show-and-tell

[wary atlas]

I'm jelly

[wary atlas]

https://tenor.com/view/stevenuniverse-star-gif-4782048

[modest raven]

I've made a tool that automates the placement of clusters of parts in KiCAD : https://github.com/cgarcia2097/kle-placement-router

[brittle nymph]

I wrote up a blog post on resistance and voltage dividers: https://blog.demofox.org/2021/06/27/resistance-and-voltage-dividers/

[coarse fjord]

I put together one of those Conway's Game of Life kits. I was out of practice with soldering but it turned on and worked first try so going slow and careful paid off.

https://youtu.be/JrnXHVxk1wM

[lean elbow]

The RP2040 QT Trinkey plus a Wii Nunchuck breakout and some nylon standoffs make a pretty cool and compact custom nunchuck adapter 😄

[shadow sail]

I made an Arduboy that has Rumble , and an "Ardumiibo" scanner for putting real life 3d printed collectibles into your Arduboy games.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI37KAai0mUhJ3Yi7gZaNxqZhPj6SuK46

https://www.hackster.io/wimberlyw/arduboy-pro-rumble-w-ardumiibo-scanner-a8aa29

[shut shard]

Here's my fully-featured HID compatible, plug and play remote receiver. Took a few hours of work.

[dawn acorn]

Not bad for the AMG8833 8x8 thermal sensor! Uses linear interpolation code from here: https://learn.adafruit.com/improved-amg8833-pygamer-thermal-camera/circuitpython-code but stripped right back for use in my PicoPicorder.

[gusty shard]

Today in the lab.

[clever plank]

I made a thing 😄

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_xRG8e-q2k

[sacred timber]

Hi @clever plank, you've done a very nice job on the design, especially choosing to not start with a kit but from the ground up. I'm curious to know more about its programming. I see from the video you've added ultrasonics on the front and sides, so how have you gone about making the robot autonomous? And any plans for bumpers or an IMU (to detect collisions or falls) should the ultrasonics fail?

[lean zodiac]

Oh hey

either that was intentional (thank you) or I got lucky that the neopixels are on one of the pins I can use as the (unused) SPI Tx, because PIO isn't working yet and bitbang neopixel is gross

[limber swan]

Making my Matrixportal query my Octoprint server to get the current print status, still needs stability work. Top row is the current file, middle is time left, bottom is a progress bar

Working on an idea I had for the PyPortal that will do the same but show snapshots of the current print as well

[viscid halo]

@twilit rune I just saw this. Very nicely done. When are you publishing the library? I think you called it 'bb_spi_lcd'

[ancient skiff]

I had to print a few keys before getting it "just right". Big thanks to the author of "KeyV2" openscad library for 3d printable keycaps!

my custom key profile can print with the "face" of the keycap right on the bed, making it easy to do the colored legend by a single "change filament at layer height".

the stem geometry is REAL fiddly so there's a lot of trying while changing the two adjustment numbers by .05mm or less per test; and then just swapping rolls of filament [both were hatchbox brand PLA] it can stop fitting. It required patience.

[shrewd zealot]

I referenced a handful of learn guides and threw together a Macropad with multiple keymaps. Holding down the rotary encoder while turning changes the keymap. The screen updates with the current keymap and key legend. I posted my code to GitHub. https://github.com/dgriswo/Macropad_RP2040

[gusty shard]

OLED Vanity: 5x5 grid display https://gist.github.com/rsbohn/3683b5776edf254c584e93cafdcd8bbb

[ancient skiff]

With all the color sensibilities of Star Trek: The Animated Series 🙂 but the enclosure 3d printable design is essentially finished and I'm pretty happy with the geometry. I could make the "rim" go up a bit more, though.

[exotic sierra]

Ohhh that looks great

Just want to share a project someone else is doing that uses a board I made 🙂 https://mobile.twitter.com/deckerego/status/1411752369768046598

deckerego (@deckerego)

The @oakdevtech PixelLeaf RGB Matrix is the perfect replacement for the Unicorn pHat that TallyPi has been using. Next up is moving the HTYP server to Python 3,and migrating to the NeoPixel Blinka library.

Twitter · Jul 4, 2021, 6:22 PM

[dire meadow]

Congrats, skerr

[supple mortar]

I just open-sourced a project i've been working on. It's IoT display gadget firmware for esp based boards. https://github.com/tavdog/general-tron/tree/master

[dreamy cipher]

Hey all, I have a project I'd like to share. I'm calling it the PowerBand for now. Here are the features in V2 which I just finished:

Feather S2 and 128x64OLED with STEMMA Fuel Gauge and Temp/Humidity Modules and a port for extending the chain. A 2000mah battery pack and a custom dial selector that I designed using what I'm calling "magnetic haptic feedback" which selects 2 lasers, a light, black light, and originally a flashlight until I ran into some trouble. Let me know what you think!

Oh - and it's also a charger for my earbuds... I integrated the soundpeats t2 into it. It also has 3 custom connector magnetic pogo pin ports supplying 3.7, 5 and 12v.

[dreamy cipher]

Something that would be very useful not only in the next iteration of this project is a basic mosfet switching STEMMA module that just has something like 8 outputs for switching up to 12V or more ideally. If anyone could give any assistance with designing such a board I do have some experience just not specifically with STEMMA. I'm also not formally trained, so most of the deeper maths and circuit methodology I wont be able to follow. Let me know if this makes sense

[candid crescent]

Maybe a product idea for @exotic sierra 's Oak Dev Tech?

[dreamy cipher]

The usefulness is pretty clear I think but especially in this scenario because you accomplish with i2c what would normally be a ton of IO which would all need wiring through the neckband to the other side

this dial uses a series of magnets and a selector magnet to activate Reed switches through a waterproof wall. My next plan is to use a magnetometer instead and then switch mosfets like discussed but a serial module would be ideal (a STEMMA magnetometer already exists)

[lean zodiac]

I kinda wanna make that now (the STEMMA MOSFET board)

[upbeat geyser]

A little math could convert the magnetometer readings to an angle, which you could then use to control something just like a rotary control, but coupled via a magnetic field.

[dreamy cipher]

That's the idea ^

I do YouTube as well, not much on electronics thus far (mostly philosophy) but it's this https://youtube.com/channel/UCpbR9Ga1GcroozoVKi70hMg

not sure if that's koscher for the chat so apologies if not. Anyway if anyone could help me understand the hardware requirements for the STEMMA switch board or a general methodology for how to go about tackling that project I'd be really appreciative.... I want to learn primarily here

[lean zodiac]

maybe #help-with-projects?

but in general, (assuming you are talking about the mosfet board?) you'll need to specify a lot more specifications than "8 channels, 12V or maybe more"

[dreamy cipher]

Sure. I guess the problem is I'm not sure of the full requirements yet but generally I overbuild things and so I would spec it for up to 16V on maybe 2 of 6 outputs and up to 5 on the others... that part's somewhat arbitrary. I've designed a mosfet board that switched a 300w TEC bundle off an adafruit trinket pro but I really don't know the nitty gritty details of the IC aspects of doing a STEMMA correctly if that makes sense. I'll probably crosspost over on help-with; thanks. If anyone wants to DM me to talk more or collaborate please do.

[ebon garnet]

Put some bling into Collin's MP3 Feather. Using the 1x4 NeoKey QT board. Added the 4 button as a previous mode button

[ancient skiff]

Finished print with this much filament left (the piece on the left)

Sooooo good though

[vestal salmon]

For the ham radio operators, here is a touch Morse Code keyer run by the Feather RP2040. Two connections for touch the dot and dash. Two buttons, preprogrammed to send common messages, rotary encoder to change the keying rate and a toggle to control two different radio transmitters.

key detail. small PC pad grounded with 1 meg resistor.

Interior view. Feather is on a small proto board for ease in connections.

Would be nice to print in plastic, but the Radio Frequency signals from high power transmitters demand that all be shielded in aluminum cases

[sacred timber]

You can use aluminum foil on the inside of a chassis, with a spray adhesive.

[vestal salmon]

Maybe, but a few holes in an aluminum bud box is far simpler and probably not as toxic.

[slow sky]

This an open-source project?

I'd like to see about building one

[ancient skiff]

@slow sky soon! I'll be making a guide out of it with Adafruit in the next weeks.

It'll have PCB design files, 3d printable files, etc

[slow sky]

Oop
I'm excited, emote got sniped

[ancient skiff]

yeah, the name of the emoji hit a content filter. We like to keep the language all-ages here.

[slow sky]

I understand that, looking forward to the project

[ancient skiff]

I've had a heck of a fun time working on it!

[floral parcel]

Lightsaber go woosh

It was my first time a solidering project went my way with out error and I didn't have to trouble shoot for 10 years

[narrow topaz]

something like this?

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/16566

[dreamy cipher]

yeah thats the idea. I'd prefer solid state though

@narrow topaz that's awfully bulky too... obviously mosfets are more difficult and take a little more technical ability but some basic nmosfets should be doable in a satisfactory form factor i think

[ancient skiff]

@floral parcel 😍

[lean zodiac]

I'm really curious how many amps you were wanting out of the board?

[dreamy cipher]

Sustained maybe 4 or 5?

I have flashlights in mind which can be quite powerful

[cedar dew]

Hi Guys. I've uploaded the stls and sketch to the following link - https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/70434-tron-legacy-disc-display-with-base-and-electronics

Tron Legacy mini disc and display base

[lean zodiac]

well I may be putting in an order for a I2C controlled 4-channel MOSFET board >_> (assuming the thing works and I didn't do something quite silly)

[dire meadow]

I believe @exotic sierra has some magnetic encoders in his shop

[exotic sierra]

Do I?

[dire meadow]

Oh wait

[exotic sierra]

I thought about carrying them but I never actually found one I liked to carry

[upbeat geyser]

The AS5162 is one possibility

But with a little trig, you can use an ordinary 2-axis linear sensor as a magnetic angle sensor too

[cunning lava]

Second version of PewPew OLED got the battery holder right.

[scenic siren]

Fancy!

[glad roost]

i really like the casual graphics

it reminds me of Crayon Physics

[cunning lava]

often freehand stuff looks better than I could do with a "clean" design, and it's much faster

[lean zodiac]

Waiting for my prototype boards and the parts, but my design for an i2c controlled 4 channel n-mosfet driver (sorry, you put a good idea in my head)

[dreamy cipher]

@lean zodiac thanks for the schematic man!

[lean zodiac]

1. not a man, 2. I'm probably gonna be selling it, but do plan on releasing the files as open-source hardware as soon as I'm sure it doesn't blow up

[dreamy cipher]

1. apologies. 2. sounds good

[lean zodiac]

( also I'm stuck until August anyway, as the micro I'm using is back-ordered until then, which was one of the earliest I could find )

[dreamy cipher]

yikes. yeah seems like that's a common situation. I appreciate the feedback; I think it's a nice module to have at anyone's disposal

Honestly idk how smart this is but I'm in communication with a patent attorney about the magnetometer dial idea.... it's expensive obviously. I know basically nothing still about patent/intellectual property law but if anyone could point me in a useful direction I'd be appreciative... as in are there resources available to inventors who want to publish open source but just don't know how/make some type of revenue from their work? Thanks.

[lean zodiac]

alas prior art probably exists for that

just not as an isolated module

[dreamy cipher]

ive searched the uspto and didnt find anything remotely similar honestly

i know the basics of searching but just don't know the resources available to me as an inventor honestly. i have 2 or 3 other novel ideas i just can't get anywhere

i work at a smoke shop. i dont have 2 or 3 grand floating around esp after the pandemic lol

i have an idea for a waterproof spooling mechanism for wires....so imagine retractable earbuds for this project but waterproof

infinite waterproof rotary switches also dont exist

that I've seen or can find

[lean zodiac]

for infinite, you probably want "encoder" not "switch"

[dreamy cipher]

true

[lean zodiac]

https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/54/3315-776436.pdf is IP67 (no ingress of dust, protection against the effects of immersion in water between 1cm and 1m for 30 minutes)

[dreamy cipher]

cool

https://www.directindustry.com/prod/ebe/product-12402-2393073.html

[ruby basalt]

with regard to the magnetometer dial reader, note that this device https://rochestergauges.com/product/jr-and-sr-r3d-dials-lp/ has been around for quite a while. Rotary Hall sensors are common. It's also patented https://patents.google.com/patent/US6564632B2/en

[dreamy cipher]

I know they use a series of halls for DC sin motors but that's a series of switches similar to the reed switch design i made

[ruby basalt]

Not sure if infinite waterproof is sufficiently different to merit a patent. It would take $$$ to write it so, IMO.

[dreamy cipher]

is a basic magnetometer module using hall effect or maybe EBE?

or is it literally a magnetic pin on a potentiometer nowadays?

[ruby basalt]

what you really want are these https://www.nve.com/lreSensors

I'll be using one of these https://www.nve.com/angleSensors in our own product. Note the choice if interfaces.

[dreamy cipher]

a thought... you could almost have a 3 dimensional dial in this regard. if it was a flat sided ball like a 20 sided die almost you could roll it around in a housing and get settings too... kinda niche and weird but maybe itll spur an idea

thanks for the info

[ruby basalt]

trackball? 😉

[dreamy cipher]

pretty much!

[lean zodiac]

except one where you can know what side is facing up

I think?

[dreamy cipher]

yeah

it'd be a weird feel. it would be really cool to have the die be suspended but defeats the concept of having a magnet suspended

you couldn't magnetically levitate it if it was a polar magnet that you needed to adjust the orientation of that is

[craggy wolf]

@dreamy cipherOne of the requirements to obtain a patent is that it must not be obvious to a skilled practitioner in the trade.
For example, if you asked several engineers how to do what you are proposing, would any of them describe something similar.

Another requirement is a similar design must not have ever been openly published. Not simply that you can't find a similar patent.

[ruby basalt]

careful.. you can't suspend a magnet without active control. Basic physics theorem, Earnshaw's Theorem. q.v.https://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=electromagnetic-levitation

[dreamy cipher]

i've never tried it and know very little about it i just want a floaty selection die lol. maybe considering that fact though levitating a die in such a manner would probably give you all the data you needed anyway for selections. the question would be if there have been experiments with machines that could compensate for someone fiddling with something you're actively balancing

[ruby basalt]

The short answer is yes. An active control would probably involve generating pulses of repelling fields. That implies use of coils, which implies that the coils are reacting to the motion of the levitated object by generating an induced voltage. Also a basic physics theorem, Lenz's Law.

The levitation problem has been solved in real life in, for example, levitating magnetic trains.

[dreamy cipher]

yeah, I've seen people levitate supercooled balls and whatnot and i know they use it in maglev...side note i know johnson controls is working on a maglev compressor for their york chillers... probably already in production. anyway this is an interesting concept i think. maybe I can come up with something clever to simulate the concept

maybe instead of levitating it you repel it against a housing and push it down to select

[ruby basalt]

Have fun. One of my grad sch. classmates wanted to show me how to to make a high-Tc superconductor in a microwave oven. Never took him up on it tho.

[dreamy cipher]

sounds like a wise choice haha

have them send pictures 😉

so let me know if this checks out... if the "cage" or housing the selection die was made of ferrous metal then a spherical magnet should always be attracted to it no matter the orientation, correct?

or even if there was a sufficiently large piece of ferrous metal at the center point where you would want attraction, correct? so in which case rather than repel a magnet with changing field just have a metal "attractor" to orient it

[ruby basalt]

Not sure I get the geometry, but a general result for inverse-square forces is that a particle within a surrounding shell subject to the same force experiences no force at all. A charged particle in a conducting hollow sphere suspends itself at the center. This is true for gravity as well, since it's an inverse-square force.

[dreamy cipher]

I'll try to draw up some cad to demonstrate the concept. if i'm understanding what youre saying that's equally interesting but I'm not convinced that's the case (that i'm understanding correctly lol)

[dreamy cipher]

effectively the sphere would be a 12 sided die in this case and the cage/housing would be ferrous or there would be a ferrous piece of metal where the smaller ball is floating above. the sensor would be at the bottom tracking the potted magnet in the die

you would depress the die and rotate it in the housing to select a new setting

it would be really cool if you induced a current into the die on each side where you potted a small led and it lit the die up in a different color depending on its orientation lol

could also just hook it to the MC though and change it that way

[dreamy cipher]

that would make more sense if you could get it to behave the way im describing because you could actually scroll it easier

[frosty topaz]

If you can get enough little coils in there, you could create small currents from the electromagnet if it's strong enough? Might need some research and experimentation, but that's basically how wireless charging works...

[upbeat geyser]

There's a video on youtube showing little wirelessly powered LEDs like that

[lucid bloom]

I built a pi slackbot to control our ac at the makerspace. I made the pi part, my friend Josh designed an adapter to hook up the ac vent exhaust to an exhaust fan. He also added a heat sensitive switch to turn the exhaust fan on high when it gets over 104. We tested it twice and it works so far none of the hot bits read above 115 after a half hour of use. It will need some more testing before it can fulfill it's purpose of precooling the makerspace before meetups.

[tacit delta]

only thing that makes me sad is that its not dual hose

[magic drum]

I'll show my project in Wednesday, is there any adictional software I must download? Oh. I found a page with the information.

[cobalt dove]

World's first hand-wired analog keyboard (macro pad) is complete! Goes well with my Riskeyboard 70 😄 https://gfycat.com/fluidsevereairedale

[ancient slate]

Hi! I’m kinda new here (and new to electronics beyond simple e-textiles), but I recently made a light-up helmet with a Metro Mini and some Neopixels 🌟

[tacit delta]

nice

[sacred timber]

If you're new to electronics it'd be hard to tell from the project, looks pretty impressive. Great job!

[ancient slate]

Ah thanks!! I have experience with soft circuits but I’m wanting to figure out new ways to combine electronics with fashion/accessories.

Admittedly I struggle with electronics but it helps to document each of my projects in my own words. I enjoy the challenge haha — here’s more about the helmet if anyone’s curious 🥰 https://www.brittzay.com/blog/robot-unicorn-helmet-rgb-led

[sacred timber]

Robot Unicorn Attack! Robot Unicorn Attack! Robot Unicorn Attack! (I believe this is how Zippy the Pinhead would handle that name.)

I like that you felt the need to provide a safety disclaimer... and your choice of paper mache to get you to the vacuum mold. Kinda classic.

...and I thought I recognised the accent. I'm up in the Wellington area (Kapiti coast). Hello across the Cook Strait!

[ancient slate]

Welp you can never be too careful with the safety disclaimers - especially on the internet haha

Wonderful to meet another kiwi on here!! Really happy to have found this server, a lot of it goes completely over my head but everyone seems so helpful 😊 looking forward to learning more!

[sacred timber]

You're I must say (with no negative intent) somewhat of a typical Kiwi: modest, which is a good thing. From watching your video I'm sure you'd be entirely capable of making a much more complicated electronics rig under your next project. Both Adafruit and Pimoroni have lots of cool hardware with relatively easy software libraries backing them up, as you've clearly already found. You did everything right, even used shrink wrap on your wire connections, a solderless breadboard for prototyping, you've got an engineer's brain as well as an artist's, so sky's the limit! I have a background in both engineering and the arts so I'm qualified to judge 😆

BTW, did you design all or some of the Wild South clothing? I've been looking for a jumper for my partner and there's a few that look very nice.

Ah, sorry, I answered my own question: "The following garments are styles I have designed, and/or have had a role in the product development." The Cotton Stripe Stitchy Knit and Bamboo Cotton Silk Cable Knit are among them...

[ancient slate]

I had some generous help from a family member who gave tips along the way, but I do appreciate hearing that haha.

The only thing I wasn’t so sure about was if resistors were required or not with the Neopixels? The resources I followed used them, but I still don’t know a whole lot. Planning on revising that for the next project.

(Welcome to DM me about Wild South, yes I design for them haha)

[sacred timber]

Well, we're both on the same time zone and it's waaay past bedtime for me, work tomorrow morning.

As for the NeoPixels, you're actually on the right server to get help with that kind of thing -- there should be Adafruit personnel around who can answer any of those questions, and they have their own forum as well where their techs are quite helpful (same with Pimoroni too).

Have a good night!

[ancient slate]

Appreciate it! Will look into it :)

[solar wadi]

the Adafruit Neopixel Überguide might answer some questions on that: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-uberguide/best-practices

[thick wedge]

RK84 Macro keypad extension. Running with a Pro Micro. 5 hot-swappable switches, a rotary encoder, and an OLED screen. Don't forget the neopixel RGB 😉 Just started developing the QMK firmware for it. The Custom PCB is "plugged in" to the keyboard via a 3D printed frame that slots into the USB port.

[rose phoenix]

And SA Laser novelties

Or GMK? Not really sure from this angle actually

Something Laser

[azure salmon]

https://youtu.be/GCAjQyizIm0

i have a plan tho

https://youtu.be/FZ4qeJly1g0?t=14

[thick wedge]

GMK! 🙂

[gusty shard]

In the lab...

[rose phoenix]

In.. Dexter's lab?

[normal estuary]

Prototype wireless knob controller for Home Assistant

Prototype 2

[azure salmon]

@normal estuaryhow do you wire those rotary switches

[frosty topaz]

Looks like perfboard connections in V1 and a PCB breakout for V2. Dunno if the PCB is custom or from someplace else?

[azure salmon]

ok cool

[azure salmon]

is there a pinout

are all mostly the same

i have 2 here

[normal estuary]

Resistors are 10k

[azure salmon]

ahh ok

[normal estuary]

Yeah most of the rotary encoders are the same pinout.

[azure salmon]

ok something to mess with thanks

[normal estuary]

For proto 2, I made the PCB and is designed for TinyPICO. But Proto 2 isn’t working and I’m waiting on Proto 3 PCBs. They have simpler routing.

[normal estuary]

I can create a schematic for Proto 1 and share my ESPHome yaml today after work.

[azure salmon]

thanks

[quaint oxide]

Thanks for the Linsn LED video wall tutorial. I used it to rebuild this roadside traffic sign into Big Orange Dance Machine. https://mcm.org/big-orange-dance-machine/

[zinc anvil]

Last project I did had the AdaFruit breakout for a gas sensor, made my life so much easier

[lean zodiac]

Those NeoKeys remind me of this thing I had made because the switches fall out too easily... Because no, I'm not gonna glue my switches in place...

[tacit delta]

hmm that reminds me of that old 3d rendering of robot head

[normal estuary]

Ah yes, good plate!

[lean zodiac]

the screws aren't really needed either, but they make it 100% stable instead of 80% stable

[normal estuary]

Yeah I much prefer having screws/standoffs for hotswap sockets

[zinc anvil]

Based on a comedy sketch by David Mitchell called "Birth of Cheesoid"

[tacit delta]

just looked at that quick

interesting

i couldnt find what i meant sadly. its quite old. 80s, maybe 70s, 3d render tech demo

it has nose like that, it goes into cup of water, it sucks it up and head turns transparent as it fills with water

it's be laughably easy to do now, but it wasnt back then

[wary atlas]

Took some help from the fine folks hanging around #help-with-circuitpython , but I now have a MiniMacroPad to use for work so I don't have to type out long things all the time! Big time saver. Just need to print a case!

[inland vale]

Hi all, I'd like to share with you all a project that I've working for +2 years... (6 months ago a posted here a WIP version).
TL;DR: It is Bluetooth gamepad support for CircuitPython.
https://gitlab.com/ricardoquesada/bluepad32-circuitpython

If you have any questions, please, let me know. Happy to help!

[lapis jasper]

@inland vale neat! I'd suggest email [e-mail] about it too

[inland vale]

thanks. I'll do that 🙂

[cerulean dirge]

Howdy folks! I hooked up a CO2 sensor, and I’m excited about it: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/845457104085319700/866985608115257384/IMG_7144.mov

[tacit delta]

uh

did it release magic smoke?

[cerulean dirge]

No? It’s still fine. Why do you ask?

[tacit delta]

oh i saw what i thought was smoke coming off right part

[cerulean dirge]

Ah. Nope - the auto exposure is definitely set weird from the non-diffused LEDs being in frame though.

[tacit delta]

lol ok thats good then

[azure salmon]

could not fit many boards into the bread board

[azure salmon]

used 18W 7V 2.6A

[hard prairie]

I actually did something like that myself, but I used full breadboards both sides

[azure salmon]

yeah i only had 1

i am poor engineer trying hard

[wary atlas]

Why not use a saw? XD

[azure salmon]

@wary atlas i didn't have one

and covid lockdown means shops are closed

[wary atlas]

Oof... Well, at least you didn't slip and ruin the whole thing XD

[azure salmon]

for a guy that shattered his arm i have steady hands

[wary atlas]

oof

I hope the shattered arm is healed at least

And unrelated to this project

[azure salmon]

i'm waiting for my last opperation but covid has delayed it

[wary atlas]

Oof...

[wary atlas]

So my grandpop has trouble staying on the line to sign his signature... So I made him this little guide plate! (Ignore the ugly print, need to tweak printer settings, but it'll work fine)

[native bridge]

awww :)

[wary atlas]

It's amazing what a few grams of plastic can be so easily molded into these days

[native bridge]

yeah :D

i feel blessed with my Ender 3v2

it has rekindled all of my past hobbies

[wary atlas]

I love my Ender 3 Pro. But that didn't print this, I used my baby printer XD

[native bridge]

i wouldn't even be here doing electronics today if i hadn't gotten it just a few weeks ago

[wary atlas]

My baby printer with minor mods... Working on a mod for the interface so it's not hidden under the bed and isn't just a click wheel knob

[native bridge]

cool! :D

that's the one that comes preassembled?

[wary atlas]

Mhmm. It's not amazing, but I love it

[native bridge]

yeah it's cute ^w^

[wary atlas]

And so portable!

[errant relic]

So have you experienced the extruder or arm hitting those paper clips yet? I have 2 of those with glass plates and I haven't found a good way to attach the clips.

[wary atlas]

Yeah, when I first put the glass in it was a problem. I just pulled the clips back towards the edge a bit, as pictured

[errant relic]

cool. good tip. I'll try that. Thanks!

[wary atlas]

No problem ^_^

[tacit delta]

I'd do a magnet and steel spring sheet upgrade

well worth it

[wary atlas]

I like glass XD might do that eventually

[feral granite]

First thing I've ever made with a micro controller. It's the heart of Te Fiti from Moana. Printed the shell in translucent resin with neopixels, an itsybitsy, and a lipo on the inside.

[wary atlas]

Ohh, very nice! Will that be part of a cosplay, or was it just because you felt like making it?

[lean zodiac]

quick! put that back where you found it!

[wary atlas]

lol

[drifting crater]

lol mother nature is fond of electronics XD

[wary atlas]

XD

[coarse fjord]

So today I figured out how to get an app into and load from the web-based app loader for the Bangle.js https://www.adafruit.com/product/4811

I modified the simple thermometer app that takes a reading from the heat sensor, only it is in Celsius so I converted it to Fahrenheit for Americans and other people that don't use the Metric system (but its mainly just Americans, right?)

[ancient skiff]

behold XUT: The eXtremely Unergonomic Trackball (pronounced: zoot)

I saw https://www.adafruit.com/product/5060 and decided to see if I could make a finished mouse replacement out of it. My 3D modeling is adequate to make a box with some holes in it, but not to make a device that is at all pleasant to use. Oh well, lessons learned(?)

[wary atlas]

Might have been more ergonomic to have the buttons around the trackball -- left on the left, right on the right, center on top. Then you can lean your fingers over to left and right click

But also just simple holes with the same buttons

But it's a working thing, so success!

[ancient skiff]

@wary atlas indeed, that is a good idea

I'm not sure I'm going to experiment further, but I'll keep it in mind

[wary atlas]

Always good to have options, even if you don't explore them

[frosty topaz]

Another option is to place the buttons near where the thumb would rest. You may have to design a wrist rest for it to make sense, though...

[wary atlas]

Indeed

[coarse fjord]

So I have been struggling to keep a good battery connection to these boards and a friend suggested JST connectors and I have been teaching myself how to make them with a lot of trial and error. If you look on the left that was my best effort to date. With each failed attempt, I would have to cut some wire. What started as a six inch lead ended up at one inch! Almost to the point of unusable. So I ordered 4 more battery holders from Digikey, and the one on the right also started out at 6 inches until I think I finally figured it out, went carefully and now have a nice, solid connection with long leads!

[formal hamlet]

Couldn't you solder in new leads and crimp new connectors?

Or splice new leads, you could add more life that way

[coarse fjord]

I didn't have any appropriate wire and being chronically ill I have not had the spoons to set up soldering for a while. I hope when I feel better I can solder a couple more of the Game of Life kits

[feral granite]

Just made it, I am pretty competent at fabrication but am just diving into electronics so going through assorted tutorials, would like to maybe sell props in the future!

[feral granite]

I can totally see this being a a control box that someone would pick up with both hands. My wife use to work at a children's museum and they would build stuff like this for exhibits all the time.

[wary atlas]

You're off to a great start ^_^ I think fabrication and nailing aesthetics is the hard part, and you already have that down pat!

[solar yew]

Posted my first ever video, made some weather changing LEDS with some adafruit libraries.. definitely awkward to be on camera but it's a start lol

https://www.tiktok.com/@realconorreilly/video/6988247640978902278

[formal hamlet]

Bummer, hope you feel better

[untold birch]

the effect is really nice, will probably "take inspiration" from it :D

[solar yew]

Thanks! There's a great adafruit neopixel animations library which I was using!

[native bridge]

Time to show off my box

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/816041342626431007/868679936825753650/PXL_20210721_044612208.jpg
humble beginnings
the 3D printed case with little allotments for all the electronics to be placed on :3

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/816041342626431007/868680235485364224/PXL_20210723_120613942.jpg
the electronics installed using I2C technology so that only 4 shared wires are required to connect all the peripheries to the motherboard

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/816041342626431007/868680360635007036/PXL_20210723_145900623.MP.jpg
a test program to ensure the screen is connected correctly

the finished product
a tricorder sensory package for conducting science and discoveries with :D

[gilded bluff]

We used a regular 3D printer to make a clay 3D printer. Platform based on kossel design. Extruder based on 3 years of head butting a wall... Instagram.com/themakerspace

[tacit delta]

wow!

[wary atlas]

That's amazing! Is it using a regular slicer like Cura, or was special software needed? Is there a writeup or guide on the modifications?

[normal estuary]

My keyboard collection. I love me some Macropads.

[gilded bluff]

Yes just using cura, tuned the nozzle and filament thickness to suit the flow of clay

[plush gorge]

Once again - THANK U ADAFRUIT!!
<3 <3 <3 Used the little charger to bring the cells in my Sphero RVR battery pack, back up a level where it'll charge & balance itself.
I swear, EVERY makers tool kit should half at least a half dozen of these little gems!!

[wary atlas]

Nice. I'm guessing the hard part was figuring out how to deliver the clay consistently to the nozzle? Does it actually heat the clay at all?

[gilded bluff]

Exactly right, I started with the rich rap pastestruder years ago, moved to a motor driven a piston, then to compressed air with screw feed. No heating the clay, I don’t think it would be worth the effort, clay takes about 2 days to dry, just need to make sure you geometry suits the process and strength of “wet” clay

[wary atlas]

I would certainly love a write-up with as much detail as you can muster! So many things I'd love to print in clay... Sadly not enough time to do a tonne of experimenting to get it to work

[marble mantle]

Next installment of my project to create a custom robot based on Zumo chassis, but with extra manipulators, AI camera, and programmable in Circuit Python

Code is easy, of course, but at least it shows that all hardware works as expected

The MCU, motor drivers, firmware, reflectance sensor array...

Thanks to @exotic sierra for his help with PCB assembly!

[wary atlas]

That would be a great companion in Left 4 Dead... Grabbin' pillz

[marble mantle]

I was thinking of a wine bottle, but it calls for a larger robot 🙂

[wary atlas]

Hehe, that's the next stage

[gentle bane]

made these 50Wh battery sticks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ank16mcw5zw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Fk9cL-Is8

[native ingot]

I do film photography, developing, and printing. B&W printing uses light-sensitive paper, but it only responds to light at <550nm wavelengths, so a red light (called a safelight) can be used to illuminate the workspace (darkroom) without affecting the paper.

My incandescent safelight bulb burned out and new ones are absurdly priced, but generic red lightbulbs aren't always safe for photo paper, so I figured I would try making my own. LEDs are pretty cheap and pretty bright, and I have done some PCB design, so I found a 2-pin constant-current LED driver and threw together this thing.

[gentle bane]

That is awesome af

so is that a single module that will go with like, a row of them

or are you doing everything with just that one little thing in a box or something?

is intrigued

ur using now-tech to preserve a past art form.

[native ingot]

I wasn't sure how much power I needed, so I included options for 1 or 2 drivers (150 or 300 mA)

[gentle bane]

ahh so its a small box

that you like, put everything in

[native ingot]

That's the whole device

[gentle bane]

ohhh rigghtt

its not used to expose

its used to prevent exposure

[native ingot]

It's the replacement safelight

[gentle bane]

yes I understand now

[native ingot]

Can plug into a standard USB port

And it's way brighter than the original incandescent bulb, with a tiny fraction of the power consumption

[upbeat geyser]

I wonder if it would be better to use a shorter wavelength (like 620nm) LED which would give more visibility for the same power (but the film may be more sensitive to it) or a longer wavelength one (like 660nm) which would be a safer wavelength but might require more brightness for the same visibility. I guess the response curve of the photo paper would be useful to determine something like that.

Looks like the old Ortho paper wouldn't care much

[native ingot]

The paper is reported to have no sensitivity above 550nm, so as long as the emission spectrum doesn't cross below there, I think it's better to be shorter wavelength for better vision. Film can't be handled under any kind of light, though, so it's only an issue for paper.

[upbeat geyser]

Fuji Acros 100 panchromatic paper would care some

[native ingot]

I'm using Ilford MG

Looks like I don't have the printed spectrogram

But it cuts off at 550

Will test this soon, hoping to get no fogging with 10 mins exposure

[upbeat geyser]

Oh yeah, that nosedives at 550 so you're good. LEDs are nice as they have a narrow band emission without residual light at other wavelengths

Aside from the typo, this is very encouraging

[native ingot]

CD test is slightly concerning though, as it shows a slight green tail

I never did the CD test with my old bulb though

[upbeat geyser]

I wouldn't expect any green tail with a red LED, unless it's a phosphor-based LED

[native ingot]

This one's orange, nominally 617nm

And it's hard to tell how much of a tail there is

Not entirely sure how to read this graph (dotted line means ???) But it looks pretty safe to me

[upbeat geyser]

I don't know either, but the dotted line could be "visual intensity", showing where the LED output lies in relation to the perception of its brightness.

If so, it would appear to be about 1/3 as bright as an LED at the peak of visual sensitive (a yellowish green color). Whereas a 660nm one would be about 1/10 as bright.

[gentle bane]

see

you people are talking about stuff that I have no clue about

That just does NOT happen outside this community.

looks all that up to like, learn it rn

[gentle bane]

fascinating

[candid crescent]

Good instincts! 👍

[gentle bane]

The fact that visible light is in the Terahertz is like

awesome

[candid crescent]

One fun fact related to that is that you're limited in the speed of data you can send in a fiber optic cable because if you try to send too many bits per second, it changes the color of the light too much... 😁

[glacial iris]

Newbie here, is this where I can share info about my new weather station?

[grand rose]

Is it connected somewhere ?

[glacial iris]

I have it connected to a local MQTT broker, which in turn is a part of my Home Assistant environment. I also upload the weather information to Weather Underground: https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KCASANTA3711/graph/2021-07-27/2021-07-27/weekly

[glacial iris]

It uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W. It's powered by a solar 12V battery trickle charger, a 12V 8Ah SLA battery, a buck converter to bring it down to 5V.

[wary atlas]

Nice

[glacial iris]

I used KiCad to design a custom circuit board to connect to the 2 RJ-11 jacks coming down from the wind and rain sensors and the JST connector for the BME280 sensor card. This card uses the I2C interface. The wind direction is an analog voltage level, so I needed to add an MCP3008 analog to digital converter, and connect it to the SPI pins. The little E-Ink display is also an SPI device, so I needed to connect it to the CS1 GPIO pin and configure the driver to use that instead of CS0.

I chose the E-Ink display as it only requires power to update it. I wanted to be sure that an extended stretch of bad weather wouldn't let the battery run down. The solar panel is 20W, which seems to be plenty, though, and the battery ought to hold for a week by itself.

[wary atlas]

eInk is great for stuff like that, and even when it does update, it's pretty low draw

[glacial iris]

Exactly. I only update the display once per minute, enough to show that the system is alive. I think an OLED display would draw significantly more power.

[wary atlas]

Probably, even if it was only a relatively small number of active pixels at lowered brightness

[glacial iris]

I still need to build some kind of Kiosk display for Home Assistant, so the weather information is visible without being on the computer or phone. I haven't decided what that should be...

[frosty topaz]

For indoor or outdoor use?

[glacial iris]

For indoor use. This whole project began because I was frustrated at how poorly the remote temperature sensor for my LaCrosse weather station worked. Also, I wanted to see wind direction and speed. But then, this needed to be away from the house to be effective. So then, it needed to use WiFi to get the distance. So then... and down the rabbit hole!

I already have a Raspberry Pi with a HiFiBerry DAC board running Volumio to play music. That's using the Pi's 7" touch screen. I might go that way again for the kiosk, but as the weather station is only running a Pi Zero and the touch display only works with a Pi 3 or 4, that seems like overkill.

(Of course, this whole project seems like overkill! 🙂 )

[frosty topaz]

Just a bit. But isn't that what makes this so much fun?

[glacial iris]

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

[frosty topaz]

Since the main purpose of this is a simple display and not extensive logging and data analysis, a small display with buttons or a gesture sensor would probably be enough.

If you wanna get fancy, you could build a smart mirror and integrate it that way, too...

[glacial iris]

Oh? What's a smart mirror?

I do want a nicer display, so I can also use it to control Home Assistant switches.

[frosty topaz]

https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/17/how-to-build-a-magic-mirror-and-not-die-trying-piday-raspberrypi-raspberry_pi/

https://learn.adafruit.com/android-smart-home-mirror

The idea is to stick a display behind a sheet of one-way glass/acrylic, and finish it off with your own framing or mounting of preference.

[glacial iris]

Ah, interesting. Maybe I could build one that has voice response, so I can ask it who the fairest in the land is...? 😆

[glacial iris]

BTW, love the XKCD cartoon in the mirror, much better than a fortune cookie!

[gentle bane]

https://homeio.info/batteryPlanner/textMode/?loadV=9&loadI=2&loadT=12&ma=3500&cdr=1

https://homeio.info/batteryPlanner/textMode/?loadV=12&loadI=2&loadT=6&ma=3500&cdr=2

plenty of errors. Still in pre-alpha beta

[lean zodiac]

Round one prototype!

got the wrong footprint for one part (and had it backwards anyway, but could still bodge-wire across it to test) + still don't have the micro (which I will hand-solder on once I get it)

horrible alignment too but

[formal hamlet]

4 channel i2c controlled mosfets?

Sounds fun

[wary atlas]

Very!

[gentle bane]

ikr

[cedar dew]

Electronics test on my TRON legacy baton build

[sterile gazelle]

I built a similar weather station, and am also pondering what to do for a local phone-less display. Smart mirrors come to mind, but I also have a couple of 1602LCD displays.

[sterile gazelle]

I think I have the same weather station sensor kit, working with the analog voltage/resistance readings for wind direction was certainly interesting! The RJ11 jacks were a bit of a struggle for me, I ended up just using some phone cords with the ends chopped off. Dedicated board for those would be an awesome iteration

[glacial iris]

@sterile gazelle I have extra boards (had to order 5 minimum), or I could send you my KiCad files if you want to play with it. I started out trying to create solder traces on a perf board, but found it beyond tedious and difficult to get solder to flow where I wanted and not where I didn't...

I don't have a photo of the populated board that I actually used, unfortunately, but it was easy to put together. As you can see, the board is as long as a Pi Zero and about 2X as wide.

You can see my python code for the station at: https://github.com/darrylri/weather_station

[wary atlas]

Personally I would recommend an eInk display to keep power draw low, but if you want a high refresh display, a Sharp memory display might be a better option. They don't need to power a backlight, you can see them from ambient light alone, so they're lower power than a regular LCD.

[normal estuary]

More e-Inks

[wary atlas]

Ohh, one with a backlight, that's cool!

[lean elbow]

Spent last night hacking around using the tone player code at https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-macropad-rp2040/macropad-tone as a starting point. This allows multiple keys to be pressed at once (using a stack to track the order that the keys were pressed), and lights up the currently playing key brighter than the others. Releasing the current note will fall back to the next pressed key in the stack, if there is one. I made a gist if anyone is interested (https://gist.github.com/apendley/801177211bb55c780847e885f38ec418), just grab the project bundle from the macropad learn guide and replace the code.py file.

[sterile gazelle]

Nice! I was thinking about how I could use the speaker on the macropad, and my 2yo son will love pressing the keys to see it light up and hear it

[lean elbow]

Awesome! 😄

[sterile gazelle]

I currently have it setup as hotkeys, added Zoom, Google Meet, and Lightroom macros. Is there a channel for MacroPad or the AdaBoxes?

Would be cool to have a place to share macros

[scenic siren]

@lean elbow Interesting! If you'd like, you can submit it to the MacroPad library under the examples/ directory. It's different enough from the basic tone example that I wouldn't mind including it. You'll need to add our licensing bits to the top, but you would include your name as the author.

[scenic siren]

Here is as good a place as any to share your code. We don't have a specific channel.

[lean elbow]

Oh okay! I'll try to do that in the next day or two!

[scenic siren]

Great! Feel free to post any questions you have about the process in the #help-with-circuitpython channel or the #circuitpython-dev channel and someone (possibly me, but this leaves it open for others too) will be able to assist you.

[lean elbow]

Will do, thank you! 🙏

[tidal ermine]

hey all! i love the ingenuity behind all the products at adafruit, i've been piecing a little something together to solve something in my life.

i made a thing for parties where people can send messages to a phone number and have them appear on a big screen (https://github.com/souramoo/TextWall), using the twilio api and a webpage using socket.io and nodejs as a backend, and in the past it's always needed my laptop to be present. i've been invited to a wedding in nov and my dear friend who is the bride asked if i can provide the same there too - i'm a little nervous about leaving my laptop unattended, and so i thought i'd build a better solution. i got a raspberry pi zero w, and was going to use that to drive the screens instead cause then i don't need to worry if it gets stolen/lost.

eventually i ended up building myself a cheap multifunctional portable linux computer with a tiny screen and battery (very cyberpunk lol) so that i can use it for other projects too, and set it up so that it's always connected to cloudflare via argo tunnelling so i can ssh into it from my desktop wherever it is, and set it up so that it autoconnects to my phone's wifi hotspot if i'm out and about

still todo:

• trim down the gpio pins on the pi to get an even more slim profile between the rpi and the minitft hat
• pisugar2 battery pack arriving tomorrow!
• framebuffer based keyboard that i can use the joystick and buttons to operate so i can use the shell on the go from the device
• autolaunch chromium on the hdmi output when new screen connected and navigate to whatever the python ui directs it to

anyone got any other ideas for a cheap tiny auxillary linux machine? 🙂

(the final ui will aim to look something like https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelcinematicuniverse/images/a/a0/TVA_TemPad.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20210619231047 lol)

[prisma sequoia]

Can't really beat the rasppi products for form factor and support

[formal hamlet]

@tidal ermine yep, I love pi0w and pitft, great combination of products

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/334905778857050125/841591274564747274/20210511_011848.jpg

I did something similar, loads of fun

[tidal ermine]

ooh cool! what did you use the buttons for? i'm coding up something to listen and then translate it into keypresses on the console, and using ncurses to build up a UI

[formal hamlet]

I used the buttons for moving the reticle, changing the scale, freeze frame, saving a png, adjusting emissivity correction, etc @tidal ermine

https://github.com/pfn/thermal-camera

[distant raft]

A “SMART” BUILD PLATFORM FOR MANUAL PCB ASSEMBLY
https://hackaday.io/project/179878-pnpassist

[tidal ermine]

Pins shaved down, UI coded, battery pack added, let's go with my little cyberpunk auxillary computer

[exotic sierra]

Very cool

[marble mantle]

@distant raftI saw that on Twitter - very cool indeed!

[tidal ermine]

Wrote a python Daemon that listens to the joystick and buttons, and translates that into keypresses for the console :)

[distant raft]

Thank you. @marble mantle You can find the discord server link on project page. We are trying to make it better together

[versed lava]

Made a case for my macropad. The files are on thingiverse if anyone wants to print one. Its 2 parts - a cover that replaces the part you press the key switches in to and an optional shell. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4922256 I'm working on a slimmer version that replaces the bottom plate with the shell and has optional angled feed.

[hard oriole]

I found a keycap on thingiverse and made a set by boolean-ing out some shapes I made in illustrator.

Printing in orange is okay, but then all LED colors are orange 😁 Will look to do another batch in the future when I get a white filament that diffuses.

[versed lava]

nice, my next project is replacing the inside of the relegendables on mine with ones that have a slot for the LED to shine through.

[obtuse root]

@hard oriole are you able to share your files and settings?

[hard oriole]

Sure will do. I haven't done that before, so I will have to check the spot on thingiverse to see the rules for sharing modified work. Source was: SA Keycaps by kaelruland on Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2178185 [SA_Row_3_1u v0] The print settings were: .2 layer height, PLA @ 205, custom support under the stems only. Printed upside down so that if the unsupported bottom printed ragged it would be on the top [less viewed].

@obtuse root and I scaled SA_Row_3_1u v0 in the ZED to about 60%.

[obtuse root]

Thanks!

[versed lava]

Added an option for the shell thats slimmer and has optional feet to let you angle the pad:

[versed lava]

Ok, hardware finished!! Added the final piece - custom printed black caps with vinyl cut legends w/ transparent plastic to diffuse the led light. If anyone wants the stl for the printed part I can put it on thingiverse - they print on an FDM printer and replace the white part of the relegendable keycaps that adafruit sells.

[empty crag]

I’ve been experimenting with the MacroPad and the NeoTrellis boards … managed to get a 2x2 (8x8 grid) of neotrellis hooked up to macro pad over i2c … using JP’s Live launcher example, I modified it to turn the neotrellis into a clip launcher and the 12 keys on macro pad for transport. Currently looking at using the 8-bit ADC stemma board to add a few faders. Currently all written in circuit python, but I’ll probably port it over to C after my initial prototype is complete. I’ll likely wind up writing a custom live remote script for it as well, as the launchpad mini doesn’t quite cover it all. When it’s a bit more put together, I’ll put code up on GitHub.

[versed lava]

Wow - I hadn't thought about doing this... I have a neotrellis lying around too

[empty crag]

Yeah, I saw JP’s demo and figured the neotrellis would make a better clip launcher, then figured some faders and additional encoders could be useful … full blown control surface, 🤷‍♂️

[versed lava]

Yeah - its hard not to keep adding. I've ordered one of those tiny i2c trackballs for mine. I think I'm going to try to add it to the side of the case and make an ergonomic mouse/macropad all-in-one

[empty crag]

Nice - don’t think I’ve seen a track ball, got a link?

[versed lava]

https://chicagodist.com/products/pim447?variant=28628689518671

[empty crag]

For those interested, here’s the code repo for the macropad neotrellis launch grid project I’m working on https://github.com/zoul0813/adafruit-launchgrid

[lucid bloom]

Finished upgrading my war driving pi to a pi 4. Parts include pijuice, berryimugps, buzzer, rgb led, USB wifi x2, USB Bluetooth. I wanted it done now so I hot knifed my old pi 3 case into a pi 4 case.

[gentle bane]

2.2kw

[hard mantle]

Please post to thingiverser. Thanks!

[versed lava]

Added the STL to https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4922256

[versed lava]

The legends are a little trickier since they aren't printable. What I did was found something that was easily cut-able and diffuse and used my craft cutter to cut black vinyl sticker with the slot, stuck the sticker on to the diffuse material and trimmed the edges

[strong bramble]

Hey all! Using a Trinket M0 and Adafruit's USB foot pedal tutorial/3d files, I made Shoom—a foot-activated webcam to show off your sneakers.

[tacit delta]

lol interesting

[slow sky]

I love this

[strong bramble]

thank you!

[scenic siren]

Ok, that's delightfully hilarious. (And thank you for presumably trimming the end of the video before posting it. 😄 )

[strong bramble]

oh and if any of you are as interested in dumb stuff as I am, here's how it all works: https://github.com/lanewinfield/shoom

[scenic siren]

I've passed this on to be added to the Python on Hardware newsletter that Adafruit produces. 🙂

[strong bramble]

awesome!

[crystal parrot]

I'm a retired electronic engineer. (Being retired is the best job I've had so far.) I had a 40 some year career designing and programming things that contained microprocessors. I don't have anything resent to show but I'm looking to get back into making gadgets just for fun.

I wrote an essay about the first thing I designed and built, a light-seeking robot, when I was around 12 years old in 1964. Nothing digital back then. It was all analog and it was inspired by a Carl & Jerry story I read in Popular Electronics. I still have that robot. You can see a picture of it and read the essay here: https://shavers.page/?p=39

Adafruit has some amazing things going on. Thanks for creating a fantastic company and all the info you put out in the world.

[gusty shard]

NeoKey makes the FunHouse funner.

[dense yew]

FeatherS2, using CircuitPython and a small handful of "libs" I wrote to interface easily with Atlas sensors (and NTP). This uses the Whiteboxes Hydroponics Kit, and measures nutrient solution Temp, pH, TDS, and EC (with Air Temp and RH coming)! I'll get the code on Gitlab in the not too distant future 😄 The kit comes with a feather huzzah, so I souped it up a bit with the S2 and the OLED shield. The NTP and Wifi bits are important as I'm planning on pushing the data to an IOT cloud of some kind (maybe just local ES, maybe an API somewhere)

[zinc hinge]

https://github.com/flyinactor91/metarpad

I made a flight weather display with the MacroPad. It uses a driver running on the computer to fetch new data and update a JSON file on the CIRCUITPY drive which causes the MacroPad to refresh just like updating code.py

Has anyone found a good way of discovering the CIRCUITPY drive from Python code yet?

My method is using pathlib.Path with some common OS USB drive locations where code.py is in the drive's root. Tested on Mac, Windows, and RPi. Some insight with Linux distros would be helpful since I don't have any of them to test with right now

[solar wadi]

I made a library/tool to find the full information on connected boards, including drives, serial ports, serial number... The drive part especially had to be platform-dependant and on linux I use psutil.disk_partitions() in particular to find the mounts.
The whole thing is here https://github.com/Neradoc/discotool, the platform stuff is in usbinfos_<platform>.py

You can use it as a library. Install it:
python3 -m pip install discotool-for-microcontrollers
And then something like that for example:

import discotool
for device in discotool.get_identified_devices():
  if "Macropad RP2040" in device["name"]:
    drive = device["volumes"][0]['mount_point']
    with fopen(os.path.join(drive,filename),"w") as fp:
      fp.write(filecontent)

Or use device["serial_num"] instead of the name to tie it to a specific device (you can read the serial number by just running discotool from the command line)

[zinc hinge]

That's pretty nifty. I'll give it a try

[plush gorge]

I love getting my hands on old tech to tare apart, its so strait forwarded. :-)

[bitter hazel]

i dont know why but i love this 👍

[tacit lake]

Ha! Made a math game for kids on the macropad last night. https://github.com/omixen/macropad-math-game

[cerulean dirge]

I'm proud of my first significant project from Adafruit parts:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/817965111423270912/874069044146352158/IMG_7364.jpg

[lusty siren]

Looking good! First one down, many more to come, right?

[cerulean dirge]

Thanks! That's definitely the plan. This home automation stuff is really cool.

[devout verge]

I’m working on a color picker for the macropad. RGB mode works well, HSL mode still has some issues.

[versed lava]

Threw it on my pad - turned out my top left key had a pin not seated properly but I fixed it and took a video!

[tacit lake]

Nice! Thanks for trying it out! 👍

[exotic sierra]

Nice work

[gentle bane]

thank you

[gentle bane]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Vu9knMFyc

[sharp comet]

this is not my project but I ran across it today and think it's a really cool idea. Combining together a virtual pet with a pomodoro timer. https://github.com/droxpopuli/pomodachi

[hallow flower]

There, I have upgraded my AdaBox Macropad with some box whites to test out, and the keycap that was missing from the adabox - fortunately I had planned an order shortly after so I could rectify it 😉

now my run/debug button shows proper adafruit spirit

I can definitely see how hot-swapping key switches can get addictive

didn't realize I needed a "switch puller" for best results, though. had to use the top "structural" pcb to kind of wiggle them loose - which is also why only the corners are upgraded to clicky whites.

maybe I should put the digikey cap on the lower-left corner which is "build"

oh man, where's the product suggestion room... an adafruit key cap that could replace my windows key would be perfect.

(but my main desktop keyboard, while having cherry mx browns, is so old that it lacks a Windows key, so I have my caps lock acting as the windows key, and right now, my secondary keyboard is actually a Lenovo rubber dome that feels pretty decent surprisingly, with reasonably small bezels, smaller than any of my other mechanical keyboards except maybe for a Model M2 which is why I'm using it.)

[frosty topaz]

If you wiggle it side to side carefully enough, you might be able to pull the entire keyswitch plate off and pop switches off from behind. Just take care not to wiggle up and down, as that has a much higher risk of bending pins...

[hallow flower]

oh thanks for the advice. This is my first experience with these sockets and with bare switches actually

have a few homemade key cap pullers (wire whisk style) but no switch puller yet.

I can probably make one from some random metal bits, though, which is probably the safer bet. that or order a cheap one on amazon

[frosty topaz]

Yeah, the more keys there are, the harder it gets. The macropad can get away with it, but any keyboards larger than 4x4 or have a solid edge should definitely use a switch puller.

[whole cypress]

I picked up a macropad, and wrote a quick bit of python to turn it into an element tracker for the board game Spirit Island.

(the missing keycap was a bit chewed up in packaging, they're sending some replacements)

https://youtu.be/8u2JlTIt5fo

[solar yew]

https://youtu.be/sxfJOMjZeIs

this is gold

i love it so much

[upbeat geyser]

Yay VFD!

[solar yew]

Can it read terminal puzzles in fallout 3/4 and auto-solve them? 😄

[cobalt dove]

Oooh yeah! My white keycaps with transparent legends and black underset masks came out great!

This print is a brand new thing from my Keycap Playground: It uses the "underset mask" feature to add a 3rd material (equivalent of a triple-shot injection mould) underneath the top of the keycap that provides contrast for transparent legends. Without that mask the white PETG lets too much light through and makes it hard to see the transparent legends. It took 18 hours to print these (0.25mm nozzle) but it was totally worth it! I tested the light using the LEDs of the enclosure but I'll make a nice gif later 👍

[versed lava]

this is great. can you post a closeup? Ive been printing my own bases for the relegendable keycaps and then using a vinyl cutter and some translucent plastic for the legends but those are square and wont work well on a more traditional keyboard

[cobalt dove]

Yeah I'll make a gif and post it shortly (when I'm done cleaning the house) 👍

It's bright out at the moment so maybe not the best time to record a keycap made for RGB LEDs though haha

[versed lava]

im more curious aboht the texture of the cap with a .25 nozzle and fdm!

[cobalt dove]

Now that I've put some on the keyboard for testing I can see the underset mask needs some adjustment: https://gfycat.com/wellgroomedafraidbobwhite

My phone's camera doesn't have a macro lens

I'm going to re-print these to fix some issues

Mostly with the underset mask but there's an issue on the right side with the overhang on the second layer that I need to fix too

[cobalt dove]

@versed lava Here ya go: https://gfycat.com/admirablegratefularrowana (tried to capture the texture using the light)

As you can see--because I printed them on their sides--the keycap's layer lines run like this: || which should feel smooth on your fingers. No sanding required!

[versed lava]

yeah, that looks usable for sure. ill have to give it a go

[cobalt dove]

Even though you don't need to sand it, printing on its side like this makes sanding easier if you want to go there. 320, 400, 600, then 800 grit gives keycaps a really nice texture IMHO. If you want that glass-like feel you can go all the way up to 20,000 😄

[gentle bane]

Joe Radio:

https://www.homeio.info/youtube/

its whatever im watching on youtube rn @ the exact time

[sharp comet]

@warped siren 's staroids makes it's way to the Pew Pew M4 🚀 🪨

[warped siren]

neat!

[versed lava]

Hrmmm, I wonder if I went even smaller - 1.5 or 2mm nozzle - it would probably take a month to print a full keyboard - maybe I should spend a little time practicing my sanding!

[cobalt dove]

My wife was concerned that our daughter would lose the teeny tiny USB flash drive I bought her so I made a cover for it. She loves Naruto/Boruto 😁👍. Printing an improved version now with tighter bearing tolerances that also says, "NINJAS" on the right. On the bottom is the Fairy Tail logo with the text, "WIZARDS" 😄

[frosty topaz]

Don’t most people use resin printers for key caps lmao

[versed lava]

Yeah - I live in an open concept loft and won't put a resin printer in it. Way too toxic to have in a living space no matter how careful you are

[open nimbus]

hey folks, I made a little game of life for the macropad https://github.com/stelly-dev/game_of_life_adafruit_macropad

It's probably not the best code since I'm just getting my feet wet with circuit python, but you can play/ pause and draw on the board

[versed lava]

Looks like this needs the "adafruit_imageload" Library on top of the default ones the guide tells you to copy over - might want to add it to the readme

[open nimbus]

Oops! Yep, thanks for the heads up! Just added it to the readme.

Would you happen to know if there's some kind of package manager for Circuit Python? Coming from nodejs I'm used to npm install to get all the dependencies, or should I just be bundling the libs with the project on github?

[lapis jasper]

check out circup

https://github.com/adafruit/circup/

https://learn.adafruit.com/keep-your-circuitpython-libraries-on-devices-up-to-date-with-circup

[solar wadi]

circup has a couple of options for installing the libraries automatically

• use circup --auto to automatically install what is imported from code.py (or supply a file name)
• use a requirements.txt file and call circup install -r /path/to/requirements.txt

so you can include a requirements file with your project, using either the pypi names for the adafruit bundle Adafruit_CircuitPython_ImageLoad (making it installable with pip install -r for blinka) or the python module names (here it would be adafruit_imageload)

[solar yew]

House fire epic style 😎

[frosty topaz]

I’ve never set fire to anything with a usb cable. Ac cables, on the other hand…

[marble mantle]

Modern USB3 PD cables can help!
They can set fire to anything you want as easily as AC

[wary breach]

I made a Majora's M4sk with the Monster M4sk, leather, and antlers. Still trying to get some custom eye code to work, but it's soooo pretty 🙂

[exotic sierra]

Ohhhh

[cunning lava]

Still didn't assemble the case? :)

Finally got proper keycaps for my low-profile CircuitPython keyboard.

[exotic sierra]

Wow, looks great @cunning lava

[cunning lava]

I've been using it for almost a year now, as my main keyboard.

[sharp comet]

I tried but the screws were a bit too big for the holes in the case I could not tighten it all the way down.

I thought about 3D printing a case at one point, but I like the little characters on the silk screen honestly, it'd be a shame to cover them up.

[cunning lava]

@sharp comet they are self-tapping, with a bit more force they should fit

[sharp comet]

I applied as much force as I could, the screw ended up getting stripped.

[cunning lava]

:(

I guess the laser-cutting tolerances are worse than with my prototypes

you can also just glue toothpicks in those holes

or smaller screws and glue

sorry for that

[cerulean dirge]

I got a door sensor on an ESP8266 publishing over MQTT, and a raspberry pi subscriber to play a chime.

[ancient skiff]

I think this fine silicone-coated wire is my new favorite, but it unwinds so readily. I put together a little holder for it

you can easily unspool it as you need it

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3164

[lusty siren]

I should do that for some of mine. They're a mess

Also why does it decide an STL file is a text file and try to display it?

[scenic siren]

So much MESH.

[lusty siren]

It's really meshed up

[scenic siren]

Well played.

[lean zodiac]

everything is a text file if you try hard enough

[cunning lava]

only on UNIX systems

on mainframes files actually have structure

[ancient skiff]

I did one for https://www.adafruit.com/product/4730 too. everything else on my desk is still a mess, but at least the wires are tidy now!

[smoky swift]

“Daddy, can you make my LEGO music box actually do something??”
Hopefully by the end of a weekend of soldering, CAD work, and 3D printing, this nest of snakes will be a working, self-contained unit. Pretty well got the code worked out, just have to replace the button with a Hall effect sensor and figure out how to run the neopixel sequence in parallel with the ringtone.

[severe scarab]

I've been working on a high input count USB HID joystick library for CircuitPython, and I think (hope!) it's now stable and usable enough to share! It uses the new USB customization features in the 7.0.0-alpha to dynamically generate a Joystick descriptor with up to 8 axes, 128 buttons and 4 hat (POV) switches, and makes configuring GPIO pins and assigning them to Joystick functions a breeze. Full documentation is provided via Read the Docs, and there are a number of examples provided that demonstrate - among other things - using it with an MCP23017 GPIO expander, MCP3008 external ADC and capacitive touch inputs using an MPR121. I'm using it in my own arcade-style "cockpit" build, and thought others may find it useful as well.

https://github.com/fasteddy516/CircuitPython_JoystickXL

[lusty siren]

Oooh, this is cool

@solar yew if I remember correctly was looking at building a high-quantity number of inputs joystick

[slow sky]

Oh my God I have been looking for something like this

[solar yew]

thanks, bookmarked it, I kinda have prioritized other projects atm because I don't like the game enough to make a 400$ joystick for it 😄

[lusty siren]

I know the feeling. "This is cool. This is not $400 cool."

[severe scarab]

It's a slippery slope. My build started in 2015 when I discovered that my shiny new Saitek X55 stick/throttle wouldn't stay put on my desk (and weren't comfortable to use at desk height anyway), and it's been an endless cycle of "tinker with gaming chair for ages" followed by brief periods of actually using it for its intended purpose. I don't actually have any decent current pictures of the whole rig, but here's an old one. (Yes, it lives in the unfinished basement...)

[lusty siren]

Why spend money to finish the basement when you could spend money on this sim?

[sacred timber]

lol

That is the finished basement. Soundproof aesthetic.

[severe scarab]

Ha. Exactly. 😉 It has since been upgraded with additional 3D-printed control panels and neopixels, and the X55 got hacked up to replace the unhelpful generic labels with fancy backlit icons and a fingerprint scanner. The added controls are all using JoystickXL for USB HID comms back to the PC. The NeoPixels are driven from a separate Raspberry Pi.

[lusty siren]

What do you use the fingerprint scanner for?

[sacred timber]

Well, the project sounds more like a construction project, something you're building as a hobby, a journey, that has a side benefit of letting you play games on it. But your primary motivation is building things, which I totally understand.

[severe scarab]

There’s an FSR embedded in the seat that I use for occupancy detection. When you sit down, the neopixel by the fingerprint sensor flashes until you authenticate with it. Assuming your print is recognized, the rest of the chair lights up and the controls are activated.

[lusty siren]

No guests, then?

Feels sci-fi though. I love it

[severe scarab]

I know a guy who can get past the auth-block when needed. 😉

[lusty siren]

You should make it have some intimidating auto voice and flash everything red when it fails. "UNAUTHORIZED USER DETECTED. VACATE IMMEDIATELY"

[solar yew]

I'd totally do it if I won the lottery thought (as in someone would do it and try to guess what I want 🤣 )

What's stopping me is really : idec tractor controls company would be like Ok 5000$ order minimum to make laser-etched tractor buttons.

• my project require a farming simulator mod

[severe scarab]

Farming Sims…! I never even thought to test JoystickXL with them - going to have to add that to the list.

[severe scarab]

I thought about that but - funny enough - I have always had a terrible time with fingerprint scanners recognizing mine. And since my gaming time is typically early in the morning when the kids are still asleep…let’s just say it’s not worth the risk.

[lusty siren]

Heh, yeah. Would be fun to have a switch for specifically to mess with people but that's work

[upbeat geyser]

Why not laser etch your own tractor buttons?

[solar yew]

Because I have no idea how that work and it would probably end up with 80 peoples wounded because of my clumsiness and damage to buildings around

[civic vale]

I have a tractor (which I use to maintain the driveway, clear snow, misc. jobs in the woods) and every time I use it I think of it as a badly designed video game, with controls far more complex than needed. There are around thirteen different controls involved with just controlling it driving over good ground.

[solar yew]

The main difference is that switchs are required in my case and a key switch

key switch to start the engine like in a tractor 😄

blue if possible because I'm using new holland sidewinder as inspiration

[upbeat geyser]

Finding a blue keyswitch for a reasonable price is probably fairly straightforward. Finding a specific blue keyswitch is a whole 'nother can of worms.

[solar yew]

key switch of decent quality seems to start at 20ish$

[upbeat geyser]

These go on sale periodically for US$3-4 apiece https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G25165

I bought some as replacement units (and keys) for some REO/PMS lasers

[solar yew]

I already think that of an actual simulator, it's too realistic to my taste

like if you need seed you actually have to get a bag, pour it correctly, or get an elevator to put it on a truck, take it out open it on the right side, some will pill so you'll need a siloking or an excavator with a bucket to get it back etc

It's even worse with forestry so I use a lot of autoload

• they added a precision farming DLC so you actually have to sample your soil and get stuff like surefire to put ther correct amount of fertilizer/lime at the correct place to control ph/nitrogen

[upbeat geyser]

That sounds more like job training than recreation

[solar yew]

3rd PCB I have ever designed, it is a CH314a-based SPI/I2C EEPROM programmer with UART support.

[upbeat geyser]

That's a really good-looking board!

[gusty shard]

Driving a solder iron today.

[solar wadi]

@wary atlas I should post that here
(first protoype)

3D printed (flex) box

still needs some work to make the "labels" look good 😛

[wary atlas]

Ohhh, nice

[solar wadi]

has a night mode with a single red/orange low brightness LED indicating the youtbe/VLC mode

it sends keyboard shortcuts over bluetooth to the computer

and has an on-off switch

[wary atlas]

Nice. So you still need to have the window in focus, right?

[solar wadi]

yep

[slim finch]

Night mode is something I really like! That's pretty great!

does your pc run a 'bluetooth listener' program in the background?

[solar wadi]

it's just normal bluetooth HID

[slim finch]

Ah nice! (ugh I need to learn how to write programs for that) Woo motivation to program more sensors! 😄

[solar wadi]

it's running Arduino, because I'm using a M0 bluefruit feather (though I did make a CP version) it's basically mashing together the demo code for Adafruit_BLE and Adafruit_NeoTrellis.

[wary atlas]

lol, mash

[little obsidian]

This is--very much--an assemble-the-legos project (so far) but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

I've got a Treat & Train from PetSafe which takes 4 D-cell batteries. The D-cells last us ~3 months and I use D-cells for, quite literally, nothing else. The treat and train was a hand-me-down and the previous owner had planned to set it up with a wall-wart to avoid the conveyor-belt of batteries. Using their plans as inspiration I decided to turn it into a USB-rechargeable.

I justified it by:

• alkaline D-cells are last 4 months and aren't inexpensive
• 4 Rechargeable NiMH D-Cells are $20 and a charger is another $20

I started with verifying it will work with 5V instead of 6V by sacrificing a mini-USB cable and then i went and got a PowerBoost 1000 [1], a 6600 mAh battery [2], and (for good measure) a 5.2V micro usb wall wart [3]. The total came to $51 (I think) for those components, I justified that with "if i ever get rid of it i can harvest them all and turn other stuff into USB-recharables.

Janky photos for completeness attached

[1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/2465
[2] https://www.adafruit.com/product/353
[3] https://www.adafruit.com/product/1995

A photo of the Treat & Train in its natural habitat

Batteries being investigated by the dog

as an aside, enabling the discord threads thing for #show-and-tell would be kinda nice

[smoky swift]

Out of the prototype stage. Now I just need to clean up the code a bit.

[plush gorge]

16S 30A LifePo4 pack with a puffy cell that I want to rebuild as a 11S battery pack for my E-bike.

Little nervous, any advice?

[sacred timber]

I would not under ANY circumstances have that inside my house. Extreme fire danger.

[tight agate]

Better than lithium primaries, but not by much lol 😂

[solar yew]

Only use it on a barge in front of these because they have like 200000 liters of fire extinguishing goodness

[solar yew]

3rd ever PCB design, first with SMD. Improved on the cheap CH314a SPI/I2C programmers. Not sure if anything should be changed.

[snow mango]

https://betterspigotdocs.blazify.rocks/ Since I personally hate Javadocs for spigot, I decided to create my own. Be warned that this early stages on heavily rely on contributors :) https://github.com/BlazifyOrg/BetterSpigotDocs

[lusty siren]

Personally, I wouldn't touch it. If one cell is bad, who knows what the other cells are like. And fiddling with batteries is a good way to start a fire.

And in the case of an e-bike, that'd be a fire you're riding.

[solar wadi]

which sounds awesome when you say it like that, but...

[solar yew]

erm, what does that have to do with electronics ?

or did you post on the wrong discord ?

I'm sure admincraft would be more interested

[snow mango]

Pretty sure it’s not required to be related to electronics by say, but I am moving it to my own servers tonight, so I’ll post those too

Not sure tho

[lusty siren]

This #show-and-tell channel isn't required to be electronics (just as the weekly Show and Tell show isn't). It can be anything that you've made and want to show and, well, tell about

[solar yew]

I see, thank for the clarification

[versed lava]

Ooh! In that case! I made my custom sneaker skates finally!

[vocal aurora]

Those are sweet

Great color scheme

[versed lava]

Bought the vans and wanted to make skates then my partner bought me the plates and gift cerfiticates for the trucks, wheels, laces, etc

[solar yew]

I rented sneaker skates in Bushnell Park (Hartford CT) around 1979. ;)

[lusty siren]

Those are awesome

I would worry about my ankles, though, if I were to wear them.

[exotic sierra]

Same

[versed lava]

My normal skates are jam skates which already have a lot less ankle support (for dancing) - I also do a circus apparatus that requires strong ankles - but yeah - these are for casual skating only!

[sharp bobcat]

@median spoke It arrived in the mail this weekend. Thank you so much!!!! I was expecting a sticker, not this awesome little PCB. You rock.

[median spoke]

Glad you got it! The github repo has sample code to use it: https://github.com/gamblor21/SnT-Badge

[formal hamlet]

I also made my first pcb design recently, very basic though, just a cable breakout board

[sacred timber]

I just posted a new video to the NZPRG YouTube Channel, showing my KR01 robot testing out a "roam" behaviour:

** Testing the Roam Behaviour on the KR01**
https://youtu.be/65TagAqW0PM

[sturdy summit]

Hi, wanted to share my raspberry pi based handheld mutantC v4. >> https://mutantc.gitlab.io/index.html

Here is a review video
https://youtu.be/BESuyftW3oY

ohh forgot to share the features of mutantC

-It is fully open-source hardware. So you can Hack it as you wish.

• 4 inch IPS display, upto 4GB RAM, 2 HDMI out.
  -Has native Serial and Ethernet port for server work.
  -56 key customizable keyboard, 2 shoulder button for navigation.
  -Have RTC, Buzzer, Vibration, LDR and IR Transmitter.
  -Control your home appliances using mutant's IR Transmitter.
  -Auto turn off Display when Display is covered, like when mutanC is on your pocket.
  -Add Add-ons to get more features & functionality, see all from HERE.
  -ThumbStick to have mouse support with left, right buttons.
  -Gyro support using MPU6050 module or Pressure or Temp and Humidity support using BME280 module.
  -Able to poweroff modules, Display, Add-ons using keyboard button.
  -Full poweroff using OS and keyboard key.
  -USB_C formfactor Nurolink/docking port with UART, I2C and Power.
  -Read battery Power level and poweroff the device when battery is low.
  -2 NeoPixel, one connected to ESP32-S2 and another connected Pi.
  -18650 battery with charge and discharge protection .
  -So little parts needed to make one. See the parts list > https://gitlab.com/mutantC/mutantc-v4/-/blob/master/parts_list
  -You can use C Suite Application suite made for touch based device in this. This apps are suitable for small screens. See the C Suite > https://cubocore.org/

And here is the build guide if anyone wants to build it
https://www.instructables.com/MutantC-V4-Modular-Feature-rich-Easy-to-Build-Hanh/

[lapis jasper]

fyi threads are now enabled for this channel. Please use them to discuss the projects

[torpid jacinth]

A button box made using the Adafruit M4 express micro controller.

I wanted extra buttons but mostly axis's while playing flight sims for easy use so decided to make this.
It uses a modified adafruit Gamepad circuitpython code to turn the M4 into a game controller allowing me to use them in game.

I also modified the HID settings for the m4 to allow me to use 6 axis's. Didn't need to do anything for the buttons as the default already allows for 16 buttons and Im only using 11.

The 2 safety buttons are only on for 4 clock cycles with an 0.05 second delay per frame. Ones your turn them off they give off the same button signal as I use them to turn on and off the engine of my plane which you do with the same button. The other is eject.

Many thanks again Amateur, danh and Neradoc for the help figuring out how to get the M4 to run the modified HID settings and some other small bugs that followed.

[torn elbow]

12x12in 3d printed map of one of my favorite games, going to go into a shadowbox behind glass, over 100hrs of printing at 0.07mm layer height

Currently working on filling the layer lines with filler and the cracks between the sections too, the bottom left is smoothed the bottom right is not for comparison

[plush gorge]

Hay @solemn tulip & @lusty siren Thanks, but I found out that I was wrong, the cell isn't bad they're okay. Though, I am still looking into getting a charge bag/box big enough to put the entire thing into, for both charging & use in general.

[lusty siren]

I'd say a puffy battery definitely isn't okay and still wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

Some sort of safety bag is a good idea, though, if you intend on using it anyway.

[plush gorge]

Na, I thought it wasn't puffy when I was initially looking at it, but a few days later when i got the housing completely off & fully inspect the cell correctly, it was just the side only looked like it was puffy. I first looked at it when I had only opened one corner, & couldn't properly inspect & feel & put a ruler against it. It's flat as board.

[sacred timber]

I agree. A puffy battery is just one step away from exploding. I wouldn't have that in my house at all. This is what happens when a LiPo flares out inside a heavy leather bag: http://geology.heroy.smu.edu/dpa-www/robo/nbot/fire/nbot_fire_01.jpg

Out in the air it would have likely been much worse.

[lusty siren]

Looking at the pictures, yeah, I can see the casing could make it look puffy.

I'd check each cell to be sure, though, and make sure there's no puff.

[plush gorge]

O' ya, I did.

[meager crag]

I did my first photo run with a polar aligned astrophotography rig consisting of RPi4, adafruit stepper hat, nema17 with 100:1 planetary gear and ball head.

Oh, that code is for the other rig. Just need to change the time.sleep() to .270. bad pic

results of last nights run

Primitive but fun. 🙂

[exotic sierra]

I’ve been working diligently on a new product release and there are finally some available on my tindie shop. A super cool ESP32-S2 based RGB matrix display with Stemma connector: https://www.tindie.com/products/oakdevtech/pixelwing-esp32-s2-rgb-matrix/

[lucid bloom]

I combined my pi bluetooth music visualizers with a nest hub. I can cast to the hub from my phone/laptop. The hub is paired to the pi and the pi is a bluetooth speaker. I customized alsa with 2 loopbacks, 1 for monitor/VT220 and then i used cava for the visualizer with 2 config files, one for each loopback. its a PI 4 8GB, VT220 and Nest Hub
https://youtu.be/bZ0xmHd2Vn0
software used:
https://github.com/lukasjapan/bt-speaker
https://github.com/karlstav/cava

[cunning lava]

Finally got the Stage game library to work on Meowbit

[cobalt dove]

Just finished a new Riskeyboard 70 for myself 😁 https://gfycat.com/firsthanduniformeasteuropeanshepherd

[exotic sierra]

Ohhh nice

Love the scrolling led matrix

[obtuse root]

Beautiful

[scenic siren]

That's lovely! The scrolling would destroy my focus though 😄

[cobalt dove]

You don't even notice it after the first 10 minutes 😄

Though the plan is to not have it scroll all the time. That's just what I've got it doing for now until I get the firmware in order

[scenic siren]

Do you have ADHD? 😉

[cobalt dove]

Here's "the plan":

• Make it display what layer you're on (e.g. when pressing the "Fun" and "More Fun" keys).
• Make it display the current mode, brightness, etc when changing settings.
• Make it application/context-aware so it can display relevant information from your computer. I plan to make it work with HID-IO so it can display stuff like gaming HUD info, active GIMP layer, Blender mode, a clock, that your doorbell is ringing, etc etc

[cobalt dove]

No, but I do have ADD 😄

[scenic siren]

Fair enough. Then you at least partially get why I would definitely still notice it after 10 minutes. 😄

[scenic siren]

This all sounds pretty neat though.

Kind of like what the Mac touchbar wanted to be.

[cobalt dove]

Well this display is just a display. It doesn't do touch. I have a separate (secret) project for a touch-based thing 😄

[scenic siren]

I was referring to it displaying relevant info.

It never really caught on, but your info sounds better than a lot of what the touchbar displays.

Rumor has it, they're ditching it. We'll see soon enough.

I think if you had more control over what it did, it might have caught on more. At least for some folks, the type of folks who like to configure things.

But that's my thoughts.

[cobalt dove]

Yeah that's going to be the BIG difference between the Mac touchbar and this: This will be truly open source and it'll have an open standard way to interface with the keyboard (HID-IO). It also won't be the only keyboard to implement it 👍

[scenic siren]

Exactly! Much better plan, imo.

[cobalt dove]

Yeah, you want people to use your cool new tech in all their applications? Make it open source! Stabilize the API to use it and invite other manufacturers to participate.

[gusty shard]

Today in the lab

[late jackal]

yay for programmable glowing mushrooms

[grizzled talon]

I finally played around with Circuit Python, I've mainly been exclusively Arduino. Also put together this test hardware and combined/modified some example scripts. This is exciting stuff and I love how fast it is to update code with Circuit Python!

[vestal cove]

Me too! That's the great thing about CP

https://www.instructables.com/Make-Your-Own-EDITH-Glasses/

My first major Python project

[plush gorge]

Project Tim Allen (MORE POWER) update 😀

I figured out, why try just charging the stock 36V 7.8Ah LiPo battery on my Swagtron EB-5 E-bike when I can just install the 2nd battery & just choose which battery to power my Ebike. :-)

That & I was finally able to find a DC - DC step down that can handle this much power.

The blue pack above is a 48V 20 or 30 Ah LifePo4.

So I'm hoping to either, triple or quadruple my bikes range. 😀 😀😍🤩

That is after I figure out how securely encase & mount that big (16kg) 35lb beast on my little e-bike. 😳

Lol, mind you the entire stock bike only weights 37lds.

[idle snow]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5hBjouFHQY

I used the Adafruit Music Maker Feather to play audio messages back at my dog

[rugged oar]

I'm working on creating a cyberdeck with a Blackberry BB Q10 keyboard. With that tiny a keyboard, naturally I wanted a tiny LCD as well. I chose what I had, an ST7735R 128×160 TFT LCD.

The LCD works fine with some older kernel(5.10.17+), though newer ones cause it to fail. I pinned the kernel and bootloader version to what worked with sudo apt-mark hold raspberrypi-bootloader raspberrypi-kernel (thanks to @sacred timber ) and then let other stuff of the os update and upgrade. This worked, though now getting the kernel headers (needed for driver development of the keyboard) via sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-kernel-headers didn't work because they point to a newer version of the headers and not the one of my kernel. So I installed 'rpi-source' , which gave me the correct headers for my kernel. Now the drivers build and I can insert them in the kernel as needed (as seen in image for BMP280 i2c device).

Once I get my hands on the BB Q10 board, I'll get to work on the driver for it. Hope it works out :)

[sharp comet]

Digital Etch-A-Sketch case is coming along, first iteration is being printed now.

[exotic sierra]

very nice @sharp comet

[sharp comet]

everything fits nicely 🎉

[tacit delta]

thats cool

[inner egret]

Do you have a tutorial or something?

[sharp comet]

not yet, but all of it will be open sourced once finished. Possibly I'll publish a guide or more detailed tutorial as well

[inner egret]

Awesome!

[lucid bloom]

Gonna go on show and tell soon to show the latest iteration of my desk. It involves pi 4 8gb running pi os, pi 4 4gb running home assistant, vt220, nest hub, smartwatch and phone. It does some interesting things like music mode. I got a couple more things I'm working on before I'll be ready to demo it.

[lucid bloom]

The home assistant is what allows me to control the desk from my phone or watch or voice commands.

[lucid bloom]

Which one looks better?

[civic vale]

For the VT220, I'd definitely go with the light characters on a dark background for just text. If you used the VT220's features to make the individual characters have different backgrounds, you might be able to get a better effect on the first one (well, probably on the second as well, come to think of it).

[lucid bloom]

Hmmm I will check that background thing out to see if I can create more contrast

[willow rain]

definitively the 2nd one

[vernal vigil]

wip:

Not sure if I'll be able to show it on the next live S&T.

[late jackal]

some progress with the programmable mushrooms 🙂
still have to figure out a good program for them, i'm thinking a 2D thing using their X/Y position to animate wave patterns through them, but possibly need more mushrooms for that to be really effective.
(made from a neopixel strand and a trinket)
todo: make the stems also light up, and diffuse the light more away from the LEDs

[upbeat geyser]

Those are good looking mushrooms, what are you using for the mushrooms themselves?

[late jackal]

thanks! i cast them in the transparent silicone rubber 2 part epoxy stuff (cant remember its actual name but usually it's used for making moulds for casting things)

[upbeat geyser]

They came out really nice

[late jackal]

i've been fairly amazed at how well they light up, this neopixel strand works really well i think because the leds seem to have quite a wide angle on them

but of course i have to cut and solder each individual led out of the strand

[ionic chasm]

Small effort. Huge psychological impact. Hehe.

It’s now generating random periods of sleep so the beeping comes on with g forces at unpredictable intervals

But I have to still do the math for I Kissed a Girl in kilohertz.

I took it for a (literal) test drive and it was the worst. It’s gonna be an amazing prank.

[native basalt]

Oh boy do I have a story for a #sparky, Over the summer I added probably a total of at least 64 feet of neopixels to my room about half of which is shown in this photo
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/810950401653735484/885210211541979196/IMG_4364.JPG
One day we had some bad storms and some power surges which somehow lead to one of my 5v power supplies and about 32' of my neopixels to be completely dead so now once they arrive I have the fun of rewiring half my room's lights

[solar wadi]

I'm working on a Macros library using classes as a kind of markup to mix different type of actions in a macro, to make richer macros without having to write a bunch of code, with the goal to make it generic enough to have it run (via small "driver" classes) on a Macropad, Keybow, Orthosnap, Neokeys, generic keypad module support, etc.
But first I made a version of the Macropad hotkeys application that uses the same principle:
https://github.com/Neradoc/Circuitpython_Hotkeys_Plus

@scenic siren you did express interest about it in the weekly meeting if you want to take a look ☝️

[scenic siren]

I saw you post it earlier, and I opened it up, but I'll be honest, my brain is apparently pretty fried this week, and it looked entirely too complicated for me to parse it right now. 😄 For what it's worth, PhilB (PaintYourDragon) who did the HotKeys project is in the middle of trying to make it work with consumercontrol at my request, and perhaps your solution is better. I haven't looked at his yet either for the same reason I'm not looking into yours right now though.

[scenic siren]

When I have a little time, I might ping you and have you walk me through the changes you made. But I can't brain it right now.

[solar wadi]

👍

[rugged oar]

My Tiny Cyberdeck project is coming along well on all fronts. Hopefully the Blackberry Q10 Keyboard will arrive before this weekend, and then I can get to writing a driver for it. I'm hoping this is how it looks. Keyboard and screen hinged together, powered by a raspberry pi zero w from below. For now, I'm happy with the thickness, it's around 3 cm in total, but without a battery as of yet. I have a chunky 6600 mAh battery but without any management. I'll look in to that later, maybe next iteration where I have a 'flatter' battery to put in its own 3d cage for a lower profile.

[grizzled talon]

There's actually already a compatible driver for both Arduino and Circuit Python I've been using. The driver libraries for the solder party bbq10 driver board also works with the LTTGO Driver board. Heres the Arduino Library: https://github.com/arturo182/arduino_bbq10kbd

And heres the Circuit Python Library https://github.com/arturo182/arturo182_CircuitPython_BBQ10Keyboard

I think the Pi Zero has Circuit Python support, not sure, but you could interface with it via I2C.

Keep in mind the driver board runs on 3.3v, while the Pi would run on 5v I think.

[inner egret]

What cad software did you use to design that?

[rugged oar]

Thanks for the link.
Luckily, Arturo182 and I are both from Sweden, and he's been gracious enough to send me a keyboard, hence my design of it is based on his step files.

[rugged oar]

I want to write a kernel driver for it. I do not wish to compile the kernel, just insert it when everything is done, similar to how fbtft devices enters late in to kernel space, but with insmod and cron (hence my need to have kernel headers from my previous post.)
I've looked in to their documentation, and I'll definitely be trying out some arduino connected keyboard for the same LCD. However, the end goal is to write kernel driver for the keyboard and use it to create custom linux images using yocto, buildroot, and elbe.
There is a tutorial on linux man page for a single button keyboard, and there is another driver for i2c based keyboard using Analog Devices' ADP5588. I'll be using those two for my driver instead.

[rugged oar]

fusion 360.

[rugged oar]

I'm not going to print the previous one.

1. It has too many parts to it, too much to go wrong plus the hinge will fail sooner or later. This one has only two parts, complex parts, but not many weak spots.
2. It's very thick and keyboard in middle with pi below, it wasn't to my taste. This one is is half a cm thinner even at its widest point.
3. This one's got camera, last one I couldn't put the camera anywhere to my liking with my constraints.

[upbeat geyser]

Complex parts are good for 3D printing: injection molding that would be a beast.

[rugged oar]

You're very right. Injection moulding on hobby scale is just too hard to get in to.

[frosty topaz]

Well, it's honestly not as bad as you may imagine. You may be constricted by shot size or material options, but there's a pretty affordable DIY injection molding machine for $200~400, if you plan on selling stuff.

https://formlabs.com/blog/diy-injection-molding/

[native basalt]

https://vimeo.com/599843112

My recent project rewiring a CRT TV to my stereo making a crude music visualizer. I ordered a second one of these TV's off ebay that I'm going to turn into a portable bluetooth speaker

[polar crag]

Some nice tasty spaghetti wiring

[crimson egret]

I made a library for talking with inaturalist for circuitpython. In this example, is cycling the observations and the images for a particular user (my brother).
https://github.com/fede2cr/cpyinaturalist/raw/main/doc/imgs/funhouse.jpg

[lean elbow]

A proof of concept for an idea that I hacked together last night (sorry the video quality is not super great). When the rotary is turned on the MacroPad (running CircuitPython), it sends a packet (UART) over the Stemma port to a Feather M4 running Arduino, which then broadcasts that packet using a Radio FeatherWing. Then I have 2 "receivers", on the left (another Feather M4 running Arduino, and a Feather RP2040 running CircuitPython). that receive the signal and display the updated value on the connected OLEDs. I thought that it would take me all weekend to get this going, but it only took me about 3-4 hours thanks to the Feather/Featherwing ecosystem, which is flipping amazing!

[exotic sierra]

Wow nice!

[rare pasture]

PC-9821 replica for Raspberry Pi CM4.

Obviously not very accurate because I didnt want to limit myself

Anywho, has space for two SSDs, DVD drive, CM4 carrier board, Pico PSU, and at least one PCIE card

I'm really excited to design more cases/devices like this

Please, tell me any suggestions,cc, etc. And especially suggestions for what I should try next, I'd love ideas for practicing.

[indigo lava]

A lot of 3D printing and some fun with left over Adabox parts == my new “task lamp”

[tacit delta]

fancy!

[indigo lava]

now im trying to figure out if the speed of the animation is my bad coding or just how it be on Circuitpython

but i've reached the initial milestone of this project 🙂

https://tenor.com/SIo4.gif

[tender plover]

@danh for the help, and others. 🙏

LAPA Studios Papercraft pdf,
TrinketM0,
Lots of solid core wires and jumpers, soldering and harnessing,
Colored tactile switches in the fingers: R, G, B,
Resistors in the tactile switch harness,
AdaFruit 5W LEDs one per ear,
Small Li-Ion battery included in the Adafruit NeoPixel Goggles pack,
Lots of time

[marble mantle]

@tender ploverwow

[wet beacon]

Is that based off of any particular model? It doesn't match any 9821 I've actually seen.

[rare pasture]

It's the first one on google images but with the second floppy drive removed and the DVD drive enlarged to a full 5.25 slot

It doesn't look like it because im lazy and carving holes for IO is hard

[solar yew]

Making one of those memory DIMM holders but this one can support large heatsinks such as DDR2 FBDIMM, RDIMM and those Corsair Vengeance series heatsinks.

[gusty shard]

Today in the lab:

[upbeat geyser]

Today in the lab:

[exotic sierra]

Ohhhh

[solar yew]

dude takin his own xrays again

[exotic sierra]

playing around with making an ESP32-S2 mini feather

[sick pagoda]

First SMD solder

[marble mantle]

very nice, especially for first time!
did you use paste and stencil or just the syringe?

[exotic sierra]

Impressive

My first PCB design was very rough and quite ugly lol

[sick pagoda]

Just the syringe

Some areas have either too little or too much, think attempt number 2 will go better.

And abit more flux next time

[frosty topaz]

Honestly, it looks like you put a really good amount in the places where it matters most. I don't see much issue with quantity, as the only parts that look bulbous are on the resistor and capacitor pads.

[sick pagoda]

Jay not terrible, excited to try it out soon™ Already excited to work on V2 and not even sure if this one works yet

[dry halo]

Raspberry Pi 400 with Pimeroni Hyperpixel4 and Adafruit cyber deck wrapped in PLA, with travel cover.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/378388945916002316/886821040234303498/cover1.jpg

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/378388945916002316/886065568472506398/IMG_3774.jpg

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/378388945916002316/886821054901792778/cover3.jpg

Would anyone be interested in these? Pre-printed for a fee, or STLs ready to print?

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/378388945916002316/886821049650516068/cover2.jpg

Back is affixed with four M2 screws. Screw hole threads are included in the print.

Cover is friction fit.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/378388945916002316/886065566400528474/IMG_3773.jpg

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/378388945916002316/886065562432704562/IMG_3768.jpg

[humble cape]

demon core badgelife SAO going off to shenzhen tonight

[vestal cove]

https://www.instructables.com/3D-Print-a-Lighted-Moon-Landing-Map/

Just a fun little project

[tacit delta]

not found?

[rose phoenix]

Made a little macropad out of the directional switch encoder that was put up on the store recently.

[feral granite]

PicoPi CloudLight! As a kid I always had little kitschy trinkets that were special to me and wanted to display, so I made this for my niece so she can have a little display for her treasured items

[west zinc]

The felted Lars is nightmare fodder.

[vestal cove]

I unpublished for a little bit while I fixed an error. It's good now.

[tacit delta]

nice

[cobalt dove]

I really upped my silkscreen game on the latest Riskeyboard 70 prototype 😉 👍

The front has lots of tiny easter eggs as well 😄

[exotic sierra]

Ohhh that’s nice

[narrow cobalt]

holy, dang that's awesome

I feel like I've seen the kicad screenshots for this before on another server lol, so cool

[cobalt dove]

No, I've merely invaded your dreams 👍

[narrow cobalt]

ah ha there we go, a fellow money-burner keyboard enthusiast, eh?

[frosty topaz]

Out of curiosity: what's the IR sensor for?

[cobalt dove]

Sensing IR

😄

[frosty topaz]

And do you plan on sharing an STL for your signature maglev switches somewhere down the line, or just straight-up mass production?

[cobalt dove]

My Riskeyboard lets you turn any old remote control into a wireless macro pad! https://gfycat.com/marriedtediousaquaticleech

[cobalt dove]

Oh I'll share them... Once I have PCBs for sale 😄

[frosty topaz]

Can't wait! Gotta save up some burnable income...

[cobalt dove]

There will also be a license like, "If you make a keyboard with these you owe me a dollar or $0.10 whatever is greater but we can negotiate 👍"

[narrow cobalt]

? wait what lol, I was commenting on the buzzer footprint

[frosty topaz]

Who knows, automated filters be like that sometimes.

[cobalt dove]

Yeah the naughty word filter has lots of words that aren't actually that naughty hehe

[narrow cobalt]

but yes I want all the beeps and boops on the keyboard 👀

[cobalt dove]

The buzzer has yet to be used. I have some ideas as to how to use it but it's more of a future thing

Obviously you can use it to generate click and pop sounds but I already have something better for that... https://youtu.be/6hMOGKTudcg

Holy cow that video went over 1000 views‽

When did that happen? Last I looked it was like... 80 views haha

clicks analytics button

[narrow cobalt]

sounds like a tiny solenoid almost 😄

[scenic siren]

It was the repeated letters... It's meant to catch spammers, not folks excited about buzzers. But it's not smart enough to know the difference.

[narrow cobalt]

ah, gotcha 👍

[cobalt dove]

Ahh, it was the Lemurs that put my video over the top

[vestal cove]

Thanks

[sullen salmon]

Was really happy by the results of this project result:
(it's the spider dance btw)

[barren sluice]

Taped up prototype for a thermometer/hygrometer/barometer housing. I plan on mounting the BME breakout sensor board in the center of the air column of the main shaft. The goal is to get as accurate as possible of a reading for ambient air temperature.

And I plan on putting screen over the top and bottom holes to prevent any friends from making a home in there as well as provide a wind break.

[tacit delta]

https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/76730-lack-enclosure-vent-fan-with-duct-for-120-mm-stand

finished my project

[coarse fjord]

I had these oscillators appear on 4 Conway's Game of life kits. A blinker which is the most common oscillator and a larger one I don't know the name of. Does anyone know?

https://youtube.com/shorts/d8dSEJUvzYc?feature=share

[marble mantle]

glider? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(Conway's_Life)

[west zinc]

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2137976. I spotted a circuit playground on this banana keytar.

[coarse fjord]

Turns out it is a pulsar quadrant.

https://playgameoflife.com/lexicon/pulsar_quadrant

[vestal cove]

What's John Conway's Game of Life?

[coarse fjord]

It is a zero player game that simulates cellular automata with very simple rules that lead to a variety of complex patterns.

Adafruit sells a kit that will play this game on a 16 cell array of LEDs. You can connect multiple kits to make larger arrays. I have built 3, a maker friend gave me his, and I have one more kit inbuilt waiting for me to feel well enough to assemble it.

[vestal cove]

OK. That sounds fun.... I guess

Very interesting

[civic vale]

Lot's more about "Conway's Game of Life" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life including several great animations. For a true "Life", you need an infinite array. There are, however, edge conditions that do interesting things.

[vestal cove]

OK

[gritty onyx]

Thank you Adafruit for making this possible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCmGmLDWalE

Using the RGB Matrix Hat with RTC

[white thicket]

I'm making my smartglasses with a web based front end

they are built on bose frames

when i finish it, it'll be able to play spotify from my phone

i just gotta work out the spotify api in my own frontend

i really just need to make a good 3d printed shell

[exotic sierra]

Woah, neat!

[lean elbow]

This weekend's project was to tinker with mounting an ItsyBitsy nRF52840 onto one of these neat new IS31FL3741 LED matrices and write some scrolling marquee firmware that would allow me to use the BluefruitConnect app to change the message, advertising name, color, brightness, scroll speed, rotation, and font (including a font I made from the Stargate's Ancient language 😂). The female headers currently aren't connected electrically but rather used as a structural support (for example, I made a little "wing" with a magnet so that I can attach it to a fridge or other magnetic surface, and I'm playing with an idea for a "wing" to make it wearable). These matrixes are really cool and fun to play with. I'm really excited to get my hands on the new LED glasses 👀

Oh also of the settings are saved onto the 2MB flash chip, so if it loses power, it starts up again using the same settings that were previously saved.

[hard oriole]

I decoded the first 3 letters... and I'd like to solve the puzzle 😉

[lean elbow]

😂

I wanted to make (another) clock with a similar setup but I'm 2 horizontal pixels shy of being able to draw 4 numbers in Ancient 😢 Guess I'll have try using 2 side by side 🤷‍♂️

[lean elbow]

Hacked apart the buffered text demo for the IS31FL3741 to use 2 matrices side by side, taking advantage of the QT Py RP2040's 2 I2C ports so I didn't have to cut/solder jumpers on the second display

[uncut pine]

Tiny tricorder next to 1/2 breadboard for size ref. ESP8266 ssd1306, BME280, MLX90614,

[rose phoenix]

There's a Raspberry Pi Pico underneath the OLED screen, still messing around to see what Python can do for keyboards. Recently got an ender 3 so I printed the rotary encoder knob myself to be as low profile as I could.

[rugged oar]

I've been trying to make this board for a while. It's a replacement for the zumo shield used on Polly's zumo robot. It has a lot of issues for rev 1, the soldering job is a mess, i couldn't find all resistors so I had to use larger packages and even use two in parallel to get closer to the resistor value I needed, the uploader is a really old tiva c board itself.

BUT, after a really hard week of two failed attempts, this one worked, LEDs work, UART works, I'll be testing i2c and spi next, then the motors.

[lean elbow]

Finally achieved my days-long dream of a clock using the ancients font as the clockface with 2 IS31FL3741 LED matrices 😂

Also on the off chance anyone is interested I published the Arduino source code https://github.com/apendley/IS31FL3741QT-ancients-clock

[grizzled talon]

Here's a blackberry keyboard dock thing I'm designing for the Clue! This is an early prototype, I should have it done by next week though. I plan to make a guide and maybe a video tutorial. It's exciting stuff!

and yes, I'll make it magnetic lol

[tacit delta]

blackberry keyboard is the best one of all time

[grizzled talon]

I never used one until I needed one for a sat-phone project I was building. It was slow to get used to at first but I really enjoy typing on it now! I see why so many people loved typing with it.

[warped cobalt]

I'm intreagued by bringing back of Blackberry keyb

[grizzled talon]

Maybe I should or someone should design a bluetooth snap-on case for modern phones lol

[warped cobalt]

I just wondered that, lol

[tacit delta]

blackberry 8830. i still have it, and yeah its amazing

i miss it 😦 i have moto g power now

[warped cobalt]

I mean, I like the mechanical keybs I use for my phones, but for super portability. A Blackberry one, especially with BT 5.1 should be popular

[grizzled talon]

It's defiantly possible... I just ordered the bluetooth glasses driver board today so once I get it in the mail, I'll have to give it a shot lol

[vestal cove]

That's pretty cool! I created something similar here: https://www.instructables.com/Make-Your-Own-EDITH-Glasses/

[tacit delta]

nope from me lol

interesting project, just dont appeal on looks for me lol

[vestal cove]

Whose, mine or @white thicket 's?

[tacit delta]

edith glasses

[vestal cove]

OK

They look better on your head

[tacit delta]

do you see hologram and such with it?

[vestal cove]

Yeah, I'm adding that. A screen projects images through a Fresnel lens onto the glasses' lenses

[tacit delta]

interesting

[white thicket]

Thats awesome

[vestal cove]

Thanks

[lean elbow]

Spent the weekend working on my "Blood Board", a variation of the awesome OozeMaster 3000. This was super fun to build 😄

[exotic sierra]

Looking good! I wish I had the determination to make my own keyboard

[cunning lava]

it gets simple after the fifth or sixth

[frosty topaz]

If only choc switches had more options in term of aesthetic keycaps...

I really like the "purple switches on the purple pcb" look though.

[cunning lava]

there are MBK keycaps coming out

if you don't want legends, there is a whole rainbow of them

with legends there are two grays, orange and black

and white

[frosty topaz]

I have seen those, and I have considered them, but I'm not even fully capable of touch-typing, so I'm kinda waiting for legended sets atm

(and money)

[cunning lava]

legends should ship by the end of the year

[vernal vigil]

Eurorack synth wip - prototyping a new module:

[vernal vigil]

hmm... can I post a link to a full size photo?
https://ny3oaw.dm.files.1drv.com/y4pJUEtg5vhuDfKOWIG46ML1CS_mLYQRHeooZYoBsvCkjkXR_Jf4mlB6kb_9BSoebC5GK__V7Wy-RTZTGvsDs3huWsHIOzBYbxFt8O7DaqNrfDXRaLAYa_cMfbpzFZkmQtNqvzbjq3lTaj6-_dmEo1ufeG5tXLu7-FxV_rAUGOJuXlnC-IvE4pBvf_adVj5os9HvBDhj3coTyLhEGKbq-oguw/004.JPG?psid=1

Yes, that's better.

In case anyone wants to figure out what kind of module it is. 🙂

[lean elbow]

Just got my glasses last night 👀

[grizzled talon]

I got the Glasses driver board yesterday and am in the process of making a smartwatch. I hacked the button (pin 4) so it can drive the NeoPixels. The neopixel ring emulates the hands on a clock (red is hour, blue is minute). It also updates/sets the time from BLE which is neat. I'm in the process of designing a case for it.

[grizzled talon]

This is the code I have running, I just updated the code from the last watch I made from a year ago to work with this hardware. https://github.com/MichaelLacock/ML-Watch/blob/master/ML-Watch_OS_v0.3.1-v4.ino

[lean elbow]

Nice!

[lean elbow]

👀