Sir Thrivalist — The Garage Is Open

Build Log

July 30, 2026 / 7 min

The Hallway Light That Took Four Weekends

The brief was one sentence: the hallway light should be on when someone is in the hallway, and off when they are not. Four weekends, two sensor technologies and one genuinely humbling bug later, it is.

July 9, 2026 / 5 min

A £3 Part Saved a £700 Dishwasher

The error code said drainage failure. Two engineers would have quoted for a pump. The actual fault was a float switch with a fingernail of limescale on it, and the part costs three pounds.

Didn't Work

July 23, 2026 / 6 min

The Battery Gauge That Lied for Six Weeks

The reading was 94%. It was 94% the next week, and the week after. I had built a beautifully packaged instrument that was measuring, as far as I can tell, the resistance of my own wiring.

Teardown

July 16, 2026 / 5 min

What's Actually Inside a £12 Label Printer

Eleven screws, one genuinely nice stepper motor, a thermal head that costs more than the rest of the machine put together, and a small piece of commercial cynicism moulded into the cartridge.

Bench Notes

July 2, 2026 / 4 min

The Enclosure Is the Hard Part

Nobody photographs the enclosure. It is the least interesting part of every build and it is the entire difference between a project on a bench and a thing that lives in your house.

Dispatches

June 25, 2026 / 3 min

The Garage Is Open

There is a particular kind of satisfaction in building a thing that did not exist yesterday. It starts with a question that is usually more interesting than it is sensible.