didn’t have any resemblance of a stand. FACT: Buyer remorse, buy a tablet case with a stand. Ideally, we should’ve purchased this case CASE. In conclusion, we had a few bins of Legos laying around the workshop, Voila! Presto! We have ourselves a fully functioning tablet stand/base (See Above). First edition in all its glory. There were other iterations, second and third iterations were canned due to instability and number of Lego bricks used… The forth iteration, coming soon… we will reduce the number of bricks used and adjust screen angle so that we can compensate for various viewers/users. Last, but not least, the featured Lego Housing needs to allow for both portrait and landscape viewing and charging cord integration.
As usual leave a comment below, let us know what you’re thinking?
Diagnosis, bleak…camera, camera gimbal inoperable, the 45° gimbal tilt, right of center is a known issue coming out of the factory…
Gimbal alignment, gimbal motor trouble(s). So, I thought I would re-post this ‘dm’ which included a 24+ day duration from workshop-to-DJI and back.
Keep in mind, ‘repair days’ are only calculated as ‘days in repair’ when the device is received by a DJI facility here in the US (CA? Maybe) or abroad (** the total # of repair days do not include ‘in transit’ days and not included in the UI status tracker **). Bummer! What malarkey! Good to know now folks! Yes, from a customers perspective, this was a nightmare. ‘Hey, we don’t count the time it take to and from customer to DJI and back, sorry about that…’ Also, assuming most of you, me included, we just don’t have a second Phantom 4 ProV2 just laying around the shop. Say, something like a defective gimbal, defective gimbal motor(s)? Moreover, a brand new drone was shipped back to DJI for repair. A nightmare I would prefer to not have again.
As usual leave a comment below, let us know what you’re thinking?
Office pals… have a look around, don’t might the fur everywhere, Zeus’s hair has a life of it’s own, it’s everywhere. Ruby is usually ‘sneaking’ around, surefooted, like a ninja. This is a usual day in the life of Ruby, hanging out on any soft, accessible blanket with her head pillow.
We Unbox The EMAX TH2
Pulling this off the ‘heap of old’ posts, archive posts if you will. While looking over now decommissioned social media posts… thought I would share the (( GEM )), here is the EMAX Tiny Hawk 2 unboxing from early ’20.
As usual leave a comment below, let us know what you’re thinking?
Drone Shots
New Drone, new gear, ‘ENGAGE’ (Cap. Jean-Luc Picard)… StarTrek Fan? No? Look it up! (Joking) It’s ok if you’ve skipped Star Trek, no time lost per say. Here are a few shots of the airfield down in Venice, Florida – Venice Flyers Airfield. We put the drone through it’s paces, high’s and low’s… Got to take in the views this drone can produce, still one of the best, sub $4K and this drone model is a few years old now.
As usual leave a comment below, let us know what you’re thinking?
NES Kung Fu
@NintendoComplete (1M views) Known as Fu around these parts. Not the other, let’s keep it clean… (( Shout Out )) @NintendoComplete coming through for the series again. Never could’ve, never would’ve won this game. Still in my Top 15 NES games. For nothing more than a reminder just how awesome 80’s Karate/MMA was in the US. Again, for a beat ’em up game you kick, sweep kick, jump kick and punch, fairly simple. Watch out various insects, knife-throwers and ceiling crawlers. At times this game can be tedious a painful reminder of arcade button-smashers. makes quick work of Contra… It’s been sometime, may be 10+ year or so. Might have caught a game or two in college, may be… since I’ve played Kung Fu or played myself. Might be one of my top 3 of 10 NES games of all time. Honestly, the video is pure gold… and it pains me to say it, I was never very good at Kung Fu, which is probably why it sits on my Top NES games of all time *for the games I had the privilege to play growing up.
Don’t forget to check out @NintendoComplete, the YouTube Channel and more. Without content like those shared here, historic gameplay/memories would just be that; memories. Click subscribe, use the bell ‘thingy’ for notifications for all these channels… do what you can to help out content ‘creators’, ‘YouTubers’, ‘Gamers’ (whatever you want to go as).
As usual leave a comment below, let us know what you’re thinking?
Web, Development, UX, SEO, Analytics & Hosting
Short-term design and development opportunity, ran online marketing site for yearly analysis, looking at local traffic and out of town impacts to the restaurant online. While the business has moved into a new business model/ownership, and expand into the taco and smokehouse/bbq space. Worked with the client to update website, SEO/Domain Strategy, and simplify experience, driving new/existing foot traffic to each restaurant.
Finally, Learn & Apply… What was your hypothesis, how did you test? What did you glean from your test results? Any workable ideas? Did you retest and test again? Do you need to test again?
Or is it time to apply those finding and make that change. Does it sound this simple? It does and it is. You, your business, your people, your brand can make a change. We start with a ‘doable’ change, we test… we test until testing is no longer needed. We learn from the behaviors, test results and analysis and apply those things to your change.
As usual leave a comment below, let us know what you’re thinking?
Usability Coordinator: CRACKLING OVER THE RADIO “((Testing)) ((Testing)) ((1)) ((2)) ((3))”
Onto our fifth message here, this message is around ‘testing’… If not for anything else I’ve done in my career, both for other entities or myself, testing is a big one. I can’t stress this enough, the value of testing. I would say, Test, test and retest. Retest as many times as you can; adjust your hypothesis, adjust your trajectory of change. Obviously in the real world, there is a point of diminishing return, but from a business justification, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to fix a test than production. This goes for code, speeches, design, spelling, text messages, SMS, phone calls, chat…
Once we complete our testing, we learn & apply our findings. As usual leave a comment below, let us know what you’re thinking?
Fixed Ideas Need New Ideas, New People; New Solutions. Thinking inside and outside the box, critical thinking, deep learning, all skills customers alike feel that their voice is being heard.
We like this form of brainstorming, storming, testing and finding a result. Results are for another topic, thinking about what you want to do with your business is key. We want to have big ideas… building on big ideas and provide great solutions.
Representing our brand with a variation or spin on the scientific method is just another ‘way to cut the cake’… You’ll want to change, where do you start? How do you start? Who will do the change etc. etc? The point here is you have to change, when its time start with something you can change; small or large. You have to put it to words, this is why hypothesizing is key. So, change or not to change? Question might be at what cost, risks and benefits do we earn by making this ‘doable’ change? What costs are we deflecting by modifying this ‘doable’ change?
Don’t forget to drop us a comment, this does require a login. Please register or login to provide commentary!
Peak Into Our Past – A Looking Glass Perhaps. Need a quick fix? Slide into the Internet Wayback Machine
We go, way, way, wayback… Check out your business, your online presence, what the web is to your customers. We do, by doing so we choose the Wayback Machine we constantly look for new, innovative ways to represent our clients vision, this requires research. What better way, then using the Wayback Machine. We use this in as a form of humor, but more about learning from your past. Look into what failures might be and turn those into to wins. We look from within, in this case circa 2000 internet… Not GeoCities, on the wayback… that’s like eons ago.
We use simple, effective tools, to communicate, operate and compete. Sound simple? Simplify.
Give it a try, what’s the big deal? Anyhow, need a simple, effective solution, give us a call.
We Want To Recognize Our Partners, Contractors, Mentors and Friends. Right people, right product or services, and right time. Riding out the trough, controlled growth in the Peaks (Ridges); Finding the right time to expand with the right partnership in play.
A great strategy can weather the storm, even grow in a downturned market… Remember the partnership, the foundational characteristic in running an organization. We partner with our customers, friends and family to work in a collaborative environment, solving problems real-time in the ridges while preparing and protecting our investments for the next trough.
Partners; why partners? As the second message of our foundational message, we welcome new partners and celebrate our past; we evolve from garage to startup to small business. Someday we welcome the next step, whatever or whenever that may be. Until then, we encourage you, today, right now… try something new, test your business strategy to fit and finish. What can change? What is considered low hanging fruit or easy change max benefit, limited expense vs limited benefit, max expense…
There is something there, right there in front of you that which can be tried. Try something today. We did, and we thank those who have been advocates of ours for many years. We celebrate our early freelancing business partners, Justin Davis with Davis and Sallee Design Ltd., Sallee Corporation clients in our teen years and the Sallee Technology folks earned today. We also want to recognize those who came before us, those who make this possible everyday. Those who provided the vision, a strategy and a never quit business strategy, NABRAN Enterprises, Inc. Soon we will hope to launch an effort, 501c3 to help others in need.
Thank you.
How do you see your business growth over time? Growth, all the high’s and low’s; learning lessons… Grow wisely, grow local and grow with independence
We chose growth as our first of 6 foundational messages; growth is the possibility of change. Inspire growth, try something today, right or wrong, there is growth to be had. Doing something with a CBA (Cost-to-Benefit) driven backlog is leading by change, scalable and ever present in a growth oriented, ‘next step’ business. What is odd about growth? Anyone can grow, change or improve. We use a rather well known method for improvement, ideally we learn from both the scientific method, acknowledgment of failures and empirical evidence. Nothing new, nothing transformative from a business model perspective, we find successful change is steeply rooted in change, change based on what you know today; empirical evidence. There are boat loads of studies, years management courses and years of learning to implement, work and excel in any one for the 15 flavors of Waterfall, Agile, Agile At Scale, Scrum etc etc. why so many? Yes, we recognize systems do require scaling from garage to enterprise. But, we beg to ask why? Why so many variants?
The answer is simple, making a system fit your organization… Could be bad, good and down right ugly. Hire the right people, require skills beyond tasks to be completed, team members own work and complete work – hypothesize, test, learn and apply. Is it that simple? Yes, we think that it is. Lastly, we think there is a pragmatic approach to incremental change or in this case incremental growth. Again, we will always say failures are terrible, but the difference here is the learning piece. Yes, if you fail and don’t learn; then yes it’s truly a loss. The sliver of light is the change that can come out of the the learning regardless of perspective. We think that is the micro-growth needed to improve your business no matter what size, level or challenge.
What problems can we help you solve today?
A partnership to accelerate business strategy, transform ecosystems/work environments, test for variation and work to simplify change.
Highlighting more than 22 plus years of experience, in the following industries worldwide – Advertising, Business Administration, Finance, Engineering, Healthcare, Insurance, Restaurant, Production, Investment, Marketing, Retail, Global Technology, Consulting, Defense, Utility, and more. It’s all about finding the right fit – people, problems to tackle, services to provide and margin on the bottom dollar.
Current Leadership Roles:
Previous Leadership Roles:
Education:
