USB Microscope "Stand"

To be honest, I'm not a great fan of Lego. While I was a child, I played with it, but not to much. I was jumping into the electronics quite early and abandoned Lego.
The years passed, and now I've a son, who is obsessed to the Lego. This frighten me a bit.

Together with the one I wrote about, I bought an other microscope also. I wanted to use this as a magnifying glass on my desk. Arrived. I realized that the stand came with it, is a heap of crap.
I wanted to have something what I can build quickly, because I've no time to build the final solution, what is in my mind.
So I borrowed some Lego parts from my son. Here is the result. The height can be adjusted, solving the focus adjustment:

In the background you can see the image it makes.

Ordering from China

I'm continuously ordering things from China on the eBay and AliExpress.
Now I ordered a USB LCD microscope. This one:

Arrived, but no battery included.
Ok. Lets talk with the seller (the gray italic is just my thoughts, not actually was in the letters)

Me: The item arrived without the rechargeable battery. I don't know if this is intentional or not (I'm aware that certain regulations doesn't allow the shipment of the battery). Anyways: Please tell me the exact battery model needed, and if keeping out the battery was unintentional, I'd like to get one.

Seller: Thank you for your kind email and sorry for the trouble.
Sorry to say the item does not include a battery.
Because of the aircraft accident, our shipping company
does not ship items with batteries included now.
Powered by: 3.7V-4.2V Rechargeable lithium battery
In this case, how about you buy the battery in your local place?
We will be responsible for the cost of the battery.
Do you agree?
We look forward to your reply.

Me: Thank you for the answer and your generous offer, but I still would like to know the exact type of the battery, because
"Powered by: 3.7V-4.2V Rechargeable lithium battery" is too generic to find out what kind of battery I need.

Seller: We confirm this is the exact type of the battery: 3.7V-4.2V Rechargeable lithium battery .
You can have a check on eBay.
Then you can choose one and buy it .
Any question is welcome.
Have a nice day.

Me: Yes, I can confirm, that you are a complete idiot.
Let's assume, that you haven't got a clue about, what kind of battery is needed, but you will never admit it.
So, to help you. Fortunately I had a Nokia battery, what almost fitted into the unit. Based on this battery I made some research, to find a bit shorter one. Actually I found installed and tried out.
Please be so kind, to add to the description to the unit, to help to the future buyers. The battery what fits into the unit is the Nokia BL-5B. I bought one, for nuts, so I don't need any refund.

In addition, one of the LEDs on the bottom is dead, what I not fill as a serious problem. I'll repair it instead of sending back.
As I not really like if somebody think I'm a fool, this will be the first time when I got the article I ordered and will not add a five star review.

Supermicro Server hacking - Failed

This is a hack, but not from software point of view. It is some hardware.
I wanted to put a 2.5" SSD into the Supermicro's 3.5" hot swap drive carrier:

Disassembled the carrier, and the problem can be seen right from the beginning:

All 3.5" drives has three holes on each side. In most cases the middle screw hole isn't used.
The carrier has no hole there. But the 2.5/3.5 conversion tray need that hole.
Hole missing, so drilled it:

The carrier also has spring inserts, what also need that hole. The spring is a very thin material. I tried to drill a hole into it:

FAIL!!!!

Ok, I still have other unused carriers, so next try. What if I mount the conversion tray before putting in the spring insert, and not drilling it at all.

Lets try:

Ooops, these screws are to long. I can't cut them while it is in the tray. The cutting will be way too hot for that plastic.
It took a while, to find out, how to secure these screws into the vise to cut them.
Finally succeeded.
At that point I assembled the whole thing perfectly. When I tried to find some screws to secure the SSD into the first thing I found the screws perfectly fits in the place of the recently cut ones. :@

Finally I tried to insert the carrier into the servers cage. Didn't fit in. I found out why:

FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! FAIL!!! 

I'm a complete idiot. I hadn't checked this in the first place.

KiCAD vs. GitHub

I don't know if this is documented somewhere or not. This is my findings. I see in the current KiCAD nightly builds that it is able to use module libraries from the GitHub repo, what is kind a cool. I've a long standing problem, how to share the modules I designed between my projects and machines. It would be the solution.

As somebody almost never read any manual, created a repo in my GitHub account, added my modules to it, then I went to the KiCAD and added the repo:

The result is not really what I expected.

After some reading, and trying here are my findings. The way I was thinking above, just not works.
First of all. The structure differ from that. In the KiCAD's thinking one new style of .pretty type library is "A" repo itself, and not a repo store several libraries. In addition, the KiCAD access the repo on programmatic way, so it needs some additional configuration.
So I decided to create a new organization for it on the GitHub.
Here are the steps - Kind of picture blog style. :-)

Create a new organization:

Remove the restrictions for third party application access (necessary for the KiCAD)

Add the repo for a module library:

 

 Adding the modules to the repo with your usual toolset

Now you can add the organization (not the repo directly) to the KiCAD:

And here is the result:

TI Precision Labs - Arrived

And finally...
After some fighting with the Fedex/Customs Office, it landed on my desk:

Let the learning begin...