show-and-tell

[whole brook]

Made a simple case for the Adafruit PN532 breakout board (v1.6) to make it easier to store the breakout and some NFC tags, shared it on Printables in case anyone finds it useful 🙂

https://www.printables.com/model/245741-adafruit-pn532-nfcrfid-breakout-case

[uneven dove]

Getting really close. I think I have decided on the SAMD21 for the basic unit. Do any of you use a pcb company to get assembled boards or does everyone here place their own?
I will try it out later, but I just want something back quick.
Who do I use?

Beautiful. RP watchy. 👍

[wise bluff]

What buttons are those on the side. Can’t find any smt/smd side buttons that small

[exotic sierra]

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/434381035816/11631972

[wise bluff]

Finally the side clicky

Thanks

[exotic sierra]

🙂

[grizzled talon]

Working on some cool EYESPI stuff, made a custom Feather Wing. Stay tuned for more posts, this isn't the only thing I'm working on that will work with EYESPI. 👍 I will release the design files once I verify that these prototypes work correctly.

[stark latch]

Pics from a WIP: RP4 retro arcade console. Needs a bit of polishing and GPIO wiring (and maybe some keycaps for the smaller buttons), but it's getting there. Trackball controller works, at least. Waiting on parts to (hopefully) make a spinner module.

[burnt wyvern]

I have a feeling this is gonna take a while, but I'm modeling the DMG-01 Game Boy shell in Fusion 360. When I'm done I should have a near 1:1 copy of the original shell which I can then print on my new resin printer 👀

[burnt wyvern]

The test print went okay, there's a little warping and misalignment but I'll probably remeasure and add better supports next time

[exotic sierra]

Very nice first pass. Liking the color

[stark latch]

Got all the gaming things built and working. 🎉

[wise bluff]

Ok but where is the comically large analog joystick

[stark latch]

Well, I was just going to use an off-the shelf gamepad, but now that you've put out the challenge... 😄

[pulsar mortar]

I don't think i posted this but I finished up my LED light.

Outside is metal and inside is 3d printed parts. It features a dual 186500 battery system with a custom charger.

Charger being tested

(Outside for obvious reasons)

[vernal vigil]

Prototyping with a Feather RP2040

[signal wigeon]

Hi all,

I am working on a personal project to do with GPS tracker.
I need some help, and there is a small budget for hiring ( I will buy you drink kind of thing )

I am building a GPS tracker for my Motorbike,
It is based in RPi Pico, Coded in C+

I am hoping to have a SIM868 as a GPS and GSM
One 9DoF accelerometre
Three Vibration sensors
One RF module ( either RF 433 or LORA )

A second device will be acting as Pager
One RF module ( either RF 433 or LORA )
one Round screen ( possibly square too )
Few buttons for menu

I am looking for someone to collaborate, It will be an OpenSource project, and I am happy to ship Hardware for the purpose of development
I am London, UK based ( just in case we have any local )

DM me, lets talk about it !!!!

[exotic sierra]

Probably the best place to find collaborators would be the Adafruit Jobs board. It’s free and they share it each stream 🙂

https://adafruit.com/jobs

[signal wigeon]

Legend!

I might even apply for some jobs there lookinf at it !

[signal wigeon]

Cool, I added it there, thanks !
still thought if there is anyone here ! feel free to reach out !

[west zinc]

Five CircuitPython HACKtablets are en route to the Adafruit factory for the giveaway.

Submit by 3 August for a chance at the first three tablets. Ping me or @sharp comet with any questions.

Entry details here:
https://gist.github.com/FoamyGuy/642358cf5c8193b2b4b4704d10f021c6

[cunning lava]

Hello!

[stark latch]

Nothing the least bit sinister going on here at all. Why do you ask?

[brave thistle]

I just published a new repo on Github: https://github.com/PaulskPt/MAGTAG_datetime

[random tapir]

No coding, no (intense) circuitry besides the soon to be power supply/switch for the inductive “candy cane wand.” Just recessed LEDs and a whole lotta magic 🪄 wife did the painting since I’m not good with layering

Anyone have a good idea of how to get a portable 5V? I got a handful of 3.7V LiPos, but don’t know how to run them in series yet, resistors I could figure out afterward.

[candid crescent]

The easiest way to get portable 5V is a USB powerbank.

Or there's the PowerBoost boards if you want to use your existing batteries.

[random tapir]

Looks like it works at minimum 3.5V after doing a little more testing. A single 3.7V LiPo is gonna work after all

Thanks for getting me up to finish the day strong😤

[cunning lava]

progress

[north mural]

He’s adorable! Love the hat.

[zealous eagle]

Happy Birthday Jerry!

[vernal vigil]

Proof that I made it myself: bodge wire & hot glue 😄

[round zodiac]

MidiCommander - a hand-held MIDI patch librarian - PyGamer and MIDI Featherwing, coded in CircuitPython. #CircuitPythonDay2022 Open Source: github.com/gmeader/pybadge
https://youtu.be/xjDKXFzHlWw

[hearty lagoon]

these look very cool. Where can I find more info?

[cunning lava]

https://hackaday.io/project/180025-fluffbug

[remote sigil]

oh this is so cute!

[cunning lava]

thanks

[hearty lagoon]

Thank you for the link

keep us updated!

[subtle lynx]

When can I buy if I don't get picked for a giveaway? How many I/Os are left for me to use?

I need to hook up some buttons & knobs and a couple more pins for a CAN transceiver! I would love to get my hands on one of these to make a bigger screen for one of the things I made at work to control one of our radios. See attached video.

(Eagle-eyed viewers will notice the Adafruit Zippy scroll wheel PCB, hidden underneath it is the ATtiny817 seesaw with stemma Qt because that screen only had an I2C and two IOs available, just barely enough for me to hook up CAN and the seesaw)

https://youtu.be/GERtje63eYc

[north mural]

I got an ANO decoder for basically the same purpose except GUI and/or weather related. Yours works awesome. Please share the code, I want to do something similar. I have a touch screen so I can use touchcontrols but those same screens are also in not touchscreen in which an ANO encoder is awesome.

[west zinc]

I’m not setup to sell units. But I’m glad to answer any questions. On this board I think there are four or five leftover pins available.

[west zinc]

And that's a really cool project.

[vernal vigil]

Since Jen Schachter is going to be on tonight, here's a book nook diorama I made based on a simplified version of her plans

(and I guess some guy named Adam is going to be on too?)

[subtle lynx]

it's LVGL, mostly C right now, if that's ok, i can dig that code out and pop it into a github repo. i haven't gotten around to trying to figure out LVGL and CircuitPython together on the esp32 series (or if that's even possible--hence why i want to grab the tablet and try them out together!)

and it's using esp-idf instead of arduino

[exotic sierra]

Yeah, no idea who he is

Only famous maker I know of is Jamie Hyneman

🫣

[north mural]

@exotic sierra don't be savage like that

@subtle lynx thanks, esp-idf is out of my league right now. :/

[subtle lynx]

i think i have a variant of the LVGL example code that does use arduino, lemme dig around

should be easy enough to plug in the arduino seesaw library then

for the encoder

which screen do you have hooked up?

[north mural]

planned on using it with circuit python on a project enclosure next to the tft.

3.5" tft featherwing

[subtle lynx]

ah ok. cool. well, i think there's a micropython port of lvgl, so maybe it can work in circuitpython too

[north mural]

was going to go with foamyguys tab layouts for displayio but yours seemed like a nice shortcut until you said esp-idf

[subtle lynx]

should take this to another channel since this is going off topic

[north mural]

oops you're right

[subtle lynx]

which one fits best

[versed lava]

@vivid junco in #help-with-3dprinting wanted a 3d printable grid for the 64x64 panels so I made one... it turned out it was better to do an infill hack so it didn't take a full day to print (2.5 hours instead) but it came out pretty good! Its on my printables with a lot of other adafruit related models if anyone wants to make one! https://www.printables.com/model/252635-adafruit-64x64-led-matrix-grids

[rigid onyx]

wow this looks SICK nice job!!

[north mural]

Been waiting a month for my brother to show up and we'd build his birthday gift together. Come to find out.... the Macropad doesn't require any soldering. It's all compression fit stuff, plug and play, easy enough for a 10 year old... perfect project for my brother who has no experience with microcontrollers. I posted this in circuit python drinking then realized it should really belong in show and tell. He thinks the Macropad is sick and loved the rotary encoder. His eyes lit up when he realized what it could do and OLED screen helps with the commands per macro. He loves it.

Here's the Macropad YouTube Controller script I wrote for him. He'll get the most use out this one. He loves the Macropad and his cute adafruit lunchbox for storing more adafruit electronics like sensors and boards. 🙂

[short summit]

Thanks to foamyguy for both the inspiration and the image and image conversion script, I added a Winamp skin to my Album Art display. I pick an album on my website, and it shoots the art over to the PyPortal and the artist name and album title display in Winamp.

[north mural]

ohh nice, good album too.

[versed lava]

I got my nephews all the macropad adabox. It was a fun project for them and I also got to teach them a little about 3d printing

[short summit]

Macropads are the best!

[north mural]

my brother is really good with wood working. he'll probably build a wooden box for it. i've seen wooden box designs for them in the learn guides. i'll point him to one of those.

foamyguy's wimpy player is awesome. i might build one of those someday too for a little boombox with a wimpy LCD. Do you have your code for internet album art on github somewhere Paul?

Adafruit has a 20W I2S amp and with 10W speakers could make for a really nice little boombox. 🙂

Though on the product page the 20W amp doesn't have I2S in the title but if you look at the back of the PCB the silkscreen mentions I2S. 😉

[short summit]

https://github.com/prcutler/circuitpython-programs/tree/main/pyportal - I make no apologies for the code quality, I'm still learning. 🙂

[stark latch]

Made a 3D-printable version of my H.R. Giger Counter (contains a MightyOhm Geiger counter board). STL files and assembly instructions located here: https://www.printables.com/model/254282-hr-giger-counter

[versed lava]

Took me a minute 🙂

[stark latch]

It all dates back to a friend's tweet about the movie "Prometheus", 10 years ago: https://twitter.com/BadAstronomer/status/213663977069223938

At the time, I bodged together something from bits and pieces: https://www.instructables.com/Giger-Counter/

Now that I've got a reliable 3D printer, I figured it was time to make an actual, printable version with a fancy thumb switch and everything. 🙂

Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer)

If I ever go to an alien planet, I'm bringing a Giger counter. #ThingsILearnedFomSciFIMovies

Twitter · Jun 15, 2012, 4:07 PM

[versed lava]

I love it 🙂 looks like its resin? Threw it a like on printables

[stark latch]

The original was spliced together from a 1/2-scale plastic skeleton, some split loom conduit, and a bunch of low-temperature thermoplastic, all spray-painted in a color called "carbon mist". I made 3 in total: one that was auctioned off for charity, one for Phil, and one for myself. Not sure if anyone else ever made one from the Instructables thing.

[ember pendant]

I upgraded it to usb c. There currently isn't a battery

I had to glue together a proto board and a bakelite board to stabilize the usb board. I then jumped some connections, soldered the original power ports wire to the proto, and soldered the USB pads to the through holes on the proto. This created a simple drop in power module. After cutting the shell, I mounted it. I'm thinking of custom designing the next board and having it printed so it won't be as cobbled together might even sell completed modules as upgrades since drop in upgrades don't seem to exist

[north mural]

If it fits it ships. Would be nice if all devices were easily converted to USB-C.

[ember pendant]

i think most if not all are, so lond as there is room and you have a little know how and such. maybe not phones

[grizzled talon]

Looking into manufacturing my EYESPI feather-wing breakout. I still have to design a silk-screen (add the pin labels, etc.) for it and adjust a few things. It's coming along well and will be cost effective to manufacture. 👍

[late orbit]

I call it MIDIzilla. A custom midi control code footswitch built with a raspberry pi pico w designed for MODEP, an open source emulator for MOD devices.

[north mural]

Made a featherwing pogo jig out of a feather tripler.

Eventually I intend on soldering the LORA board on the RP2040's low profile header pins. It's so low profile when they're together you can barely tell they're 2 boards stacked together. Want to test my LORA board without soldering headers on it first, then snipping them off, and soldering it to the RP2040. This seemed like a worthwhile test jig for a low form factor stack. Initial soldering of the spear head pogos, still have to adjust their height in line with the standoffs.

[north mural]

Also its day 53 of the MagTag on a 2500mah battery running openweather.

[mighty umbra]

Working on a web GUI for the Pimoroni Inventor2040w aimed at controlling props and other simple interactive stuff.

[late orbit]

Success!

[north mural]

at first i was like why is that thing so dirty if it's brand new... took a second to figure it out then i was like ahhh ok that's hot.

[late orbit]

@north mural are you talking about the graphic i used for the top? Yeah...it's subtle until you see Godzilla. I'm a kid of the 70s so I grew up watching Godzilla during that era. I wanted to find an image from that era but couldn't find anything usable.

[distant frost]

This is a simple accessory for the Nike x Acronym Blazer (the grey sideways V screwed to the shoe toward the back). My shoes are size 10.5, and the accessory that I downloaded and printed had the mounting holes in slightly different positions, so it did not work. I made this so that I could tweak the hole positions until they fit. It is kind of like simple stud earrings, I guess.

[versed lava]

I also did a 3d printed shoe project this weekend.

[calm badge]

What is that? Multiple space shuttles control console ?

[late orbit]

@calm badge nuclear missile launcher. 😀 Actually it's a midi controller.

[calm badge]

It's just what I says when I see something with a lot of buttons, but looks very nice. What controller/MCU is handling all these buttons and what's the connector ?

[late orbit]

@calm badge it uses a Pico W. The connector is a USB cable.

@calm badge here's a pic of the inside.

[calm badge]

what is the cable organizer board ? what kind of LCD has such a big backend but such a small frontend?! I have the same LCD backpack but the backplate of that LCD is huge compared to the display on the front?!

[late orbit]

The board with all the cables is my custom button panel that is to the right of the LCD in the previous pic. I can't remember the exact mfg for the LCD but it's a 4 x 20 LCD.

[calm badge]

thanks, I ask all of this because I'm very interested in these kind of enclosure and custom membrane costs too much to print for a custom small project

Wish I could find a motorized switch that stays in a position though that returns to off when powering off

[late orbit]

@calm badge I just printed mine on an ink jet printer and added lamination.

[calm badge]

I meant a membrane like this with electronics in them(like resistors and debouncing) and the standard port for membrane. I didn't see one on your panel ?

[late orbit]

@calm badge nope, I didn't have anything that fancy.

[torn elbow]

I see your USB-C PSP and raise you my USB-C new 3DS XL

[restive forum]

Pfft... USB-C, USB & GPIO.

[slim finch]

All of these mods are so cool! Great work across the board!

[north mural]

Fits with this years hackaday theme of modernizing old tech. Updating to usb-c counts. Good stuff.

[torn elbow]

Really makes older/vintage handhelds a lot more useable, charging using your phone charger instead of nintendo's proprietary connector of the year

[north mural]

Created an easy to use OpenWeather demo for the ESP32 Airlift Featherwing.

the online data will be integrated into my weatherstation project. currently only has offline sensor data from local sensors. will soon integrate online elements into it.

[restive forum]

I'm working on a portable, online weather monitor.. using a Pico W. 👍

[north mural]

that would be something very new. haven't seen a lot for the pico w.

[restive forum]

Having built-in wi-fi is a big plus.. I can use my phone for hotspot, so it's fully portable.

I just have to decide on a method for publishing the data online that doesn't rely on the Pico being active constantly.

[north mural]

adafruitIO is great for stuff like that. i plan on using adafruitio for logging most of my stuff, i won't be throwing much at it, maybe once every 15 minutes maximum but for most things once an hour is plenty.

[restive forum]

Everything I do must be self-hosted.

[lapis jasper]

I like influxdb

for time series data

[restive forum]

I'll probably look at some method to dump data into an SQL DB.

[lapis jasper]

influxdb has an easy line api for writing data and a built in dashboard too

[restive forum]

I doubt I'd need all that.. just some easy PHP stuff. 😁

Keep it simples.

[lapis jasper]

up to you 🙂

[slim finch]

I'm overloading info in an image but most of the informative parts are visible
I have a distribution of air quality sensors across my apartment connected to various ESP32S2 boards running circuit python reporting the values my website, and after looking at the air pressure over time I noticed I could use them to infer the state of some seemingly unrelated parts of the apartment, in this case if the bedroom door is open or closed.
Upper left block of four plots:
Top left of that is the time series of air pressure across three rooms and outdoors (brown is the office, cyan is the bedroom, blue is the living room, and bright green is outdoors). The blue and cyan are just barely visible over each other, with the blue dominating most of it. But I noticed I could see the cyan sometimes but not other times. This happened often enough that I thought it might not be noise or artifacts from matplotlib. I looked into it and took the difference of the two sensors over time. The red plots are two difference plots showing that the pressure difference is blocked into groups but does also wanders a bit over time. The bottom left of the top left block is the histogram of the red plots y values showing two clean structures.
Bottom left block of four are the plots PyMC gives when it fits a model for two normal distributions. Basically it found the values you need for a bayesian classifier.
Righthand three:
the histogram of air pressure differential data, the pdf of the points, and third plot is the probability any air pressure differential value is caused by the 0th cluster, or 1th cluster based on the value.
The intersection of the third plot is how I determine if the door is open or closed. If the differential is below -0.08 hPa I say the door is closed, if it's greater than that I determine that it's open
the whole model is while the hvac is running, and windows are closed. As those change the air pressure across my place the model would stop being valid without those conditions

[north mural]

Got some online data going now. Just want to show the inaccuracy of trying to rely on on-board temp sensors. The board voltage/heat does affect them significantly. It's better to use external sensors.

[north mural]

because the bluefruit sense must be in a featherwing stack its highly susceptible to board heating. the more intensive code you're running, and the hotter the ambient temp gets, the more inaccurate it becomes. it was 10 degrees off yesterday showing 101F when it was actually 91F ambient. so it's only really useful as a CPU temp monitor which is a shame because the onboard pressure sensor is the most accurate of any pressure sensor i've tested.

so it's really best if coupled with an external stemma temp and humidity sensor while keeping the onboard pressure sensor.

[junior barn]

Using these in several BLE connected UM FeatherS3 temperature projects. Slap a STEMMA connector on them and mount away from the cpu. Works great! https://www.adafruit.com/product/5064

[north mural]

not even sure what i'm looking at. gps, rtc, 2 displays, antenna board, feather, and a battery that looks like it's about to explode.

[white zenith]

AWESOME shoes (because I have the same ones and planning to add LEDs, lol)

[balmy lake]

For anyone who was watching the CircuitPython day Show And Tell.... we have liftoff 😂

https://twitter.com/gvy_dvpont/status/1560717877098995712?s=20&t=W58CSK7RWWrB9FTf7P-KBQ

Guy Dupont (@gvy_dvpont)

Anyways, here's my animatronic Racacoonie.

(H̶̵̶e̶̵̶ ̶̵̶c̶̵̶a̶̵̶n̶̵̶ ̶̵̶c̶̵̶o̶̵̶n̶̵̶t̶̵̶r̶̵̶o̶̵̶l̶̵̶ ̶̵̶m̶̵̶e̶̵̶ I can control him with an app, or by automatic gaze tracking if I'm in front of a camera)

CC: @allatoncemovie @Daniels

▶ Play video

Twitter · Aug 19, 2022, 7:58 PM

[signal wigeon]

LOL

Advance GPS tracker with RFpager
battery is ok, just looks weird 😄

[north mural]

I forgot to show off my shirt at the end for @terse totem and @warped siren on show & tell today.

[versed lava]

Nice - I have some other mods I'm planning to do to them (decals mainly). I also got some big gray toestops that look nice

[warped siren]

YES. That is super

[versed lava]

Playing around with multi-material custom keycaps

[north mural]

i showed a bad example during live show and tell of how close the RP2040 board can be mounted to a lora featherwing. this is why i needed the pogo jig. when you solder them together there is no separating them without cutting through the pin headers holding them together. once soldered together it's almost a permanent combination.

[hexed star]

Hey guys, I recently created & launched a midpower rocket with active roll control, powered by a flight computer soldered onto perfboard featuring an Adafruit feather M0 among some other sensors!

[white zenith]

Id love to see lol! I also got the yellow ones and I'm airbrushing them UV colors (no lights for that pair)

[calm badge]

i wanted to do rockets once but im not good at math and i was afraid things would go wrong and it would escape earth orbit.

[candid crescent]

That's a fantastic problem to have in amateur rocketry.

[stark latch]

I've been working on an OpenSCAD library that's specifically for creating 3D-printable boxes. I've used it for everything from pill organizers to Retro Pi game consoles. It does most of the heavy lifting so all I need to do is tell it what size and what features I want. It's ideally suited for small project enclosures (assuming you need something that's rectilinear). Finally got around to adding the source (plus a few demo files) on github: https://github.com/degroof/ConfigBox Would love to get some feedback.

[north mural]

It's all 3D files so you'll need someone from the 3D crowd to look into it. Neat enclosures.

[stark latch]

It's incredibly convenient. Yesterday, I decided needed a pill organizer for mid-day (as opposed to morning and evening) pills. So I spec'd out a minimally-sized box that would just barely contain those meds. Got the whole thing done in a couple hours.

[terse totem]

nice!

[versed lava]

3D printers are amazing. Every once in a while you print something that pays for the printer.

[rugged grove]

I've been wanting to print some boxes but don't know blender yet. This seems like a great solution

Do you mind if I dm you with some questions?

[stark latch]

Sure. That's fine.

[rugged grove]

Appreciate it

[north mural]

just thought of a neat idea for your project. grid organizational bins like you buy in stores. your scalable code would probably work great for something like that.

[versed lava]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd4NnHvTRAY <--- this may be of interest to you 🙂

[north mural]

Oh i got 2 new organizational bins that I still have to fill with parts. Was just an idea for you to better show off what your scaling code can do.

[stark latch]

That's an interesting idea. Might be fun to make up a library specifically for storage containers / bins. Stackable / interlocking, etc.

[short summit]

This is a similar idea: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1264391

[stark latch]

Nice!

[devout verge]

I made a candle-shaped controller for Sky: Children of the Light. It’s powered by a QT Py M0, which unfortunately didn’t have enough storage to do it in CircuitPython so I had to rewrite everything in Arduino. An accelerometer is used to detect gestures which correspond with key presses. This is my first time 3D printing a shaped enclosure for electronics, and while it’s far from perfect, it came out better than I had expected.

[hybrid sigil]

VSCode users playing with web workflow in CircuitPython 8.0 beta might find this interesting. Still rough, but seems to work well. Warning...only tested on Mac so far but shouldn't be too platform specific. Will do some testing on Windows today...Windows 10 seems to be fine, too.
https://github.com/ae5au/vscode-circuitpython-webupload

[short summit]

That's really cool

[hybrid sigil]

Thanks Paul! Also, thanks for the work on the podcast. I'm enjoying it!

[short summit]

thanks!

[grave owl]

Doing styrene mockups of pi400 frames.

And yes, by chance, that spacer fits perfects

[north mural]

compared to a large powerful laptop that's a nice cheap compact war driving setup. needs moar cyber punk aesthetic 🙂

[versed lava]

Oh man, now I want to design and print a rig to mount my field monitor like that

[grave owl]

And honestly cloud computing and or simply connecting to a machine at-home means anything is possible from this. If your computing power is elsewhere, and accessible there's not really anything this keyboard can't do.

[grave owl]

Do it

[dark cairn]

remade repl

using jcurses it's so quick to do this stuff

[stark latch]

I made this because Shelby (cat) is always trying to convince one of us that the other hasn't given her the treats due her. Verb on left, past participle on right, noun on slider.

[candid crescent]

Clever use of grammar! 👍

[versed lava]

Litter Scoopen

[dawn bane]

made a rpi based handheld with gps, rp2040 for USB keyboard with BBQ10

RC3 will fix OLED small screen for system status, jog dial wheel for tab/up/down bash commands

https://twitter.com/thara1129/status/1563163810391015424

HRA! (@thara1129)

8/26夜の sangria

スクロールも動いてそうですね👍️

▶ Play video

Twitter · Aug 26, 2022, 1:57 PM

will be fully open source and promoting GIS application and MSX emulations

[versed lava]

Where do you purchase these keyboards?

[short summit]

I think it's the one by Solder Party: https://www.tindie.com/stores/arturo182/

[north mural]

Those are sweet!

[short summit]

Or mabye not, I'm not sure now that I look closer

[dawn bane]

Keyboards from Shenzhen... dismantlement from bbq10...

[versed lava]

Thanks! Even if its not the same one keyboards like that were sold out everywhere last time I looked

[marble mantle]

robots I built used by kids in a robotics class in summer camp:
https://youtu.be/jOU6kb7Fh8Q

[uneven dove]

OK I feel close to being at the next step.
I have learned that you can't really reverse engineer from brd, but you can from sch.
I learned that Kicad libraries are not as easy to find compared to Eagle.
I learned that this was not hard, but there were a lot of steps that could not be skipped.
I almost figured out how to edit footprints and or symbols, but according to an error that I chose to approve, it didn't happen yet.

I may be ready to have a board made now. Not sure if this is where I can ask for recommendations? I assume the difference is the price/time/location difference? So someone in the US?

[exotic sierra]

#help-with-hw-design is a great place to get feedback on your designs

[uneven dove]

Thanks!

[solar yew]

The Most Useless Robot Ever.
https://youtu.be/uhePhkDf_IQ

haha

[brave socket]

https://github.com/zax71/EC-Online I made a Minecraft server player counter, this displays the current online player count on an LED bar graph and automatically turns off the display between 9PM and 9AM so you can sleep at night💤. I used MicroPython so it worked with the Pico W (or maybe move it to an ESP8266 in the future as I have a few lying around and Pico w boards are like gold dust 😆 ).

[hexed star]

Coming soon 👀

[north mural]

via constellation art. i see you. nice one.

[hexed star]

Finished designing my DIY reflow hotplate

[uneven dove]

we need better remote power. For aesthetics... batteries yes, but when they need charged it's not wireless anymore. Maybe batteries can plug in and part of the case design to pull one easy and swap another? (like non wired constellations)

[stray orchid]

https://www.zebra.com/us/en/support-downloads/mobile-computers/handheld/tc75.html

[uneven dove]

@stray orchid spam?

Anyway my thought was similar to how cordless tools have easy changing batteries...

Today's presents... 4 pages.
UPS can treat my package anyway they want, but we have the power of bubble wrap!

[stray orchid]

Nope. That device does what you were saying. Instead of charging it, the entire back is the battery, which you can just pop off and stick another one in. There's a supercap that saves the system state while you do, so that it doesn't have to reboot.

[uneven dove]

Ok.

I figured like power tools. I wasn't even thinking about keeping it running, just the annoyance of so many devices and so many batteries. The little PH connections are going to break eventually etc.

Laptops have quick changing batteries...

Cordless power tools.

Basically what I mean is there are some they are all proprietary. No standardization. Yet.

[stray orchid]

Well, not for lithium, anyway. Alkaline and lead acid, you've got all sorts of standard options.

[uneven dove]

yup

that ph connector is standard

I guess its in the author of the housing. I was just thinking of smoke detectors and little star shaped led things on the ceiling being hard to change batteries in, but also wires on the ceiling...
I was just trying to imagine a solution.
I was even trying to imagine crawling in the attic above or wherever and laying down those big charging coils, but there is a half inch of sheetrock usually and that is a huge gap for charging. It might still work though. idk lol

I recently bought this though so I can test some distances.
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1407

[dim saddle]

^ running arduino (via platform.io) and protomatter stack for most of the graphical stuff. I've got it doing a fair bit behind the scenes, hence the blocking pauses every so often. Those things on top are an IR receiver/sender and an I2C temperature sensor. I've also got an RTC attached in behind and an SD Card reader I'm not doing much with yet. It's also reporting sensor data to home assistant via MQTT and soon will likely also add reporting via the same.

Definitely had to do the fun pin remapping thing in SERCOM for the Matrix Portal to wedge all that in.

[dim saddle]

woo, and just got the IR switching "pages". Now I just need to get it to unload memory a bit on page switches.

[serene juniper]

Hi everyone! Thought I’d share another prop project. Used a CPX, all coded in MakeCode. Still needed a lot of tinkering but I think I’m improving

[restive forum]

Very like! 👍

[dim saddle]

It's fun seeing what I can pull off with only 64x64 and 6bits.

[restive forum]

I'd love to have one myself, but money. 😔

[dim saddle]

fair

[restive forum]

I'm still waiting on parts/budget for my pocket weather monitor.

[dim saddle]

ooh that sounds cool

[restive forum]

It's getting there.. I just need a few more parts. 😁👍

[north mural]

have a schematic and board designed for a 16 step sequencer. been staring at it for a while with joy. i've wanted to do something like this for about 20 years and never knew how until recently. i want to thank Lady Ada, Liz Clark, John Park, Tod Kurt, and Skerr. each had their own little thing to contribute over the years that sparked something inside me to learn this stuff. based on the picostepseq by Tod Kurt but having that as a base alone isn't enough if you don't understand how to modify and expand it. i'm finally starting to understand pcb design. this is an add-on board for the RP Pico and according to Adafruit, drop-in boards for the Pico specifically are going to be called Bells. still don't have a name for the board, suggestions welcome.

[stark latch]

Me attempting to solve a maze of my own creation...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU9ZKYrEIkw

[vernal vigil]

A metaphor for life.

[vernal vigil]

I recently learned how to design my own PCBs. It seemed like a big hurdle, and it sort of was, but once I figured out how to make something resembling a "proper" PCB it really enabled me to take my projects to the next level.

(although right now I'm working on something for an adafruit Perma-Proto board)

[vivid junco]

Hey all, been working on this project for a few months now and wanted to share my progress. I finally built a wooden frame for it and am fairly happy with the code.

A little about the project:
Essentially it's a glorified clock which displays current weather information (So I don't need to ever go outside again)
The clouds displayed are based on cloudiness, they move based on wind speed, the sun and moon rise and set based on time and local sunset time, the moon phases are accurate to the current moon phase and if it's raining, little rain droplets will fall from the top based on the amount of rain.
Aside from weather, it also displays current crypto prices on the main screen because I'm one of those types of people...

It also has other modes that I can easily switch to using http requests from shortcuts on my phone.
The two other modes I've included videos of are a variation on Conways game of life (I adjusted the rules so it's constantly unstable and think it looks cool) and an animated heart so my girlfriend doesn't get annoyed at how much time I spend on this thing 😅

It can also play a game of classic snake (controlled from my phone) and cycle through around 30 animated gifs that I stole online.

Although this is a project I'm constantly working on, I'd love some feedback from you guys and to hear ideas on different modes I can add

Huge thanks to everyone in this community who has helped answer my noob questions over the last 3-4 months, I appreciate how quick and helpful the responses were. 🙏

[sleek slate]

I wanted to let folks know about a new open-source project I released recently: https://k3n.cc/0 . This is a collection of O(all) the not-for-Google software I've written over the last decade or so. Security-first Linux server & container management, various user-space tools, home-security system, smart-home controller, lots more. My gift back to the technical community. **But of special interest to Circuit Python folks might be this: ** https://github.com/kstillson/ktools/blob/main/pylib/kcore/neo.py . It's a Neopixel abstraction layer that provides the same API on circ-py, rasp-pi, and normal CPython (where the pixels are graphically simulated). So you can develop and test code on a full server (with debugging, source control, etc), and upload it to circ-py only when it's mostly done. There's a similar abstraction for more general GPIO pin usage. Would be great if you could check it out and let me know what you think!

[grave owl]

More pico-duck "cases"

Thick acrylic flexes enough for bootselect to be pressed.

Thin*

[woven flax]

Hey guys, I developed a simple RTC & Thermometer using the DS3231 RTC. I love CircuitPython, makes development so much easier & fun! https://youtu.be/gBofy7MMdIY

@vivid juncoYou have done a great job! Really impressive project. What display are you using?

[north mural]

@woven flax 1 tiny unnecessary step. the terminalio font is built into circuitpython. it's the only built-in font and you can call it with font = terminalio.FONT excellent easy to follow video. 👍

[solar wadi]

terminalio.FONT doesn't even include the ° symbol, it's fine as a default for most text, but it's not a universal solution

[north mural]

he imported terminalio font into /fonts. as far as i know it's the same font...

[solar wadi]

it's not at all quite the same

[north mural]

didn't know that, i take it back then.

[solar wadi]

the builtin font is stripped of most characters that are not low ascii unless they are used by the localization

it is a much bigger font in total than what is included in the binary

but since letters numbers and punctuation at least are there, it's good enough

but no ° 😦

[north mural]

ahh hence why he had to import a font to get that symbol.

good to know. 🙂

[normal inlet]

I finally finished the Gemma Hoop Earrings! (I know it’s a small project and just following a tutorial but it’s been super fun to wear around campus.) https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR5Bf4WA/

[brave socket]

from machine import Pin

pin_state = [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0] 
    
def shift_update(input_data, data, clock, latch):
    global pin_state
    
    # define the list forwards and backwards
    pin_state = input_data
    reversed_pin_state = list(reversed(pin_state))
    
    #put latch down to start data sending
    clock.value(0)
    latch.value(0)
    clock.value(1)
  
    #load data in reverse order
    for i in reversed_pin_state:
        clock.value(0)
        data.value(i)
        clock.value(1)

    #put latch up to store data on register
    clock.value(0)
    latch.value(1)
    clock.value(1)

def set_pin(pin, value, data, clock, latch):
    global pin_state
    pin_state[pin] = value
    shift_update(pin_state, data, clock, latch)

Just wrote a more user friendly version of the code in https://peppe8o.com/how-to-use-74hc595-shift-register-with-raspberry-pi-pico-and-micropython/ in case anyone wants a driver for the 74hc595 shift register

|| It's MicroPython because it's for a Pico W project btw ||

[grand turtle]

made a magnetic angle sensor breakout board. In the process of prototyping for a brushless DC motor haptic knob

[hexed star]

Figuring out the packaging for my flight computer PCB. Printing the top to this now 🙂

Unboxing it will be like unboxing an iphone lol

[exotic sierra]

Nice

[vivid junco]

Cheers! Appreciate it 🙂 It's the 64x64 3mm pitch led matrix with a raspberry pi 4 and bonnet

[round zodiac]

ESP32-S3 TFT Feather on battery power running a CircuitPython 8.0 clock, set by Internet time NTP. Open Source, of course: http://chromakinetics.com/esp32/
CircuitPython is now automatically connected to WiFi, asuming you have created an .env file with your WiFi connection info.
Thanks to @solar wadi for help getting this running (in #help-with-circuitpython ) and @terse totem for most of the code from his Parsec video.

[north mural]

@round zodiac Nice code! super slim and neat. 👍

[long hound]

ESP32 TTGO allowing you to monitor the prices of multiple stocks at the same time. It uses the free finnhub api to grab pricing info: https://github.com/mike-rankin/TTGO_Stocks_Monitor

[hexed star]

I'm back 😎

Here are some screenshots from the web platform I created to allow users to explore the data from off of the flight computer pcb I'll be selling

In these screenshots the data was being directly read off of the FRAM and transmitted over serial to a connected computer where it was then displayed within the website

Pretty cool

[north mural]

That's amazing. Does is have a way to compare flights?

Looks gorgeous! Beautiful UI design!

love the font you went with too, no idea what it is but great choice. everything looks top notch from the board design to the web platform. congrats!

[hexed star]

Yeah I'm planning to allow users to upload their flights to the cloud so they can view all of them from one place

Since the board itself can only store 1 flight of data

[hexed star]

Thanks for the feedback! Not too bad for my first pcb haha

The discord for /r/rocketry tore my product apart lol

But in the end it still was good feedback as well

[stark latch]

NeoPixel module for a WIP. A Feather, LiPo and NeoPixel Jewel, all crammed into a 3D-printed enclosure. Touchpads on the side control pixel pattern and brightness.

Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=484KQ1Va2YY

[long hound]

I ❤️anything blinky.

[stark latch]

The idea is to make something that can be put inside a container with a cutout design. Here's a test piece I just printed, with the module inside.

[floral flicker]

My latest silly project 🙂 Adafruit Inside!
I used the 1.69" 280x240 Round Rectangle Color IPS TFT Display (ST7789) and the MAX98357A I2S 3W Class D Amp.
https://youtu.be/KxgmwC9LNg8

[hexed star]

For anyone interested, I've now added the ability for users to upload flights from their flight computer to the cloud & share them with others https://connect.proxima-aero.space/cloud

The one flight on here was actual sensor data uploaded from the flight computer through the site, just not flight data (yet)

Still need to add user auth of course, but one step at a time

[woven flax]

Hello guys, I created a tutorial on how to install CircuitPython on a Lilygo ESP32-S2 board which is quite fast and capable. https://youtu.be/Sd-uIebrfUs

[woven flax]

I hope you find it useful and that it will save you some time.

[sturdy sierra]

Finished my first prop project (Warehouse 13 Tesla) thanks to Adafruit! CircuitPython and all the tutorials on their site are the only things that got me through this. I used a Raspberry Pi Pico and lots of LEDs.
https://hackaday.io/project/184727-warehouse-13-tesla-gun

[stark latch]

I've been playing around with some OpenSCAD code to auto-generate containers based on an arbitrary shape (e.g. from an SVG image). I tried a simple shape first. When that seemed to work OK, I gave it something a bit more complex. As far as I can tell, if I were to give it an image with multiple, unconnected shapes, it'd create a separate container for each. I might have to come up with a way to join up the bottoms in that case, so that it creates a tray of pots.

[vernal vigil]

Is that Lady Ada?

(how does this channel not have a Lady Ada Lovelace emote?)

[stark latch]

Some random silhouette.

[stark latch]

This would be Lady Ada, apparently. Also, cookie cutter.

[north mural]

@woven flax released another excellent circuit python tutorial today. Super simple to follow along. Great videos. https://youtu.be/RtQqXMeYpqI

[stark latch]

I put the SCAD code for the SVG-to-container thing here, in case anyone wants to play with it. https://www.printables.com/model/280675-giftbox-keepsake-box-from-image

[stark latch]

Also, I think I came up with an image-to-cookie-cutter algorithm that creates an outline cutter, plus a press for the details. It works fine, as long as there isn't too much empty space in the interior. I had to doctor this image with a necklace to get it to work.

[compact grove]

So if someone is interested in doing a show and tell, what all do they need to do it? ie: how is the video stream imported?

[rough root]

There's a link to a live streaming platform that shows up in #live-broadcast-chat right before the stream time

[compact grove]

ah, I missed that one, thx!

I'll have to prep my project for one soon. :)

[rough root]

Can't wait to see!

[stark latch]

Think I figured out the whole cookie cutter algorithm thing.

Anybody need an Ada cookie cutter model? Please adhere to the standard safety guidelines when using 3D printed models around food:

1. Coat in a food-safe sealant.
2. Clean thoroughly, sterilizing whenever possible.
3. Do not immerse in clostridium botulinum before applying to cookie dough.
4. Avoid using within the core of a nuclear reactor.
   There are a bunch more, but I really think they're more common sense than rules. 😄

[woven flax]

@north mural Thank you very much for the share and the nice words! I am glad that you like and I hope it is helpful!

[stark latch]

Slight upgrade on my NeoPixel module project. It's now a Feather M0 Basic with a NeoPixel FeatherWing, and a 400mAh LiPo sandwiched between them. Had to alter the capacitive touch code a bit from what I was using on the 328P but otherwise worked out fairly well. USB charging port on one side; touch controls (brightness and pattern) on the other. Runs for about 4-5 hours on a charge.

[prisma sequoia]

Trying to follow step 3. Any recommendations where to get enough clostridium botulinum to immerse it?

[paper charm]

Hi everyone, just posting some progress on a board game idea that I'm currently working on. This isn't anything crazy, just wireless communication between devices using MQTT to play and pause music. It was meant as a communications test to see how to pass data around.

[runic axle]

Her due date was the 256th day of the year (though she joined us a day late) and I thought those here might appreciate the same namesake...

Meet Ada Silver

[exotic sierra]

Your greatest maker journey has started 🙂

[vague spruce]

I made this little wand/holder for the induction loop. Parts used:

• Small Inductive Coil https://www.adafruit.com/product/5140
• Miniboost 5v https://www.adafruit.com/product/4654
• 2 x AA Battery Holder
• nOOds - Flexible LED Filament - 3V 300mm long - Pink
• 220 ohm resistor
• 3d printed holder

[paper charm]

@cedar trellis slowly making progress. Figured I'd share. This is me testing the matrix idea that you suggested and it works perfectly

[cedar trellis]

Congratz, this is awesome!

[hazy walrus]

Hi all! I made a little self-serve tarot machine and wrote about the process here: https://zachgoldstein.engineering/posts/mechatarot/mechatarot/
It's a riff on a project from a couple of years back by i_mozy: https://www.hackster.io/i_mozy/automated-tarot-machine-62d035
Adafruit M4 Express inside 🙂

[wise osprey]

Here is my Halloween Monster M4sk project with a mask i picked up at walmart.

I split the m4sk so i could use the 100mm jumper cable, this helped with adjusting the eyes.
Then i hot glued the boards and the PIR sensor in place, the battery i used 3m doubled sided tape.
The black tape was used to block out the light from the side of display.
/www.adafruit.com/product/4343
https://www.adafruit.com/product/4350
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1578
PIR sensor from my stock

[jovial void]

Hey everyone! I built a macropad with a custom PCB using the Adafruit KB2040. https://youtu.be/P_oSLBZABGA

[solemn vector]

Really nice! 👏

[jovial void]

Thanks!

[north mural]

YouTube subscriber counter originally by Becky Stern. She used a NodeMCU board and Arduino. I recreated it from scratch with an Adafruit Feather ESP32-S2 and Circuit Python. Requires the adafruit_requests library and YouTube API token. Code is on my GitHub. https://github.com/DJDevon3/My_Circuit_Python_Projects/tree/main/Boards/espressif/Adafruit Feather ESP32-S2/7-Segment YouTube Stats

Here’s Becky Sterns original. https://youtu.be/R9F8g4r3MAQ Accomplishes the same thing, but now in Circuit Python.

[short summit]

Very cool!

[deep star]

My still ongoing fallout based raspberry pi all-in-one pc/terminal

[restive forum]

Very nice. 😁👍

[uneven dove]

V.3 is coming soon...

[compact grove]

Woooooooo! New survey-in accuracy record for me. 0.2600m / 10.25in. That's phreaky accurate.

[stark latch]

The cross-section is the absolute value of a cosine.
The profile is a sine wave.
The twist is a 360° rotation.
Pretty math.

[north mural]

Indeed very pretty.

[compact grove]

Got the survey-in down to 0.2286m (9 inches) today. Was sooooo upset when I saw it switch to complete. Set the receiver to survey in to 0.1016m (4 inches). I don't expect it to ever get that good, but this way I can see just how far it can get. Course at these accuracies may be time to just capture 24hr of raw data and have a ground station do ephemeris corrections and tell me EXACTLY where the thing is.

[vague spruce]

What are we looking at?

[compact grove]

A U-Blox ZED-F9P receiver under a mason jar to protect it from rain, while on the monitor portions of U-Center can be seen documenting the status of the survey-in process as the receiver uses multiple measurements, settings, and algorithms to try to figure out more precisely where it is over time. First picture it had been running 30122 seconds and reached 0.2600m Mean 3D StdDev, in the second, it had been running 35605 seconds and reached 0.2286m Mean 3D StdDev.

(10 inches and 9 inches, respectively, for those who prefer imperial measurements)

[honest lark]

this is what you have to do when you forget the parental control password on your tv box https://youtu.be/quD16blxw3c

[cerulean dirge]

I’m excited to get this surface transducer connected to the actual doorbell! This’ll be way more fun than a “donk,” especially for Halloween. :)

[north mural]

Fixed a feather esp32-s2 that I dropped a solder blob by being a genius and soldering a wire splice while working directly over the feather. First time ever using a hot air rework station. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLR9jsHeNDM

I did actually turn it on with the solder blob on there. Everything worked except I2C which is what I was using it for. Soldered it back together, turned it on, and it ran code.py correctly first time and I2C works. Success!

[compact grove]

Sweet, finally managed to read all five sensors detected and data imported. (NAU7802 scale, UBlox ZED-F9R, 3x MPU6050)

really gotta switch to using curses though, man that tearing is harsh.

[north mural]

Yeah that is not easy on the eye. Congrats on working with the nau7802. Scales sounds like a fun project.

[compact grove]

I'm doing strongman pull training; the goal being to tackle pulling a 100' (~35m) furrow with an antique and restored 14" single-bottom moldboard walk-behind plow. This whole build is to support the training by giving me a way to not only measure draft forces but build a model that I can throw simulated conditions against and see how far under those conditions that particular pull would have moved the plow.

[north mural]

Good lord. The scale is capable of measuring how much force?

I think there are different versions that get chunkier the more they can measure?

[compact grove]

I'm using a 2000kg load cell, so about 20kN (but I need to get a much smaller one... that is suuuuuuuuch overkill for the purpose I'm losing precision).

A 500kg would be ample; my worst case scenario is needing to generate a draft of 990lbf/ft, on a 14" implement, so 1155lbf. That's about 5.2kN.

To give an idea of how beefy (pun not intended but now I have the chuckles) the load cell is

[peak bolt]

Oh look, a new toy I want

[compact grove]

The hand or the loadcell? o.O :)

[peak bolt]

Lol the loadcell. But strong hands are good too, I do rope climbing and could always use a spare hand lol

[compact grove]

The load cell is available on Amazon, search for: walfront load cell 2000kg (not sure if it's cool to post links, if someone can say if it's cool or not I can add a direct link)

[exotic sierra]

Generally fine, just use the shortened link so it isn’t a huge link

The bot will delete messages if you share too many links in a short period of time

[compact grove]

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B077YHFCX4

Sweet, that's the one I have.

[vernal vigil]

In honour of ladyada and the Feather RP2040, I got some pink patch cables for my modular synth.

[north mural]

social media tracker project initialized.

[compact grove]

Ooooh, flashy, I like. :)

[forest kernel]

Since April I've been trying to revive an old discrete op amp design and adjusting it to fit the 2520/990 standard. I had gotten to the point where I had a circuit board made but I had some issues (it caught fire). I went back to the drawing board and discovered the transistor pinouts did not match what I expected (I picked up a version with the base and collector flipped. Oops) but I was still having massive distortion issues. Today I solved the biggest one

The problem was the matched pair in the lm394h was faulty

With the new transistor

Much lower thd

I still need to make some big adjustments

Mainly matching the transistor pairs in the current mirrors

[short summit]

You say it caught fire so nonchalantly! 🙂

[forest kernel]

These things happen

[short summit]

Nice work!

[forest kernel]

Thank you

[hardy veldt]

End of a long journey but I finally got this thing to work. Basically, I needed to free up my Pi Zero 2 for a timelapse project, but it's currently running my e-paper clock/weather display and the pi shortage isn't gonna end anytime soon.

Well, I had spare KB2040s so I figured, "Can it run this?" It's a waveshare epaper display so it's not readily Circuitpython-compatible (its init is fussy so no displayio), the Python implementation uses PIL, and I don't know C/C++ well enough to dive into Arduino. But someone had ported a smaller display using MicroPython copying its C implementation so I built from that, replaced the RTC and Wifi (also why I wanted to stick to CircuitPython for the module support)... and somehow made it work. It's certainly a touch slower having to send all the pixel data with a weaker processor but it's entirely functional.

Practically used up most of the pins too so I'm really glad this little thing is good enough.

[slim finch]

Well done! I've got a pi0w running my waveshare eink display and I know how finicky that system is, this is awesome to see!

[hardy veldt]

Thanks! Yeah, the initialization procedure is rather involved (and this particular 7.5in display needs to sleep before every refresh unlike the 2.13in) and I was crossing my fingers for it to work the first time, but thankfully they have a universal driver so it simplifies things by a lot.

[north mural]

That thing is huge. Looks like progress! Congrats!

[woven flax]

Hello guys, I posted a new video with instructions on how to use the Nokia 5110 LCD display with the Raspberry Pi Pico board using CircuitPython. I hope you find it useful and that it saves you some time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNFkMaRvCDk

[compact grove]

You ever been so annoyed at your pile of jumper wires....

... You just jump into TinkerCAD and in less than five minutes hammer out a holder?

and then just casually send it to the printer, not once thinking about how absurd to think of this would have been just ten years ago?

[stark latch]

I've designed and printed things to solve lesser annoyances, so, yeah. 😄

[polar crag]

Using an eeprom to store data + displaying it on a seven segment

[cyan goblet]

Modified light to be time-based. Warm white at night, cool white in the morning. 100% adafruit electronics inside

[dusk zinc]

#137 in a series of frivolous network gadgets: Raspberry Pi Pico W + WIZnet Ethernet Hat (and hiding inside: Pimoroni Pico LiPo Power SHIM and battery), running CircuitPython 8 beta. https://gist.github.com/anecdata/75ab1f977782008d33b5b3c6201e6dc1

[subtle delta]

I now have the CircuitPythonukiah undergoing an 8 day long test to fully vet it so I can call the project done! Currently using a Linode server to act as a mock time service. I also set up all of the tooling to quickly load the CircuitPython firmware and software so I can get a bunch of these out to friends soon!

[exotic sierra]

Very cool! I love it 🙂

Makes me want to make an advent calendar that polls NTP every day to check the day and update the corresponding LED

[lucid bloom]

A talking Mac SE, it is set to speak any message it receives using a USB wombat and metro esp32-s2. It is controlled through home assistant using mqtt. My friend set the Mac up to boot to the speech program so it's going to be part of the tour.
https://gist.github.com/matt-desmarais/20e785dca34181b88d8d4f8b32ad5827

[restive forum]

👍👍👍

[short summit]

That's very cool! I let Anne know, maybe she'll put it in the newsletter. 🙂

[lucid bloom]

We have been doing some other things with circuitpython and old computers. We are trying to hack old computers so they can be turned on/off through home assistant with circuitpython, hid and mqtt. The plan is to swap the Mac SE metro with a picow

[rugged tartan]

I’ve been looking for a high quality 3D printer. Is this one good? On a scale of 1-10. 1 is terrible, 10 is it’s the best one ever. Your feedback would be great

[compact grove]

I find the saturn to be a solid choice in its size category, especially if you can find it on sale. If the 192mm x 120mm x 220mm meets your volume needs, I would recommend it.

[compact grove]

^

[rugged tartan]

Thank you 🙏

[fluid belfry]

I took an old typewriter from the 80s and turned it into a computer! I made a video of the assembly and a demo of it. There's also a sound test of the custom mechanical keyboard I designed at the end. https://youtu.be/Pd6pa3Jko3w
It uses an Arduino to scan the keyboard and control the typewriter, and the Arduino is connected via serial to a Raspberry Pi with its serial console enabled. This lets me use it as a Linux terminal!
The source code is available here: https://github.com/artillect/serial-typewriter

[compact grove]

mpu6050 3x mount.

and hooked up

[dark cairn]

djpkg in the works
It actually holds a database and verifies dependencies/conflicts and can handle many packages at once

conpression with jz since no zip/tar support

This is on picow

[hardy veldt]

It's rather utilitarian (so I can just glance all the info I need), but I was able to replicate my Zero 2 e-paper clock setup sans gray tones since that used to be handled by dithering via PIL and replicating that process here isn't really worth it.

That said, I had to switch from a KB2040 to an ESP32-S3 feather for raw throughput because it took about 25 seconds for the 2040 to send the data and refresh the screen (understandable since it's 800x480 res. Baseline is 8 for the Zero 2 and it's proportional to the amount of black to display). Now it's 18 seconds with integrated wifi, which is good enough. I'm curious how it would fare with even higher clock speeds so I'm gonna grab a teensy 4 to test eventually.

[compact grove]

I can guess some of the meaning of these data but can you walk us through each data point or cluster?

[hardy veldt]

So the big ones on the left are Hour / Minute. Top right is Day and monthDay. Below that is room temp and humidity via sensor. The final six points are local temp from 12PM to 5PM (upper left to lower right) that's pulled from openweather for the current day (or the next if it's pulled after those hours; the API is a bit strange so I took advantage of it). I decided on those hours since those tend to be the more concerning times of the day especially lately. Data for those gets pulled on startup and every 3 hours.

[cunning lava]

Today my robot got a proper face.

[stray chasm]

Any insights on doing this? I have a similar lamp but I'm unsure how to get it open with minimal damage.

[pseudo olive]

Took the Arduino and motor shield out of a Neuromaker hand and replaced with a CP Bluefruit and a PCA9685 servo driver board. Typing selected letters or words into the UART on the iPad makes the hand do the ASL translation. Code to see what ended up working.: (mqtt and bluetooth UART both inop in CP8 for the ESP32S3 currently) https://github.com/BergenMakerspace/NMhand-circuitpython

[subtle delta]

I wrote a command line tool to help with writing code in a folder and having it pushed to a CircuitPython device as you save changes. Currently works with Linux and macOS (I think), but hoping to get it working with Windows too: https://github.com/tekktrik/circlink

You can use pip install circlink to download it! Thanks everyone who has worked on circup since it was a big inspiration (and it's actually a requirement since it uses the device detection function it implements).

Also, my CircuitPythonukiah project is OSHWA-certified!

[peak bolt]

Ooh very nice

[proper valley]

This is my TRON Oscilloscope clock using CircuitPython. https://youtu.be/OOFGKmF-wbw https://github.com/LuminousOwl/tron-clock

[fiery basin]

My circuit playground board in a made of a milkjug Halloween skull https://youtu.be/S4bFJFoM8eU

[ruby ledge]

This video demonstrates something new and novel. Using a resource-constrained 8-bit MCU (Arduino UNO) to decode highly compressed TIFF G4 images directly onto the framebuffer of an e-paper display. I had to trim some functions with #ifdef to make it all fit. The demo images are compressed about 10:1 and need only 1K of RAM to decode and transmit:

https://youtu.be/Ow_Yd7A_qEU

code is here: https://github.com/bitbank2/TIFF_G4

[dark cairn]

conflicts and dependencies taken care of

[lucid bloom]

We are done playing musical metro at the computer museum. We used a metro esp32-s2 with circuitpython to prototype three different computers in the home assistant controlled museum and now we added 2 picows to use with the Mac SE and Performa. The Performa and Gateway have long boot times so using these devices we are able to turn them on at the start of the tour so they will be booted by the time the visitor(s) get to them, then hid sequences are used to make them do things

2. Macintosh Performa: turns on/shuts down and does keyboard/mouse sequences
3. Gateway: turns on/shuts down and does keyboard/mouse sequences using the Metro```
https://youtu.be/nxQLtRhJFW8
https://youtu.be/tHAekMnpw6s
https://youtube.com/shorts/Vy66oe2-2KE?feature=share

[ruby ledge]

Blog post describing what I did above:
https://bitbanksoftware.blogspot.com/2022/10/using-e-paper-displays-on-resource.html

[amber flame]

I've been working on a Rust driver for the Atwinc1500 and I thought I'd share it here in case anyone would find it useful. Still has a long way to go, but progress is being made. https://github.com/DrewTChrist/atwinc1500-rs

[hardy veldt]

Thanks so much for the bit, bytes, and pixels article. Granted I'm rather new to all this but I never truly understood all the masking, division, bytecode, and bitshifting that was going on in the waveshare e-paper code I was piecing together. Now I do and it really is that intuitive when laid out that way.

[ruby ledge]

Thanks for sharing your feedback. I appreciate it.

[north mural]

Full build start to finish of the Adafruit Neopixel Goggles, just in time for Halloween. 🙂 My new YouTube channel for electronics. Will probably end up becoming mostly Adafruit related projects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=injS3V2OpEs

[sturdy sierra]

https://learn.adafruit.com/sword-and-wand-prop-effects-with-circuit-playground

Just finished a wand from this tutorial. It can do three different colors depending on orientation and fires 3 different IR codes. This is for the laser tag system I'm working on.

[rough root]

I love it! Nice work.

[short summit]

I made a 32x8 NeoPixel matrix audio reactive, borrowing heavily from 2 other Learn Guides

[north mural]

That's awesome Paul. I've seen you working on that one. Nice to see it finished!

[woven flax]

Hello guys, I posted a new video with instructions on how to use the 0.96" Monochrome OLED display with the Raspberry Pi Pico board using CircuitPython. I hope you find it useful and that it saves you some time. https://youtu.be/c64WG4iJuEo

[north mural]

Excellent content Nick!! You setup everything so logically and easy to follow. The image quality is excellent too. Bravo, very well done. 👏

[dark cairn]

with one 6.1kb installation package, it can install adafruit_hid to the board and the ducky commands.

[peak marlin]

After seeing the View-Master Interactive Vision on Retro Tech (12th October), I decided it would make a terrible Pi 4 case 😄
So I made one - it needs work but its a good start for anyone that wants to finish it (my Tinkercad skills are limited)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5574796

[junior agate]

@ruby ledge your writeup is great

[coarse edge]

I made a thing. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5575688

[grave gust]

This is awesome!

[wintry mauve]

I put together a web-based UI for the pico w that lets you control/view digital IO pins over wifi. I just put it on github in case it might be useful to anyone else: https://github.com/justbuchanan/pico_web_control

[surreal dove]

finally found a suitable case for the project, a soup case !
https://github.com/redraw/euclid-pico-seq

need to make a video playing it, so you can understand better

[peak bolt]

That is so very cool

[bitter meteor]

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2GLrz1BYakBAhAJv9
I have a lot of time spent with this beautiful thing. I owe a lot of credit to the people who helped me finalize the code and put it all together.
Again thank you for the help with my portal gun. Portal 2 is my favorite game and as the first one is getting an rtx update I figured I should make it and make it as cool (at least to me) as I could. I am 95% done. I need to 3D print some boxes in order to protect the electronics (Propmaker M4 and Featherwing M4) and add the detail wires to the front. In the near future I want to get a speaker so when I press the button it plays the firing sound and when it does the rgb mode it plays caramelldansen

@rough root @frosty topaz

[rough root]

Oooooooh that's sick! Nice work

[bitter meteor]

@solar wadi

Thank you!

[north mural]

@bitter meteor Glad you got it all figured out. That’s awesome. I was not expecting something of that quality in a first time project. Very impressive.

[bitter meteor]

Thank you. And thank you for your help

[feral orchid]

Not the best magnetic levitator (levitation distance is not far, and the driver circuitry is probably over complicated (with a discrete MOSFET driver ic)), but it's still cool and surprisingly stable (probably because the IFR644, the tc4420, and the LM393 drive the electromagnet very quickly in response to a hall effect sensor change (I was surprised how much of a difference those components made over the original lm358 and 30n06)). It's using one of those cheap 12v electromagnets (which might be why the levitation distance is not very far).

[ruby ledge]

New blog post on CO2 and e-paper:
https://bitbanksoftware.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-co2-project.html

[lean elbow]

Driving 16 noods with the AW9523 LED driver. Impressive results and easy to set up!

[exotic sierra]

Spooky 🙂

[dire mantle]

Recently I discover that you can build a working AI assistant connecting to OpenAI via urequests.
If you send yoir HAL in a conversation the bot should build for commands that can be interpeted by micropython REPL.
It looked to me a really interesting apolication for any IoT device

[exotic sierra]

Not very showy yet but I’ve started an open source project aimed at being a fairly usable local parts/project management web application

https://github.com/skerr92/my-reels

Runs on a flask web backend with a local database of your parts/projects. I’ve got some low hanging goals for an alpha release

Still a lot to develop but I believe I can get something basic working this weekend

Then hopefully deploy to pypi so it’s pip installable

[north mural]

More than a few small business makers have been fairly vocal in being interested in something like this. Definitely a void there to fill. 😉

[north mural]

Gonna call this one done. Featured on digikeys hackapumpkin live stream and everyone was impressed with it. Over the moon happy with how it turned out and the reactions. Yes it’s supposed to be spooky. That’s the whole point. ☠️🎃 https://youtu.be/N6FDmYX_2Bw

[subtle delta]

The absolute spookiest

I love the pirate idea

[vernal vigil]

got n00ds

[forest kernel]

https://www.twitch.tv/magpiepirates
Live music fest featuring members of a circuit bending/diy music community

Full disclosure I'll be playing this using some diy instruments mixed in, but yall should really check out everyone

[shut anchor]

Built it 🙂

[sharp bobcat]

Fun times using asyncio to make Spooky move this weekend!
https://github.com/flavio-fernandes/spooky-scary-skeleton/blob/main/code.py
https://twitter.com/flaviofdev/status/1587028727065726979 Thanks to you, Adafruit!
Happy Halloween!!!

Flavio Fernandes (@flaviofdev)

Happy #Halloween !!! To celebrate, I printed Spooky and loaded it with @CircuitPython https://t.co/aSEKzIR4sS
Thank you, @kevsmac and @adafruit !
#3D #asyncio

Twitter · Oct 31, 2022, 10:28 AM

[gilded stag]

I made a thing for the WizNet contest, using Circuitpython and adafruit.io https://maker.wiznet.io/DrBrian/contest/tell-me-when-my-room-has-cooled!/

[glad roost]

Quickie Halloween deco. Clip art + two Circuit Playground Bluefruits running the “full” CircuitPython animation demo, with some changed colors.

[lean elbow]

Recently finished up a project I've been working on for a couple of weeks. The basic idea is a control unit (containing a QT Py M0, an AW9523 LED driver breakout, and an ANO dpad/rotary encoder for input) connected to 5 peripheral units (each with 4 magnetic connectors, 2 contain output from the LED driver, and 2 containing voltage), attached to a magnetic board. You can connect up to 10 LED noodles, all outfitted with magnetic connectors, to any of the peripheral units. For lack of a better idea I used sugru to create handles for attaching/detaching the noodles from the peripherals, and to provide strain relief where the noodles are attached to the magnetic connectors. I'm still programming it, but I'm happy enough with the results already that I couldn't wait to show it off 😄

[north mural]

My Halloween mask. There are so many electronics in it I don't know where to begin. 4 green Noods, 1 red nood, 2x 12 pixel rings, 2x GC9A01 round displays. Boards used: Feather ESP32-S2 (6600mah battery), QT Py S2 (2500mah battery), and Gemma M0 (6600mah battery). The mask is pretty heavy and I could only manage to wear it for about 2 hours before my neck became sore from the weight... just enough time to hand out all my candy though so mission accomplished. Had a couple teenagers that were so impressed with it they asked for a photo with me. 🙂 Going to sleep very happy with how my night turned out just handing out candy.

[dim saddle]

The Pumpkinator MkII: CircuitPython + RP Pico + 3 diffuse NeoPixels on a milled circuit board. Easy code to randomize between 6 or so different shades/levels of brightness for each LED. (Psst @lapis jasper , here's the video).

[brave thistle]

I just added a repo with an example of a Circuitpython script for the Adafruit ESP32-S2-TFT-Feather board. See: https://github.com/PaulskPt/esp32s2_tft_example

[woven flax]

Hello guys, I posted a new video with instructions on how to use a 20x4 char LCD display with the Raspberry Pi Pico board using CircuitPython. I hope you find it useful and that it saves you some time. https://youtu.be/ysH_P1WvidQ

[vernal vigil]

Here's a digital effects module I made for my synth, getting its input through a nood!

[subtle delta]

I've got workspaces, user configuration settings, and documentation/tutorial working for my circlink CLI tool, and pretty much all the bugs (so far) are squashed! It's already been massively helpful for working on code in only one place and just constantly updating a CircuitPython board. A few more nice-to-haves still left, but I think it's time to look at start some of the other CLI tools I want to make! https://github.com/tekktrik/circlink

[rough root]

Printed this vase for my sister

[stark latch]

That design looks familiar. 🙂

[waxen musk]

https://www.printables.com/model/276551-breadboard-wire-kit

[rough root]

It came out great!

[hardy veldt]

I kinda wish there was a 1-port stemma breakout adapter that I can cleanly stick to a Feather M4 Express but Sparkfun's 2-port adapter works well enough with some rather tight soldering.

While it's your usual all-in-one environmental sensor pack that uploads to Adafruit IO, I am planning to downscale it to fit in a mint tin using a spare KB2040 and airlift breakout (freeing up the now-stemma'd Feather M4 and airlift featherwing) and replacing the pimoroni envirowing with its relevant sensors; I have no need for the screen and support for it is kinda outdated and it somehow doesn't play nice with the Feather 2040 (even with the updated pin reference in the code, just having it plugged in and unused does something weird to the airlift featherwing and it refuses to connect, which wasn't the case for the other feathers I tried)

[peak bolt]

Ah, this overlaps with one of my projects. I’ve been tinkering with getting feather m4 express & airlift & pim enviro+ to play nice together. Starting to give up on the pimoroni due to outdated libraries I gotta hack apart to make work, just ordered a bme688 breakout to replace it.

[hardy veldt]

Ah. Yeah. The three should work but I did use the adafruit Pm25 library instead of the one from Pimoroni and even then there are some fiddly stuff with it since you can't run the particulate sensor at the same time as the wifi. You need the particulate sensor to run first, then take a reading before connecting to wifi.

In that config, you can't really keep it running so I just do a deep sleep every 30 mins to reset the code and take readings that way.

[peak bolt]

I plan on using an oled featherwing to provide the stemma port for the bme breakout to plug into, but I probably won’t use the screen itself much. So I kinda agree that it would be nice to have a super easy featherwing to tack onto the m4 express to add a stemma

[hardy veldt]

That was my original idea too. OLED featherwing for the stemma port. XD

But it became increasing clear to me that I don't need the screen at all so I just went with this route instead.

[eternal maple]

I made a custom board for that. It fits underneath the feather. A bit tricky to solder, that’s all. https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/56GyOrMq

[hardy veldt]

Ah. That's good to know. I'll see if I can get those made and solder them on myself.

[peak bolt]

Well now isn’t that clever

[eternal maple]

I just soldered the header signal pins, +3v, GND, and a couple near the Stemma connector.

[hardy veldt]

Yeah. It pretty much works like a SHIM, which incidentally is something I use for my Pi timelapse rig since that needed a stemma qt port as well.

[peak bolt]

I’m not very good at tiny soldering like that, so I might have a hard time assembling that, but it might be worth me trying. That link is just for the board and I would need to get the connector separately yes?

[eternal maple]

OSH Park’s 0.8mm PCB works best but takes a bit longer for them to make.

yes, I used this connector: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4208

[peak bolt]

Nice

[north mural]

That's a cool idea @eternal maple

[scarlet pelican]

This is video from the Electronic Artrium "Vertically Integrated Project" team interactive exhibit at Georgia Tech; mechatronic flowers and video projections and music respond to body gestures: https://youtu.be/gC2FGTFGS2c

(there's links in the description to behind the scene details)

[vagrant flare]

Anyone who need custom build services, welcome to dm me https://youtube.com/shorts/uuZ1VMsYWpo?feature=share

[hardy veldt]

First perfboard project (soldering wires and all) and it turned out pretty well. I really just wanted to use the proto-tin board since I have an Altoids tin, which barely doesn't fit except on the lid side. One unexpected wrinkle is that the particulate sensor doesn't work via UART. This is on me since I assumed it would work (it's a simple breakout and I didn't breadboard test again because the sensor was in use) but everything checks out electronically (signals good and no shorts) after inspection so I would have to suspect it's the controller messing something up since the Feather RP2040 works with it via the featherwing using the Adafruit library.

No matter though. Getting the I2C variant of the sensor. Works out too since that sensor works best with the featherwing and this completely frees me from the Pimoroni libraries that get kind of fiddly to decode.

[naive narwhal]

I am an electrical engineer and fashion designing was my pandemic hobby. I just finished my first season of fashion shows and the finale was Austin Fashion Week. I had some other Adafruit items in the show but these shoes were my favorite. I used Betsey Johnson rhinestone combat boots, which had a thick rubber sole. I decided to use a playground express and neopixels. It was programmed to be rainbow until 3G, which it then quickly flashed white. The result was an effect of the flash of light whenever the shoe hits the ground in the walk.

[short summit]

That's really cool! Did you use CircuitPython to program it?

[naive narwhal]

I have in the past. I used makecode this time. It was my first time using makecode but I do a lot of STEM work and figured I should start using that for items I want to pull into kids project.

The shoes were initially based on the Adafruit Firewalker guide and so I decided to throw in a nod to the guide by also making a “Never Log Off” tshirt. I paired it with this outfit that I made from cutting up a DDR mat. I think I’ll do the DDR one again and actually try and preserve some of its functionality.

[short summit]

Awesome, thanks!

[peak bolt]

Very cool!

[stark latch]

Oh, now you have to post video of that, because that sounds amazing.

[naive narwhal]

Sure thing! ☺️

[stark latch]

Oh, that is amazing!

[naive narwhal]

Thank you! 😊

[ancient skiff]

neopixel bff text scroller https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Learning_System_Guides/pull/2334 @median spoke

[ancient skiff]

joining in with another call of "amazing"

[median spoke]

That looks great. I should update my code to match yours. I think the bitmap font labels weren’t a thing when I first did it.

[ancient skiff]

It took me a bit of time to realize just how simple it could be. I started out expecting a LOT more code but something really easy fell out of the tree onto my head.

[woven flax]

Hey guys I posted a new video on how to load animations on an OLED display, color and monochrome. I hope you like it 😉 https://youtu.be/WqyBWcjs_oY

[sacred helm]

game boy with dot matrix display on atmega328p

[slim finch]

Woo! My project (started in Jan, and what I've been heavily working on since late August) is finally working to the stage it does something *For* me.

I want to track my sleep and have my home turn off lights earlier on nights following a night of bad sleep, or flag when I'm sleeping too much and am probably getting depressed. I have the whole pipeline working to the stage where it's able to notice when my partner and I each get up in the morning, and if we've stayed out of bed for a long enough period of time, it'll turn off the blue LED lights we use to help us wake up.
It does this by the placement of three accelerometers on the metal frame of the bed in roughly three of the four corners, and keeping track of the angle they're at. When we get in and out of bed, it'll change some in a step function like way. The sensors are out of the way, and when I get clips printed, the wiring will be controlled so it stays off the floor and the roomba can move beneath it. The whole setup is designed so at no point do we have to change our behavior for the sensors, they're out of sight and mind.
If it's the morning, another program listens for a step change on the correct sensors and correct angle, and turns off the lights for me, making this project finally add something to my home, rather than just sensing and some hope that in the future I'll figure it out.
I got that last piece of the puzzle up and running yesterday, and got to enjoy it working this morning as it turned off the lights behind me.

[short summit]

that's really cool! I like how you said you don't have to change your behavior for the sensors

[slim finch]

That's one of my main focuses with how I'm working on my 'smart' home--I strongly want my home to form around me, and not require me to fit around it. A lot of sleep sensor apps are either watches you wear to sleep or apps on your phone that you place on the bed. That required difference in my behavior wasn't something I wanted to commit to if I could engineer a better solution

[peak marlin]

When I took my Systems Analysis course back in the 80s, the lecturer said that one of the primary rules for software development was "develop for the way you work, rather than changing your work to fit with the system"

[hardy veldt]

Update and for those who might consider using a Waveshare 7.5 e-ink display with an iMXRT1062 (via teensy 4.0 and circuitpython): It's blazing fast, even faster than my Zero 2 W benchmark of ~8 secs, granted that's a different implementation. From ~28 seconds/full refresh of the ESP-32-S3 to ~5 seconds on the Teensy 4.0. Caveat is that it's a bit unstable to use as a clock; it crashes and resets on the display's sleep function and iirc, the deep sleep library for the teensy 4 isn't quite stable as well. Regardless, pretty excited for a fully-capable M7 feather/circuitpython implementation when it finally comes.

[scenic siren]

Congrats! This is great!

[slim finch]

Thank you!

[ancient skiff]

We went to a potluck and I realized this would be a great way to tell folks what we brought

[solar yew]

Here's a quick video showing a BME280 temp., humidity, and pressure sensor (altimeter), along with a VCNL4040 Proximity and light sensor. They're sending MIDI note and CC messages to my DAW and my Behringer ARP2600 synthesizer clone. I envision being able to one day monitor data streams using "music". https://youtu.be/fR1cABqO-cU

[short summit]

this is great! Did you use CircuitPython?

[solar yew]

Yes. I have an updated use case for this configuration here: Tune your 3D printer's bed by ear... https://youtube.com/shorts/gxGA1l6Sxvk?feature=share They both use very simple altered example code from the Adafruit website.

[worn wagon]

i made a boot.py that downloads code.py from github and then runs it , most efficient way to update code when you have multiple microcontrollers

https://github.com/rastinder/picohid/blob/main/boot.py

[solar yew]

If you need to play around with Arduino, a jigsaw and a soldering iron in your holidays, then here you have some inspiration : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrLCPcfc_rA

[tame dawn]

Hi! I started working on this project back in June and I finally have it set up and running at my mom's - the project is for her. She's become less tech savvy as she's gotten older and was struggling with using Roku devices and streaming apps. So I built her a 4 button remote using the Matrix Portal 4, 64x32 RGB Matrix, and a 4 key Neokey keyboard. The code is available on Github, along with the 3D printing files (.scad and .stl). I even added the Adafruit logo on the stand, as my way to say thanks. Sorry for the mismatched filament, I ran out of the turquoise at the very end 😭

Github: https://github.com/niccit/easy-remote

[pulsar mortar]

Coffee roaster testing

Right now, Ive got the main fan and rotation working. Heater output does work but its not hooked up 😄

Unfortunately, I wont be able to control the speed of the main heater fan because I messed up on the package, so its hooked up to a relay right now. I wanted to be able to control the speed of the heater fan so I can get more or less heat, but I should be able to do that with a PID loop for the heater

[neon mica]

Dang if I knew this channel existed I should have taken video of my donated christmas build.

[icy thunder]

It's also kinda cool to add LEDs to one's backpack. #CircuitPlayGround
https://hackaday.io/project/187037-brake-light-and-turn-signals-for-backpacks

[north mural]

https://youtu.be/DQ9yF1BBiss

Why isn't it embedding the video? 😢

[flat owl]

I made a cheap "bad" USB using the Raspberry Pi Pico and Adafruit TinyUSB! https://github.com/xslendix/picoduck

[stray orchid]

https://youtu.be/DQ9yF1BBiss

Embed worked for me.

[sleek anvil]

Emulated a custom instruction set 8 bit computer. Planning to make a small handy pcb so it can be programmed in machine code wherever u go. A fun little toy that will keep ur brain engaged. If anyone is interested to work on it together or has some interesting ideas, plz do let me know 😉✌️

It is currently computing the Fibonacci series upto 255

[hardy veldt]

Perma'ed my e-paper display rig. Just had enough space with a 2x13 IDC breakout helper holding up the epaper HAT with 4 pins to spare for the RTC breakout to stemma for the light sensor (so it clears the screen and periodically sleeps in low light) and the temp/humidity sensor.

Prototyped it on a Feather ESP32-S3 and I originally wanted to slim it down to a Qtpy S3 so I could keep the Feather but the PSRAM turned out to be crucial so I went with a TinyS3. This setup also solved a persistent ghosting issue I had with this display which I suspected was to due to resistance going through the jumper wires. Turns out these displays are temperamental when it comes to the input voltage so the more direct the connection, the better.

[woven flax]

Hey, I just published a new video on how to use the Color OLED display SSD1331 with CircuitPython. Lovely tiny display. I hope you find it useful. https://youtu.be/TGcLY4kgq2o

[scenic siren]

I sent it on to our Python on Hardware newsletter author. Thanks for sharing!

[north mural]

I really like your videos Nick. They're very concise and easy to follow. 👍

[woven flax]

@scenic siren thanks for that!

@north mural Thank you very much! I am glad you like them!

[scenic siren]

FYI - if you want to submit your videos yourself, you can email a sentence and link (as you did above), to cpnews(at)adafruit.com to have it added to the newsletter. Newsletter is finalised on Monday afternoons, and goes out Tuesday morning, so keep that in mind for when to expect it to be included based on when you send it. 🙂

[rancid kestrel]

The E-Fidget, a work-in-progress haptic feedback fidget!

[hidden stratus]

Is going on the live show still a thing? See the instruction says to check for link here but didnt see one tonight. Might have something during the holidays to show. Havent been on in years 😉

[short summit]

Yup, sure is! The link is posted in #live-broadcast-chat right before the show starts

[grave bone]

Gorgeous! What software are you using for design, and rendering?

[rancid kestrel]

KiCad for everything! It even has a 3d renderer with (very slow) raytracing, which is how I got that image.

[hidden stratus]

Thanks Paul. My brain saw live broadcast but registered show and tell channel. Ugh 🙂

[cobalt dove]

Chyrosran22 posted his unboxing video of my 3D printed keyboard (with 3D printed switches)! https://youtu.be/MH7r6OsExSY

[north mural]

What in heavens name did you create? That's amazing.

[cobalt dove]

Yeah it's a pretty sophisticated project 😄

[frosty topaz]

Where can I get my own...?

[cobalt dove]

How much you willing to pay? 😁

[frosty topaz]

That is a fair point. The magnets alone are probably half the price of my current keyboard...

[cobalt dove]

It's like $3.50 worth of magnets. You must have a super cheap keyboard! 😁

[frosty topaz]

Sorry, I meant the hall effect sensors. Though my Pi keyboard is around that...

[cobalt dove]

Hall Effect sensors aren't expensive

[supple mortar]

updated my filament box sensor to include inductive charging via the inductive coils from Adafruit. https://hackaday.io/project/179663-magtag-filament-box-humidity-sensor

[wary atlas]

Noice

[unreal mica]

made it to test the chip, https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/devicedoc/20001952c.pdf

:3

[wary atlas]

Very nice! I hope when I make boards they look that good :3

[rough root]

Nice solder work

[unreal mica]

ty

[exotic sierra]

Very nicely done!

[rough root]

I might consider a decoupling cap too

[vernal vigil]

I can't imagine why it doesn't work 😵‍💫

[wary atlas]

I see black wires going to the red bar on the bottom… are they supposed to be like that?

And I see blue going to red on top and black on the bottom

[unreal mica]

hm?

[rough root]

Oh I see it

[rough root]

Nice and neat

[unreal mica]

it's mostly just a direct copy of the reference schematic

[wary atlas]

I should pull up the Pico reference info before I make a clone, lol

[vernal vigil]

uh oh, do electrons pay attention to the colours?

There were two connection errors, now corrected. Still have problems with signal levels.

[wary atlas]

Electrons do not care about colors, but if you’re using red for positive and black for negative, mixing them up is a problem XD you can use whichever rail for whatever you want, it just makes it easy to get confused if you have red + and black - on one side and opposite on the other side

[vernal vigil]

I have +12V on the far left (top in this pic), -12V on the far right, and ground rails in between.

[wary atlas]

Ahh…

[cedar root]

I'm working on this GrowBuddies project for plant growers who grow within a grow tent https://growbuddies.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ - in case anyone is interested... Thank you.

[ancient skiff]

I imagined the satirical life cycle of an “integer division business”, from business plan to eventual acquisition, and used ChatGPT to write out the details. I think it’s a delightful example of what ChatGPT can do when used for entertainment. Thanks to some folks on the Adafruit private slack who provided ideas for prompts.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PtwaiNcJlpsLcZ8wAL6vgHvkH1uaebcG9u7mh-x6OEk/edit?usp=sharing

Write a business plan for an Integer Division as a Service company. The key product is a JSON endpoint that computes the quotient and remainder of integers.

There are some real LOLs for me, like when ChatGPT is asked to write more "enterprise-like" code and it explains that this code sample is "more verbose than the previous one".

[vagrant flare]

Welcome to reach me for prototype services, thanks! https://youtube.com/shorts/1RvIGbtUN3w?feature=share

[exotic sierra]

You should definitely take advantage of the Adafruit jobs board to advertise your services, it would be a better way to reach people seeking that help. Cool keyboard by the way! 🙂

https://adafruit.com/jobs

[vagrant flare]

Thank you!

[blazing marsh]

I finally found THE Adafruit discord! I’m gonna be posting a lot of my projects on here, this is tonight’s project, a simdash for Assetto Corsa utilizing a seedstudio ble sense, Adafruit ST7789, and circuitpython

This is a more fleshed out version of an h pattern indicator I already made before with the ESP32-S3 (UM), the reason I chose the Xiao ble sense for this new version is to be more compact and because the S3 doesn’t really have any good BLE support as of right now in cpy, and I want BLE to make this thing completely wireless and battery powered capable

heres a look at the original verison running on an ILI9341 and ESP32-S3, this was just a simple h pattern indicator, the gui was drawn using display_shapes library, with this new one im making bmp assets and loading them through sd... https://youtu.be/amMpBnceCGo?t=22

timestampped at 22seconds, I show the hpattern indicator in action

my dream is to make a final PCB out of this design and possibly manufacture this to sell as a simracing accessory

because the ST7789 doesnt have touch screen, I'm gonna be making a system tray icon with the python computer side driver script, the system tray app would allow u to configure the display and perhaps adjust what is being displayed on it on a python coded preview display of the screen and allow u to move and resize measurement/telemetry "widgets" and configure what values are being displayed however the end user would like it to

I'd love to get connected with y'all at Adafruit, I spent the whole entire summer playing with ESP32s and XIAOs, made a bunch of random stuff with circuitpython, it's such a fun and fulfilling platform, working at Adafruit would be like my dream job... I love making microcontroller peripheral devices... the reason I started this is to one day make a PCB of one of my projects, order a bunch from JLC PCB, 3D print enclosures on my Creality Ender 3, then setup my own e-commerce shop, selling my little peripheral devices... I wouldn't have gotten the inspiration if it weren't for Adafruit... seriously the learn tutorials on the adafruit website taught me so much... if any Adafruit employees are on this server, thank u for the world you guys opened up to me... wouldn't have been able to materialize all these ideas if it weren't for adafruit.com...

check out my shorts on that youtube channel too... i have a circuitpython bluetooth volume control knob, and a pc hardware performance monitoring screen

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/12Wkm79YORw https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kmIJtXzXA_A

those were the first 2 projects I made this summer... then I started to make more sophisticated stuff

[feral orchid]

Tesla coil driven by class e single mosfet driver working! I still have to tune it, but it produces a sizeable discharge at ~20W input power (current limited to 1.5A with 15V max voltage). The pixelation is my doing, not the coil's lol. It's also out of focus because I didn't want to leave it running for too long while I try to get the focus adjusted. The scope shows that it might be tuned, but I'll have to compare that signal with the gate signal to know for sure. It's driven at a constant frequency right now, but I'll get feedback working later.

[feral orchid]

I plugged the second scope channel into the gate (green is gate trace). It seems to be working properly (maybe might need a bigger capacitor for full class E performance because the peak only covers about half of the low signal time). The drain-source voltage peaks to 180V before coming back down, which could make touching any part connected to the drain (screw terminal, pads, heat sink, mosfet) shock you (a bigger resonant capacitor might push the peak down, though. There is some more ringing or noise on the gate, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting anything. Interestingly, when I put my hand close, the waveform completely changes. I don’t have a picture of that though.

It’s still running on a fixed frequency, and when I put my hand near the coil, its resonant frequency and output arc length changes. When I get feedback and automatic start working, the coil should always be running at resonance.

[eternal maple]

The final test of the KaTV project, a kitten screen saver in a miniature retro television console. The enclosure was entirely hand-made with Dremel and Proxxon tools; no laser cutter. Screen saver was implemented on an Adafruit RP2040 Feather, 2.4" TFT FeatherWing, and CircuitPython. Thanks to @sharp comet for the original kitten screensaver code that was adapted for this multi-cat project. https://youtu.be/5aPtLs6iIHw

[subtle delta]

CircuitPythonukiahs are finally happening!

[wary atlas]

Do they play a tune?

[rough root]

I assume they are neopixel based?

No doesn't seem to be

[feral orchid]

More development on the coil. I'm able to get these nice discharges with 18V. Draws about 30W.

I also got interruption working.

[wary atlas]

Bzzzzt

[subtle delta]

Yes, they do - Maoz Tzur

[subtle delta]

Just regular LEDs - I'm using the super bright orange ones in the Adafruit store

[wary atlas]

Nice!

[near plume]

Lovely project!

[scarlet pelican]

Prototype lasercut controller for the arcade games Defender & Stargate build by one of my Retrofuturistic Hardware Vertically Integrated Project students at Georgia Tech: https://youtu.be/ieQnMNsnwN0

[neat lake]

https://github.com/tuxpresso/os
Buildroot based temperature controller for espresso machines, targeting Arm Linux.
"Reference implementation" using a Raspberry Pi Zero W and Gaggia Classic Pro.
I'm planning on adding a web UI and making further improvements to do things like reduce integral windup from cold-start.

Temperature performance

[feral orchid]

I got music playing on a Tesla coil! It's not the best sounding musical coil in the world, but the audio is recognizably Crab Rave. Honestly, I was impressed by the audio the first time I turned it on to play music. I thought it would be a lot more distorted.

Bottom is the interrupter circuit. It's just a (counterfeit from a cheap Amazon assortment) LM393 and an optocoupler with a potentiometer and audio input.

[rough root]

Neaaaaaaaaat

[near plume]

Love those big arcade buttons! Immediately turns a simple breadboard tutorial into an enticing game. Nice work!

[hot stump]

this isn't a project or anything but I just hand-soldered 0201s

[edgy matrix]

Rasbery pi pico with a tft 1.8 disply using the st7735r libery. Trying to make a Vpet but in better collor

[dark cairn]

https://twitter.com/bill88t/status/1604271860006490116?s=19

Bill Sideris - @[e-mail] (@bill88t)

Lë çōmῥãχt dé lã fΙåsh de #CircuitPython #Ljinux on Seeed XIAO nRF52840
It's 2 am, the only reasonable time to desolder a 50 pin connector.

Twitter · Dec 18, 2022, 12:26 AM

Yes I did just desolder the 50 pin connector just to not have a gap

2am is a stramge hour dayo

the rest of this abomination is glue, kapton tape and hot glue

the board is encased in kapton
so it can be yanked out later when I stop liking this stupid idea of mine

[wary atlas]

That's a weird way to spell "awesome idea"

[scarlet pelican]

Quick demo of a prototype hybrid digital/analog synthesizer built by a senior design team at Georgia Tech that I advised: https://youtu.be/ZyrEZefb1DE

A more detailed demo: https://youtu.be/fLYMtNXaxKE

[wary atlas]

Ohh, I love it!

[scarlet pelican]

Here's the GitHub with the software for the synthesizer, including a library they made to increase the PWM rate on the Adafruit Grand Central M4 Express from its default 1.8 kHz rate: https://github.com/mtfarren/synth-control

[manic topaz]

Can your space heater render video?

[vocal aurora]

140W TDP, wow

And another 75W from the GPU

I've always wondered how much of the electricity stays as "information" and how much is lost as heat

I would assume most is dissipated as heat but from an entropy/thermo standpoint some of it shouldn't go immediately to heat from what I understand

[manic topaz]

I'm not a engineer or computer scientist however I wouldn't look at it in the same way as we do say a motor. As far as I can tell its mostly just a relationship with the size of the features on the silicon chip (this chip is 32nm but currently we're doing 5nm) and the amount of speed the cpu goes. So for mine its a 32NM chip that runs around 3.2Ghz in boost. These days you can get higher clock speed in a smaller package thus they are more efficient.

[manic topaz]

also there's 2 of those CPUs, so full tilt its around 280watts to the CPU. The actual GPU almost never uses 75watts. The 1650 is an efficiency beast. 😛

[wary atlas]

My machine is currently drawing ~350W not doing a lot XD

[north mural]

Are you running it as an encoding server or just experimenting around?

[wary atlas]

Me? I experiment with stuff, I just had like a quintillion browser windows open

[north mural]

No, Poppy. He's using a dual CPU server board for video encoding.

[wary atlas]

Ah

[vital eagle]

I made a sociably reactive lamp using Adafruit IO https://youtu.be/hH3rk7p8itk

[woven flax]

Arduino VS CircuitPython Speed Comparison: https://youtu.be/qym-P4GTdIU

[wary atlas]

Oh wow, I didn't realize there was such a stark difference

[frosty topaz]

The overhead of interpreting python as needed is fairly significant. Great for prototyping and simple applications, but Arduino and other compiled languages still have their own advantages.

[wary atlas]

Is there a way to compile Python and load it like Arduino?

[lapis jasper]

Not really. C code has a huge advantage because of the compiler's chance to optimize

[wary atlas]

Would be super cool if someone figured out a way to optimize and compile Python to be fast like C, but still allow for the super-fast iteration of CP

[lapis jasper]

Cython is the desktop version of that

[wary atlas]

Nice. I'll look into that

[frosty topaz]

On that note, mpy files are pre compiled python packages, right? Do those exhibit similar performance advantages compared to their py alternatives?

[slim finch]

I think .mpy files are more about compression than they are about compiling in the way you'd compile c code. Because the files are filled with less data you technically get some speed improvements, but not on the order of c compared to python

[lapis jasper]

mpy reduces import memory cost because it stores byte code already

there isn't much optimization that happens when the mpy is created though

[solar wadi]

basically it's the same code that makes the bytecode in the mpy file and the bytecode that's generated when a py file is loaded dynamically, after import there should be no difference

[grand jay]

i think MicroPython has a way to compile Python into native code, but CircuitPython doesn't include that

[wary atlas]

Is there a wishlist for CP features somewhere? I'd love that to be added

[exotic sierra]

File an issue on the GitHub 🙂

[feral orchid]

All is dissipated as heat. It does make sense since you can't convert information back into energy like you can with light (light can be converted into electricity for example). Every watt that goes into a computer comes out as heat.

[rough root]

A smidgen comes out as moving air from fans

[vocal aurora]

In the end, yes it’s heat. But if you put something into computer memory isn’t there just a tiny bit of energy that hasn’t turned back into heat yet?

[vocal aurora]

My mental model for memory/storage here is the analogy of the ball on top of a hill, you expend work (heat) to get it there and it stays there until you disturb (read) it at which point it’s released as heat

[cobalt dove]

Chyrosran22 posted his full review of my 3D printed analog hall effect keyboard (with 3D printed switches & stabs)! https://youtu.be/iv6Rh8UNWlI
(folks here will appreciate the PCB overview at 16:57 haha)

[feral orchid]

Actually might be true in a way. A capacitor (which is used in RAM and Flash memory) stores energy in an electric field, which can later be turned back into electricity.

[grand jay]

in theory, yes. in practice, i’m not aware of any practical schemes to do energy recovery from the capacitance of DRAM cells, etc

(DRAM cells also have nontrivial self-discharge rates, which is why they need to be refreshed)

[wary atlas]

I don't think there's enough energy stored in DRAM to be recovered before it fades

[wild moss]

just an fyi, there was a Microsoft Internet Pro keyboard that had two usb ports on it.. so you could have say a usb mouse plugged into the keyboard and use only one usb for the keyboard

[frosty topaz]

If I recall correctly, some newer keyboards do something similar with either usb passthrough with a second cable, or a hub built directly inside the keyboard.

[solar wadi]

yeah having a hub in a keyboard for the mouse is an old trick

[restive forum]

My IBM SK-8815 has 2x USB ports on it..
I'm looking at installing the Pi Zero 2 W into the keeb. 🙂

[grand jay]

sometimes the internal hubs of USB keyboards report more ports than are exposed on the exterior… probably due to using off-the-shelf hub chips

[restive forum]

Ohh, for sure.

Great Scott did a video recently on USB hub chips.

[frosty topaz]

Time to expose more ports…

[feral marsh]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGFuntnb6os

Christmas tree with a Raspberry Pi driving about 200 neopixels.

[woeful oracle]

love the minecraft stuff in the background

[vital eagle]

Here's me thinking no one noticed.

[woeful oracle]

the lamps really cool too

[vital eagle]

Thanks! No prize unfortunately 😞

[woeful oracle]

Hey Also - Im not trying to pressure anything
but just an idea

A twitter bot that someone can reply to a message with a hex code and will change to that!
I would love to do something like that but never worked with IO.

[vital eagle]

AFK but if IFTTT can read the tweet and use the data it would be pretty easy.

[vital eagle]

Looks like you can but only the "pro" account

[vernal vigil]

Festive lights!

[vocal aurora]

I like the EL wires, are they also jumpers too?

[vernal vigil]

One of them can actually carry a signal.

but the signal gets munged passing through the LEDs.

There's a guide for making the non-signal-carrying version here: https://learn.adafruit.com/noods-led-synth-cv-visualizers

[feral orchid]

Tesla coil working really well now. The scope waveform shows what seems to be nice class E or near class E operation. The arcs are pretty good. It runs off 15V, but it wants almost 4 amps and 60W. That might be due to some losses though, as I found that removing metal objects surrounding the coil results in less power usage.

[grand jay]

yeah, corona losses are a thing, even if they're silent or invisible

[vagrant flare]

Welcome to DM me for prototype services! https://youtu.be/7iDKNEikKPk

[rough root]

I didn't make any part of this, but I had this neat Ursula K Leguin bust made for a friend. Resin print.

[feral orchid]

The final-ish revision of the musical coil driving circuitry. I found secondary CT feedback to work really well, but I had to manually start the coil. To make it self-starting, I added a winding that connects to my function generator. I have the function gemerator running at 1.17MHz, which is not the resonant frequency of the coil (resonance is actually about 1.26MHz), but it is in the right ramge to get oscillations in the coil so that the secondary feedback can then mostly take over.

[old spruce]

I wanted to share some gifts I made for Christmas. I still need to upload the firmware this week so I have a bit of work to do still.
They are display pedestals for PSA graded trading cards. The 14 segment displays show the value and population of each card. The displays connect to an Adafruit Huzzah (ESP8266 module). The intent is for the value and population to be automatically updated though a server. There is a nice package on GitHub for scraping the data for the cards, so I will be publishing that data to my server, which the ESP826 will connect to.

The front is made from Cherry and the purple parts are all PLA/ PHA 3D prints wrapped in velvet. I had the aluminum machined locally and the PCBs were made by Oshpark (also local to me). Each pair of displays is mounted on a board with an HT16K33 matrix driver chip.

Let me know what you think, criticism is welcome:)
More pictures:  https://imgur.com/a/s8zkXwj

[upbeat lotus]

Over break I worked on a react/tailwind landing page for the board I made to automate watering my plants; I am having 30 boards made and assembled of v1.1 and should have them soon, the v1 boards are fun to play with but v1.1 corrected one of the connector types pinout. https://growmax.opensensor.io/

[old spruce]

looks cool! How much current can the board supply?

[upbeat lotus]

Pico supports max of 300 mA, so its important in the software to only turn on one pump at a time, this allows the other sensors and things enough current extra, if more current is needed, then an I2C Relay board can be combined.

[broken rain]

Just made a case for the raspberry pi zero 2 w and spy cam for anyone that wants it. https://www.printables.com/model/356931-pi-zero-spy-camera-slim-case

[amber granite]

Space mouse!!! It’s running Kmk with an kb2040

[rancid kestrel]

The E-Fidget is done! It works too!

(My haptic feedback fidget spinner)

[exotic sierra]

I’m surprised you got away with so few capacitors for the RP2040

[rancid kestrel]

There's plenty over to the side. Not ideal, I know, but it's a small space

[exotic sierra]

The thing wants like 11 of them, 2 1uF and 9 0.1uF

[rancid kestrel]

I think they're all there, above the off-white JST connector

[exotic sierra]

Ah

[rancid kestrel]

It's a work in progress, hoping to fix in V2.1

[exotic sierra]

You have lots of space to the right of the RP2040, definitely consider moving them there 🙂

Overall looks good though

Nice work

[rancid kestrel]

Ok, will do for the next revision, thanks so much 🙂

Also gotta fix that ugly red jumper. Forgot to pull the EN pin of my 3.3V regulator high 🤦

[exotic sierra]

😅

[cunning lava]

my eevee pcbs arrived

[exotic sierra]

These are perfect

[cunning lava]

there is a little notch near one ear where the cnc router got confused, but I fixed it already

[frosty topaz]

I don’t even know what these are for, but I want them.

[cunning lava]

they do nothing

[frosty topaz]

Oh. Changes nothing. Is that just 4-color silkscreen? I should think of something cool for these…

[cunning lava]

it's a black pcb with transparent soldermask, white silkscreen and gold plating

oshpark's "after dark" theme

[slim finch]

So what are you doing to do for Rev2? Flareon, Vaporeon, or Jolteon?

[exotic sierra]

Probably could do all of them with the colors of PCB available

[cunning lava]

i was thinking umbreon in purple

jolteon is doable too, but I don't like its looks

[rough root]

Do you do your own drawing/art?

[cunning lava]

yes

[rough root]

Nice! I have so many PCB idea but I'm limited by my skills

[cunning lava]

practice

or team up with an artist

there are many illustrators who do commissions relatively cheap too

[rough root]

Yeah that's where I'm going

An artist

[wary atlas]

I will pay you money for an Eevee

[cunning lava]

just order them from oshpark at that link

[wary atlas]

I didn't know I could do that! I shall do that!

[wary atlas]

Wait, there's no link

[cunning lava]

sorry https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/X7W8wMWh

make sure to check the "after dark" checkbox

[wary atlas]

It's cool. Would that be 1 board is $18.95, or a set of 3 like in your photo? [and I guess "download" would be for making changes, like maybe adding LEDs? 👀 ]

[exotic sierra]

You get 3 for $18.95

[burnt wyvern]

This is such a cool design! Would be cool as a keychain too :)

[quartz latch]

cardboard tracks made by half-cutting the cardboard to make it into a belt

[feral orchid]

Here are my two Qwiic/Stemma QT BLDC boards. Hopefully they can drive a hobby BLDC without overheating. Not as good of a design as the Eevee PCBs though.

[rough root]

What's the central mcu?

Not mcu

Ic

Oh I see.

[devout verge]

Pun intended?

[rough root]

Heheh

[north valve]

I've just posted more information on the mini slot machine I previewed on last week's Show & Tell show.
https://www.somenice.com/2023/01/the-micro-one-armed-bandit/
Looking forward to everyone's projects tonight

[pulsar mortar]

Version 1.2 of my Coffee roaster board is up and running

Just have to connect the heat and let the PID loop do its thing 😄

Features (so far)
Adjustable drum speed
Adjustable heat (duh)
Adjustable Fan speed-I kind of figured I would need this if I want to do a slow roast with gentle air.

I'll be using a NEXTION display as the screen

[rain steppe]

First large order of my dental motor system - assembly in progress…

Very tight on space at the moment - renting a new location in a month

[hardy veldt]

Didn't expect this hackjob to work as I winged it the entire time but it did. Fixed the middle mouse button since I like the mouse and its optical switches but the middle mouse is mechanical and it gave out pretty early. Turns out these switches are not only pin compatible (only two are really used and work as you expect), but they have the same pitch as your common headers. So I hacked away some plastic to fit the 3-pin, reduced the header to line up the switch vertically and it totally works again.

[exotic sierra]

Amazing to see this come to fruition after all the hard work you put in

[rain steppe]

Thanks, yeah it’s been a long ride. I’ve learnt a ton along the way. Big thanks to you and all other contributors in hw-design for getting me there 🙂

[upbeat lotus]

After having 10 boards made of Growmax v1.0 and supporting my pinout mistake with cross over cables, I since corrected the design and had 40 boards v1.1 made -- already have sold one organically since my site launched on New Years, so I am pretty happy about that. Ask me anything about it.

[blazing apex]

I made a front cover for the magtag https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5784938 Also I made a project that displays the temperature that is being sent to adafruit.io from a pi zero in another room. Where do I put that code in case any one else wants to use it?

[wary atlas]

Nice. I love the look of the filament changing over during the first layer.

Probably GitHub would be the best place for the code

[blazing apex]

Thanks 👍🏻

[wary atlas]

No problem :D

[wind linden]

https://github.com/Bexin3/Speeduino

My first version of a library that has faster samd21 functions, it’s far from finished but makes ADC and PWM much faster and pwm frequency configurable

What other stuff to speed up?

[feral orchid]

Nice. I needed high-frequency pwm for a project a while ago. But that project is kinda dead now

Maybe speed up the DAC

And general GPIO (although that is usually accomplished by using the registers).

[solar yew]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aCM6yupru5k finished my "Gameboy" based on ATMega328p , 8x8 dot matrix controlled by shift registers. I wanted to impement "Snake" or "Tetris" game but the programming was hard for me so I stayed with "Simon Says" game for simple demonstration😭

[feral orchid]

I got rotation! It's pretty slow right now, but if I figure out how to fine-tune the pid parameters, I should be able to get it going faster

[potent fox]

Is the case also supposed to spin?

Ive never used brushless motors before

[feral orchid]

That's exactly how hobby outrunner motors are supposed to work

[grave gust]

I finally finished it! The "sArCaStIc TyPeR!". This was my very first venture into a a lot of things, circuitpython being one. Coding period lol. I had an idea how to do any of it and kind of went for it in figuring out how to do it. LOTS of trial and error along the way but it was so much fun!

So this is pretty basic. It consists of a Seeduino Xiao RP2040 flashed with circuitpython and wired to .96" OLED and simple SPST switch. The circuitpython script, which is was what took me the longest to figure out having no expeerience, is pretty simple too. In the off position the switch will do nothing more than display "Normal Mode." When the switch is flipped to the on position it'll change the text on the screen to "sArCaStIc MoDe!" and start sending the capslock key code at an interval of .1 seconds. "tHaT wAy YoUr TeXt LoOkS lIkE tHiS!" lol
It's a stupid thing but the idea of this came about looking to make a gift for a friend of mine, and this is an odd, quirky little thing she does and I figured I would make it easier lol.

For the enclosure, I worked with someone to custom design it and then had it 3D printed. It's pretty neat!

[upbeat geyser]

What is the SOT23-6 footprint for?

[cunning lava]

SAO connector

[jagged parrot]

This is fabulous!

[grave gust]

Thank you!

[north mural]

@grave gust That is an awesome idea brought to reality. Congrats!

[grave gust]

Thank you!

[wary atlas]

V2 idea: a few buttons that automatically type out any phrases she commonly types. I used that sort of function at work so I wouldn't have to type the same thing over and over and over and over again, lol

[grave gust]

That’s a good idea!

[untold briar]

About 8 months ago, my daughter asked me to make her a cube of LEDs that she could control from her iPad. The hardest part was the 3D printed case, and we ended up doing just a grid for now, but we are still working on the cube!

The React webapp works on her iPad (recognizes multi touch) or a computer and mouse, or my touchscreen laptop. It posts to a lambda to write the JSON to S3, then pings the device using adafruit.io, then the microcontroller requests the full JSON from the S3.

It's using a feather huzzah and the propmaker wing.

[grave gust]

Okay that is just too amazing!

[dark cairn]

Sd tolerances are nuts
This sd, did not register unless I pressed hard on the connector (downwards)
The fix:

One pass with my K tip.

Works btw.

[potent fox]

nice fix

[potent fox]

My pcb I have been working on for about a month is almost ready to print. Id say probably a week worth of work is left before it is ready. I use Fritzing, that is why it is breadboards. Fritzing allows you to create circuits on breadboards then print the circuits onto pcbs.

[blazing apex]

This is the finished Magtag temperature from Adafruit.IO if anyone would like to make suggestions https://github.com/aireng1/Magtag_Temperature_from_Adafruit.IO

[wary atlas]

Super cool :D I have some suggestions for possible designs to make a cube

[rain charm]

version 2 will have a custom pcb instead of all those wires

version 2 will have many different things instead of many different things

[wary atlas]

So the same, but different. Hehe

[rain charm]

yes

it's cool tho i was playing some games earlier with it

[wary atlas]

Nice :D can't wait to see it in hand-holdable form

Nice, looks retro :D

[rain charm]

been a fun process

sadly the i/o is at the top since the software doesn't want to rotate the screen consistently

[wary atlas]

Oof

[rain charm]

i just prefer having headphones come from the bottom of the device but it's not to be

[wary atlas]

Can you solder a headphone jack on a wire to the port and take it to the bottom?

[rain charm]

totally, and also expose the sd card would be ideal

but this one i have to just finish it, it's been 6 months and a couple of days a week

this one after much deliberation is going to my cousin, the next one will be for me ^^

[wary atlas]

V3 will be your best I'm sure! If you continue after V2 anyway, lol

[rain charm]

aha !

well the plans for version 2 are dockable and cleaner i/o with custom pcb and a clean snap fit

maybe haptics

[wary atlas]

Nice!

[rain charm]

software enhancements like battery status

[wary atlas]

Good to know how much battery you have, lol

[rain charm]

yes

the battery in this one is pretty bad, it's pisugar s plus and when it cuts power it doesn't really cut power

so my screen will randomly flicker

the screen has a backlight button, which doubles as power down.... shutdown is a two step process

[wary atlas]

Might be able to have your Pi signal the screen to turn off during shutdown

[dark cairn]

my rfm69 range testing package is looking like a pipe bomb

[wary atlas]

I don’t see a pipe

[blazing apex]

Not sure if this is any help to you. I made a retropie cm3 in a Gameboy case a while back https://github.com/StonedEdge/Retro-Lite-CM4

https://www.freeplaytech.com/shop/

[rain charm]

that's basically what i plan to do for version 2. it's a great hobby and lots of fun

the retro lite cm4 is a very clean solution

yep you've basically got EVERYTHING

so cool

[rain charm]

https://giphy.com/gifs/meme-gaming-twitch-V7uXIdVWs3FsrAUSIs

[ember cliff]

made some Tamaguinos to test out circuit board cutting. Did concept sketch to finished in 3 days last weekend

Then this weekend has all been about arcade controls, this was sketch to fab in about the same amount of time (arcade switch to usb keyboard translator)

[dim saddle]

NeoPixels are among the many things my modded Otamatone is sporting 🙂

It's guts are based on a Electro Smith Daisy Seed (STM32H7). I've basically taken out all the original circuitry and replaced it, with the exception of the resistive touch strip. New brains, new speaker, new amp, SD reader, and 9dof sensor 🙂

[wind linden]

https://github.com/Bexin3/Snowduino-Null
Not yet tested as I am waiting for the pcb to get manufactured, but this includes KiCad files for a samc21 board compatible with uno layout, library for it, and a Speeduino library version for samc21 that allows for faster analog and pwm functions

[hardy veldt]

Lots of firsts for this split flap clock project. First universal perfboard project, first stepper, first crimping (it's rather addictive), first external power rig (barrel can power stepper and board). (and first Arduino project, to control the steppers better) Which means a lot of trial and error, messups, and wasted parts. But I'm learning and it totally works now. Just waiting for laser cut parts for the clock itself.

[wary atlas]

A Chinese clock kit I just got, proud of how neat and lined up all my parts are… too bad there’s a problem with it DX

[stark latch]

So, the bottom segment's out on all 6 digits? Best guess is a bad connection somewhere around the 7 resistors on the left or the IC pin connected to one of them. Got a scan of the schematic?

[wary atlas]

Mhmm, I was thinking maybe a bad component, Altho it was late when I finished… I’ll post in projects and in a bit with scans and all

[pulsar mortar]

Finally got my roaster to a point where I can roast

The only thing thats missing is the HMI stuff for the Nextion so I can use a display

The result

Its definitely a dark roast 🙂

The only thing Ive found that might be difficult is the load/unload process.

[wary atlas]

Oh, yeah, finally got the clock fully working thanks to the folks helping in the project channel! Turned out to be the pad for a resistor had broken away from the trace, so I just ran a bodge wire from that to the nearest display pin.

[gusty shard]

This just arrived today.

[summer gazelle]

Notice anything different about my 3DS?

[wary atlas]

I don’t recall it having USB C :0

[hardy veldt]

This split flap clock is coming together rather well. This is based on scottbez1's split flap display but heavily modified for a clock design with flaps that I took from an existing battery-powered flap clock. Uses steppers to turn the spools, hall sensors to determine a "zero" point, rtc and wifi to maintain consistency. It does have drift errors but they're consistent and fixable via code.

[real marlin]

Are you plugging VSYS to GND?

Or no isn’t it wired to GPIO pin

[gusty shard]

It is GP15, set up for PWM.

[hardy veldt]

Done. This is the entire initialization sequence. Zero out then set to time. I need it to start at a consistent point since everything else, including the drift corrections, is based on that with a full reset once a day to be sure.

[wary atlas]

Beautiful!

Made a dual-color joule thief flashlight: jumper selection of red or white, button to power on (momentary contact, might swap for a switch?); back is kind of a mess, but that’ll be hidden, lol. Gonna make a case from scrap plastic and run it from a D battery, so should last a few years

[wise island]

Made a RP2040 DVI/VGA board with a nrf24l01 as a wireless display. In the video an ESP32 is sending messages to the RP2040 to drive the display.

[wary atlas]

Ohh, wireless display! That’s super cool!

That would be SUPER useful for digital signage purposes

[hard oriole]

Here's a nOOd, ground wire, and aluminum armature wire in a clear heat shrink. I designed a base /battery holder. It lasted about 2 weeks of constant bending before it started shorting [a break in the nOOd right where anode attaches]. The aluminum proved very reposable but was not able to hold hard corners. I now have a version where I'm using a single brass rod for the armature and ground, with idea of just posing once.

[wary atlas]

Made a cardboard battery compartment for my joule thief flashlight. Has a D cell battery, should last a long long time!

[broken rain]

https://www.printables.com/model/386400-adafruit-esp32-s2-reverse-tft-feather-case

[last jay]

Designed this PCB earlier for transmitting data from another serial device using an hc-12 transceiver module

[exotic sierra]

Very cool

[last jay]

Thanks, I'm working on an Uno hat for the receiving end

It's got 3 LEDs and a buzzer to take advantage of the extensive space provided by the template

[exotic sierra]

Very nice, I hope it works on the first go! It’s a great feeling when that happens 🙂

[last jay]

I forgot to mention that I'm using a bmp280, not an adafruit one though

For measuring the battery temperature of the electric car we're using

[ashen steeple]

hello, what's your home lab look like ?

Messy for now, will clean up later

[last jay]

OnePlus x Hasselblad?

[ashen steeple]

oneplus 9 pro

[last jay]

Ah

I own a Nord n100

[ashen steeple]

::)

[last jay]

Camera is mostly hot garbage

Despite the fact it has 3

[ashen steeple]

yeah, not the best but it's ok as a general one

[last jay]

I yearn for the speed of a flagship phone, but a budget one will do until I'm not broke anymore

[ashen steeple]

my office is mostly just second hand stuff i got for free 🙂

[last jay]

Looks like you got pretty far

[ashen steeple]

can get alot for free here

[last jay]

Job?

I've gotten some XP era laptops from my dad's work before

I currently run Linux on one of them, which is an HP/Compaq that I call the slab

[ashen steeple]

in my previous work I did some dumpsterdiving and found a few nice laptops

but most of the stuff in office, poeopel just give away because hey need to get rid of it quickly

[last jay]

You wanna send one over? Could really use one about now 👀

[ashen steeple]

I sold the ones i got after fixing any issue 🙂

[last jay]

Welp

Almost managed to trade an old latitude D610 with dock for a newer Inspiron laptop

[ashen steeple]

someimes I find some nice deals on the second hand marked and sell for profit again right after 🙂

[last jay]

It had a dual core pentium with 3gb of ram and ran windows 10 somehow

[ashen steeple]

i run win10 on 2gb. it worked but is far from good

[last jay]

Yeah that would beyond suck

I was gonna run Linux on it but friend declined the trade

Kinda mad

[ashen steeple]

🙂

[jade palm]

That's a really nice concept! What kind of data are you sending over the ether? Is it raw video buffers, draw calls, displayio or something completely different?

[wise island]

Thanks! On the client you use a RemoteDisplay class that then uses a transport object to send the data for each call. The RemoteDisplay implements the MCUFRIEND_kbv methods (extended Adafruit_GFX interface), but is not derived from it...

[scenic crown]

Production pillbugs in and tested

[exotic sierra]

These look so good

[scenic crown]

thank you! These are nrf52840 powered pin compatible blackpill replacements, specifically aimed at our mechanical keyboards

[exotic sierra]

Very cool, I almost didn’t see the antenna on the ends. It all looks great! Are you bringing these on show and tell this week to talk about? Also, circuitpython support at all?

[scenic crown]

Already on the circuitpython support page. This is just the first batch of production units. I don't know anything about show and tell here, fairly new to the server.

[exotic sierra]

Show And Tell happens every Wednesday at 7:30pm Eastern Time

They put a Streamyard link in the #live-broadcast-chat to join the show

[scenic crown]

Maybe next week? I should sit in on this one and see how it is done by regulars

[exotic sierra]

There are recordings on YouTube if you want to watch reruns 🙂

[scenic crown]

Thank you for the recommendation!

[north mural]

Show & Tell is for everyone of all skill levels. Works in progress are not just welcomed but also appreciated. It’s cool to watch people’s projects progress over time.

[feral marsh]

NeoPixel controller V2. There's an ESP32-S2 Feather visible underneath, but the board on top is the one I had fabbed at OSHPark, with a 74125 soldered in for the required 3.3v to 5.0v level shift. Red/green/black cable goes to a JST SM to feed the NeoPixels. Box is 3d printed, it's a rework of something I found on Thingiverse, it has the cutouts for a cable and the USB C connector.
This will ultimately connect to my WiFi, and ping a local NTP server for time. That will let it (A) turn on and off at sunset/sunrise, and (B) adjust the color scheme based on the date: Green for St. Paddy's in March, Red White and Blue for May 6th and July 4th, Orange and purple for Halloween, bright colors for Christmas, etc, etc.

[hardy veldt]

Bit of a proof of concept. I've made myself a MIDI player that sends signals for our digital piano to play perfectly (hooray for General MIDI). But since I adapted it to use an RP2040, I want to take it one step further and have it drive neopixels (instead of relays connected to lights) on the second core based on the key being played in the octave. And with Scorpio, that opens up a lot more possibilities, including animations. It might not even need multicore (or scorpio for that matter) but it gives me an excuse to practice using them.

So far so good. I've isolated the MIDI messages I'm looking for, and I'm testing the multicore functionality with this LED test. Core0 generates random numbers while Core1 sets the LEDs. I'm just waiting for my scorpio and neopixels to really see if it works.

[wary atlas]

Ohhh, I’ve done this before, but yours is so clean… and I never thought to label mine XD

[dark cairn]

I am horrible at remembering pinouts.
I would be frying sdcards left and right if I didn't label it.

[wary atlas]

I just look it up every time like a dummy XD

[near plume]

+1 on the labeling. I should get a microminiature pen for labeling components that are too small to write on

[dark cairn]

Ljinux doesn't like the sd

it's instant on the board

using it as root really isn't viable

[last jay]

Newest iteration of my PCB

[solemn vector]

Finally got the t-shirt plus some stickers from the Hacktoberfest team for contributing with the CircuitPython projects 🙂 🙌

[north mural]

Congrats! 🎉 Great looking shirt. I tried to get one but failed 😦

[solemn vector]

Thanks! Maybe next time!

[upbeat lotus]

Always this year -- pipenv backlog has plenty of issues I can help coach you on if its of interest.

I got the light themed shirt for 2022 🙂

My latest adafruit order arrived today and I've been working with the 128x128 grey scale display and the toggle touch sensor.

The blue board is the growmax board I developed as OpenSensor.io -- I also am using the Adafruit SCD-40x sensors -- lots of great adafruit products to pair with.

Having a slight issue with the touch toggle sensor though, sometimes when I turn it off, it comes back on within 10 seconds -- but not always. Like just now I had to turn it off 3 times now it seems to be off-off.

Using a PULL_DOWN on the pin, so not quite sure I can explain it. Seems to usually work ... but sometimes turns back on

pin = Pin(28, Pin.IN, Pin.PULL_DOWN)
pin.irq(trigger=Pin.IRQ_RISING|Pin.IRQ_FALLING, handler=toggle_display)

def toggle_display(pin):
if pin.value():
display.poweron()
else:
display.poweroff()

[upbeat lotus]

Ah I think its this from the data sheet:

Timeout configuration pin. Must be connected to either VSS,
VDD, OUT or an RC network. See Section 3.11 on page 11 for
details.

I have that pin floating right now 😕

Fortunately TIME and VDD pins are next to each other 💡 Just a dab of solder I think ...

Actually that just caused it to heat up and lock up, so this can't be right 🤔

[upbeat lotus]

So then I cut the timer jumper and it "works" with the VDD and TIME pin soldered together, but the display still randomly tuns back on. 🤷‍♂️

In fact, it turns on way more frequently after those solder/jumper changes 🤦

Ok, seems better when I specified the pin to not have pull up or pull down, but pull is None. Will see if it turns off on its own in 15 minutes (supposed to when TIME is connected to VDD).

Well I guess its no better, still turns on on its own ... if you have any ideas I'm all ears.

[upbeat lotus]

Is it possible that the ADC pins on the pico were causing this problem? I just switched from pin 26 to pin 20 and haven't seen the problem reoccur yet.

Nope nevermind, right after I typed that it happened again

[north mural]

Ask in the help-with-circuit-python channel. 😉

[grand jay]

made a cute little USB-C jumper/adapter board, so i can patch a PPK2 to measure VBUS currents without too much fuss. i might make a custom PCB version later that has selectable CC1/CC2 resistors on each side (right now it has the 5.1k device pulldowns from the breakouts)

i deliberately left the pins un-trimmed, so i can plug female Dupont jumpers on top of them (they're barely long enough)

[upbeat lotus]

But I am using Micropython

[north mural]

ah, looks very similar. dunno i've never tried micropython yet.

but there are plenty of people in the circuit python help channel that also know micropython.

[timid vale]

This is my ham radio Morse code beacon keyer. I'm using it for a school science project studying propagation. It automatically sends a test signal and CW identifications on 2 meters. It connects to my regular FM radio's mic jack, but the only connected wires are PTT and ground. It just keys PTT on and off, which generates CW because there is no audio to modulate the carrier.

If anyone wants to build their own, it's really easy. Any relay should work. I used an active on HIGH relay, but the code also supports active on LOW. You'll have to somehow connect it to a mic or ACCY jack on your radio to key the PTT line; how you do this will depend on your radio. For the code, just download the "Telegraph" library in the Arduino IDE; the code is in the "Morse Beacon" example sketch. Please remember to change the values in config.h; at least set it to your call sign.

This does require an amateur radio license for legal use on the air. Please check for and comply with any laws or regulations in your country; beacons and automatically controlled stations are, at least in the US, regulated differently than other types of stations. If you just want to test the code, set the pin to LED_BUILTIN and don't use a relay. It's okay to leave my call sign if you're only testing with an LED.

The code should work on any board compatible with the Arduino IDE; I have only tested it on an Uno, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work on any other board.

Also, please don't run it on a repeater or another frequency on which people are likely to be talking!

[hardy veldt]

Got it working. All 7 notes (A-G) mapped to an LED, with an extra 8th to (currently) emphasize it being a sharp/flat note on a keyboard. This one's playing to the tune of Fernando from the Arduino MD_MIDIFile library example (audio from PC speakers, but it should play well on a MIDI controller). It should adapt nicely to a neopixel concept, but I still need to figure out how to extend this to an entire strand with possibly a measure of randomness so they're not all evenly spaced out.

[rough root]

Made this egg

[calm badge]

are you related to faberge?? 🤣