show-and-tell

[night bronze]

🪰 if I feed 🪰 it mini drone 🪰 flies will it 🪰 spare me? 😄

How do you have it powered?

[warped violet]

That looks really gait!

[desert iron]

I see the pun that you inserted there! 😆

[desert iron]

Right now I use just a 10A 6V power supply, it's pretty scary so I'm very careful... because the maximum current draw of one cheap mg996r servo is maybe 2.5A 🔥 🔥

[short ether]

This is my UV meter with a reptile light using the Adafruit Guva s12sd breakout and a pico. The LEDs come on at 1.0 and 2.0 respectively. I almost gave up on this - the first sensor I got apparently was busted and always read 0.2.

[vivid tulip]

If anyone else has a BloomSky Weather station, I created a CP Library for accessing the API.
https://github.com/askpatrickw/CircuitPython_BloomSky

I am planning to make a magtag-based clock\display\something... which I'll share in the examples whenever I finish that as well.
Anyway, they're cool weather stations hope someone else finds the library useful.

[tranquil kraken]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/624406071783587854/805251903444615258/IMG_20210130_174302.jpg

turning crappy lorex cams with terrible software into motioneyeos cameras using the pi zero!

One of them uses battery power fed through gpio, while the other uses micro usb threaded through a hole I drilled into the plastic

[exotic sierra]

interesting

looks cool

[stoic mauve]

I hope a video is ok👍 I got my hands on a Kickstarter early that's based on the Adafruit Itsybitsy M0 express and did a demo/review of it.

A beginners kit for making a mechanical macropad

https://youtu.be/yS4RrvKslaM

[polar eagle]

oh lol you go here too eh?

[stoic mauve]

Of course!

[west zinc]

Added a bitmap copy function with scaling and rotation, oh and clipping too:

https://gist.github.com/kmatch98/263866738b064ae81970e5c9c8e85ff0

[raw magnet]

oh boy oh boy

it's nearly time

[raw magnet]

some process photos of the rotary cellphone

[naive path]

I've been having a lot of fun with (my modded versions of) WLED lately making different colored lamps and such to beautify my life.

I started making a PCB (using CircuitMaker) just before Christmas but didn't follow through.

My modded Skylite died (because of soldering stranded directly to protoboard, I've already learned what a bad idea this is) while at the same time I decided I'm done wiring this same circuit yet again, so this week I created PCBs for both ESP8266 D1 Mini and ESP32 Devkits to support WLED and my mods. I used EasyEDA for the design.

PCBs ordered. I'm excited to see if I thoroughly checked them before ordering.

EasyEDA was easy and I had no major issues. I need to go back to compare again with Circuit Maker and look more at and Fritzing and Eagle, but overall EasyEDA worked fine for me for my simple PCBs.

I nearly ordered the PCBs without realizing the ESP8266 and ESP32 have a "keep out" zone where my copper grand plane I guess would have been a problem. I pushed the antennas as far off the board as feasible and reduced the size of my ground plane. It's been a really fun learning project.

View of my bedroom ceiling from my Blisslights SkyLight modded with a an Adafruit Neopixel Jewel (7 RGBW neopixels) running WLED on an ESP32 board with my Usermods (controlling motor and laser, too, although the laser is off). None of the original circuit in use. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZFVONCO2qI -- more vivid IRL.

[coral mica]

This is very cool! I've been needing this functionality for a project of mine but didn't have the skills. Do you have plans to integrate it with the the Dsplayio_Layout library?

[west zinc]

That is a good option to put it in a library (especially since my initial reason was for making widgets). I'm also wondering aloud whether it could replace of the current Bitmap.blit function in the core, but that would need the core CircuitPython folks to decide if it's worth the additional space required.

[coral mica]

Would implementing it in the core provide performance benefits? Wondering aloud as my project uses fairly large bmps.

Though it would be very useful even in the form of a library.

Nice, just tested and it worked first time wth Blinka. I'll play a bit more, thanks again!

[west zinc]

I suspect the performance would be improved, but I haven't verified it yet. I've got it on my list of things I want to try out, but am distracted by widgets at the moment. If you know how to build CircuitPython you could give it a try to replace the current .blit function.

[coral mica]

Never tried building CP, may be a bit involved for me for now. I'll see how it behaves running as a library and maybe take it to the core if it becomes too unwieldy. Really appreciate the start you've made.

[west zinc]

Cool. Let me know if you find any bugs.

[west zinc]

A dial gauge indicator widget: in progress video.

[coral mica]

a quick question @west zinc , should your scale rotation function work with on disk bitmaps? I recall they may be treated differently

[west zinc]

No idea. Haven’t tried it.

[coral mica]

no worries I'll have a go

it does work, that's awsome!

[lucid bloom]

Updated my VT220 setup. originally i had a headless pi 3B with a serial hat/ir remote. I have switched to a pi 4 8gb, added a monitor, touchscreen, keyboard, mouse. I am having fun with it, got cava working on the VT220/Monitor simultaneously with bt-speaker. I am adding terminal programs like mps-youtube and then using the touchscreen to display the video. The ir remote does volume and playback control. if anyone knows of any fun terminal programs please let me know and I will try to get it setup with the VT220.
https://github.com/karlstav/cava
https://github.com/lukasjapan/bt-speaker
https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube

[marble snow]

simply switched out the CovidTracker Magtag project with my Solar interface json queries and now I can keep an eye on my solar panels more easily.

https://www.heatherclassen.com/solar-panel-tracker-with-adafruit-magtag/

[night bronze]

That's so cool @marble snow. Great way to keep an eye on your system at a glance!

[marble snow]

exactly! thank you. Yeah SolarEdge has a mobile app, but I don't remember to open and check it much.

[night bronze]

As simple as that "remember to open [the app] and check it", I've found it's a HUGE barrier to usage. Your solution requires zero action from the user after its setup. Talk about barrierless!

[craggy parrot]

@marble snow Thank you !! I was not aware of the solaredge API -- Just connected to mine with your code!

[marble snow]

nice! glad someone else can use it. 🙂

[craggy parrot]

Next will pass it along to AIO

[devout verge]

I was inspired by Pierre Carles’s Co2 display project on show and tell a few weeks ago, and Carter Nelson’s similar project with the Matrix Portal, and wanted to try to make my own version. I wanted it to be super small and cheap (it came out to be about $30). I used the QT Py, as well as the SGP30 for Co2 sensing, and an AHT20 to get the humidity to calibrate it. The neopixel on the QT Py is used to display the Co2 level, with green being good, down to red being really bad.

[brisk sundial]

Updated video on the hoverboard plow

[tranquil kraken]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/760633914917257236/807500733762895892/IMG_20210205_223607.jpg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/760633914917257236/807500745489252373/IMG_20210205_223625.jpg

I got an old dual xeon server running again

[lavish warren]

I got tired of counting pins

[solar yew]

@tranquil kraken 1990

@lavish warren Nice colors - howdya?

[tranquil kraken]

I think the bios date that it shows after replacing the battery is the manufacturing date

[solar yew]

@tranquil kraken It's going to be the date the ROM was burned (BIOS setup stuff) and will be (usually) slightly prior of the date of manufacture of the complete unit.

As the years ago by, you can usually take the two dates to be roughly equivalent.

It's a good simple way to estimate the age of the machine, if you have no other reference point.

[tranquil kraken]

I mean, it's a dual xeon machine

[solar yew]

Anything that began with x was fast, iirc. ;)

(Never owned one)

[tranquil kraken]

I had to search on amazon to find an old video card that would work with it

It's a rage xl 8 megabyte card

With old pci

[solar yew]

I had a sweet ATI Mach 8 card when new (paid retail, too) and I haven't seen in in forever .. Must have gifted it away. ;)

I need some video cards from vintage era for stuff like plan9 and Oberon.

(Those usually only support a very small subset of possible video boards)

[lavish warren]

@solar yew I purchased a collection of multicolored pin headers, then cut and sanded. Lined them up on the breadboard to solder.

[solar yew]

@lavish warren That's really nice work.

[coral mica]

your bmp rotate function is working great @west zinc ! I'm adding it to my eink moon phase display project to include the slight rotation of the moon between phases. This example uses Blinka but will hopefully work on my itsbitsy m4 too.

[west zinc]

@coral mica that’s really cool. Can you share how you captured the cool video of your project?

[remote sigil]

Hey folks - I made a little guide on how to build a Raspberry Pi Pico Soil Moisture Indicator using CircuitPython: https://andywarburton.co.uk/raspberry-pi-pico-soil-moisture-sensor/

[coral mica]

Sure, I’m using foamyguy’s Blinka_Displayio_PyGameDisplay to test my code. I set the code to create the bitmap and display it in a pygame window, then used pygame.image.save() to export the frame as a jpeg. The code cycled daily through each moon phase in February resulting in 28 frames (just short of a lunar month). I turned these into an animated gif using GIMP.

Of course it’ll never run that fast on any microcontroller I have but I only need it to update one frame per day to an eink!

I still need to work on the code but I’ll clean it up and publish as soon as I can here:

https://hackaday.io/project/174149-moon-phase-display

[scarlet galleon]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/544280770072543307/802339870428102746/unknown.png

Raspberry pi zero ptz camera

[remote sigil]

Oh that is sliiiick. Is that a render or real?

[coral isle]

i made a pyportal app that shows what's playing on my favorite public radio station – WBGO 88.3 FM. you can also update it to show other NPR station playlists. code, readme, and a couple action shots are on github: https://github.com/jefforulez/pyportal-npr

[scenic siren]

@coral isle Very cool! If you use Twitter, please post and tag @anne_engineer in the message, or email [e-mail] with the link to your project to have it added to the Python for Microcontrollers newsletter we put out every week.

[coral isle]

will do – thanks!

[heavy panther]

Turned my MagTag into a spellbook for D&D

[ancient skiff]

2nd circuit sculpture...

[solar yew]

raspberry pi zero strapped to a toy drone from 2014

gateway ping success

[half pier]

From a builders perspective it’s not all that impressive. Solder 2 headers, slap on a hat, flash a card, and configure the correct settings, but from a utility standpoint it’s quite amazing. It will run more than a day on a small battery pack and using the internet hotspot from my phone and a compatible handheld radio I can talk anywhere in the world. #hamradio #pistar #mmdvm #show-and-tell

[lapis jasper]

Trackball/Keyboard setup: https://twitter.com/tannewt/status/1359937799173021699

Scott Shawcroft (@tannewt)

@_dcd https://t.co/u272V2t6cV

▶ Play video

Twitter · Feb 11, 2021, 6:50 PM

[night bronze]

I spot a Model01!

[slim finch]

I am loving the voice bonnet: https://twitter.com/keithTheEE/status/1359609629068718083?s=20

Keith Murray (@keithTheEE)

Making slow but steady progress on Sonny--it's now able to do a few things! Like turn on and off the lights https://t.co/RIShOcsl5c

▶ Play video

Twitter · Feb 10, 2021, 9:06 PM

[cobalt badge]

👋 hi! We are building affordable bioreactors on top of RaspberryPis: Pioreactors! Check us out at https://pioreactor.com/ and our open source software at https://github.com/pioreactor

[hallow trail]

https://www.instructables.com/RGB-Desk-Lamp-and-Change-Colors-by-Moblie/

Check out my project on instructables

[deft bloom]

Just finished making an I2C XOR offset board with two different busses and a pass through (uses the LTC4316 chip). Can set/change the offset with the small resistor boards easily

[valid sluice]

Valentine's Day project - hooked up my electromechanical kinetic paper heart to a Circuit Playground Express so that it beats in sync with the pulse of blood in my thumb
https://mobile.twitter.com/Bornach1/status/1360991941996007425

Bornach (@Bornach1)

My heart beats in sync with the pulse in my left thumb, read using light sensor of an
@adafruit
Circuit Playground Express running a Circuit Python script

Pulse oximeter on my right hand serves as verification that it is triggering on the correct pulse signal

#ValentinesDay https://t.co/Bm4ZrXncpJ

▶ Play video

Twitter · Feb 14, 2021, 4:38 PM

[west zinc]

More GUI widgets in progress.

[night bronze]

Very slick @west zinc ! I love how you ramp up the changes - start slow and then increase speed. Quick question though - were you aiming for Oct 26th, 2015? 😉

[west zinc]

Now with scrolling.

[night bronze]

Wow, that's a great visual @west zinc. Particularly helpful if the data is updated remotely, you can see if the value increased or decreased

[remote sigil]

Sure I’m not the first and definitely not doing anything useful with it yet but this is the first step towards greatness! 😂

[ancient skiff]

Ooh adafruit blogged a remix of one of my designs https://blog.adafruit.com/2021/02/18/cardboard-screw-compatible-with-makedo-screw-3dthursday-3dprinting/

[burnt wyvern]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4767494

[idle ermine]

Hello, I would like to start making an environmental sensor array. Would you be willing to help? Nice work doing your own. On my list to buy are 1) The Plantower PM sensor Adafruit Breakout, (2) BME680 Bosch Sensor. I have not selected the "brain" yet. I would like to start with two and build up. I would need some assistance in buying components that I can expand into. Thanks

[drifting crater]

Hi there, you may want to ask this question in #general-tech - #show-and-tell may not be the best place to ask...

[idle ermine]

This is my first day on Discord. I appreciate the guidance. Thanks

[night bronze]

In that case, welcome! 🙂

[idle ermine]

Thanks

[lucid bloom]

Just installed this today at the food pantry I volunteer at. Color changing led to reflect the status of the fridge. It uploads temp every 60 seconds. If temp gets to low or high for 15 minutes and it will send text messages. It's a remix of the freezer alarms I made a couple years ago.
https://github.com/matt-desmarais/freezeralarm
The food pantry currently has 8 raspberry pis soon to be 12. 6 are pi zero ws and the next 4 will be as well.

[solar yew]

@lucid bloom In our soup kitchen a client unplugged a freezer out in the public area to charge their cell phone .. then walked away without plugging the freezer back in.

[lucid bloom]

wow thats bad. the fridge I just alarmed had its computer die 1 month out of warranty and we lost a lot of produce so they asked me to do something so if anything happens we know asap.

[solar yew]

They've lost more than one freezer full of meats that I'm aware of (aside from that unplugging incident which I don't remember the upshot of).

I think at least once they closed down or went on some other regime for what to serve because of it.

[lucid bloom]

I've stopped 3 incidents in the last 2-3 years. 2 door left open and 1 temperature alarm

[solar yew]

They're really pricey events so good on ya'.

I know some pretty nice people living in the forest. Including couples.

[lucid bloom]

I wouldn't last long in the forest unless I had some source of electricity and internet

[solar yew]

lol I've asked them but you know I didn't press for details. "What do you do when a bear comes around" and they'll have an instant answer because it had already happened and they know what they in fact did do. ;)

It's a planetary surface, so this isn't the first time hominids have lived in forests. ;)

[lucid bloom]

a lot of nonprofits dont know the free tech services that are avaiable. I have Salesforce for nonprofits (20k/year for free), google g suite for nonprofits (about $6/user/month for free) and we order a lot of our hardware from techsoup.

even if they dont offer free services a lot of companies offer a decent nonprofit discount

[night bronze]

That's a very cool and handy project @lucid bloom. From other stories, sounds like a battery backup with a "Main power lost" type notice would be good too, for power failures of various sources

[lucid bloom]

I have a pi 3b setup with pijuice and a 2g modem to alert me when the pantry loses power and every 15 minutes until it's back or the battery dies.

Pijuice has a nice api that lets you see battery status/charging status

[solar yew]

There may be a safe contactless sensor that could 'tell' when the freezer compressor circuit hasn't engaged after a suitable timeout.

For my window A/C I just TMP-36 it on the cold air vent. ;)

To test it I set the entire unit on my fridge and run the TMP-36 into the freezer compartment with the wires shut in the door for a few minutes (freezer compartment is just below top of fridge unit).

I use a PWM to modulate an analog D'Arsonval meter movement, to simulate a reading in a old school format.

[lucid bloom]

I've come to realize the importance of sensors for the 1% of time things go wrong 😅

[solar yew]

And when it hits max or min (very warm or very cool) a singleton red LED blinks every few seconds to indicate overrange/underrange.

I use a bank of NeoPixels (8x) to record thermal history. Each LED stands for 3 minutes of runtime.

[lucid bloom]

That would be fancier than my single led 😜

[solar yew]

So after 24 minutes it's FIFO .. oldest temp disappears and is replaced by newest reading. ;)

Probably this, but it's been a while since I've peeked at it:

https://github.com/wa1tnr/therm-TMP36-aa/blob/master/tmp36-cc/tmp36-cc.ino#L82

[night bronze]

Planning normal use cases and scenarios is "easy". Planning for the unexpected however... yeeesh

[lucid bloom]

Yea some issues don't become apparent until after you have already deployed the system. Stable patterns of data is reassuring

[craggy parrot]

I always require advanced notice of all unexpected events 😉

[solar yew]

I use the onboard RGB as 'master pixel' in realtime.

[lucid bloom]

Sometimes I would get a random really high or really low temp so I made it have to get 2 readings within 10 degrees of each other or it throws it out and gets new reading.

[solar yew]

The 8-counter is here:

https://github.com/wa1tnr/therm-TMP36-aa/blob/master/tmp36-cc/neo_pixel.cpp#L69

Charley Shattuck invented a 'round' stack that wraps around on itself (neat invention based on his work at GreenArrays) so that's what I used.

Yeah I didn't throw out any analog noise.

No validation of inbound data on the analog pin used at all. ;)

This is the wrap-around mechanism in the upstream version:
https://github.com/CharleyShattuck/Feather-M0-interpreter/blob/master/Interpreter.ino#L34

[lucid bloom]

You gave me an idea 💡 I have some neopixel rings maybe I make a clock type display with the last hour

[solar yew]

When the high bit is set the logical AND removes it (masks it).

so it counts (say for 8 bits) 253, 254, 255, 0, 1, 2.

always progressing as if 256 was reached and crossed.

Runs backwards too. :)

If you have a need for a stack that is not an exact power of two you can just ignore the 'stations' that are not used.

(say to wrap at 100 decimal, have a stack that runs to 128 positions - and just skip over the ones you don't need above 100).

Easier to just think in terms of powers of two, though.

[lucid bloom]

I have to build 3 more double door freezer alarms and then a 3 door freezer that has glass doors so I 3d printed things to hold the door sensors near each other. Rather than recode I'm running the 2 door alarm and 1 door alarm programs in parallel.

[upbeat geyser]

ItsyBitsy M4 driving a 1952 vintage oscilloscope I just restored

[split comet]

So, after help and advice from @dusk zinc and @west zinc I got this working. (Many, Many, Thanks!!) It's an addition to MatrixPortal. 'crawl_text' will move the text from left to right (only texted on a 16x32 pixel board at this point) by using a font that I flipped upside-down, and entering the text backwards (next step is to reverse it using the code) I created a scrolling sign that changes message when it is flipped over.
Links to a video, and the code... ttps://photos.app.goo.gl/oStxDV74apKnagK87 https://www.dropbox.com/s/tppa9e2vbxua36k/matrixportal.py?dl=0

[west zinc]

Looks really cool! Glad you were able to get it working. Now I understand better what you were trying to achieve. In thinking about it maybe it would be easier if you could somehow change the “orientation” of the display rather than rewrite the text scrolling code. At a quick glance I don’t see an available option in the matrix portal library but it might be a useful feature. @sterile lodge do you have any suggestions to achieve the different text orientations that @split comet is trying to achieve on the matrix portal?

[split comet]

2 uses came to mind, this was the first. The other was for scrolling languages that are read Left to Right.

[sterile lodge]

It might be possible. According to https://circuitpython.readthedocs.io/en/latest/shared-bindings/framebufferio/index.html, framebufferio has a rotation property that we're are not taking advantage of in the MatrixPortal library. That would need some experimentation done to see if my hypothesis is correct.

[solar yew]

@upbeat geyser That's really nice .. sweet oscope.

[upbeat geyser]

I've been keeping myself occupied lately by restoring old scopes from the pile

[fringe narwhal]

A shocking development.

[marble mantle]

@upbeat geyser at first glance it looked like a cozy old-fashioned wood stove...

[upbeat geyser]

It's a compact portable scope stuffed full of tubes, it does emit a fair amount of heat

[cedar dew]

Busy finishing off a light cycle project and though I’d make a variation that uses light... because it makes sense right

[tacit delta]

very nice print

wonder if you could rip off led scatter panels and make it more even?

wonder if can buy those though if dont have dead panels

[cedar dew]

Scatter panels? The silicone sleeve?

[tacit delta]

no, lcd montiors have sheets to spread light out for nice even lighting

but im not sure what its called so cant google for it

[cedar dew]

Ah right. The video is different to how it actually looks as well. I’m make three with the tails and will see what I need to do to spread the light more. This is where the silicone bead strips might be better

[tacit delta]

cool 🙂

even if it isnt, its still amazing nice 😄

[cedar dew]

Thanks @tacit delta

[tacit delta]

welcome

[candid crescent]

"Diffuser" is the usual keyword, I think.

[tacit delta]

ahh nice thanks

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/PMMA-prismatic-light-diffuser-film-led_60284030324.html

lol good for next 100 lifetimes

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-Galaxy-S3-i9300-i9305-i535-i747-Neo-i9300i-LCD-Polarizer-Diffuser-Film/393004111244 vastly cheaper

[cedar dew]

Ty

[tacit delta]

welcome

[valid imp]

since my cats mauled my poor TFT, I decided to abstract my code a bit more to support multiple devices and christened it by adding a way to interact with it on my PC over serial so I don't have to wait for a replacement to arrive! I think I'm going to go for a 3.5" this time to see how portable I can make this (and so I can store the FB entirely in the teensy's RAM for proper scissor rects! ) -- i think i want to make a smart home interface with this definitely not inspired by anything else theme

[tacit delta]

fancy

[valid imp]

its really satisfying to watch windows move on both my pc and the screen haha

sadly the RA8875 isn't the fastest thing in the universe (and is lacking in the RAM department ) so I hope it vrooms even faster once I order the other TFT

[solar yew]

My first ever PCB design. A circuit to rectify and regulate 12v using the LM317.

[exotic sierra]

Nice

[candid crescent]

Some of the clearances, like under C3, look a little tight, so you might want to scoot traces back in a couple of places. But yes, nice use of a single layer. 👍

[valid imp]

hooray, SDIO on the teensy4 is fast. i need to get a 3d printer and a new screen already so I can put this into an enclosure

wish that keyboard featherwing was in stock, kinda want to make an SPI/I2C debug tool with this UI. I have a bunch of 6502s, could also run programs off of that, would be neat

[lean elbow]

As a recent weekend project, I built an Adalight using a QT Py and 80 Neopixels, driven by Adafruit's DMA Neopixel library. Since I wanted this for my work desk, where I frequently switch between my work laptop and my personal laptop, I also wanted the ability for it to be a mood lamp of sorts, without even needing a computer to drive the pixels.

As a reference I started out with the Adalight-FastLED project (https://www.partsnotincluded.com/adalight-fastled) and reworked it for the QT Py and NeoPixels, and then wrote all the custom code related to the non-Adalight mood lamp functionality.

To accomplish this I added a rotary control, giving me an input system with a single button and a forward/reverse control, as well as a Schottky diode so I can power the QT Py from the same power source as the Neopixels without even needing a computer to be connected to the USB port. Using the rotary control, I added some basic brightness/hue/visualizer mode controls, and I plan on adding more visualizer modes in the near future.

For the Adalight functionality, I'm using Prismatik with a 230400 baud rate, yielding about ~70 fps! It might be possible for the QT Py to push this higher, but I haven't tried, because tbh I don't really need a higher framerate than that. This has been one of my favorite projects so far, and I'm really excited to share the results 😄

[exotic sierra]

Wow, this is impressive

[lean elbow]

Thank you! 😳

[valid imp]

I'm always an avid appreciator of pretty colors

[lean elbow]

Me too

[abstract aspen]

Cool project!

[summer gazelle]

I figured this circuit out for my Pi Zero project I'm working on.

It is an OTG switching circuit.

When an OTG cable (micro USB to full-size USB) is plugged into the port, by industry standard the ID pin is pulled to GND

and that switches the port from sending power to the Powerboost, to reciving power from the pi Zero.

[summer gazelle]

Took me 3 days to figure that circuit out...

[native ingot]

built a USB handbrake controller for simracing and playing a rally racing game on my PC

https://imgur.com/XFjtG0q

as the racing chair I use folds up with all the controls attached to it, I made the handbrake handle fold down as well:

https://imgur.com/JQNO9yV

Trinket M0 is the brains, and an I2C load cell is the sensor

AMA I guess, @ me for more info

[solar yew]

Second ever PCB design, started working on this one before the LM317. Arcs are really not needed but should not cause any problems.

[west zinc]

The beginnings of a text scroll box.

[night bronze]

Next is the bouncing DVD image!

[languid nebula]

Lets do Banners !!!

[latent fog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1K-LvTNdTk

[night bronze]

Good stuff @latent fog !

[west zinc]

Scrolling text box with some smoother animation “easing”.

[night bronze]

Looking great @west zinc! But, I see what you not-so-subtly did there, with the A&M logo 😉

[west zinc]

👋 Howdy and 👍 Gig 'em! (That's for my daughter).

[night bronze]

lol, that's awesome. I only know because I'm surrounded by Aggies, Longhorns, from from Tech (dunno their nickname) as well as "Go green" folks from UNT. It's a hodge-podge!

We also have a decent amount of Cowboys (OU). It sure makes made it interesting during college football season when they face off, and folks are allowed in the office

[cobalt dove]

I have created what is objectively the best keyboard accessory possible: https://gfycat.com/fewcomplicatedhuia

[tacit delta]

LOL

C is for Cookie

[tranquil kraken]

E ink photo frame using an old kindle

[tacit delta]

i wanted to try that stuff but dunno

is it still kindle os or?

[tranquil kraken]

Yeah

Wouldn't recommend it, kindle uses a really locked down linux

Nook would be a better option but I had the kindle lying around

[tacit delta]

theres kindle screen controller boards out now i think

[tranquil kraken]

Yeah but they have a ton of wires

[tacit delta]

yeah

[tranquil kraken]

This is just a kindle with the screensaver hack jailbreak

Nook runs on an android skin and can easily be rooted with android apps

Though for the best e reader experience if you want to use it for it's intended purpose would probably
be kobo

[tacit delta]

i use kindle too

its getting close to 6 years old

[tranquil kraken]

I personally prefer kobo and use one as my daily driver, it's much better in terms of books and software support and freedom imo. This kindle was just the cheapest e ink device I could find on ebay

[tacit delta]

nice. why I got mine is that i can use very strong case with it

waterproof, and more importantly, dustproof

and resistant to impacts due to my job

[tranquil kraken]

mm interesting

[tacit delta]

alum dust isnt good for your devices btw

it killed my nook

[tranquil kraken]

Sounds like something that could cause shorts

[tacit delta]

yeah. it randomly restarts

i tried to clean it out, losing the screw lol

but it dont work well, it lasts maybe a day

even if not used

[valid imp]

embedding lua, eats half my tightly coupled RAM but probably worth it?

[cobalt dove]

I invented a new kind of open source, contactless hall effect rotary encoder for my keyboard too: https://gfycat.com/unlinedfirstalabamamapturtle

I don't think I'm part of any other discord where the users would appreciate how much it took to make a reliable, nice-feeling, smooth rotary encoder from scratch where there exists no open source implementations either in PCB design or software/firmware. It was exceptionally challenging.

I have plans to make a stand-alone reference implementation that you can use with any MCU but until I do that everyone here can feel free to talk to me about how to make one and I'll help you out 👍

You just need two 49e analog hall effect sensors (yes, it's analog and thus, adjustable resolution!) and some magnets!

[west zinc]

This is both super cool and also making me hungry.👍

BTW Why do you need two sensors to do the trick?

[cobalt dove]

Rotary encoders work on a square wave--or in my (analog) case a sine wave--you need to be able to see the state of two sensors in order to detect the direction of the turn

If it was just one sensor it'd go down and back up again as you turned it. But if you stopped and turned it the opposite direction it would just... Go down and back up again 😄

You wouldn't be able to tell if the user changed directions with just one sensor

You need two waves to be generated--one slightly offset from the other. Preferably a 50% offset but any amount of offset is--in theory--good enough (if you have enough resolution)

Imagine an optical rotary encoder but instead of black/white segments you have gradients that go from 100% black to 100% white and you have the optical equivalent of my hall effect rotary encoder: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Incremental_directional_encoder.gif/220px-Incremental_directional_encoder.gif

See how each circle of black segments is just slightly off from the other one? It's the same deal with my hall effect encoder: When the magnet is 100% over one of the hall effect sensors the opposite-pole magnet is going to be about 50% over the other sensor.

Here's a better animation I just found: https://lastminuteengineers.com/wp-content/uploads/arduino/rotary-encoder-working-animation.gif

That one works more like how my encoder works

Except instead of on/off (square wave) it's a sine wave. So you can adjust the resolution as you see fit (you can just pick how many divisions between the low and high points of the sine wave as actuations)

Ooh I just had a good idea: I should add a mode to the keyboard that shows you the rotary encoder sine wave output 👍

[west zinc]

Awesome, thanks for the explanation.

[tacit delta]

lol nice

[drifting crater]

I played a video on a microcontroller! (Well, not really. It's just a simple binary file containing a WAV and a GIF file but it counts)

Sorry for the horrible camera quality - my phone's camera is horrible. And the video is also pretty quiet itself

[night bronze]

Oh wow, that's a great concise explanation of how it works @cobalt dove. Much appreciated! Got my "learned at least 1 new thing today" for the day! 🙂

[marble mantle]

@cobalt dove really nice - would be good to have a standalone implementation
there are plenty of encoder libraries on the software side, but hardware is a different story...

[native ingot]

@cobalt dove @night bronze the TL;DR is that one sensor is sine and the other is cosine

[cobalt dove]

@native ingot Yeah basically

[native ingot]

So by reading the data from each sensor and taking arctan(sin/cos) you get the absolute angle

[west zinc]

Today I learned how to take CircuitPython screenshots and make a moving GIF. Thanks @coral mica for the hints on this library:
https://learn.adafruit.com/saving-bitmap-screenshots-in-circuitpython/overview

[heavy ember]

Hi, I want to have a tactile pushbutton, when pressed 3 seconds, turn On/Off Arduino + Lipo. How would you do that?

[rain dome]

I'd ask in #help-with-arduino 🙂

[heavy ember]

thanks

[cobalt dove]

Virtcon 2021 is over so now I can start posting regular updates again! I thought I'd kick that off with a sound test showing off the new hardware/switches/filament: https://youtu.be/xeCjrPNfyo8

[cobalt dove]

Ever seen a keyboard with a built-in IR receiver? It's awesome! https://youtu.be/mX1jJfRtEPc

[patent spire]

I made a prototype setup of a soft robotics project, for easier programming. It runs in CircuitPython on a pico, the PIO functionality is excellent for soft robotics since it lets you offload control of the air pumps so its non blocking which will be super useful. Would it be possible to demo this on show and tell today or is that only upon invitation?? Anyway hope people enjoy the pictures of my soft robotic adventure.

[scenic siren]

@patent spire Everyone is welcome on Show and Tell! We'd love to see your demo. Hang out in the #live-broadcast-chat channel around 7:30pmET, and a StreamYard link will be posted. Click on it to join. If it says it's full, keep trying, folx will drop off as they finish to allow more to join.

@patent spire As well, have you posted about this anywhere? I'd love to see it added to the weekly Python for Microcontrollers newsletter. A tweet or blog post would be great.

[night bronze]

Wow @patent spire, that looks awesome! Certainly hope to see you show it during Show & Tell!

[patent spire]

@scenic siren No I haven't posted it anywhere yet. It was part of a bigger "art" installation for a small local festival. I don't really have social media or a blog yet, but I can write something on my hackaday.io page this week. I'll give you a heads-up once I have written something.

[scenic siren]

@patent spire That is also perfect! Please send an email to cpnews(at)adafruit.com with the link when it's ready. That's the best way to get it to us so we can add it to the newsletter.

[patent spire]

TY 😄

[unkempt viper]

I'm playing with UV LEDs and glow in the dark paint. The end goal is to have a fake flower garden - servos will make the flowers bloom at night. The petals will be painted with glow paint and little UV LED fireflies will pulse occasionally. Still trying to figure out how safe these UV LEDs are to directly view or if I need to diffuse them...

Oh I guess ya'll have to listen to a clip of Drawfee in that first vid 😅

[gusty shard]

My latest: oled instead of 2x20 lcd.

[leaden jetty]

I finished a Maytag app which is a GrubHub timer for my daughter in NYC.
It starts at 30 minutes from when app is started. Two buttons adjust the timer up or down.
When the timer runs out it flashes the lights and beeps at 1200 Hz on & off at 1/5 of a second.
All buttons cause a beep when pressed. button A stops the timer. Button B increments 1 minute
Button C decrements 1 minute. Button D returns to the boot app.

The main loop is non blocking so the buttons work quickly.
The default 30 minutes and the name of the timer is read from secrets with a settings app which allows changing all values in secrets.

[night bronze]

Very cool project @leaden jetty!

[polar delta]

Dazzelite is an easy to build project that uses a low-cost FPGA board to displays multi colored patterns of light, on a ring of 24 LEDs. One can use the default display patterns or, create your own, no software or FPGA knowledge required. Take a look at the video https://vimeo.com/516437596 or dive right into the project https://github.com/ggrummer/Dazzelite

[solar yew]

Hiya folks. Long time listener, first time caller. Made this stock tracker with the MagTag, and thought I would share it!

[night bronze]

Even managed to get a sneaky Arduino sticker in there! 😉

[solar yew]

It's all in the details 🙂

[night bronze]

Looks really nice. I love the little up/down indicator in the top left

[solar yew]

Thanks! Here it is trending up!

[rain dome]

stonks!

[leaden jetty]

I finished a Maytag app which is a GrubHub timer for my daughter in NYC.
It starts at 30 minutes from when app is started. Two buttons adjust the timer up or down.
When the timer runs out it flashes the lights and beeps at 1200 Hz on & off at 1/5 of a second.
All buttons cause a beep when pressed. The main loop is non blocking so the buttons work quickly.
The default 30 minutes and the name of the timer is read from secrets with a settings app which allows changing all values in secrets.

@solar yew so YOU got the extra mag tags in Adafruit stock. At Adafruit, ya need a way to give stuff back so you don't feel bad when ya buy out their stock! I don't want to send mine away to my daughter when they are so much fun learning to program.

[rain dome]

It took me months to get one! I should have bought 2

[leaden jetty]

Exactly @rain dome I should have bought 4 for gift and testing.

[rain dome]

Best product on the site IMO

[solar yew]

That was me, yes. Last two. My apologies 😆

[leaden jetty]

Ok, I made it much simpler. Up/down buttons increment or decrement the countdown timer. A pause/resume button stops the countdown. I'm working on Alexa integration.

[ancient skiff]

working on a 3d printed jig for my next circuit sculpture project

[sharp comet]

I found a tweak to make inside of TileGrid and managed to get a clean render from a Tiled map

[quartz timber]

made a nodemcu v3 connect to wifi, monitor dht11 temp/humidity, send data to OLED display AND send data to raspi4 running docker with influxdb --- then display temp humidity on my grafana (in docker)

humidity is high here in hawaii

[night bronze]

Is that the bug you were digging into earlier on stream?

[sharp comet]

Yep! adding the right, and bottom values into the alpha_composit() call inside tilegrid seems to fix it.

Just created a PR for it here: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Blinka_Displayio/pull/51 I'm interested to see if there is some other solution that could go inside of my library though.

[night bronze]

Nice! I wonder if the blinka version was computing it or implying it somehow from the tile size?

Nice to know you were heading down the right track during your stream

[languid nebula]

Very nice, gladly you found it

[snow mango]

@leaden jetty @solar yew Sorry for the ping, but what are yall using to display the GUI?

[solar yew]

For me is just regular text on top of a very simple background I created on Aseprite. Code is here is you wanna take a look: https://github.com/verystealthy/magtag_stock_tracker

[leaden jetty]

@snow mango I have a Magtag e-ink display and I use the Magtag() class and addText to display a font at a position and a tile grid to display icons out of a bitmap. I created the bitmap usng GIMP. The Graphics class handles adding these things to a display and showing them at most every 8 seconds or so.

[scarlet pelican]

Working on fitting a Raspberry Pi 3A+ and an Adafruit 2.4" PiTFT display into a Nintento Game Boy case; it depends on the secondary set of pins on the side providing access to the RPi header signals that the 2.4" version offers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl1GDVCZ0BY

[gusty shard]

Cool project. Gameboy is a tight fit.

[drifting crater]

Hey I just released v1.1 of the CircuitPython Bundle Manager which can detect dependencies, which can save those precious mouse clicks!
Demo: (It's a bit big so it might take a sec to load)
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/38868705/110877681-c4553580-82a7-11eb-927f-39b4502db98e.gif
Release:
https://github.com/UnsignedArduino/CircuitPython-Bundle-Manager/releases/tag/v1.1.0

[solar yew]

Fantastic! Awesome job, Ckyiu!

[vivid tulip]

Pretty cool !

[dull ice]

https://twitter.com/sandyjmacdonald/status/1370459658608074758

Sandy Macdonald (@sandyjmacdonald)

Thread:

When you start out writing a little code, then two evenings later, you've written a full #CircuitPython library for the @pimoroni Keybow 2040, 2,750 words of documentation, and 8 example programs, including a 3-layer HID keyboard with media controls. 😂

1/n https://t.co/cDmBFEcHvs

▶ Play video

Twitter · Mar 12, 2021, 7:40 PM

[night bronze]

https://giphy.com/gifs/keanu-reeves-uPnKU86sFa2fm

[night bronze]

Great job @dull ice! That's so incredible!!!

[gusty shard]

Please don't step on the mome raths: https://gist.github.com/rsbohn/d432d9b6b54faa07c21ef93aa49230dd

[wet wren]

Made a motion activated sound alarm. Wired a trinket m0 to a personal keychain alarm from amazon

Light switch as the big on/off on the top

[quartz latch]

nice form factor with the light switch, neat!

[surreal wagon]

Just finished my 8x8 matrix word clock thanks to Adafruit tutorial

no laser cutting or complex stuff, just printing the word mask on glossy photo paper to fit the matrix led spacing, and sandwiching it under a square of perspex.

[steel zinc]

I'm working on a in home dashboard with Grafana. This is the first room. Using Adafruits CCS811 and SHT31 sensor.

[night bronze]

That's looking incredible @steel zinc. Feels like you're building the nerve center of the house!

[steel zinc]

Thanks!, just need to figure out why some of my temp sensors have a offset of 1-2 degrees celcius

[meager beacon]

I made a simple ducky script interpreter with circuitpython if someone finds it useful https://github.com/ShayBox/CircuitPython-DuckyScript

[dull ice]

https://twitter.com/sandyjmacdonald/status/1371179585153425412

Sandy Macdonald (@sandyjmacdonald)

Da da da da! A 4-track, 8-step MIDI sequencer on the forthcoming @pimoroni Keybow 2040, powered by the @Raspberry_Pi RP2040, running on my #CircuitPython library.

It's sending MIDI notes on four channels to Ableton, with some chopped Casio VL-1 samples on each channel.

1/3 https://t.co/RXMFgKlKzA

▶ Play video

Twitter · Mar 14, 2021, 7:21 PM

[solar yew]

So, a USB Rubber Ducky, sans USB Rubber Ducky? I love it! Well done, @meager beacon 👍

[solar yew]

Anything that is "sending MIDI notes on four channels to Ableton" grabs my attention, as my growing Ableton-related debt would prove. Awesome job, @dull ice!

[solar yew]

Looking better than my Home Assistant! Great work!!

[steel zinc]

Since I only want metrics I decided not to go with Home Assistant. Using MQTT, telegraf and grafana. I can make it as I please. 🙂

[indigo charm]

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on a QT Py. Working on class project ideas for some kids. https://twitter.com/Estranged/status/1371610263477121028

Mark Fischer (@Estranged)

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on an @adafruit QT Py. Working on class project ideas for some kids. #STEM #education https://t.co/zdUXJd22gI

▶ Play video

Twitter · Mar 15, 2021, 11:52 PM

[west zinc]

This specially signed board arrived alongside a QTPy. Less than five minutes later I was measuring the strength of magnets.

[night bronze]

It didn't get thrown off by your magnetic personality? 😄

I'm here all week, try the fish!

[lyric sun]

Still working on the github page but I made a touchscreen with a pimoroni tiny2040 https://github.com/ArielWolle/PI-Pico-Touchscreen/blob/master/README.md

thanks for all the amazing help @glad roost

[reef flax]

Just finished first pass of the uograde of my 20th centry bushbike into a 21st centry e bike. I've had the bike for 25 years and it has been used and abused. After damaging the rear wheel it was time fora full rebuild. I've had to replace all the bearings on the bike along with the cables. Full strip down and clean. New cogs and chain. Now ready for another 25 years! Hoep you like the 3D printed brackets I created for a clean install. :0) https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4796608

Built in Tinkercad https://www.tinkercad.com/things/lD5EPo9rijc

[scenic siren]

Nice! If we haven't already featured it, I'm going to include it in next week's Python on Hardware newsletter.

[lyric sun]

wow thanks

[lyric sun]

I will upload a nicer image/video to the github if you want

[scenic siren]

If you'd like to, you're entirely welcome to! I'll definitely be including an image.

[solar yew]

As a kid I was fascinated by those lissajous-animations shown in movies when they wanted something to look futuristic. I didn't know, however, how to program such things in Turbo Pascal and there was no Wikipedia to look up formulas etc. And there was no Circuit Playground... But....things have changend 🙂 This is the TFT-Gizmo-edition of lissajous-curves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJgXl2IkNtI I would very much like to provide a tutorial whith code and instructions to the Circuit Playground-crowd. How would that be possible? (please excuse, I am no native speaker as you may have noticed...)

[reef flax]

I've had a scratch that I have needed to itch for sometime. This morning I have finished. If it's of any use to anyone, well. Up to you. 🙂 As a coding exercise I've written a json parser in a single header file. The file is just under 700 lines, with lots of comments. It passes all the tests that the industry standard library rapidjson does. Mine only reads files. rapidjson does so much more. And so despite sharing my little toy I would say use rapijson instead if you need a json parser for work. But if you want a single file solution or want to see how json parsing can be done, please, have a look. Thanks. 🙂 https://github.com/HamAndEggs/TinyJson

To read a value you can do something like this... root["Level1"]["Level2"]["Level3Number"].GetInt()

[west zinc]

Swirly palette animations with displayio.OnDiskBitmap

[lyric sun]

@scenic siren
calibration LEDs Picture

Wiring Picture

[scenic siren]

@lyric sun Cheers! Added both.

[dull ice]

https://twitter.com/sandyjmacdonald/status/1373771960300240903

Sandy Macdonald (@sandyjmacdonald)

Can anyone guess how I’m changing the colour of the @pimoroni Keybow 2040 through the browser over USB? 🤪 https://t.co/LhVHBiLaOa

▶ Play video

Twitter · Mar 21, 2021, 11:02 PM

[gusty shard]

Crazy idea No. 210321: Handheld punchcard emulator. Go way oldschool and write your program on a virtual deck of punchcards. Submit your deck to a processing unit via wifi.

[left inlet]

Hi. I now have 4 games running on my Arcade Retro Clock. 64x32 LED matrix. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9uW0MQYcrE&t=19s

The photo is from an old 8x8 matrix that runs the same software.

[queen veldt]

Just finished designing and 3D printing the housing for one of the rugged buttons. It’s part of a bigger project I’ll share with you guys

[dawn acorn]

Been playing with sound from a Raspberry Pi Pico. Thanks to several people on here, managed to get it working! https://www.recantha.co.uk/blog/?p=20950

Also used an AMG8833 thermal cam sensor and an Adafruit 2.8" screen to do a mini project part of a larger project. https://www.recantha.co.uk/blog/?p=20959

[ancient skiff]

random python project: who hasn't written a password generator? Here's one I coded up for fun. https://gist.github.com/e21576b9caa1689a0ab2f9b0b79a1016 ```$ python3 password-generator.py --count 3

Approximate password entropy (bits): 39.2

FemaleFatherPowder801
CutMountainPoint808
LittleKeyAcross489
$ python3 password-generator.py --words 8 --digits 2

Approximate password entropy (bits): 84.5

NeedleNearWinterButBandMedicalLeafWheel37

[night bronze]

*raises hand* I haven't, but yours is pretty neat, and quite compact (not counting the dictionary part).

[ancient skiff]

I was inspired both by xkcd https://xkcd.com/936/ and by the style of password on some netgear wireless equipment ("WordWordWord123")

xkcd: Password Strength

To anyone who understands information theory and security and is in an infuriating argument with someone who does not (possibly involving mixed case), I sincerely apologize.

[willow rain]

a small "improvement": on linux, you can just read the /usr/share/dict/words file (there is also http://www.math.sjsu.edu/~foster/dictionary.txt)

[night bronze]

I'm partial to having word separators, probably because that's how my brain works. But that's a minor addition

[willow rain]

it does look super simple to implement

[ancient skiff]

OK you've made me complicate it. I hope you're happy. https://gist.github.com/jepler/98c8cc946ca9e6503e67a478d4a2344d

$ python3 password-generator.py --dictionary /usr/share/dict/american-english-insane  --separator='/'
# 428319 words, 18.7 bits/word entropy
# Approximate password entropy (bits): 66.1
Semimetallic/Broadmouth/Triphibious/044
$ python3 password-generator.py --dictionary /usr/share/dict/american-english-small  --separator='::'
# 40067 words, 15.3 bits/word entropy
# Approximate password entropy (bits): 55.8
Upholstery::Pokers::Deficits::388
$ python3 password-generator.py --dictionary /usr/share/dict/french  --separator='+'
# 200353 words, 17.6 bits/word entropy
# Approximate password entropy (bits): 62.8
Insolubilisassions+Cycliste+Paraferiez+434

😀

[willow rain]

it still looks quite simple for a password generator

i can read it and i barely know python

[ancient skiff]

I particularly like this "click" library for making commandline utilities!

[willow rain]

it does seem to simplify a lot of stuff

if you goof, does it autogenerate some help?

[solar wadi]

yup

well it does the usual --help and "Usage: ..." when you give it bad arguments

[willow rain]

that's pretty awesome

[ancient skiff]

I've seen use of one called "Typer" which also adds the ability to add "completions" to your favorite shells .. https://typer.tiangolo.com/ ```$ cascadetoml --help
Usage: cascadetoml [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
--install-completion [bash|zsh|fish|powershell|pwsh]
Install completion for the specified shell.

OK it bugged me that non-ASCII letters couldn't be used. https://gist.github.com/e5ee9a891b9e138d21f64b9dcff2a633 ```$ python3 password-generator.py --dictionary /usr/share/dict/ukrainian --separator='+'

1444577 words, 20.5 bits/word entropy

Approximate password entropy (bits): 71.4

Обкачувався+Чернівчанкою+Розрядитесь+745

 The SCOWL is a collection of word lists organized by word popularity,
 language, word class, and other factors.  These lists can be
 combined in various ways (or used individually) for spell checking
 and similar purposes.
``` also just saw this in Debian, interesting!

[solar yew]

Added a little silliness to the MagTag Stock Tracker. NeoPixels turn red if stock is down, green if it's up. Also added a Market Open / Close indicator to the bottom left corner!

[willow rain]

that's actually pretty cool

[solar yew]

Unfortunately I haven't seen the green NeoPixels today... 😆

[willow rain]

🤞

you will

you can say the green leds are untested

[solar yew]

TODO: Wait for the market to turn, so I can test my NeoPixels

[night bronze]

With my luck, I could save a few dollars (or pennies) and skip the green LEDs. 😄

Alternate for a PyPortal or other such display - Stock down == money flying out the window. Stock up = dump truck full of dollar/current being brought in by a dump truck!

[solar yew]

There's a PyPortal here waiting for some new code... you might be onto something, @night bronze 😄

[night bronze]

I have decent ideas at times - just not about investing! lol

[solar yew]

Investing is just an excuse to tinker with some displays 🙂

[languid nebula]

Maybe invest in some displays for the people here in the chat. Pyportal should be fine with me

[vast drum]

i've been doing little electronics projects for awhile and usually they end up in a drawer or shelf forgotten about... this year I decided I would make it a goal to make projects that I could give & sell to other people. So my show'n'tell for today is my new moniker (@electronvillage on the tweets) and new freshly-approved first Tindie product 🥳 I don't expect big sales numbers or anything, but would be fun to share things I make with folks around the world 🙂 https://www.tindie.com/products/electronvillage/ohm-parade-programmable-resistor

[solar yew]

That's pretty neat, @vast drum!

[vast drum]

😊 thanks! sweet and simple idea.

[solar yew]

Got meself one! This will definitely come in handy 🙂

[vast drum]

FREE with your purchase: my eternal gratitude for being my first customer 🙏 thanks!

[lyric sun]

usually use this but yours looks way more satisfying https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10613

[marble mantle]

I've seen decade resistor boxes, but i like the idea of using binary to represent different vqlues

[lyric sun]

i love anything with those switches 🙂

[vast drum]

i know i love DIP switches too 🙂 i wish i could find ones that were more satisfyingly clicky/good contacts but still cheap

[solar yew]

Oh, man! I'm honored 🙂

Ohm-pa-pah

Give me an Ohm where the buffalo roam..

[vast drum]

someday i'll do one with capacitors and call it Farad Parade 🙂

[ancient skiff]

it rolls off the tongue

[devout verge]

Added a logging function to my carbon dioxide sensor and ran it all day at school. It went up a bit during my Latin class, I wonder if that room has bad ventilation

[craggy wolf]

No. Latin is just stuffy.

[exotic sierra]

Printed this and used a slice of neopixel strip I had laying around

[west zinc]

LEDs are cool and all but paper sack spiders are something else entirely.

Nice work on both!

[exotic sierra]

My son is the mastermind behind the paper octopus puppet 🙂

Also admire the pile of dog toys lol

[night bronze]

Very nice! But looks like you're running out of real estate, with all those decorative elements. I can help you out by taking that Switch off your hands, and all you need to do is cover postage! 😉

[exotic sierra]

You’ll have to convince my wife to give it up 🙂

[night bronze]

It reduces clutter, and cables all over the house?

[exotic sierra]

😂

She loves animal crossing and will fight anyone haha

[lofty ruin]

not sure if this is the channel to share 🙂 made this little tool because I'm starting with the Pico and got curious about UF2 files. maybe it is helpful to someone else https://github.com/hexpwn/readuf2

still WIP

[languid nebula]

Interesting!,, no CRT, eh?

[night bronze]

That's a cool tool @lofty ruin. And clearly living up to your moniker! 🙂
But, I like the CRT look! Can you fax me one? Please?

[lofty ruin]

😂

props to cool-retro-terminal

[gusty shard]

NeoPixel flashligt, just needs a nice case.

Maybe the Feather S2 is overkill.

[night bronze]

Overkill is like over-engineering - a myth! 😄

[devout verge]

Wifi controlled flashlight? Why not?

[ancient skiff]

@gusty shard I just needed that -- had to swap out some light switches in the dim light of evening.

💡

[gusty shard]

Doing some battery testing and it just froze. The neopixels are still on but the code that makes it 'twinkle' stopped running.

Vbatt is down to 2.68.

[ancient skiff]

That may be the "brown out detector"

tries to stop the cpu from running if the power supply is low or unstable, but won't shut off the LEDs

[gusty shard]

I think it ran about four hours on the 400mAh battery. It ran a few more cycles just now, then stopped again.

[ancient skiff]

https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32s2/api-reference/kconfig.html#config-esp32s2-brownout-det It can be set from 2.44 to 3.30v apparently, but you have to go pretty low-level to set it to different than whatever your environment (arduino, circuitpython, etc) wants to give you

[gusty shard]

I'm not running the neopixels hot, (24,8,0) but the red is random 0..24. Guess I should recharge the battery now.

[ancient skiff]

100mA doesn't sound unreasonable for running 32 pixels and the Feather S2's processor too

if a maxxed out pixel is 60mA, but you're running 32 of them with on average at (12+8)/256 = 8% of full brightness that's 60mA×32×8% or around 150mA

[hexed pelican]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eHN1N1R9Yk

I love Adafruit. 🙂

[snow mango]

My first circuit! Might not be much but it’s something :) My diode has a built in resistor, but since I don’t have any male to male lying around i used a 220R resistor. Thanks to camDP and nis for helping me out!

[cold tangle]

Hey if you can turn an LED on and off, you can basically do anything 😄

[snow mango]

Yeah, I am going to start programming a socket now (which I am more of an expert in) and use my 7 inch rpi screen to turn it on n off :)

[solar yew]

;)

[left inlet]

"outbreak" is a game inspired by The Game of Life.

https://github.com/datagod/ArcadeRetroClockRGB/blob/main/README.md

I am converting my Arcade Retro Clock from 16x16 Ubercorn (Pimoroni) to Adafruit 63x32. I am so happy I made the switch. The performance is incredible, and the extra large playfield really lets the games shine.

The red portion of the screen is cheese, and the viruses are eating and replicating. You can see the clock, the date, even a current crypto balance (ETH).

[solar marlin]

I got some Pixelblaze V3 controllers, playing with them now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DsEKLWe8Uo

[devout verge]

Made a light-up egg carton using through-hole Neopixels, some plastic eggs, and a Circuit Playground (programmed in CircuitPython). They are changing color if you look closely.

[sudden panther]

3d printed Tic Tac solder spool holder to fit with the portability of the tiny TS80P soldering iron. From https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3354779

Note: not my design, just too handy not to share. 😁

[ember pendant]

Printed this off.

[dire meadow]

@exotic sierra how thick is your diffuser?

[exotic sierra]

I think it’s like.. 2mm thick?

[lean elbow]

Repurposed a couple of QT Pys that I accidentally toasted into fridge magnets, inspired by the way JP soldered a rotary control directly onto the QT Py for the chromakey device (and also inspired by the rotary NeoTrinkey)

[solar yew]

@vast drum look who's here!!

[vast drum]

🎉 🥳 🎉 hooray! thanks again!

make sure to install the DIP switches "upside down" @solar yew - mentioned this on the instructions but i should really highlight it yellow or something heh

[solar yew]

Heh! Will do!!

[solar yew]

The photo on Tindie shows it upside down.

I'd be all like "Do I install it upside down?" since the photo shows it that way. ;)

[devout verge]

Made an egg tree for my neopixel eggs

[exotic sierra]

Oh sweet

Looks good

[night bronze]

Looks a lot better and much less messy than the Easter trees we made when I was a kid!

[reef flax]

Finished my mini desk for my monitors and stuff. For a few hours printing, scrap wood and a bit of paint I am very pleased with the results. Could be the best thing I have made to date. 😄 https://www.tinkercad.com/things/30sby7MUSt2

FYI The two small monitors are connected to a PI zero and Pi 3 for development and info displays. The little black box under the left monitor is my pc. An Asus P50 4800u (8 core 16 thread) 64GB 2TB dev station. 🙂 Very nice bit of kit.

[night bronze]

That's a really nice setup! The dev station as well as the two smaller displays for your Pi devices. Very clever!

[lean elbow]

No idea what I'm going to do with this little button box yet but I sure do love making things with pretty lights

[dawn acorn]

What's the microcontroller for that one, @lean elbow ?

[lean elbow]

@dawn acorn It's a QT Py 😄

[dawn acorn]

Ah! 🙂 So small I couldn't see it 🙂

[lean elbow]

Indeed! It's hiding behind those chunky jumper headers lol

[reef flax]

@night bronze Thanks mate. I'm really pleased with how well the wood came out with a monkey like me slapping on some random wood paint. A pro would have been crying in their tea. Now I'm thinking neo pixel under lighting. 😄 OMG it's becoming an obsession. 🤣

[solar yew]

All button boxes have a special place in my heart! Looks fantastic!!

[lean elbow]

Thanks @solar yew 🙂

[rose phoenix]

CircuitPython keyboards and macropads oh my!

Wait there's more I forgot. Top one uses an itsybitsy nrf52840 with an oled, rotary encoder, and a gesture sensor as rudimentary nav control. Others are variations on that theme

Two green ones use a Pico as does the black and white keyboard with the oled in the middle.

[night bronze]

There's so this one from a community member, coming soon!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/painlessprototyping/byo-build-your-own-mechanical-keyboard?ref=user_menu

[rose phoenix]

Nice

[scenic siren]

I don't suppose you've posted this to Twitter or some other media platform?

[rose phoenix]

Wait there's a few more I forgot

Bottom two use QT Py and the Pro Micro RP2040. Bottom left uses MCP23017 as IO expansion so you can have full 16 keys plus rotary plus i2c for gesture sensor

[scenic siren]

I'd love to include this in our Python for Microcontrollers weekly newsletter, but I need somewhere to link to like Twitter or a blog or whatnot.

[rose phoenix]

And stemma qt / qwiic ports!

[rose phoenix]

Neat. I haven't posted these on Twitter or whatnot but I'm on Reddit as Southpawengineer

[scenic siren]

Reddit works!

[rose phoenix]

I could post this on the circuitpython subreddit I suppose.

[scenic siren]

That would be brilliant!

I sent myself a link to remind me to check on Friday when I'm in newsletter land.

[rose phoenix]

Well that's cool! I love experimenting making these HID devices with CircuitPython because you can iterate and play with stuff so quickly. Some of the other mechanical keyboard stuff we love requires a dev setup and compiling and all that jazz. CP is great because you can edit a text file and boom, new keymap in a snap.

[scenic siren]

That was our goal 🙂

[rose phoenix]

https://www.reddit.com/r/circuitpython/comments/mgq97w/a_plethora_of_circuitpython_keyboards_and/

There! I made a mini write-up on them

[scenic siren]

Excellent!

Emailing it to [e-mail] - which you can also do in the future if you ever want another CircuitPython/Python on hardware item featured in the newsletter!

[dire meadow]

Today I had my first ever livestream on YouTube! It was about building a 3D printer. The printer isn’t ready yet, but it means that there will be at least two streams more.

[lapis jasper]

awesome @rose phoenix! I was hoping to see you make the designs available. I'm interested in modular macro pad things

[rose phoenix]

Thanks! Always enjoy your streams.
You mean the green Pico pads? I was thinking of doing another rev to make the modular bit keyed. I don't mind it the way it is but if I released it along with a few modules would probably want to change that

[lapis jasper]

I don't remember which design it was. I've been brainstorming how to connect multiple input devices together via i2c. (I want my keyboard and trackball to coordinate.)

[rose phoenix]

I don't know if Adafruit has something like this yet, but I've seen a few cases from our friends in Colorado where an ATTiny84 is used as an intermediary with a joystick. Pimoroni does something similar with a blackberry style trackball and some strange Nuvoton 8051 micro.

[lapis jasper]

Ya, I have the arcade button from sparkfun

[rose phoenix]

I have thought about ways to integrate pointing devices in an easy to use and compact way, but there aren't a lot of simple ways to do it.

[lapis jasper]

I was actually thinking about inverting the i2c way of working

where most devices can control the bus to write to a single device that aggregates all of their state

that way you only talk on the bus when things change

[rose phoenix]

I like it. State coordinator

[lapis jasper]

it also means you don't really need worry about address allocation

[rose phoenix]

That's nice. I don't run into it too often but when you do it's a pain

[lapis jasper]

ya, I may be optimizing for the wrong thing

[rose phoenix]

Also made this gamepad/one handed keyboard thing. Not CircuitPython yet but the controller is socketed so it might be fun to try when I get my own boards with RP2040's in. I wish a pleb like me could get them in hand

Last time I talked to Limor before the RP2040 Feather was released she said she had like 8 of the chips 😄 patiently waiting for the Itsybitsy RP2040

[sleek pebble]

just finished with my first perfboard thingy

[lapis jasper]

I know the qtpy and itsys got a bit hung up getting smaller flash chips

I think we had a bunch of rp2040s

didn't sparkfun have pro micro rp2040s in stock?

[sleek pebble]

I got 2 from the adafruit store when I saw they were actually in stock and that was like last week
might have to wait a bit more to get a new batch

[rose phoenix]

I got a handful of pro micro rp2040s - I did the PR to put them into circuitpython lol. It seems to work swimmingly thus far

Funny thing is the Pro Micro pinout became somewhat of a de facto standard in diy keyboards largely due to the cheap clones

[vast drum]

Got the raspberry pi timelapse camera I built last year running again in time to catch my neighbors' irises blooming 🙂 https://twitter.com/ElectronVillage/status/1377322106120151042

electron village (@ElectronVillage)

Iris season has officially begun!🌹🌹🌹
#timelapse #ShotOnRaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi https://t.co/PdkNF38inf

▶ Play video

Twitter · Mar 31, 2021, 6:09 PM

[wide musk]

Hello all! I'm new here on Discord but not new to Adafruit. Just curious how to get on Show and Tell. I built a TOS Tricorder with a PyPortal and Clue. Thanks!

[vast drum]

👋 welcome @wide musk - if you go to the #live-broadcast-chat channel a few minutes before Show and Tell starts today, they will post a youtube link and a StreamYard link - click the Streamyard link to be a SnT guest 🙂 You gotta be a fast clicker because lots of people usually jump in when the link is posted. But if it says "room full" keep refreshing throughout the show because more spots open up after people present

[wide musk]

Thanks Dan! I forgot it was this evening... I will hold off until next week, when I get some details completed. Very cool!

[gusty shard]

140lb watercolor paper. Maybe milky acrylic would do better.

[solar yew]

I've had good results using Chemcast Black LED Acrylic with my MatrixPortal projects!

[idle jacinth]

Pretty new to this stuff, but I've been tinkering with my Experimenter's Guide to Metro.

[sleek pebble]

very nice!

[languid nebula]

@west zinc Thanks for the useful code!

[west zinc]

Cool LED demo with the slider! Awesome Widget.

[languid nebula]

I just reuse 95% of your code 🙂

[west zinc]

Glad that you can build even cooler things on top of the Widget and Control libraries. Awesome that it’s useful and can’t wait to see what other awesome gizmos you and everyone will come up with!

[tepid adder]

It's amazing what ~140 lines of CircuitPython and ~300 lines of Javascript can do... Getting ready for summer, trying to implement remote steering for a boat via BLE 😆

[devout verge]

I could never figure out how to do WebBLE, can you post your code somewhere?

[tepid adder]

This is not pretty, as it's a vvvvvery fast hack, but here it goes: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/FmdY3CVKNC/

so essentially it just connects to the device, tries to get Nordic UART service and then it's just writing to the RX characteristic

once I get the whole system cleaned up a bit, it'll be coming to github

[scenic siren]

@tepid adder If end up posting about this anywhere like Twitter, Reddit or a personal blog etc., please email a link to [e-mail] and I'll feature it in the Python for Microcontrollers newsletter we do each week. We love to have projects like this! (But I need something to link to. 🙂 )

[tepid adder]

@scenic siren will do, especially if and when I get this setup in the boat 😄

[scenic siren]

Excellent.

[dawn acorn]

I've today soldered up this fabulous Pico carrier board from a friend of mine.

I say today... I mean yesterday... Gosh waking up at 4.30am sucks.

[vast drum]

Looks great! I love round PCBs 🙂

[drifting crater]

I'm addicted to writing desktop software and GUIs now 👀
https://github.com/UnsignedArduino/CircuitPython-Project-Manager
Sadly no binaries yet and still very much in BETA so please don't use it for your most precious projects just yet! It's also compatible with my CircuitPython Bundle Manager! More details can be found in the project's README
Sadly I don't have a recording because whatever I do it won't fit under the 8mb limit without looking like trash. But if you scroll down in the README then there are many pictures of them.

[drifting crater]

Reminds me of a Circuit Playground 😂 but overpowered

[broken rain]

I made this: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4813812

[subtle turret]

Prototype of a cosplay prop (Pandoria's core crystal)

...yes, I broke the gray piece, shush. I'm still tweaking hte model so I haven't molded and cast it in resin yet

also I had to move the board all the way out to get even light dispersion, which interferes with my battery placement plans, so I need to tinker with LEDs with different viewing angles

[gusty shard]

hey that's cool

[subtle turret]

I have to glue it to my skin, so I have some clever (?) plans involving silicone and magnets. It also has some glowy flat pieces that stick out to the sides, so I may pot some more LEDs into the silicone pad

the other half of this cosplay involves extremely inadvisable uses of very high power LEDs... working on this little dude is cute and relaxing by comparison

I know I'm not going to accidentally give myself third-degree burns, for example...

I didn't heatsink them, and they melted their own solder

whoops

[exotic sierra]

Not my hand doing this artwork but it’s one my eldest brother did. He’s serving time in prison and has been working the last two years or so to develop skills for the outside world.

[night bronze]

That's a remarkably beautiful piece! Your brother is quite talented

[dawn acorn]

Nice pic. What's the media/material?

[dawn acorn]

I've been working all of March and this week on the new iteration of my Picorder project, this time using a Raspberry Pi Pico and CircuitPython: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGL9rmXOsYM

[lean elbow]

@dawn acorn this is awesome! I'm a sucker for the LCARS interface 😁

[dawn acorn]

:-D

[exotic sierra]

Watercolor on cold press paper

[hexed pelican]

My church camera project is complete at a hardware level, code is 80% there (but enough to test it). Features Adafruit products as much as possible. 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6ABa6cxs0I

[subtle turret]

is this the right place to be hyped about a super clever electronics idea I came up with last week that I'm gonna be trying out today? because I am Hype

(you can show and tell ideas... right...??)

[reef flax]

@subtle turret I'm about too, just as soon as I taken a picture of some old printers. 🙂

My first 3D printer, a K8200 (in the UK) from a long time ago and one I designed, printed myself, again many years ago. And as you can see from the sticker was shown on show and tell a long time go. 🙂 Both worked, the K8200 has a very large foot print for a small print volume. The other worked but constantly needed re-calibration. It was an experiment to see how much of a printer could be printed. I have ordered a 300mm x 300m bed and will combine both of these into something that should have a smaller foot print but larger print volume. And I am also considering throwing in an RPi Pico into the mix. I have a Pursa mk3 that is excellent but need a larger print volume for some big brackets I want to print. So this will be Aprils project. 🙂

[gusty shard]

Packing foam as a diffuser.

[reef flax]

Nice and simple

[dawn acorn]

I've got to first-prototype stage on my PicoPicorder project. Written up everything thus far: https://www.recantha.co.uk/blog/?page_id=20924 Plenty of Adafruit and Pimoroni products brought together in one Star Trek-influenced package. 🙂

[languid nebula]

Nice project, Two things: after reading your blog post, maybe you could tray instead of using label use bitmap_label in the same library, maybe you could have an improvement on the speed and memory, in the same path, if you do not need all the characters you could stip the okuda font to only have tyhe charactes you need or if you want an improvement on speed convert your font to pcf https://learn.adafruit.com/circuitpython-display_text-library/convert-to-pcf Also, regarding the touchscreen, take a look in recent development in here https://circuitpython.readthedocs.io/projects/displayio-layout/en/latest/api.html#icon-widget, it will take of the control part of the widget.

[dawn acorn]

Thanks @languid nebula 🙂

Will take a look at those things.

I think I might still need to rewrite in MicroPython, though, to get interrupts.

[languid nebula]

No problem 🙂

[lapis jasper]

why do you need interrupts?

[dawn acorn]

@lapis jasper To pick up on button presses or touch screen presses that happen when something else is happening

[lapis jasper]

for button presses we have gamepad

we don't have something similar for touch

[dawn acorn]

Didn't know about gamepad. Ta. :-)

[lapis jasper]

👍

[languid nebula]

Ok thanks

Cool thanks again

[inner leaf]

Per the rather recent ferment in quadrature rotary encoders in the Where's The Part series here is my current take on a rotary encoder breakout which offloads a lot of bit-banging, plus there is an optional closed-loop variable-speed cooling fan control which just measures the temp, or can drive a pwm output directly. The up/down count is maintained in the MSB of the SPI register, while the current temp is in the LSB. To reduce noise by 12dB the two low bits of the count MSB are unused, leaving a total resolution of 6 bits for the counters. There is also an active switch debounce section for the push-switch variant encoder. My intention for that is for an oscilloscope type fine adjust control switchable by pressing the knob. The article link is here:

https://bifrost-group.com/ee-times-designline-blog-article

The breakout schematic is here.

Timing waveforms are, respectively, Up count, Down Count, and register read:

The count waveforms are here unlabled but for identification they are, from top to bottom, (N/A, Quad_A, Quad_B, Out_Step, Out_Dir).

Here are some Gerbers for the breakout:

[azure salmon]

i have a lame hobby.
most people try build a light sabre or cosplay item or try get a task or process automated.

i code first person shooters on micro's

[candid crescent]

Heh heh, awesome. What's the lowest-end one that you've gotten to run at a decent FPS?

[azure salmon]

the lowest was a pic 16c84 with a array of plexed led's

Then i did one on a ardiuno with a lcd and got 5 fps

then i did one on the teensy 3

and now i'm doing one on the esp32

and it has multiplayer and a amazing 1.5MB of textures arranged ala NES style

[drifting crater]

😄 so cool! I've always wanted to do something like that! (Can you post pics???)

[gusty shard]

# chargen.py
import board
import neopixel
from random import randrange
import time
import displayio
import framebufferio
import terminalio
from adafruit_display_text.label import Label
from adafruit_pixel_framebuf import PixelFramebuffer

FRAME_ROWS=4
FRAME_COLS=8
PIXELS=FRAME_ROWS*FRAME_COLS
# NeoPixel FeatherWing  https://www.adafruit.com/product/2945
# on FeatherS2          https://www.adafruit.com/product/4769
np = neopixel.NeoPixel(board.IO38, PIXELS, brightness=0.1)
frame=PixelFramebuffer(np, 8, 4, alternating=False)

V0 = 0x001111
V1 = 0xFF3300
def update_frame(bits, offset):
    global frame
    for row in range(FRAME_ROWS):
        here  = (offset + row) % len(bits)
        for col in range(FRAME_COLS):
            v = V0
            if not 0 == bits[here] & 2 ** col:
                v = V1
            frame.pixel(FRAME_COLS-col-1, row, v)

bitmap = [
    0x00, 0x18, 0x24, 0x42, 0x7E, 0x42, 0x42, 0x42, #A
    0x00, 0x7C, 0x42, 0x42, 0x7C, 0x42, 0x42, 0x7C, #B
    0x00, 0x3C, 0x42, 0x40, 0x40, 0x40, 0x42, 0x3C, #C
    0x00, 0x7C, 0x42, 0x42, 0x42, 0x42, 0x42, 0x7C, #D
    0x00, 0x7E, 0x40, 0x40, 0x7C, 0x40, 0x40, 0x7E, #E
    0x00, 0x7E, 0x40, 0x40, 0x7C, 0x40, 0x40, 0x40, #F
    0x00, 0x3C, 0x42, 0x40, 0x4E, 0x42, 0x42, 0x3C, #G
    0x00, 0x42, 0x42, 0x42, 0x7E, 0x42, 0x42, 0x42, #H
    ]

#bitmap = range(8)

while True:
    for offset in range(len(bitmap)):
        update_frame(bitmap, offset)
        frame.display()
        time.sleep(0.1)

[azure salmon]

i'm actually busy with another one where i'm bit banging a shader model 1.4 gpu on a kendryte 210

but i have very little to show yet

[azure salmon]

But so far i have enjoyed scratching out everybit of cpu power and memory i can from the esp32

i'm just working on the new tile set so i can finish the gameplay

[azure salmon]

i found that you can capture the frame from the esp32

gona try get some screenshots

[west zinc]

Who needs AfterEffects for animations when you have CircuitPython?

[scenic siren]

@west zinc Love it. Email [e-mail] if you post that to social media or a blog or some such so I can feature it in the newsletter next week. 🙂

[languid nebula]

Kattni has a great idea, we were wondering how to do some advertising of the new features in the DisplayIO library for people to know, maybe we can include some graphics and present on widget every week. what do you think @scenic siren ?

[west zinc]

Widget of the Week. Can’t wait to hear the catchy jingle for it.

[languid nebula]

jejeje, ok, I could prepare the Animation 🙂 if Kattni accepts!!

[outer cliff]

A very WIP sand table that I'm building using a SCARA arm and a Raspberry Pi. Once I create a board for the drivers/peripherals it'll go into a coffee table I'm building

[night bronze]

I'm hearing a spin on "wiki wiki wild wild west", but with "weekly" and "widget"

[azure salmon]

Very unfinished bsp engine

holding 45 fps

[azure salmon]

btw my code was bad.
uint16_t RGB888toRGB565(const char *rgb32_str_)
{
long rgb32=strtoul(rgb32_str_, 0, 16);
return (rgb32>>8&0xf800)|(rgb32>>5&0x07e0)|(rgb32>>3&0x001f);
}
//32 to 16 bit rgb converter

This works

[scenic siren]

I don't know about having it as as separate section in the newsletter, but I would absolutely welcome it to be included in News from Around the Web. The graphics need to be 550 pixels wide, and I need something to link to, presumably the library would work. If you want to submit a PR to the newsletter each week with that, it would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, if you email everything to [e-mail], I can add it when I'm working on it.

Part of it is that I don't want to force you to have to come up with something every week, and I don't know how long that's sustainable. So a separate section might not make sense. I can bring it up though.

[languid nebula]

Agreed, No sustainable for sure, I will submit a PR for the newsletter, easier I host it in my Repo and include the code to it. if not we would need to create a PR to include it as an example (can be done in parallel) in the original library. And last thing, we would only include the ones that are already available to the public.

[scenic siren]

That all sounds good. I would say let's include any examples in the Adafruit hosted library repo and link to that. That way you're not responsible for any of it long term.

[languid nebula]

Will do, thanks.

[azure salmon]

my program to grab the palette and convert textures to the palette map.

Results

[west zinc]

I’m calling this done. Here’s the link to the CircuitPython_DisplayIO_Animation library and the simple test example: https://github.com/kmatch98/CircuitPython_DisplayIO_Animation

[languid nebula]

Weekdget :)

[azure salmon]

cool

[inner leaf]

Since we have been on a tad of a widget jag this is my (now sadly passed) hack-muse Miss Widget. She liked to help me out by touching the correct keys for me. Till I had her I didn't know that Manx came in a short hair tuxedo flavor.

[jagged parrot]

Fun little evening project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDB_BjCuV2c

[azure salmon]

now that my textures import seamlessly and memory is under control time to add sound to the esp 32

looking around i found many ways to play midi and wav audio.

eventually i tested a few samples and thought.. my word this sounds so terrible is there supposed to be this much noise

after swapping out the cheap speaker for a amplified speaker with a broader audio range i fell on my back.

it sounds too good

[west zinc]

Nice. Your color scheme evokes this cool button game I’ve always wanted to see in person: https://www.wethrowswitches.com/flux

[azure salmon]

change of plan

Hex hates me... so converting to RGB565 nearly gave me a heart failure.

decided having my palette in 8 bit RGB just made less trouble

[warped violet]

It doesn't hate you, it just put a hex on you. But, yeah, 8 bit RGB is much easier.

[lyric sun]

just "finished" (mechanism and code works need to pretty it up) a painting plotter for people with disabilities https://drive.google.com/file/d/17IzHxxTIbPMZS8hHn07XxPMWCfZh87_D/view?usp=sharing

using a pi pico, l298 drivers and circuitpython, i will send a nice video of it painting on a real canvas tomorrow

[lyric sun]

Here is the video

[azure salmon]

it's a psp joystick

[reef pasture]

https://github.com/wifijt/Funhouse_home_asistant_light_control

My first project with the funhouse board

The primary guide isn't out yet and the board doesn't ship with a booloader image - I flashed the magtag bootloader image and then used the UF2 image from circuitpython

[lyric sun]

Last thing ill post about this project but we made a funny pitch video for it https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dHgOHrwBAX949tUFuzA0DuVJNcDItJU7/view?usp=sharing

[scenic siren]

@lyric sun Other than the video links, did you write up this project anywhere? Is the code posted to GitHub? I'd like to include it in the Python for Microcontrollers newsletter but I need more than a Discord message to link to. 🙂

@reef pasture Nicely done! I'm going to include this in the Python for Microcontrollers newsletter.

[reef pasture]

Thanks!

[lyric sun]

yah i have a github but its currently just code cad and a wiring diagram, ill update it to have some images and videos for you https://github.com/ArielWolle/McMaster_Project_4

[scenic siren]

@lyric sun Alright, can you do me a huge favor? Please email that link to [e-mail] when you get it updated? I'll include it next week. This week is already pretty big!

[lyric sun]

sounds great

[scenic siren]

Thanks so much!

[torn elbow]

Only a week late for easter eggs, but eggbot!

[snow roost]

MagTag put to good use as a Game Boy Camera photo frame. Perfect for those tiny 4-shade photos.

With deep sleep this thing seems to run forever.

[night bronze]

Wow, that looks really good! Especially with the black case you have and on the light coloured surface. Is the case something you 3D printed youself?

[snow roost]

Thanks the stand is from the Ruiz Brothers. I did design a basic front cover though to hide the screen bezels.

[night bronze]

Ah yeah, those Ruiz brothers sure know their 3d printing! The front cover is what I was thinking of. It looks really good. Great job!

[wide musk]

Good afternoon! I know I'm a bit early, but I would like to do a show and tell on my TOS Tricorder build using an Adafruit Clue and PyPortal Pynt. Thanks!

[lapis jasper]

@wide musk I think the streamyard link is usually posted to #live-broadcast-chat right before it goes live

[wide musk]

Thank you, sir! BTW, thank you for the help on getting the PyPortal to connect to the internet! Awesome!

[lapis jasper]

np!

[wide musk]

@lapis jasper, I'm new to Discord... is it appropriate to upload on the channel, a little video I did?

[lapis jasper]

yup!

[hollow cedar]

i learned what the heck charlieplexing is last night and i tested it out with two LEDs

next step is 6 LEDs

[wide musk]

Here's my TOS Tricorder build... Fun project!

[scenic siren]

@wide musk Neat project! For future reference, please avoid cross-posting (posting the same thing in more than one channel). Folks will see it wherever you post it! 🙂

[wide musk]

Sorry... thanks!

[scenic siren]

No worries! Thanks for showing off your project!

[indigo charm]

Finally got into Home Assistant and ESPHome fun with a Feather ESP32: https://vimeo.com/537021338

[supple mortar]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4828756

[whole brook]

Old project but still fun: GM328 transistortester kits 🙂 Had fun relearning AVR programming and playing with a classic open source design to upgrade resistors/vref and flash the latest firmware.

Last pic is the “stock” unit I built first. The second one upgraded with 0.1% Vishay metal film resistors, a 0.1% 2.5 vRef and a 20MHz is in build now tho. Just gotta remember how to set a ATMega328p lfuse for a 20MHz external clock now... 😂

Bonus TIL: When you flash an lfuse setting for an external clock on a ATMega328p out-of-circuit your next flash will fail without that external clock. 🤦‍♂️ In-circuit for the win!

[half reef]

first step in my quest to build an OISC is complete: monostable timer!

i cut and stripped every wire in this myself; it took a really long time!

[solar yew]

That is tidy! Unlike the mangled messes I usually produce. I'm assuming that's the clock, correct?

[night bronze]

I was about to say! That's Ben Eater Breadboard Computer tidiness. Great job @half reef!

[solar yew]

I hope to achieve this level of tidiness one day 😄

[half reef]

it is the clock!

thank you both

[warped violet]

My breadboards are about as miswired as my brain

[night bronze]

And with a name like wirehead... I'm not sure which side of the line that falls onto!

[vast drum]

I showed this Mars rover badge on show'n'tell live a few weeks back and a few people asked me about it.... they're now available on my tindie! burned through half a roll of solder this week assembling them 😅 https://www.tindie.com/products/electronvillage/mars-perseverance-rover-badge-assembled/

[frigid sundial]

Cover for the Stemma Soil Moisture Sensor:
https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/63833-adafruit-stemma-capacitive-soil-sensor-cover
Code to link it up to Adafruit.io:
https://github.com/mperino/GardenSensor
Resulting Dashboard:
https://io.adafruit.com/ewr2san/dashboards/home-garden

A nice spring project for your Garden or Home Plants.

[night bronze]

LOL, anatomically accurate! Love that!

[marble mantle]

@vast drum how did you do the red martian dust at the lower part of the badge?
I can see how you used white silkscreen and gold ENIG finish for most of your art, but where does the red dust come from?

[vast drum]

It’s a copper pour on the reverse side of the board seen through the FR4 🙂 the board side of the copper doesn’t get ENIG finish so it’s the actual reddish color of copper!

[marble mantle]

@vast drum clever!

[vast drum]

Thanks - honestly came out way better than expected, I thought it would be barely visible but it's pretty prominent, especially w/ thinner 1.2mm PCB (original was 1.6)

[lyric sun]

Sorry for taking a while, had some big exams but the link is emailed!

[scenic siren]

Thank you!

[scenic siren]

We're already pretty full up for this week - I will be including it next week! Wanted to let you know I received the email and it wasn't missed.

[vast drum]

last shameless plug for awhile - my Mars Helicopter badge is now up on my Tindie also, if anyone is interested. Was so exciting seeing the first pics today 😍 🥳 https://www.tindie.com/products/electronvillage/ingenuity-mars-helicopter-badge-assembled/

[lyric sun]

Idk if its too much but could you possibly link the video in the newsletter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9EO0ap5n0Y

[scenic siren]

@lyric sun That was the plan! I intend to link to GitHub as well but the primary link will be the video.

[whole brook]

Grabbed a laptop from a recycling pile. Power on password makes it a brick. Bus Pirate and some googling turns brick back into a laptop. 🎉

[azure salmon]

upgrade complete swapped out the temic P-80c31-12 for a ATMEL 80c31x2-UM i salvaged.
i'm adding a icp next.

i'm rebuilding the keyboard my friend broke her badly

but i doubt i will find a ps2 keyboard soon.

so i'm looking into a usb host chip.

and for the gpu i need to still decide if i'm building something from logic or cheating and adding another mcu.

the storage is a AT28C256 256k eeprom

Ram is 64KB of Chiplus cs18lv00645pcr70

i think the rom upgrade is the best.

https://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/54261/FAIRCHILD/NM27C256Q90.html

😂

[languid nebula]

@west zinc Still very Blue, but using the Dial library only

[west zinc]

Super cool clock. I think @normal vale was asking how to do this.

[languid nebula]

oohh nothing fancy I've just used brute force, duplicating Functions, not even creating the two needle objects, for that I think it would be better create a different class.

[night bronze]

That's looking awesome!

[languid nebula]

Thank you Hugo 🙂

That is @west zinc Dial library. I just modified a little

[night bronze]

Community contributions!

[languid nebula]

Indeed

[sleek anvil]

Im my recent project i used Arduino uno and 59% of its sram to run a simple video game with VGA VIDEO OUTPUT! Also no libraries were used.
https://youtu.be/up2sRJ1ovYU

[sharp comet]

Finally knocked out a "meta" project that I've had in the back of my head for a while. A web page that makes it easy to create required library list screenshots for Learn guide authors.

[patent bison]

I made a pool temperature monitor using an ESP32, which sends data to Adafruit IO. Then I created a display using the MagTag to view the temperature which updates every 2 hours.

Here is the display

[sharp comet]

That's a great looking display for a cool project! Do you have it written up or code published anywhere online?

[patent bison]

@sharp comet I have the project on hackaday IO but have not published the code yet.

https://hackaday.io/project/178540-pool-temperature-monitor

[sharp comet]

awesome! thanks for the link

[scenic siren]

Interesting! We like to include the entire CIRCUITPY drive structure. Would it be difficult to add a static code.py , boot.txt and the three . files as though it was of the actual drive?

With the libs in a "lib" folder.

[sharp comet]

Nope, that should be pretty easy! I'll work on those tweaks next later on tonight.

[scenic siren]

Great! Let me know what you come up with. It looks super convenient. I feel like it could be used for folks manually loading libraries as well (since we have the Project Bundle now, we're moving away from that) but it would help find dependencies without dealing with cascade failures.

[sharp comet]

Theoretically it might be possible to re-use some of the infrastructure that makes the Project Bundle work to automate the generation of the images

[scenic siren]

As a side note, we haven't decided yet on the canonical way in guides we're going to handle the Project Bundle. I think we may still want a screenshot of what CIRCUITPY looks like, so this might still be helpful.

I have how I think it should look but we haven't really settled on it yet.

[sharp comet]

we can control the look and feel as well. If we do end up wanting to use them but there is a preference for it to be light themed or just different from what I have now styling it differently should be fairly straight forward.

[scenic siren]

My whole machine is dark themed, so all my screenshots are.

I don't know that we have a preference there. Lighter themed would match Learn better, but I don't think it matters.

[languid nebula]

A DS18B20 ... Interested in seeing the code..🤔

[worldly ore]

hello all. i wanted a project to get me out into the garage more. so, i'm building an electric go kart! https://hackaday.io/project/179303-vintage-electric-go-kart

[exotic sierra]

This is sweet! I’ve always wanted to build an electric go kart

[shut rain]

"Java not cool" Young man is wise beyond his years!

[broken rain]

Here is the code from my keyboard tonight: https://github.com/bdsvac/Adafruit_Pico_Airlift_NeoKeyboard and here is the thingiverse link https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4835788

[night bronze]

That's so cool, thanks for sharing your code and project!

If you haven't already, you should share it for the Python on Microcontrollers weekly newsletter!

[broken rain]

Who do you talk to for that @night bronze ?

[night bronze]

You can either a) submit a pull-request to the newsletter's GitHub repo (https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython-weekly-newsletter) with the instructions from the README, or b) send an email to [e-mail] with a link and some details

[night bronze]

By the way, just looking over more of the code in your repo, I've got to complement you on the simplicity and clarity. It's a breeze to follow along!

[broken rain]

Thanks

[azure salmon]

You know whats horrid.
recently worked for a man here in SA.
He was a installer for security and honestly with work being as hard as it is to find i figured why not.
After a few weeks i showed him my programming stuff and electronics.
I then proceeded to build him a app for his business and I built a esp32 unit we can use to flash updates and reprogram panels for alarm systems.
During this time i did my job everyday with a smile.
2 days before the 3 month probation he fires me.
Locks the workshop, keeps everything we made.
And the laptop he gave me wipes itself.

[tacit delta]

that is just what

did guy cut off any pay?

[azure salmon]

He paid me nothing for 2 months

obsessive control freak, that hides spy camera's in your house.

everything he did was breaking the law.

and to be honest he was a script monkey.

he had no electronics skill

real emperor palpitine

[tacit delta]

you have to sue if you are not paid

[azure salmon]

if i sue. i'm taking his business

not worthy

he lies to his customers so he doesn't look dumb.
he solders like a 3 year old.
he talks about company morals and why i cant buy a customers old guitar, but has no problem digging in their trash to steal a broken poe injector cuz it's his idea.. not mine.

people treat your staff with respect and growth

please

[tacit delta]

poe injector?

if you feel its not worth fighting then forget that guy, businesses dont usually last if badly managed like that

[azure salmon]

Power Over Ethernet

[tacit delta]

ahh yes duh lol

[azure salmon]

honestly i job searched for 3 years.

finally got a position.

and the guys a nut job.

explaining why he works alone

[tacit delta]

i wonder how many workers he ripped off

[azure salmon]

apparently his last wife and tech that worked for him screwed him over.. but the true story was he made her nearly take her own life by giving her no attention.
And his last tech got frustrated after 6 months then sued.

and i don't blame them.

he drips hot solder on people and then claims it was a accident.

and i was very grateful and told him if we work together we can make good business.

nope..

[tacit delta]

jezz just not nice guy

[azure salmon]

Then he was nice enough to keep most of my tools.

and our cops here are easily bribed

nothing will happen to him

[tacit delta]

jeez

it actually cost you a lot to work for him

[rough dew]

I designed my own laser projection enclosure with an alignable laser mount!

[grand rose]

cool, does it workout showing something ?

[gusty shard]

PWM noisemaker on feather-m0

[topaz citrus]

Main control board

breakoutboard

micropump

Hey all, wanted to share a kinda cool project I made for work recently. I had to figure out a way to drive upto 64 12v micropumps and monitor their speed. Their speed is set via a 5v pwm signal which I use 4x PCA9685 chips to do, then each pump also emits a 5v pulse 2x per revolusion so reading these pulses can get give you RPM, for that i use 4x TCA9548a's(Altough fyi right now they are among the many chips you can't find anywhere) multiplexer to direct which pulse gets fed back to the itsybitsy m4 to count. The board is as big as it is mainly because it's only a 2 layer board, but also the ribbon cable connectors i'm using to connect to the daughter boards(each drive/read 8 pumps) are fairly large. To do it again i'd pick another connector type something to also include the 12v power input to the pumps in the same cable as it is i take in 12v on the left side of the board and then breakout bare +12v and gnd wires to the various breakout boards. Blacked out boxes are just name of my company/customer.

[leaden jetty]

4 panel array RGB matrix with event scheduler. Built in feed servers, weather station, climate clock, clock, countdown timer, Bluetooth controlled.

[exotic sierra]

That’s pretty cool

[rancid kestrel]

Working on an ESP32-S2 robot controller w/motor driver. Hope to have it on CP.org by the end of the month!

[marble mantle]

@rancid kestrel would you tell more about it? What features have you planned?

[rancid kestrel]

Glad to see there is interest! I intend for it to have terminal block input at up to 20v, a bunch of exposed IO, Stemma QT, USB-C, dual-channel 4.5A motor driving, and of course, it can run CircuitPython!

I've ordered the boards and I have one mostly assembled. I've built CP and am just waiting on the USB-C jacks

Then I can get some testing done and make some PRs

[marble mantle]

Nice
I personally would like also to see encoder input and built in PID speed control for motors

[rancid kestrel]

This is the kind of board that goes inside the robot, so there isn't really a need for physical on-board controls. That's a pretty good idea with the encoders though and I'm already planning a companion board for controlling it. Speed control is possible with the motor chip I chose, but not simple enough to implement in alpha. I do plan to add it though 🙂

[gusty shard]

Thump Drone on "E": https://gist.github.com/rsbohn/3705da8ca1a145ea0b2340ab0ec9e0b8
Feather M0, PWM Tones (pin D12), touchio (pin A5), debounce.

[devout verge]

Getting my cousin a Circuit Playground for his birthday, wrote this little demo program for him in CircuitPython.

[crimson egret]

I've made a Pyportal for weblate, in preparation for @lapis jasper's micropython merge.

[rough dew]

This is incredibly janky & unsafe-- I don't recommend ANYONE recreate this project due to the obvious risk of blindness

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/307372082810060801/836051560726528010/video0.mov

but it was a heck of a fun time to design & make :)

[tacit delta]

nice!

i wanted to make fake vector crt using laser

[night bronze]

Not sure what makes it seem most ominous - the long-press of a button to start it, the sound, or the sense that the only refrain happening inside is "targeting... targeting... targeting...". So cool though! Makes me thing that the power button should be behind a flip safety switch... or three!

[marble mantle]

it would be a nice project to embed an actual dev boards like qt py inside such a switch.

[warped violet]

It would be a real change.

[candid crescent]

You mean a major switch? 😉

[azure salmon]

i once shoved a attiny into The Most Useless Switch Ever

turns out it was more handy than expected

[night bronze]

Self-deceptive advertizing? 😄

[azure salmon]

no idea what that is but it sounds evil.

[half night]

Two points to the Adafruit development team for the Neo Trinkey! I've made a password safe application for it at https://github.com/william-stearns/trinkeypass . I think it counts as the world's smallest keyboard macro and password safe!

[leaden jetty]

@half night This looks like fun to think about.
What about a separate rpi 0 configured with no network to "set" the trinkey key up. That would leave all the clear text access to the drive unviewable by all. The RPI0 could be wiped each time.

[half night]

You could plug the trinkey into a pi (with a USB adapter for the zero), yes. Thanks to @solar wadi 's help I was able to build a firmware file that doesn't have Mass Storage Device support - by using that firmware the keyboard feature still works but the files aren't presented to the host system. (One can switch back and forth between firmwares without wiping the code.py and password files).

[leaden jetty]

@half night I'm thinking about routines to tell you/it which key to send by talking to the key. Very interesting...

[half night]

From the pi0? Actually, the pi0 can do HID/keyboard itself! I was originally going to do this project on a pi0 because it can do the same keyboard injection. The problem is there's no input built into the zero, so I'd have to connect a keyboard.

Next generation - running this on a magtag. 4 buttons and an e-ink display for a full menu system with descriptions of the keys so you don't have to remember which slot holds which password.

Just waiting for them to come back in stock. 🙂

[leaden jetty]

I was speaking of when you use the password. Yes, the magtag is the brilliant solution as all keys indexes can be listed on the panel. But, that little trinkey is your answer. It is so usable.

I like it.

[half night]

They did a nice job on the design.

[leaden jetty]

I'm going to build a couple and see if I can remember indexes for 100 passwords...

[half night]

Niiice! Please let us know how you end up doing it.

[leaden jetty]

Ha they are out of stock... I should mail you a Magtag for a key! (but I wont. I'm still playing with them.)

[half night]

🙂

[leaden jetty]

@half night For paranoid people: A nice piece of information would be the key updating a file stating how many times it has been used, the indexes used (encrypted/obscured). A really paranoid individual could use that to determine there is something amiss. This is not the same as "everything is OK."
So, when I use a key I expect it to increment. I also expect any other user can just reset the key and access it n-1 times so it appears ok.
It's like Rockford leaving a hair glued to the door and the door frame. If tampered with, pay attention. The door has been opened.

change can to can't.

[half night]

Oooh, I like that! Maybe have a "last used date" as well. Hair on the door - I think that was used in Dr. No as well, though I don't know which showed up first.

[leaden jetty]

Dr No is before Rockford.

[half night]

Got it. Hmmm - I wonder if a Trinkey can get the date at all.

[leaden jetty]

I expect not...

[half night]

Agreed.

[cobalt badge]

👋 I've been working on building a bioreactor🦠 on top of RaspberryPis. It's involved lots of fun software and hardware problems, and I got to use my data-engineering background, too. Here's our first article on how we built our system: https://pioreactor.com/blogs/pioreactor-blog/how-we-built-a-bioreactor-on-top-of-a-raspberry-pi

[sterile zodiac]

Thanks to the help I got on discord here, I was able to get part of my project done (learning Python from scratch) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9jsNZSSAzg

[night bronze]

Good stuff @sterile zodiac! And that's with learning Python from scratch? Great job!!!

[jagged parrot]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4843252 little Funhouse stand I designed. First time out with fusion 360. 😊

[burnt wyvern]

Small Metro Mini powered Neopixel lamp im making for my mom for Mother’s Day, it currently doesn’t light up due to the board being the 3V version and not the 5V version, I’ll post more when it actually turns on

[west zinc]

Finally getting I2C signals into sigrok's PulseView. Have to save a file from sigrok-cli and then load into PulseView to visualize. This is an ItsyBitsyM4 TinyLogicFriend measuring a 100kHz I2C signal to an SSD1306 OLED display. Baby steps!

[languid nebula]

Oh this is cool, I have many things for you to troubleshoot 😋

[dire meadow]

Cool! Can’t wait to see that complete!

[lucid bloom]

I got my home assistant computer museum demo ready for install. The 5 outlets are the same and simple, the pi controlled computers are unique to that computer. An amazon dash button at each computer will turn it on a play a text to speech message about it. I'll be doing the setup/demo on Saturday and then I'll be taking pics and some videos. There are still quite a few more computers to control.

[rough dew]

1 arduino mega is handling intaking all the data, parsing it, and piping it out to the laser control DACs

[desert timber]

Very nice! (Just hope no one opens the door unexpectedly 🙂 )

[rough dew]

https://youtu.be/g7LzYudKs-s

And the conclusion!

[tacit delta]

you use galvos right? for laser direction

[rough dew]

Yup ^^

[tacit delta]

nice

galvos so expensive heh

[rough dew]

I got mine, and their drivers, on ebay for about $150

[tacit delta]

bit cheaper not bad but still too much for just farting around with

[azure salmon]

i still have a sony drive and a few disks.
now i'm intersted.

https://github.com/dhansel/ArduinoFDC

[vestal crow]

I split my project into 2 PCBs and look at how adorable the MCU board is, https://i.imgur.com/ml0xXRQ.png

[vestal crow]

The mainboard, https://i.imgur.com/5tKyvIo.png

[azure salmon]

i think my reflow station just gave up.
power keeps tripping if i pick up the iron

[wise lake]

Cable worn?

[azure salmon]

not really

[wise lake]

Weird, earth problem?

When you pick it up or just touch the iron?

[willow rain]

my bet goes to it shorting somewhere

[languid nebula]

@night bronze Now you do the rest ... Guess what the led is saying..

[sacred timber]

My Morse code is a bit rusty.

[languid nebula]

🙂

how do you know it is morse code, that is amazing

is the Paris Protocol

[languid nebula]

I will load the "code" to my repo if interested..

[sacred timber]

Well, it was a guess. Any time someone tells me there is information in a blinking light or repeating beep it's likely Morse. Of course it could be a different code or nothing at all...

[languid nebula]

I see, yep you are right

[night bronze]

I don't know Morse code, so I will guess is says "Jose rocks!"?

[languid nebula]

jajaja

no you will see it the readthedocs example 🙂

give me 10 minutes

[sacred timber]

dah dit dah dit. di dah. dah dit dah dit. dit dah. The problem with "j" and "a" is you definitely need to leave some time between letters. Part of reading Morse is getting into the context of what's being said so you can kinda guess what's coming, as we do in all languages.

[languid nebula]

yes, kind of confusing when you need space for the letters and then for the words

[sacred timber]

International Morse is better than American Morse in this regard.

[languid nebula]

let me see what I have

[languid nebula]

so C is 'C': '-.-.', 'c': '-.-.',

so it is international

[tacit delta]

...---... ...---... ...---... ...---...

[languid nebula]

https://github.com/jposada202020/CircuitPython_morse_code @night bronze

[wary atlas]

• --- -.. .- -.-- .. .-.. . .- .-. -. -.. - .... . .-. . .- .-. . -- ..- .-.. . - -.-- .--. . ... --- ..-. -- --- .-. ... .

[coarse edge]

Whee!

[night bronze]

That's awesome, thanks! 🙂

[languid nebula]

You are welcome 🙂

[dire meadow]

When your MacBook is old enough to have a USB A port lol

[coarse edge]

mid-2011 MacBook air

[night bronze]

Yep! Got an early 2011 here, still going. SSDs and a few replacement batteries help tho

[wary atlas]

I got one of those recently, lol. Not bad for a 10 year old laptop. Swapped the battery and it's golden!

[cold tangle]

I'm using a 2010 MacBook Pro for my Arduino stuff. It no longer has a battery but is still fine otherwise.

[wary atlas]

No battery is a good way to keep it from puffing up, lol

[cold tangle]

That's how I ended up with no battery 😉

[wary atlas]

XD if you use it like a desktop... who needs a battery?

[cold tangle]

Well, the battery helps it to remember what day it is haha.

[wary atlas]

lol, that is helpful

[cold tangle]

I noticed that the web doesn't work unless I set the clock to the proper day by hand, because otherwise it's too far in the past and none of the https certificates are valid.

[wary atlas]

Yeah, that can be a pain. Worst thing is if the time happens to match current time but the year is off, you might not even notice that! I've had it happen to me before

[dire meadow]

I’ve got a 2012 MBP 13’ non-retina. My original battery died, but the replacement seems to be not so good

[wary atlas]

oof... Thankfully my Air's replacement seems OK

[night bronze]

My plan is to make it at least dual boot with a Linux distro once I'm moved over to my new main computer. Fairly certain a Ubuntu/Debian distro would work well, and try Arch since it's so highly spoken of around here.

[wary atlas]

I'm going to switch my Air to Linux since this MacOS version is so out of date.... but debating if I want to do Ubuntu or Pop!_OS -- I have an older MacBook, one of the ones that came in glossy white or matte black, and WiFi doesn't work on Ubuntu, but the Air is much more portable so I want to make sure it has good hardware support

I'd consider Windows if it had more than 4GB of RAM....

[night bronze]

You can ask FoamyGuy from here (or on stream later this morning - check the #live-broadcast-chat channel around 10am Eastern America time - about 1 hour 40 from now).

They're currently running Pop_OS! on a System76 computer, and I think previously used Ubuntu, but I could be remembering wrong (I've blinked since).

[wary atlas]

Remembering is hard XD I should be able to join the stream, work is pretty quiet

[azure salmon]

https://tenor.com/view/classic-babyrage-1970s-babyrage-1970s-babyrage-gif-19912851

[exotic sierra]

Prototyping a unicorn wall light

Need to redo the overall shape a little to make it more unicorn like

[desert timber]

much better than I could do but I was gonna say "nice horse"

[exotic sierra]

lol

I designed it this morning and printed the parts out throughout the day

[desert timber]

with some cool light controller of your own design no doubt?

[exotic sierra]

I’m making it use a LiPo power pack I designed, a small protoboard with a button for mode selection, small neopixel strip, and probably a microcontroller I designed

Might need to order a bigger battery next paycheck

[desert timber]

more power! lol
what do you use for the light sensor, CdS, phototransistor...?

[exotic sierra]

Probably won’t use a light sensor, just a simple switch

[wary atlas]

Tap on, tap off!

[exotic sierra]

I’ll probably use a touch controller 🙂

[warped violet]

Seems like a bright idea.

[hard oriole]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60tbZQgmMA

[lucid bloom]

These are the machines at the museum that are setup with homeassistant. 4 of them are just outlets, the gateway is pi controlled. There is an amazon dash button at each computer that will turn it on and talk about it. Everything can be controlled with the app/web interface, google assistant on a phone or nest mini and the dash buttons. I'm gonna have to hack some of the older machines with an Arduino pretending to be a ps2 keyboard.

[wary atlas]

So you can turn them on and off remotely? That's so cool!

[lucid bloom]

Yup and make a decent tts voice talk about them

[wary atlas]

Ohhh, nice

[lucid bloom]

The goal is to be able to give multiple levels of tours with the tour guide being involved or present or absent.

[wary atlas]

Automation and remote control of old systems is awesome. Are visitors allowed to play with the systems?

[lucid bloom]

They will be with a short list of commands they can run at each computer. We are still trying to get everything setup and ready.

[wary atlas]

Nice. Glad to see a good collection getting love!

[lucid bloom]

I'm not the computer guy, I know next to nothing about the hardware, my job is the raspberry pi stuff and the automation. My friend acquired all of the computers in the museum for free over a long period of time.

I think there are 12-15 computers ranging from the late 70s til around the year 2000

[wary atlas]

Heh, I might have some things to donate... Where's the museum?

[lucid bloom]

It's in massachusetts.

[wary atlas]

Ah, that's a bit of a hike from here... But maybe I'll come take a look and bring some goodies some day!

[azure salmon]

stunning collection

brings back fondness

[wary atlas]

Happened to go down the basement... Good reason to share this!

[hard oriole]

@wary atlas Tandy 1000, my first work machine. I got paid to illustrate with 16 fixed colors 320x240.

[wary atlas]

Nice! I love this thing, but a lot of my 5" disks don't love to play nice anymore...