general-chat

[burnt tendon]

Might be that school or that category of schools.

I haven't done college recruiting in a long time so I have no reference tho.

[tardy badger]

It might have been more closely correlated with the major

Most were information technology majors

[burnt tendon]

Ah, yeah, I was on the Math & CS side.

[tardy badger]

Most wanted to do software/cyber security

[burnt tendon]

So Math & CS / CS / EE at my school all were heavily encouraged to do projects.

[tardy badger]

The master’s students were the best candidates for talk too

And two of the candidates that I interviewed worked on a research program that I actually was part of starting

[winged finch]

Interesting, I guess I was an undergrad when CS was just becoming the behemoth it is now so hackathons were super common

Almost valued more than academics tbh

Back when Facebook was still private and .edu only

[burnt tendon]

I got my degree..... before there was a Facebook, LOL.

[tardy badger]

Lol

[winged finch]

Now EECS is the most popular major…

And the backup major for biologists is Data Science

[tardy badger]

I got mine after Facebook made billions on election meddling lol

[burnt tendon]

There was some weird over-indexing going on because people didn't want to go into EECS shortly after I'd graduated for a period of a few years, then suddenly it was a huge thing.

It's really awkward and weird anyway

[tardy badger]

CS is largely more popular now than EE

[winged finch]

At Berkeley it was EECS, they had a separate CS only track but it was a Bachelor of Arts

And yes when I left undergrad it sucked and it was mostly dudes

[tardy badger]

And systems engineering is the second most unfilled role where I work

[winged finch]

Now you need a minimum GPA and it’s mostly women!

[tardy badger]

Also available at the new college grad level

[burnt tendon]

Like, we built this positive STEM conceptualization around the toy that was the early personal computer and the not-meant-to-be-a-role-model rehash of a couple of Steely Dan songs about how to be a looser that was cyberpunk fiction.

And so I always want to grab people by the neck and shake and ask them if they realize that Hey 19 by Steely Dan is about a old dude harassing a 19 year old waitress and that none of us are actually cool.

[tardy badger]

Hehe

[mental python]

EECS a good combination

[burnt tendon]

And Zuckerberg's face reminds me of someone who I loathe's face so I've always loathed him, even when everybody had the "OMG, he's so SMORT!" thing going.

EECS leads to madness. The more that computers come to resemble the Total Perspective Vortex from Restaurant At The End Of The Universe where it's a giant expansive map in your mind that starts at bandgaps, goes through transistors and logic gates, through the negative and positive rings of the x86 infrastructure, through the ARM or RISC-V microcontroller that provides an illusion of a disk drive to your computer, all of the way through the layers of accessibility frameworks to your USB mouse moving a cursor on the screen with a little arrow that says "you are here" the more you go mad.

[mental python]

Yeah learning about how much actually goes into a modern computer was pretty daunting

[burnt tendon]

Stick to an information technology degree where you build software that runs in containers that runs on someone else's kubernetes cluster and you might keep your sanity.

[mental python]

Ah well

At least I'll know things that are unfathomable for the unlearned at the end of my degree

I'll be a warlock

A logic gate warlock

[winged finch]

Lmao we have this mentorship program at work and I was like why not, I’ll partake

They paired me with a bioinformatics guy who spent several meetings going into “it’s dumb that we don’t just do everything in Python”

And in that moment, I knew that I would rather go mad than to ONLY learn Python

[burnt tendon]

Hey, everybody! Let's write cryptography code in pure Python and then act surprised when it turns out to have a bunch of side-channel attacks!

[winged finch]

Lol

Circuit Python is the exception, obv.

[mental python]

Ew

Writing everything in python

What a nightmare

I'm a C++ boy myself

[worn nexus]

i am such a clown

i just ran a bunch of code on my ubuntu terminal

not realizing i hadn't made a ssh connection to my pi

twt

[tardy badger]

EECS is such an interesting former acronym. Now we have pure EE, CS, and EECS is now Computer Engineering lol…

Personally I have a Computer Engineering bachelors. It’s great too. I wanted to do embedded hardware anddddd here I am a software engineer

[winged finch]

Can I do all of that in Python?

[tardy badger]

Sure, why not

I’m sure someone’s made a KiCAD plug-in in Python to layout and route boards, order the PCB, and then they might program it in Python lol

[late fulcrum]

When I was in college, they changed the requirements when I was partway through, then had a convenient "administrative error" that moved me from the college of computer science to math, physical sciences, and engineering, and if I wanted to continue to pursue my CS degree, I'd have to re-apply and meet the updated admission requirements (which I didn't). So my choices were to spend a semester or two aligning my progress to the new requirements, finish out some other degree that leveraged the credits I had already accumulated, or give up. I stuck it out another semester aiming for a physics degree (many of my assorted math, science, engineering, and computer science credits would apply, as "physics" is a fairly broad discipline), but eventually realized I had lost interest in the whole enterprise and was not enjoying academic life. 120 credits was required to graduate, and I had amassed 147 credits at that point, but they didn't add up to any degree offered. I (probably) could have managed a physics degree with another semester, but I had had it and didn't bother.

[late fulcrum]

I worked in software engineering (including a lot of low level device driver and embedded stuff) for quite a while, then got laid off and decided to try my hand at freelance hardware design. I did that for about a year and a half before I got an attractive offer to go back into software engineering, and decided that benefits and a steady paycheck were nice things to have, so here I am, back at it.

[tardy badger]

I wouldn’t mind something that was a good mix of hardware and software

Ideally, that’s what embedded engineering is

[late fulcrum]

Right. I do well with a keyboard in one hand and an oscilloscope or soldering iron in the other. It turns out there aren't a lot of people writing device drivers, so that was a good field to be in for a while.

[tardy badger]

The embedded role I had temporarily was that way

It was good fun

[late fulcrum]

I also got a fair amount of work because I can bridge the divide, talking to both software and hardware people. Companies kept getting in situations where the hardware people said it was a software problem, and the software people said it was a hardware problem, and they needed to figure out what was really happening and fix it.

[tardy badger]

It’s a great skill set

I used it last night debugging why my screen brightness controls weren’t working

Turns out the pad for the pin wasn’t taking paste like it should have so I wasn’t getting continuity

[winged finch]

You want a field where hardware and software need to be vastly improved?

[tardy badger]

Now it works great

[winged finch]

Biotech

[tardy badger]

Biotech is interesting and growing rapidly

But biotech in some areas is ethically grey and I’m not 100% sure how I feel about that

I guess in defense it’s guaranteed that you know the outcome of your work will yield

[winged finch]

Yeah but it’s usually been the most neglected of the automated fields because it’s harder to make money but the pandemic changed that and now the federal government is going in on keeping up with China and “Moonshot”

You can’t do large scale pandemic level testing without some serious hardware

But that hardware is not yet at the manufacturing levels of larger conglomerates

It’s more nascent so lots of opportunities for big impact

[tardy badger]

True, very true

[winged finch]

Vision systems are just barely making their way into labs at a consistent scale.

Check out opentrons or Formulatrix to see the state of things but also to get a feel for how much better it can become.

[late fulcrum]

Biotech has a bunch of demand for small numbers of fairly complicated semi-custom devices with lots of moving parts, optics, fluid handling, process control, etc. It would be an interesting field to get in to. I was looking at trying to get hired at one of the companies that builds surgical robots. They let me play with one of their machines and said I looked like I had a lot of experience, although it was the first time I had ever tried anything like that. I suppose I just look at how to use manipulators differently that many people do.

[burnt tendon]

I mean, I had to quit for ethical reasons a company that was neither biotech nor defense.

[tardy badger]

One company I’m talking to next week is doing stuff with computer vision and drones which seems pretty cool

[burnt tendon]

I mean, computer vision has actually done some actual results. Not self-driving cars, potentially not without a giant advance there.

[late fulcrum]

I've done some work in computer vision, for fairly well defined tasks (detecting bad parts on assembly lines, faces not wearing masks, that sort of thing)

[burnt tendon]

Yeah, it's just seeing that works and then assuming that we can make self-driving cars with all of the things that happen in an uncontrolled real world is my problem.

I've interviewed at biotech places but nothing ever pans out.

Most recent time they just couldn't pay me enough except they wanted people with my particular expertise.

[late fulcrum]

It seems like a Very Hard Problem to me. The annoying bit is that 80% of driving is fairly easy, which is dangerous with human drivers because it's hard to concentrate for long periods of time on what is essentially a fairly automatic task. But there's the occasional bit that requires serious situational awareness and decision making without warning. It's hard for humans and nearly impossible for computers.

[winged finch]

I just completed a CV project for detection of the separation layers of the contents of blood tubes

[winged finch]

That sounds right but your impact would be huge

[burnt tendon]

I mean, I guessss? There's a lot of money in that field so it feels way exploitative to not pay my going rate.

[winged finch]

Yeah that’s changing but historically that was the barrier

[burnt tendon]

Sure. Also, I live in a very expensive part of the world.

[winged finch]

I live in SF so I understand

[late fulcrum]

A friend of mine was a histologist for a while. College degree, years of experience, but the pay was so poor she had to take a second job sorting mail to make ends meet. There was a ton of money in the lab service biz, but the MDs and administrators grabbed the lion's share of it, and everybody else got to fight over the crumbs.

[burnt tendon]

I guess the thing I'm annoyed about with self driving cars is they didn't optimize their early offering for transportation where it was OK to have the car randomly safety-stop all the time, things like paratransit.

[winged finch]

Yeah that’s true, you’ll make more as a data scientist with an MS than a PhD unless you get director level. It’s competitive field.

[burnt tendon]

Defense is funny because it turns out nobody would risk me not getting a clearance if I filled out the form honestly, even though my background is totally absurdly clean.

[late fulcrum]

Amusingly, the data scientist at my current job had previously worked as an organic chemist.

[burnt tendon]

Oh, yeah, a relative had an accident and needed to use a wheelchair after that so he ended up doing a very weird transition from chemist to software engineer.

And I've run into a whole blob of people who were in high level sciences like physics and stuff who got tired of all of the bad code they saw in the high level sciences so they entered software engineering.

[crystal ore]

I ran away from academic politics instead. 😅 Though probably the Fortran would have been enough, too.

[winged finch]

That also sounds right 😂

[late fulcrum]

I was weirdly fond of ForTran, but have no patience for academics nor politics.

[burnt tendon]

Yeah, a friend got to be a research assistant for some years and the pay sucked and opportunities for advancement also sucked, but he got to do a lot of really interesting pawing through some satellite's data without the burden of publishing.

[late fulcrum]

I got curious a little while back, wondering if the ancient "Herrmannsfeldt" code I used to work on was still in use, and it is, although I doubt it's still distributed as decks of punch cards. https://www.aetjapan.com/english/software.php?ElectronGuns_IonSources_design=EGUN

[burnt tendon]

They probably call the input file a "deck" though. When I got to deal with a NASTRAN derivative the mechanical engineer guy kept talking about "cards" in the "deck" instead of "lines" in the "file"

My dad still loves Fortran, but he was a aeronautical engineer.

[late fulcrum]

We used it for electrophysics. I'm leaning on a periodic focussing channel we were building, it was a scale model for an enormous one they were considering, we even used scale model atomic particles, with electrons standing in for the mercury ions that the full scale version would have used.

[burnt tendon]

Did it work, or was your luck mercurial?

[late fulcrum]

It did end up working, but the full scale version was abandoned as that line of research ended up going in a different direction

So ... both

[crystal ore]

In the photo it looks like he's almost giving it a Hug.

[late fulcrum]

The notion at the time was to use pulsed ion beams for inertial confinement fusion. I even constructed the circuitry to generate the acceleration pulse, which came on quickly (~350ps) to 2kV, then ramped up quadratically to 6kV, then shut off. That would make the back end of the packet of ions go faster than the front end, so the pulse would compress as it propagated down the channel. A bunch of pulses would converge at the fuel pellet and (hopefully) induce fusion. However, laser techniques ended up becoming the favorite approach and these days tokamaks and the like seem to be the front runners, although they're still experimenting with inertial confinement.

[burnt tendon]

I guess it wasn't that much of a smashing success then

[winged finch]

That’s still pretty cool

[late fulcrum]

Apparently they didn't think I'd be able to build the pulser so they gave the same assignment to a grad student. His design used a cascade of avalanche transistors, could fire one pulse every ten minutes or so, and a random transistor would destroy itself every few hundred pulses. My design used a krytron tube and I'd test it for hours at a 10kHz pulse rate. It turned out nobody had expected me to opt for a tube-based design.

I was amused that a little board scarcely larger than a postage stamp, bearing a tube the size of a peanut, easily outperformed a board covering a square foot, covered with transistors.

[narrow knot]

Hi, is there anyone that could help me with adafruit python as7341 sensor lib?

[uncut trench]

Is there a channel here when I can just talk to people about kicking ideas around for something I'm trying to design? I know exactly what I want to do, I'm just not at all sure a good user facing design for it,.

[dusty citrus]

how am I supposed to wire this connector?

[blissful roost]

Solder to that bit.

[static flare]

Yeah, that's all you should need to do

[blissful roost]

Might want to sand it a bit first.. and use plenty of flux.

Also, keep it separate when soldering.. you'll probably need to make it quite hot.

[dusty citrus]

alright thanks
but why is it constructed like that with those extra nuts and plastic caps?

[blissful roost]

To bolt into whatever housing it goes in.

[dusty citrus]

hi, what's with this colour code?

[static flare]

We couldn't possibly know for certain, but it looks like red is power and black is ground (standard), and blue could be some sort of signal?

[dusty citrus]

it's an ac power plug, but I haven't ever seen colours like that
looking to other plugs, I think that I can guess that the blue one is a protective group, while red is a phase, and black a ground?
but I might be as well wrong

[static flare]

Oh! Then I have no idea

I only really do DC electronics

[late fulcrum]

That's what I call the "whatever we have lying around" color code often seen on cheaper or small production run electronics. I think of it like what Lego builders refer to as "rainbow mode".

[dusty citrus]

this looks unsafe, isn't it?

[late fulcrum]

Reminds me of some of my builds (check out this access to the volume wheel, SD card slot, and headphone jack)

[blissful roost]

🧐

[dusty citrus]

when you got only bad tools laying around that's what happens lol

[fervent rain]

I was wondering, is what she is doing dangerous? 😂
https://youtu.be/Hn0MOz7E-oc?t=132
I'm looking for cheap phones for a DIY project and stumbled on this where she's hitting a battery with a hammer then drops it in water

[dusty citrus]

Most cell phones use lithium technology batteries. They are of course to be handled carefully.

"Relatively little is known when Li-ion batteries are exposed to harsh environmental conditions. Internal shorts and rapid disassembly are of concern, an event that no safety circuit can stop once in progress. The fault occurs inside the cell and the battery must burn out."
https://batteryuniversity.com/article/safety-of-lithium-ion-batteries

A friend of mine is a responsible career aircraft pilot and has his own hangar.

He left a common power tool battery pack on charge in the hangar and found it venting with flame. ;)

[tardy badger]

I will.. forever be angry at xfinity for deciding to do internet maintenance in the middle of the morning and then taking it down for the whole work day forcing me to have to adjust my schedule and work Friday..

Today is supposed to be my off day and I’ve got to work a full 10 🫠

First world problems

[ebon dew]

with today's always online world there is no good time to take a network offline. there are only bad and worse times. early morning 2am-6am has always been the optimal time to cause the least disruption.

[tardy badger]

midnight to 6am is reasonable. 7:55am is not

also, someone found an old website I thought I took down a year or two ago. apparently not. they started spamming the example contact form because it was a demo website when I did web design stuff

[late fulcrum]

That's why I have (unreliable) comcast/xfinity plus (unreliable) verizon

[tardy badger]

I need more income to afford redundant service

luckily my Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro can be configured to use and blend dual ISPs

which blending is interesting

[late fulcrum]

I have a nice router with automatic failover, but it depends on features the ISP's don't support, so it's still manual.

[tardy badger]

I opted for small enterprise level equipment because lots of COTS consumer products promise a lot of security features and severely under-deliver or pay wall it

plus if I ever feel spicy I can ssh into the dream machine and make my own custom configurations since it's built on Linux

[late fulcrum]

Yup, I know what that's like, I tend to do the same thing. I stupidly cheaped out on a NAS, now I have to go back and buy a real one.

[tardy badger]

I mean sure, I spent like $900 on network equipment.. but it's far better than the garbage WiFi router Comcast would have provided

I also really like that I have an integrated network honey pot to collect malicious actors

though my wife and I have really clean browsing habits so I never get any notifications about blocked malicious content/activity

[ebon dew]

I also go with UI stuff. I don't like the entire Unifi ecosystem though. I prefer their edge lineup. Modularity is a better idea in lightning prone areas. The entire concept of an all-in-one network device that requires a server or always online capability is a nightmare waiting to happen.

[tardy badger]

definitely.

i'm not rich enough for their Edge products though

not until i'm ready to rent bandwidth on the local fiber backbone and start my own ISP

I've been contemplating starting a WISP

[ebon dew]

last i checked the edge stuff was cheaper than unifi. the unifi AP's are amazing though.

you'll end up spending more to get a unifi setup started vs edge router and switch, factoring in the cost of the cloud key or whatever they're calling it this week.

i used to be big into the UI community but they were always promising features that never happened and eventually just ignored edge completely, slowing phasing it out even though in my opinion it's a better ecosystem if they would have put their effort into edge instead of unifi.

I wrote some of the guides that UI still uses for edge products to this day though they stripped my name from them.

[tardy badger]

geez

From my understanding the Dream Machine was supposed to be the replacement of Edge products, at least from the product releases

so far though, the UDM has been great

only thing I wish the UI APs had was better channel selection based on local interference patterns.

[ebon dew]

looking back that's obvious now yes. at the time of unifi's launch they were like don't worry edge products will continue to be the main ecosystem, unifi and later amplify were for consumer use.. that turned out to be more of a stalling tactic so all the veteran sys admins didn't revolt. because they couldn't have that kind of thing affect their share holders. if you look on reddit you can still find a ton of backlash from when they started lying to the edge admins.

a LOT of admins started getting banned on their forums, they started sweeping everything under the rug.

[tardy badger]

oh I'm pretty familiar with the edge/unifi revolt

[ebon dew]

became more like a UI mafia tactic where if you didn't hold your tongue you got banned and admins were dropping like flies.

oh ok nvm then.

[tardy badger]

I was dealing with issues with the P2P routers when I happened upon them

[ebon dew]

their air stuff is really neat and ties into edge, part of edge. just a matter of time before they move everything to unifi... which is funny because UI started on air deployments like that's their base customer are the WISP's.

[tardy badger]

so far I think the UDM was a big turn around from the blunders of the Cloud Key Gen 2 fiasco

I had to debug recently a OS migration issue on a gen 2 cloud key and had to walk my sister through getting everything readopted and configured from 1800 miles away

[ebon dew]

like i said modularity is a good idea. seen plenty of overheated UDM's where people now have like a $600 brick. UI has always under engineered for heat soak.

[tardy badger]

I've had my UDM for well over a year and it's done fine

[ebon dew]

that couldn't have been easy, so many steps.

[tardy badger]

it was a nightmare

had to completely reset the cloud key

then factory reset all the APs

luckily the security cameras adopted without an issue

that would have been a nightmare to do because they were ladder height above doors or more than ladder height outside 15ft up

overall I've found the UDM to be much better in terms of quality and usability

it's also one that i've found the least amount of negative reviews on. heck even LinusTechTips recommends it for those who want good control over home networks

but I do love their P2P bridges though

NanoBeam M2 and M5s were great

[ebon dew]

yeah that's another thing, protect built in. like 1 lightning strike and everything of everything of everything goes down. i find that to be a really bad idea.

[tardy badger]

I actually don't mind having protect built in. with the cloud key issue, the cameras were the only thing I didn't have to fight with after the update.

[ebon dew]

and they added in rfid/card access so then you can't even get into your own building. it's one of those jurrasic park moments where they were so busy seeing if they could make an all in one device they never bothered to ask if they should.

[tardy badger]

I've not heard much bad related to their access control tech

but then again, access control tech is just horrible in general

hard to be good when the overall tech is just bad

[ebon dew]

it's going to be a matter of time, an eventuality until UI is hacked and everything on every network is given carte blanche access with their own backdoors, just horrible idea.

[tardy badger]

the problem is most every network platform like that for small business is doing it

even Cisco's Merkari or whatever it's called is doing similar things.

[ebon dew]

yeah it's going to be a massive issue on a scale probably never witnessed before

[tardy badger]

especially because more often than not, user passwords get stored in text files

[ebon dew]

and edge users aren't immune to it either, we're just on a different network, uses the same protocols.

[tardy badger]

yup

probably the thing I hate about our current technical world is this "make something that does everything" path that every company seems to be on

probably the biggest reason I won't get anything from amazon related to smart home stuff

I have an old beta echo which, once that dies.. it won't be replaced

[ebon dew]

during the UI revolt there was a hashtag people were using like "thanks for asking" which was a dig on UI making something nobody asked for and not making the things everyone was asking for.

[tardy badger]

it's the same trend we see everywhere

no one asked for crash detection in iphones

no one asked for 48MP RAW images

we did ask for more secure communication between us and our friends/family

[ebon dew]

ugh see you got me started, years later i'm still salty.

[tardy badger]

it just sucks that it isn't really just UI, it's all these companies

flashy features that do nothing to really add value

[ebon dew]

yeah i know exactly what you're talking about

[tardy badger]

except Adafruit

Adafruit gives us what we want

as long as the chips are available that is

[blissful roost]

"'One size fits all' is a marketing lie"

[ebon dew]

Adafruit is truly different, the new old apple

[tardy badger]

I at least listen to myself when I make stuff 😂

[ebon dew]

If UI was run like Adafruit they'd probably be trillionaires by now

[tardy badger]

ESP Watchy

Some assembly required

[ebon dew]

you must have a microscope

[tardy badger]

I do

It needs to charge though

[ebon dew]

wireless?

[tardy badger]

I assemble this by hand with a set of tweezers and a magnifying glass

[ebon dew]

i'll be starting out simple with an 8 neopixel ring that needs tiny caps or resistors or something. yeah tweezers but i need something to let me see tiny stuff my eyes are horrible.

[tardy badger]

My magnifying glass

Nice a big lol

[ebon dew]

that looks expensive, i was thinking more like starting out with a diopter

yeah something like that

[tardy badger]

They have ones on booms

i'm doing great at concentrating on work today

i'm the only one on my team working today too lol

[winged finch]

Because it’s cheap and easy to implement now and people consistent want new features even if the product is already really really good

It’s all about what have you done for me lately

[tardy badger]

i know why they do it, it's just one of those things where consumer behavior has been driven to accept incremental changes and expect them every year

I think for the time being, smart phones have peaked

[winged finch]

Demand them

Otherwise why would I upgrade from my iPhone 13 Pro Max to an iPhone 14 Pro Max after 8 months?!

[tardy badger]

i was going to upgrade my iphone 12 mini but there honestly isn't much incentive other than my battery life sucks

which, i'm out of warranty so i'll probably get a replacement battery one of these days

[winged finch]

The battery is absolutely the best reason to upgrade haha.

But also a Pro Max for people like me with dumb huge fingers

[tardy badger]

$70 for a battery replacement or $800 for a new phone

at least right now, $70 provides more value

[winged finch]

Just put the chip in my brain so I’m always plugged in

[tardy badger]

lol

[winged finch]

Battery = my body

[tardy badger]

they did make stress batteries

might as well use my anxiety for something useful

[winged finch]

Will put an OLED maybe on my wrist to monitor the chip metrics

[tardy badger]

i'm getting better at making smaller and smaller electronics so I can develop my own smart phone

[winged finch]

Yeah I feel like something that reacts to my stress in a quantitative way will just make me more stressed 😂

[tardy badger]

great, more power

[winged finch]

You’ve seen the movie cranked?

Basically that but 10 billion people

Just constantly inducing adrenaline or stress to power themselves

[tardy badger]

i'd never sleep because everything would be on all the time in which i'd probably die from exhaustion

[winged finch]

That’s our lot in life anyway, constant states of exhaustion

[tardy badger]

indeed

[rapid geode]

O_o

[neon halo]

Has anyone gotten their Drone license? Any tips.

[ebon dew]

don't fly your drone near airports unless you enjoy fines.

[tardy badger]

And maybe don’t fly it over a military installation too unless you want espionage charges

[burnt tendon]

But it's OK if you can't stop talking about it, because drones.

[neon halo]

Okay, but I hear with the license, you get more privileges due to having a license.

[rapid geode]

you get the priveledge of them knowing where to send the fine

[ebon dew]

https://tenor.com/view/itstrue-allofit-harrisonford-starwars-hansolo-gif-4929747

[wanton mason]

😶

[north eagle]

hi. does anyone have experience with solder paste? will a 10g tube be enough for 30 of those pcb's?

(ignore all the solderpads) 🙂

[sick adder]

@north eagle I'm just spit-balling here, and with caveats .. say you are using a 5 mil thick stainless stencil (0.127mm), and you exactly fill all the holes on that stencil with no waste and no gaps. that means for every 10x10mm area of solder pad you use .0127ml of solder paste.

Now you've got some sub-problems like computing or guessing the area of all the solder pads and the density of solder paste. If solder paste is as dense as water (so that you have 10ml of it) you get ~78000mm2 of stencilled area, or ~280x280mm.

It seems likely that either I biffed a decimal place in there, or that you have plenty. One or the other. If you follow the idea, I invite you to make your own estimate..

Tandy 1000 Keyboard to USB HID converter wired & working 100%! I had talked about this back at the start of the month, linking back to the original discussion.

[sick adder]

https://www.indium.com/blog/calculating-solder-paste-usage.php

[ebon dew]

@sick adder i read the guide on the commodore 16 keyboard, really neat read but images of wiring are completely missing.

oh now there are images today, nvm. maybe was an issue on my tablet not showing images.

[sick adder]

Help me understand what you feel is missing. ... oh.

[ebon dew]

now everything makes much more sense. very cool guide. with the all the free KB2040's i've been getting it's just a matter of time before i tackle a kb project. guides like yours are very very helpful.

if you can resurrect a frickin tandy then just about any kb should be free game.

[sick adder]

thanks! It's been educational. RP2040 PIO was super helpful for these old keyboards, I hope my string of luck will continue.

https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Learning_System_Guides/compare/main...jepler:tandy1000-keyboard?expand=1#files_bucket Here's the code for the Tandy, but not well commented or explained

[ebon dew]

i haven't gotten into pio yet. actually in the middle of watching scott's deep dive on the pi pico from a year ago. super informative about the basics.

when i have time to start on a kb project first thing i'll likely do is type "kb2040" into the learn guide search box.

[sick adder]

both this and the original IBM PC keyboard use a simple clocked serial protocol, driven by the keyboard and read by the computer.

program = adafruit_pioasm.Program("""
    wait 1 pin 1
    in pins, 1
    wait 0 pin 1
""")``` which can be read by a very simple pio program, and because pio can buffer up to 8 (I think) items you don't have to worry much about something getting lost.

[ebon dew]

i didn't realize you could set them up as a matrix. when i got the kb2040 i was like ok so my kb can have like 8 pins, maybe a macropad or something.

[sick adder]

without pio I don't know if you could do it in circuitpython, because you have to be ready all the time for a new bit to arrive

[ebon dew]

just started getting a look at todbots picostepseq code last night. pi stuff on CP has a different way of doing things, will take some time to learn.

i've only used nrf and esp feathers so far. this is my first pi board on cp. it's kinda different.

i'm sure i'll be referencing your project as i'll likely be trying to rip out a mini blackberry style kb and using its matrix. your guide will be most helpful im sure.

[keen arrow]

does anyone know if I can access gas scanning mode for the bme688?

[static flare]

I wish I had the budget to get my hands on the freebies, but alas my ordering capabilities are now diminshed

[blissful roost]

Yay! My OLED arrived!
All 0.96" of ultimate screen tech!! Lol

[fossil flower]

Are the the lipo battery connectors on the Feathers reverse polarity?

[static flare]

If you use batteries from Adafruit, they should be the correct polarity for any boards made by Adafruit

[fossil flower]

So lipo's for tiny drones that use the same JST PH connector are reversed?

why is that?

shouldn't they all be standard?

[static flare]

I wouldn't know either way

All I know is that they're at least withing Adafruit stuff all standard to themselves

[fossil flower]

guess I'll be cutting off connectors and re-crimping, as one of my feathers went up in smoke the other day

[static flare]

It's why they recommend using JST batteriessold by adafruit

[fossil flower]

I just had extra batteries lying around from the drones, using the same connector

bummer

[dusty citrus]

one last question, anyone knows a some cheap microphone? I wanted to make an home surveillance system, but with audio
dunno what to pick on, but I have a really tight budget because I'm broke

[ebon dew]

if it's for surveillance get something with auto-gain. what kind of form factor do you want? like a small pdm mic for a breadboard or something larger for a 3.5mm input, etc..?

[dusty citrus]

maybe something small so I can hide them in the corners of the ceiling or walls
but would they catch conversations with a low voice?

[ebon dew]

that depends mainly on sensitivity. ultra high sensitivity + auto-gain = insane levels of sensitivity. some of them you can hear a mouse fart behind a wall. some of the most sensitive setups use 2 mics in tandem. i've personally never used them but being into audio stuff and reading specs you can infer a lot.

[umbral phoenix]

be aware of local wiretapping laws, and please alert your invited guests to the extent of capture, recording, etc.

[brave copper]

man I almost killed my LCD XD

[tardy badger]

Work in progress

[tardy badger]

Only thing I dislike about the fully SMD modules is it’s difficult to tell if you have full connectivity

But at least I can talk to the RTC

[ebon dew]

At first I was like you crammed an RTC in there? then I was like oh duh it's supposed to be a watch. 😛

[tardy badger]

Right there lol

It’s snug right up against the ESP32-S2

[hasty wedge]

https://youtu.be/xLvANljiCT8

Posted my demo online

[ebon dew]

is this for an actual ice cream truck?

i'm starting to think i'll put a trigger for that to run whenever i open my freezer, load it with ice cream.

making me hungry

[tardy badger]

Lol

[brave copper]

oy....I'm getting to a point I can't display what I need via on the 16 x 2 Character LCD

[blissful roost]

Tiny!

[dusty citrus]

some cheap material where I can make a mold by pouring it to the object that I want to duplicate?
silicone is way too expensive
the part is pretty big

maybe I should have print a negative of it
then use it to pour cheap trash in it to do the object like cement or construction stuff (though they tend to expand so it might end up deformed or break the plastic thing or get glued in it)

[blissful roost]

I would say that silicone rubber is the best option.. IMO.

[late fulcrum]

Depends somewhat on what you want to cast with. Sand, plaster of Paris, and fiberglass are all options, but what makes sense depends on the characteristics of your original and what you're casting with.

[wooden schooner]

Are there any good "open" smartphones that can run vanilla Android and might actually stay usable / avoid planned obsolescence for more than 1–2 years?

[blissful roost]

Hummm... "Open".
I don't think any truly are, running ARM CPUs as they do.

As for vanilla Android and being obsolete... I stick with the Pixel line, Nexus before that.

I upgrade every 2 years anyway, because that fits my standard contract.

[unkempt nimbus]

the Pixel line, being the reference implementation, is actually unlockable

so you might be able to flash vanilla

[wooden schooner]

What's the relation between being the reference implementation and being unlockable? You're saying the firmware is open too?

My understanding is Google now supports the Pixel phones for 5 years, used to be 2. But why even that limit of 5

Then there's, like, the PINE64 which runs mainline Linux and I do not understand how that works, but if it's possible then I have a bunch of questions about these support windows

[unkempt nimbus]

I'm saying they're rootable without voiding the warranty, because they want people to be able to tinker with the official Android device. "Reference implementation" was the wrong term because it implies a degree of FOSS.

[blissful roost]

They are vanilla, by standard.. lol

[wooden schooner]

Rootable without voiding the warranty! 😮

[blissful roost]

I think it's 4(?)... But the EU are looking to force 5 years for all manufacturers.

[wooden schooner]

Force what? A warranty?

Or some kind of requirement to backport all software updates they make to their newer models?

[blissful roost]

Force a mandatory 5-years worth of OS support/updates.

As for if rooting will void warranty, that seems a little grey..
It definitely depends on your local jurisdiction.

Seems in the EU, it shouldn't.. but???

[wooden schooner]

My current phone is 6 years old and friends tell me that continuing to run an old OS is a pretty big security risk.

[blissful roost]

Yes.

I'd consider it more a personal determination, depending on your assessment of the risk.

[wooden schooner]

I think given my low level of expertise, deferring to these friends is probably a good idea

so I'm now trying to find my best option as someone who wants to maximize the amount of time I can use my phone before it stops working for bs reasons

so I'm looking for something that has as long of a stated support window as possible (looks like that's 5 years, available on the Google phones and some Samsungs), allows supplementary physical storage (SD card), allows battery replacement, and ideally is rootable.

[blissful roost]

I think you'll struggle with easily replaceable battery as a requirement... on any decent phone.

I feel like SD cards are pretty much a dead stick now, especially with how easy it is to just connect a USB drive.

[wooden schooner]

I am ok with removing a glued on back panel and snapping off some modules to get to the battery, just did that with my old phone.

As for SD card, no way man. What I want is to not run out of internal storage and therefore have to buy a new phone. USB drive would have to be continuously plugged in

[blissful roost]

I certainly see the logic... I'm just not confident with relying on SD cards for anything important.
I have to consider them disposable.

Of course... I'm somewhat biased.. 😅

[wooden schooner]

A few months ago, my phone would not function because 31 of its 32gb of internal storage were occupied with stuff that did not seem to be removable. SD card fixed this

The incentive for manufacturers is not just to make a functional product, it's to make a product that is functional enough to not lose customers during the industry-standard support window and otherwise to extract as much money from already-paying customers as possible

[blissful roost]

My 2 year upgrade cycle saves me a lot of that bother.

[wooden schooner]

Yes, cooperating with planned obsolescence saves you the trouble associated with not cooperating with planned obsolescence

[blissful roost]

I don't see the logic. /s 😅

My phones are typically wrecked after two years.. or I just dump them into the spare/beta test pile.

[night crescent]

Desk of Ladyada - Use ANY font in EagleCAD with Pinguin https://youtu.be/2fAzqByJwzU

[tardy badger]

Well, this prototype verified a few things. One, I should really make a note to not use gpio26 on the ESP32-s2, 2 passing DRC/ERC doesn’t mean you actually connected all the important components in a schematic lol..

[kind sage]

Is there any references that i could look at to help me figure out why my tft goes black after awhile when logging to the sdcard (240*135 tft by adafruit). it also goes black when loading the program but when reset with button it works for a moment.

[crystal ore]

If the display has a SPI interface, there might be something funky with how the lines are shared between it and the SD Card or the in-circuit programming circuitry.

[late fulcrum]

Astro Slide 5G?

[brave copper]

I'll play with python so I can know how to code it and get good at python coding

[wooden schooner]

Thanks for the link, I'll keep an eye on it. I don't see any stated support window for Android OS updates?

I see they're using a non-Qualcomm SoC, so maybe that helps since the Qualcomm drivers are one of the things that block OS releases for older hardware. No idea if the MediaTek SoC they use is better about that though.

[blissful roost]

Humm.. weird.
The Pico W has been plugged in for 5 hours now.. and it's still working.

[tardy badger]

Tiktok severely overestimating my interest in the death of the queen

[spice moss]

i got lots of those artifacts like how cool with same shape could fit tech inside it

[dusty citrus]

mediatek from what I'm aware doesn't release pretty much anything usefull
way worse than qualcom

[spice moss]

i used nvidia tegra chip on shield tablet with internet and it was great

[blissful roost]

YouTube, Farcebook.. my colleagues...

[tardy badger]

There was a time in my teenage years where I was fascinated with royal heritage. Back when I thought it was cool that the Scottish clan I bear my last name from was connected to Mary queen of the scots

But my world view has shifted left. Now I tend to identify more with my Saami ancestry than royal ancestry

[blissful roost]

I simply don't care about it all... BAU.

[tardy badger]

Though, I still definitely want to visit Ferniherst

[tardy badger]

BAU? British are useless? Lol jk

Or “British Americans Unite”

Baked American Umami?

[blissful roost]

Huummm

[spice moss]

British Agency Utility

[blissful roost]

Connection issues...

"Business As Usual"

[tardy badger]

Ah

[blissful roost]

I'll be American some day. Lol

[tardy badger]

stands in American

releases bald eagle

throws tea in the harbor

[blissful roost]

sits in entirely unpatriotic fervour

[spice moss]

lipton tea is great

[tardy badger]

The actual teabags, yes

The powder stuff is really easy to get wrong

[blissful roost]

Twinings, Earl Grey. ❤️

[tardy badger]

I tend to only drink tea when I’m sick

[spice moss]

skerr that sounds challenge to make great small board to get it powder stuff right

[tardy badger]

We have a licorice type tea with lemon echinacea

It’s quite good on the throat after hacking your lungs out due to allergies

[spice moss]

mint one is cool

[rapid geode]

tea is gross.

[blissful roost]

Heretic!

[winged finch]

Depends on the quality of the tea. I used to hate cantaloupe but then I had fresh, good quality cantaloupe and it was way different than the crud they serve as a fruit bowl side in the diner.

Same with tea, I used to be indifferent until I had proper tea.

[tardy badger]

I tell ya, you have to appreciate the hustle game of Chinese PCB fabs.

While it is very annoying to get connection requests simply for the purpose of trying to get my business, they are persistent. I get the same like 10 reps commenting on my project posts on LinkedIn

I mostly have started ignoring those comments because even when I say I’m not interested, they still push

One of them even commented asking that I accept their connection request for the sole purpose that I would be their customer

Lol

[rapid geode]

i thought linked in was for posting resumes to get a job?

[tardy badger]

It’s a “professional” social network

Though in the electronics world it’s mostly getting spammed by PCB/PCBA fabs looking for new customers

[blissful roost]

I was thinking about updating my LinkedIn, but it's so full of spam.

[tardy badger]

Nowadays it’s a mix of “I just got laid off and I’m looking for work”, “I just got a new job doing X at Y company”, “I wish Chinese fabs would stop stealing my videos and not giving credit”,”workplace influencers”, and irrelevant ads

Oh and recruiting companies desperately trying to find qualified candidates for roles that have been open for the last 6 months

[dusky estuary]

I cannot believe they are selling this for almost $300 💀

I'll be making my own for less than $100

[blissful roost]

I'm looking for a new role at my current place, one that puts me back in my local office.

Don't need SpammedIn for that. 🤣

[rapid geode]

linked in in my industry is a weapon to prevent people from moving to other companies

[blissful roost]

The idiot that got dismissed from an entry-level role here.. has (allegedly) gone to a 3rd line specialist role now. 😂

Personally, I suspect he's lying.

In all my years, I've never come across someone so incompetent.

Claims to be a "certified network engineer"; CCNA/CCNP... with "exam dump" certs.

... I am not joking.

[rapid geode]

cant beat the guy that didnt know how to instal ram here. took all the heat sinks off of $4000 worth of ram cause he thought it was packaging

[rapid geode]

after 2 hours i kinda looked at him trying to instal ram in my machine and just went to the owner 'you might want to check on him'

[blissful roost]

I once saw an "experienced IT tech" snap a brand new AWE64 Gold.. into 3 pieces.

[rapid geode]

i was told we had somone apply and then it was a different person who showed up. like they got someone else to take their interview

[tardy badger]

Holy moly

[blissful roost]

Actually seen that...

[tardy badger]

Though I’m honestly not surprised

Seems to happen more often these days

[blissful roost]

By some freak chance.. I knew the guy that turned up.

[rapid geode]

there was a guy that got hired, and then quit a few days later after he realised his supervisor was ... gasp... female

[tardy badger]

When I first went to university, I knew one person from Kazakhstan and she told me about how you could just buy your way through university there for really cheap

[rapid geode]

good thing he wasnt under the trans guy, his brain would explode

[tardy badger]

Lol

[blissful roost]

Funny aside.. I was working with a trans lass before.. she asked how I identified.

I told her my name. 😅

[rapid geode]

haha

[tardy badger]

Lol..

[rapid geode]

i identify as pizza

[tardy badger]

I identify as minding my own business

[vestal pier]

$200 of that is probably to help pay for the lawyers on retainer incase of product failure 🙂

[tardy badger]

Which is similar to identifying as pizza

[blissful roost]

She questioned my logic.. I simply replied "my gender isn't my identity".

[whole jacinth]

hey can we not joke about gender identities?

[tardy badger]

Yeah, good idea

[crystal ore]

You know, I trust my embedded skills, but if I'm going to jump out of a plane, I kind of want to trust gear that I didn't personally throw together from an Uno and a protoboard... 😅

[blissful roost]

I wasn't... But, fine.

[tardy badger]

It’s the perception is all

[blissful roost]

Yeah, I understand.

[whole jacinth]

yeah liability and certification are a big deal

[tardy badger]

Unfortunately the human brain has a difficult time distinguishing between perception and reality. :/

[blissful roost]

No touchy!! Misconduct! 😅

[rapid geode]

ha

[blissful roost]

..sorry. 😁

[whole jacinth]

we're in a text-only medium, so onlookers don't necessarily know what's in-group gallows humor and what is actual intolerance

[rapid geode]

fair

[blissful roost]

The short point was; I personally don't refer to gender as an identity for myself. That's all.
I'm a person.. that's all that matters to me.

#subjective

[rapid geode]

sure

[blissful roost]

I'll obviously respect anyone else's perspective.

[rapid geode]

i think when you say "my name is pie" and someone willfully decides no, im calling you "cake" you get... annoyed.

[blissful roost]

I've been called worse. Lol

[rapid geode]

haha

[tardy badger]

I just run by the notion of it isn’t my life, it isn’t my business. How ever you identify should make you happy, or at least comfortable with who you are. And I hope that by not making it a huge thing that people can feel natural as they identify themselves

[blissful roost]

Yarp

[rapid geode]

anyhow, this is a complex discussion, and it goes poorly on chat (especially twitter)

[tardy badger]

Yeah, definitely

[rapid geode]

certainly a lot does boil down to "um, why do you care so much about things tat have no effect on you?"

[blissful roost]

I respect everyone's perspective.. drawing the line at bigotry.
Ain't got time fo' dat.

[whole jacinth]

drawing the line at bigotry is a good start! it's also important to challenge the stereotypes and pervasive societal structures that the bigotry comes from

[blissful roost]

Certainly...

I'd have to say, being married to a black woman has certainly opened my eyes to some very disturbing situations.

[rapid geode]

eats pineapple pizza slice

[blissful roost]

Gives!!!

[rapid geode]

mine!

[blissful roost]

Dang it. 😐

Sad panda.

[rapid geode]

being exposed to people helps. this is why big cities tend to be more "liberal" (the real usage of the word). Cause you can simply ignore all the people different from you

people in our office change their opinions often because of all the variety of people. (except that one guy that quit)

you very quickly realise all your stereotypes are wrong when the person is right in front of you, working with you for a year

[blissful roost]

I'm from West London, so very multicultural.
I just didn't understand perspective.

And racism certainly doesn't have much impact on a white guy..

[rapid geode]

well the small things you dont see if its not happening to "you"

[blissful roost]

Yeah

[whole jacinth]

being around people who are different from you helps, but not as much as forming relationships with them (of whatever kind)

[blissful roost]

Definitely

[rapid geode]

thats what i mean, you get pushed into relationships with them when they are just "there"

[whole jacinth]

you might be surprised at the kinds of racist stuff white people will say right in front of me, partly because i speak English with an unmarked accent

[rapid geode]

well, some peopple are horrible of course

haha

[blissful roost]

Ohh... My wife had someone say she "needs to learn Western manners"...

I don't think said person was prepared for the American accent.

Especially with a New Jersey attitude. 😂

[rapid geode]

but theres 2 levels usually. conscious and then whats just been embedded by culture. people dont often realise the root of what they are saying and why it might be hurtful

well, east west is a new jersey thing

:x

haha

There used to be a joke that we should just put everyone in a blender and all be the same... but we'd still find ways to separate. hair colour, left handed, etc etc.

[blissful roost]

Lefties are the devil!! 😈
j/k

[rapid geode]

a lot of what i see described as racism right now is more about culture (doesnt make it any better, but it is rooted differently)

(im talking here in my city. the US is a whole different mess)

[blissful roost]

Yeah......

[tardy badger]

Anyway

[rapid geode]

movig right along

how bout that local sports team

oh, wait. nevermind

[tardy badger]

Go sports!

Lol

[blissful roost]

Football!!

[rapid geode]

no

wrong

[blissful roost]

I mean.. "soccer!"... Lol

[tardy badger]

You mean soccer 🫣

Lol

[blissful roost]

Inb4

[rapid geode]

football of both types is a sign of weak minds

😛

[tardy badger]

Lol

[rapid geode]

hockey!

ha

[tardy badger]

Only football game I watch is the superbowl

[blissful roost]

Both are boring to me.. unless you've got Bob Menery doing the commentary. 😅

[tardy badger]

I’m waiting for the world championship soldering competition

[rapid geode]

there ya go

[spice moss]

ok got twinings by london pure green tea

[rapid geode]

OUT!

[tardy badger]

Lol

[rapid geode]

haha

[blissful roost]

The English Breakfast tea is good too

[tardy badger]

I prefer harbor tea

[blissful roost]

... not that we grow tea in England. Lol

[rapid geode]

see, i dont care about this other stuff. i separate people by tea drinkers and normal people

[spice moss]

as queen elizabeth II funeral so good ot drink her majesty appointment tea

[whole jacinth]

i'm more partial to Whittard of Chelsea but it's harder to get than Twinings in the US

[blissful roost]

Hush, traitor! 😂

[rapid geode]

ha

[tardy badger]

260 years later and ya can’t accept defeat

[spice moss]

i have lipton too but its mint

[tardy badger]

Lol

[rapid geode]

teafeat?

[blissful roost]

Dez feet!!

[tardy badger]

Lol

[rapid geode]

see, we just waited it out and mom gave us the car keys wilingly

[blissful roost]

Pretty shameful, when you have to call the French for backup... Ducks!

[spice moss]

those lipton mint teabags come with triangle bags

[tardy badger]

I’m looking forward to the new era of British colonialism under Charles III and Liz truss

[rapid geode]

hey, youre the ones that lost)

[tardy badger]

Though truss said she plans to break up with the us

[blissful roost]

Lel!

[rapid geode]

truss will be gone by xmas

[blissful roost]

Hope

[tardy badger]

I appreciate you teaing up this conversation

[blissful roost]

She'll be... Trussed up, like an Xmas turkey.. 😂

[tardy badger]

Lol

[rapid geode]

would you like us to come liberate you?

we have pineapple pizzas

[blissful roost]

Yes, plz!

[rapid geode]

and, um.. insulin?

[tardy badger]

Just say the magic words, “we have oil”

[rapid geode]

oh, we have lots of oil

[blissful roost]

Bring Hershey kisses and Folger's ground coffee.

[tardy badger]

America intensifies

[whole jacinth]

magic for getting awful people to make a mess out of your country, perhaps…

[rapid geode]

ew thats american yuk

[tardy badger]

It’s called freedom

I’m joking

[blissful roost]

Ohh! 💩

I need to write a shopping list for my wife, for her trip back!

[tardy badger]

We’re liberating your oil

[rapid geode]

my country invented hawaiian pizza and very little else of note.

[tardy badger]

Government regime change results might vary

[tardy badger]

You reinvented ham, that’s cool

[rapid geode]

you can try to liberate our oil. we've been trying for 30 years.

[wooden schooner]

🙁 thanks for informing me on this

[spice moss]

liberate PCB?

[tardy badger]

Yes

[rapid geode]

we make pcb's. mostly gpus. ATI and matrox

and blackberries. um. maybe we should stop making pcbs. haha. dont seem to be good at it

[blissful roost]

And now for something completely different.....

I need to start ordering parts for a DIY 3D printer.

[rapid geode]

new topic. Which one is prettier?

[blissful roost]

Second one

[tardy badger]

I like the second one

[rapid geode]

you have redeemed yourselves after that tea nonsense.

🙂

[blissful roost]

I'm already planning to build my own bike, when I'm finally in the US.

[rapid geode]

i have to sell the frame i dont keep. probably the first one (larger size)

[blissful roost]

I'll have to practice my welding first, obvs.

[rapid geode]

oh, welding a frame. thats fun

[blissful roost]

Yarp. 😁

[rapid geode]

i have everything set up to do that here but no time

[whole jacinth]

seat height looks way too high on both, but maybe i lack imagination about body proportions or riding postures

[rapid geode]

seat height is correct

[tardy badger]

Make sure to stock up on allergy meds when you get here

[blissful roost]

I don't have any allergies.. lmao

[tardy badger]

Allergies are so much worse in the US because we thought it was a good idea to grow all male trees

So much pollen everywhere

[rapid geode]

O_o

[whole jacinth]

there was a good takedown of that myth by an actual botanist or biologist somewhere

[rapid geode]

yeah

[blissful roost]

10 years as a gardener... Not a problem for me. ☺️

[tardy badger]

But it was an actual plan by the US government

[rapid geode]

if they were all male they would not reproduce

[blissful roost]

My wife has allergies, I don't.

[rapid geode]

youd need to graft them all

[tardy badger]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urban-planners-preference-for-male-trees-has-made-your-hay-fever-worse

Male trees are preferred in urban environments

In 1949, the USDA started endorsing the widespread use of male trees in urban areas

[blissful roost]

No seeds, so less risk of spread.

[tardy badger]

Yup, we rarely grow new trees from seed

[rapid geode]

meh

[tardy badger]

We often clone through air rooting

[rapid geode]

we have maples

they are weeds

hehe

[tardy badger]

Bradford pear trees stink and are weeds and incredibly hard to get rid of

[blissful roost]

I should sneak in some cherry seeds. 😁

[rapid geode]

i need another peach and plum tree in the back yard

[tardy badger]

I never had allergy issues until I moved to the eastern US where they are everywhere

[rapid geode]

i want all plants in my yard to be for food

i need to cut down 3 huge maples

but that costs so much

[spice moss]

https://tenor.com/view/ole-missy-reindeer-night-gif-12527047

[dusty citrus]

under my hood there are tangerine trees
for some reasons nobody picks them up, probably to not look poor or something so they will eventually fall to the ground and decompose, making a mess

[spice moss]

reindeers on lapland they can come to cabin where you are too freely what is cool

[rapid geode]

well this isnt working at all

boo

[tardy badger]

Are they sugar maple?

[rapid geode]

norway

you can make syrup from them. just need double the sap

[tardy badger]

That’s good producing

Plus maple syrup is a national commodity lol

[rapid geode]

but they have to go

[tardy badger]

A national treasure

[rapid geode]

i did the math and it will cost me 5x more in power to boil down the sap than buy the syrup in the store.

i will keep the main boles though for wood

[tardy badger]

If Nicholas Cage did national treasure in Canada, he would plan to steal the national strategic supply of maple syrup

[rapid geode]

someone already stole the syrup

[tardy badger]

Yeah lol

$15m worth of it

[rapid geode]

thats just the quebec cartel though. there are lots of other sources

[whole jacinth]

there seems to be a small bit of truth in Ogren's "botanical s*xism" theory, but reality is a lot more complicated, and his theory only explains a small part of the increase in airborne allergies (link omitted to avoid deletion)

[blissful roost]

Ahh, dangit.. no Pi Zero 2 W available.

[rapid geode]

make your own

[blissful roost]

Fnaar!

[rapid geode]

i believe in you

[tardy badger]

Probably a banned word in the link, but yes there is a lot more to it than just planting tons of male trees

[whole jacinth]

yeah, climate change extending the flowering season; balance of wind-pollinated vs not, mold spores, etc.

[tardy badger]

Climate change and environmental stress plays a lot into reproduction patterns of trees. Some scientists suggest that these super hot summers we have plays into earlier and earlier releases of pollen and larger amounts of pollen being produced

[rapid geode]

pollen is good for bees

then we get honey

mmm

[tardy badger]

Well, I’d argue that fruiting plants are better for bees. Nectar is the primary source of honey

[rapid geode]

all city rees should be fruit trees, but they dont want to maintain them.

[tardy badger]

Because it’s a safety hazard unfortunately

Some people think it’s because cities want to starve homeless people, but it is mostly due to the fact they want to avoid lawsuits over people getting hurt or dying

[rapid geode]

well that goes for almost everything. like grocery stores throwing out food

[tardy badger]

Plus rotting fruit attract rodents and pest bugs like wasps

[rapid geode]

yeah, hence the maintainin

[whole jacinth]

somehow, i think cities aren't going to maintain an orchard staff to pick fruit off of street trees before they can become a problem

[rapid geode]

grumblecakes. my fluid sim is broken.

oh, nope, its back

ha

just slow

[rapid geode]

they could creat jobs and feed people. win win

[whole jacinth]

i'm not sure the fruit would be suitable for human consumption, depending on how much airborne pollutants they concentrate in their fruit (edit: not to mention soil contamination near roads)

[rapid geode]

nah, would be fine. fruit never made anyone sick

stp being so negative

😛

how bout a pizza tree

[whole jacinth]

how is that going to be less messy?

[rapid geode]

you plant a napkin tree next to it. duh

[whole jacinth]

heh. could possibly solve a lot of problems with magical trees

[rapid geode]

I should get a few dozen peaches next year. Supposedly peaches are the messiest tree

apples arent bad to pick up

[tardy badger]

A woodchuck ate all the apples of the apple tree at my parents place

[rapid geode]

wow

[tardy badger]

Weirdest thing ever

[rapid geode]

we have squirrels, skunks, racoons, rats, mice, and large bunnies. plus birds.

they killed all the pumpkins

ate lots of cucumbers

[tardy badger]

I was luck to get 22lbs of pumpkins

[rapid geode]

stayed away from most everything else

[tardy badger]

I was sure the squash beetles were going to ravage everything

[whole jacinth]

ugh, around here, too many bunnies, not enough hawks

[rapid geode]

the gta is overrun with bunnies

[tardy badger]

To quote the old “ask a ninja” videos, if you kill all the wolves, you’ll have a lot of rabbits

[rapid geode]

there are some larger rhodents but i havent seen them. not sure what they are. groundhogs or something else. size of a cat.

we need cats to take care of the rats and birds

[tardy badger]

The mantis in my garden were too late to save my crook necked squash

At my parents place in Wyoming when we lived there, the only way to control the ground squirrels was through less savory means

[blissful roost]

Wha chu sayin'?!?

[rapid geode]

ground squirrel is a comdinment

[tardy badger]

They avoided traps and poison so we had to use a pellet gun and pick them off

[rapid geode]

i like bunnies

[blissful roost]

A good ninja is hard to find....

[rapid geode]

you arent allowed to harm squirrels here

[tardy badger]

Ground squirrels are rampant in western Wyoming

They decimate gardens and eat their road kill buddies off the sides of mountain roads.

[rapid geode]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Black_squirrel_in_Santa_Clara_CA.jpg

we mostly have these guys

[tardy badger]

Tree squirrels

[rapid geode]

plus some grey ones

[tardy badger]

They are cute

But will also throw hands

[rapid geode]

and chipmunks hide in the forest

[tardy badger]

There’s a place in the wind River mountains at about 9500ft in elevation where there are tons of cute little chipmunks

We take seed up there and feed them

[rapid geode]

lots of snakes too. little garter snakes

only pest i really try to deal with is the rats. making sure they dont get in the house

for skunks just keep the gates closed

they cant climb

racoons, they just do their thing.

[half sun]

Just out of curiousity, is it weird if I use blogger as a way to display my projects, or nah?

[tardy badger]

That’s pretty common actually

[half sun]

for blogger?

[blissful roost]

I prefer self-hosted WordPress myself, but that's because I'm familiar with it.

[tardy badger]

Using a blogging platform in general. I don’t think it matters much which you use

[half sun]

I see

[lusty fossil]

Got a neat tool

Not sure how accurate it is

[tardy badger]

N-E-Mos means it can be N E thing

Lol jk

[tardy badger]

I just read all the stuff with the queens funeral took so long because kings can only move one floor tile at a time

[winged finch]

lmao

I mean... lameeeeee

[tardy badger]

Lol

Today in: the job market for engineering roles is absolutely insane:

A role I was contacted about just over a week ago is no longer available lol

My one irk with technical recruiting is the “after you got your paper” experience vs total experience

Based on my “after you got your paper” experience, I have roughly 3 years of software/embedded engineering experience. If you go by how long I’ve been in the game, I have closer to 8 years

[rapid geode]

i just point to my emmy award shelf.

i mean, it's empty... but still

speaking of weirdos... i sell cad files on etsy for like $10. someone has got the impression they are real items and wants something custom and no matter how many times i say i dont make anything they wont stop messaging me

[tardy badger]

I keep my electronics projects laying around to grab and put in front of the camera

https://tenor.com/view/patrick-sponge-bob-look-at-it-sponge-bob-square-pants-gif-14840416

Like this

[rapid geode]

ha

[dusky estuary]

Are there any good guides out there for an intro to the ATmega328?

Looking to use it as the microcontroller in my next project but I'm having some trouble with finding a tutorial that just explains everything

[ebon dew]

I enjoy when you post pics of your projects skerr. By all means share more.

[timid anvil]

My phone keeps having a sideways arrow on the battery icon anyone know what that means and how to fix that?

I been having problems charging it and I just put a new battery in it and cleaned the battery connector on my phone still same problem and same sideways arrow in battery icon

I have to restart my phone to make it charge properly.

[blissful roost]

A cropped screenshot might help.

[burnt vale]

I forgot how much fun it was to build stuff with embedded, its a fun combination of physical building and really abstract parts working in concert. been coding backend stuff and cli tooling and devops stuff for about 3 years now. I stopped building the SDR I was working on to study code

now I build cat feeder! >:3. If only I could teach the cat to press buttons and operate a keyboard

[tardy badger]

The funny part of not actively looking for a new job but just entertaining companies, is the positions getting filled and your interviews getting canceled lmao

Happened twice so far this week

[rapid geode]

does this mean there is an oversupply of employees now?

and not a shortage

[tardy badger]

Nah, it just means there’s no urgency on my part to interview

There’s still tons of roles open and not filled

But plenty of software engineers changing roles and looking for more money

[rapid geode]

ah

i want a job that pays $1m a week and only lasts a week

😛

haha

[tardy badger]

Lol

[rapid geode]

actually what i really need is 300k in 3 years to pay my house off. seems impossible unless i invent something that sells with that much profit and doesnt require any work after the inventing

[tardy badger]

The roles I was going to be interviewing for had salary up to $135k/yr

[rapid geode]

not bad

[tardy badger]

Yeah, I make just north of $100k/yr

[rapid geode]

i need the 300k on top of my current pay, after tax. haha

[tardy badger]

Lol

[rapid geode]

basically, i need an 'extra" 300

[tardy badger]

So you need to make like $400k a year

[rapid geode]

(cdn, sooo, 250us?)

[late fulcrum]

Why the 3 year timespan?

[rapid geode]

ha, 600

taxes are close to 40% on wages above 150 or 200.

3 years cause the mortgage is up and ill be hit with a crazy interest rate

[tardy badger]

37-39% for wages over $200k for singles, $400k for married couples

For the US + add any local income taxes

[late fulcrum]

What kind of mortage has a balloon payment like that?

[tardy badger]

Refinance it?

[rapid geode]

46% here over 220k. thats the top bracket

canada mortgages are different. after 5 years you renew and you get the enw going rate. which might be 8-10% by then

vs 1.9% i pay now

[tardy badger]

Geez 1.9%

I don’t even think US mortgage rates went that low at their lowest

[rapid geode]

we had 1.8 ish for fixed. 1.5 ish for variable at the lowest

[late fulcrum]

Mine's 3.25%, I've heard of people getting 2.8% or so, but that's the lowest I'm aware of.

[rapid geode]

today it is about 5.3?

yeah 5.34

but its going up and up

the difference winds up being an extra $1500 a month if it hit 9% i think

so... better to just try and pay it off

but i need some sort of sideline business. selling 3d printable pizza

[tardy badger]

30 fixed rate in the US is averaging above 6%

[rapid geode]

no such thing here.

but 6 is still kinda high.

as in it would make my paymens $500+ more a month

thats a lot of pizza

ha

[tardy badger]

Yeah

So while home prices are falling here, interest rates make it unaffordable for me

Homes down the street at $580k, a 6% rate would be like a $3800 payment

[rapid geode]

in reality, ill probably pay a lump of 100k in 3 years, and then deal with whatever the new payment is and be ok. but theres a raft of epople that will lose their houses in 2-4 years.

[crystal ore]

Time for fact to catch up with fiction!

[rapid geode]

580k wont get you a house here. maybe a cardboard box

hahaha

[spice moss]

nvidia unveiled new graphics cards for gaming and they new RTX chip is called Ada loveface

[blissful roost]

Ooohhh!! I do loveface.

[dusty citrus]

jeez I wish an fpga like thing were you can "upgrade" your hardware with a software update

[late fulcrum]

That's pretty much what an FPGA does. You could flash a basic ARM CPU on it, then reflash it with a RISC-V, then reflash it again with a PowerPC core.

[dusty citrus]

yes but for consumer stuff like pcs
so you do not need to buy new ewaste every year

[spice moss]

i saw some video of smaller FPGA like micro FPGA if i read the slide right on the video thumbnail

[whole jacinth]

i think the market incentives simply aren't there for that kind of versatility in a consumer product. yes it's unfortunate and has awful long-term environmental consequences

[late fulcrum]

It sort of depends on what you're using computers for. I generally only refresh mine every several years, and peripherals like monitors even less often (I also tend to repair things when I can as well, I have two monitors I've repaired at least once, and one four times over quite a few years)

[burnt vale]

lol, fpga with nanomachines and silicon resevior to build the new hard software update

every five years you press the "update" button on the board and it builds better hardware

[rapid geode]

i expect an fpga that could emulate an rtx would be the size of a pizza and cost $500000.

my CNC has an fpga card for the IO control. you can update it's firmware to give IO different functions. That seems to be the most common fpga use, high speed custom IO

[tardy badger]

I saw this on LinkedIn

I laughed a little too hard at Microsoft’s Org structure

[blissful roost]

I dread to think what Fujitsu would look like....

[tardy badger]

Or Lenovo

[blissful roost]

Yuh huh

[tardy badger]

If you ever want a corporate thriller, just read company reviews of working for lenovo

[blissful roost]

Ohh, it's bad enough being at Fujitsu.

To be fair, it's not so much the company... But where you are in the company.

[tardy badger]

There’s something to be said about Asian owned multinational corporations and intense internal competition in which literal segments will throw other segments under the bus. Even though they are all working towards developing the same products lol..

It was that way at Lenovo, and I was just a contractor in their fulfillment center

[blissful roost]

Not seen any of that myself.

GoDaddy are terribad.. glad I got out.

[tardy badger]

I have an account and some domain names with godaddy

I never interact with their customer service though so

[blissful roost]

I have one domain.. which I'll move to Google soon.

Humm... I'd pay extra on renewal with Google.

£10/pa Vs £7.95/pa.. lol

[timid anvil]

@blissful roost

[blissful roost]

Ok, that's weird...
How many junk apps do you have installed on that?!?

[timid anvil]

Idk i haven't installed any apps recently

I probably have a lot

[blissful roost]

Apparently that particular icon means the phone is charging a connected device.

[timid anvil]

How's that possible?

It's not hooked up to anything

[blissful roost]

I see what looks like a USB icon, top left..

[timid anvil]

Yea I've clicked that

And a menu pops up an disapeers right away

[blissful roost]

Smells like some kind of bugware jank to me.

[timid anvil]

Oh now it comes up but it won't change

I hit always nothing an just once Nothing

Before that would just flash up once an go away

[blissful roost]

Start by removing apps that look like potential jank..

[timid anvil]

Alright

[blissful roost]

If that doesn't do it.. I'd be tempted to do a backup, then wipe the phone.

[timid anvil]

Alright

Thanks

[blissful roost]

It could be an OS bug, being a custom version... But, that's a hard one to tell.

[jolly briar]

hi all i knows its general but am asking did someone has experience with MCP2515 / shield or board (the one for interfacing car network (can bus high/low )

i would like to know if it can simulate the network without the arduino ?

[late fulcrum]

Nah, fit in your hand and only cost $80k or so. Could be considerably faster than an RTX, even.

[rapid geode]

ha

[late fulcrum]

Heh, read one about working at amazon, not a thriller, more like Hunger Games

[tardy badger]

I thought the prototyped on those ultrascale xilinx that cost like $200k

I guess it’s only $87k

Virtex ultrascale+

Nearly 9m logic cells, 35b transistors

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/XCVU19P-2FSVA3824E/11588539

In an easy to solder 3824-FCBGA

[rapid geode]

so what cpu could you make on it? i see its now amd, i wonder if they can test a 32 core cpu design on it?

[tardy badger]

I did see someone crammed a 128 core RISC-V processor into one but I’m struggling to find the link to the article

[rapid geode]

or buy 32 $5 pi's

ha

ok mayb enot

i want somethign that can render halo real time

actually they used to do that. special cards, etc. back when a pentium 3 was the best pc

but now it seems gpus are where it's at

[shy fiber]

Are there any good stretchable sensors out there? I have a heart model that I'd like to measure how big it has expanded...

[late fulcrum]

Like this one? https://www.adafruit.com/product/519

[shy fiber]

Thanks for the reply. I did saw this one, but am thinking a mesh type would make more sense rather than cord... the other one I found on adafruit was the fabric one, but that's pressure sensor, which is different than my need.

[quartz mango]

Does anyone know how installing circuit python affects the available disk space on hardware with "bigger" flash? Specifically, if I install CP on an ESP32 with 8MB of flash, do I still end up with the same 1MB partition for CP code or do I actually still have 5MB?

[shadow siren]

the drives that are setup on the MC's like esp32 are in effect a fat12 disk so a bigger storage space gets you more storage

[tardy badger]

Happy Earth, Wind, and Fire day

https://tenor.com/view/september-earth-wind-and-fire-do-you-remember-21st-night-of-september-disco-gif-18346287

[fierce prawn]

Is it good to use a seeed studio rp2040 for a small keyboard with rgb

[solar kindle]

My spouse and their friend were just talking about this yesterday. Neither could remember what day of September it was. I said 20th, so I was no help at all. 😄

[tardy badger]

You might be able to do a small MacroPad with it, maybe a 5x5 one, use the remaining pin for driving neopixels

That would be 11 total pins

Then add an i2c display and/or rotary encoder with the Stemma QT connector

Oh wait, seeed Studio doesn’t have that

If you used the Adafruit QTPY RP2040 you could do that

[night crescent]

SHOW and TELL 9/21/2022 https://youtu.be/pQlk4CygWi8

[night crescent]

ASK AN ENGINEER 9/21/2022 LIVE! https://youtu.be/cz9DPWV3Mv0

[fierce prawn]

What should I use to drive them
KMK or QMK

[ebon dew]

The RP2040 feather has 21 GPIO pins. You could create a keyboard with 10x10 matrix. That's 100 keys. Adding only 1 I2C expander chip (which uses 2 GPIO on a Feather for i2C) can provide 64 additional pins using an 8x8 diode matrix with each expander. Hypothetically, what's the maximum pins you could get from a feather board? If you used every GPIO for expanders only, that's 10 expanders (64 potential keys per expander) for 640 keys maximum with a feather and the MCP23017. Just thought I'd throw that out there. You can make a full sized keyboard using a QT Py and i2c expanders and a diode matrix, np. All that's really involved is learning how to work with expanders and creating a diode matrix. It's definitely not plug and play but totally doable for even a beginner that's determined to learn how to make one (which i haven't yet but intend to someday).

[blissful roost]

A standard 104-key RB would suffice for me. 😁

There's 26 GPIO on the standard Pico.

[ebon dew]

Well if you want RGB lighting then you must at least double your required pin count depending on the LED you choose.

[blissful roost]

Nah, not for me.

... you could go with a second Pico for lighting.

[ebon dew]

Yeah there's more on the Pico making it a little easier but if you want a full keyboard you're going to run into the same limitation eventually, wanting to add more pins and LED's.

[blissful roost]

Can you do a full 104 on a single Pico?

[ebon dew]

expander chips are easier to work with. i've been using them in my project, they work great. i don't have it in a diode matrix. 2 expanders are enough for 6 keys and LED's (not RGB).

with expanders absolutely.

[blissful roost]

Ahh, yes.. I'd want at least 3 LEDs for a standard 104.

[ebon dew]

diode matrix's are really code heavy and also require specific hardware design, totally doable though.

[blissful roost]

So, in short.. I'd need at least one expander for a 104-key with 3 LEDs?

[ebon dew]

the trick to getting up to the 640 keys is the combination of expanders and diode matrix. can't get there with either on their own, requires both.

if we're talking about a pico with 26 gpio then -2 for 1 expander. so that's 24 keys + 64 = 88. 1 expander won't be enough to get you to 104.

[blissful roost]

Bugger

[ebon dew]

oh wait, i did the math on the diode matrix wrong.

[blissful roost]

Lol

That's why I ask questions... I can't do the maths. 😅

[ebon dew]

forgot i needed to split it in half

24/2 = 12

12x12 matrix = 144 keys

you could do it without the expander using only a diode matrix

if you used all 26 gpio that's 26/2=13

13x13=169 keyboard using only the pico and a diode matrix.

[blissful roost]

Fair. 👍

[ebon dew]

but as you can see the pico alone provides 169 keys and the maximum with expanders on the pico is 832

[blissful roost]

I've been considering converting the IBM SK-8815, with a Pi Zero 2 W integrated.. using a Pico as the controller would be extra sweetness.

[ebon dew]

using the mcp23017 specifically, there are some expanders out there which offer more pins but they're far more expensive and harder to find.

i guess you could go with an SMD option, i only looked for through hole zif chips

[blissful roost]

Ohh, I'd just use the Pico as-is.

Got more than enough space inside the keeb.

I've got 2 Pico available and the Zero 2 W.

If it doesn't need an expander, even better.. less work. 😁

[ebon dew]

i wanted to answer the original question of how to add enough keys while also making them rgb. expanders is really the only way if you want to do a full size keyboard, you might be able to squeak by if it's one of those 30% or 60% keyboard though.

[blissful roost]

Yeah, I get you.

I'm very specifically aiming for full 104 myself, converting an existing keeb.

It has extra media function keys, but I'm less fussed about those.

[ebon dew]

yep i got a couple free with orders and i'm like what is this tiny thing, how am i supposed to build a keyboard with this... there's not nearly enough pins.

took working with expanders on a recent project before the light bulb went off in the noggin.

expanders are actually really easy to work with if you treat them like stemma i2c devices

just give it sda, scl, power, gnd, and voila you have 16 extra pins.

i'm using the bare chips, not the expander modules to be clear

[blissful roost]

👍

I don't get to work on electronics projects at work.. it's all remote IT stuff.

I'm doing BIOS and iRMC firmware updates today.
Donkey work. Lol

[ebon dew]

i'm running 16 step switches with built in led's so it actually needs 32 pins. i'm not using a diode matrix, expanders only with the pico and i only have 1 GPIO pin free left on the pico.

oof, gl with that

[blissful roost]

Eeehhh... Tedious, but at least it's overtime and not my regular duties.

[ebon dew]

honestly didn't even learn about diode matrix's until i'd already designed the pcb and had it shipped to me.

not that i would do anything different, but it's excellent to know about diode matrix's if you ever plan to build a keyboard, it's almost required if you want to do RGB lighting too.

[blissful roost]

If I recall, the diodes are to eliminate cross-talk.. err, avoid erroneous key detection?

Something, something.. dark side...

[crude folio]

ghosting

[ebon dew]

diode matrix is a way to use 1 pin for a row or column of keys

and then another set of pins for the opposite row/column

in a grid array you trigger column/row pair to make 1 single key work. allows you save a ton of pins instead of using 1 GPIO pin per key

more like using 1 pin per row

[blissful roost]

Ahh, yes..

[ebon dew]

apparently they use diodes, that's all i know for now 😛

[crude folio]

without the diodes you have to limit it to 3 keys and do some weird stuff, not good

[blissful roost]

Oof

I'll have to open the IBM keeb later and take a look.

[ebon dew]

with the additional gpio on a pico vs a feather you do get more pins so directly driving a 26 key macropad is a thing

or a 12 key with rgb macropad

hence.... the macropad haha, that's what it does. the macropad really is the best example

[hard mica]

It's like an elaborate game of 'Clue' (or Cluedo):

Your cards: [Lake Geneva] [Flare Gun] [Claymation Taunton]

[static flare]

technically, with a bit of extra circuitry, you can make a keyboard that's any size by up to 20, but I'm not sure my idea is exactly a good idea, but it removes the need for the I2C expanders, and is basically only a couple of 74 series chips (or equivalents)

[thick wind]

https://hackaday.com/2018/09/30/whats-the-cheapest-way-to-scan-lots-of-buttons/ might be a nice read for anyone interested in lots of buttons with limited IO.

[dusty citrus]

what piece of electronics do those ultrasonic vapor thing use?

[static flare]

Interesting! I was thinking of using a counter and a decoder for the scanning lines with the button outputs over on the free pins, but a shift register would work fine, if not a little slower. that being said, either way we're heading into hypothetical territory unless someone is planning on making a full keyboard using only like, a QTPy

[tardy badger]

I’m not sure what would be better in this case. You might find that someone here has done both and can make the recommendation

[thick wind]

It’s interesting that you mention that, as speed is strangely irrelevant today in the context of modern keyboards. While it would provide possible benefit in other applications or with older hardware, keyboards today are limited less by the actual poll rate of the keyboard and more by the data transfer rate. With Bluetooth LE and USB transferring data in packets, plus most modern microcontrollers having ample clock speed, the drawbacks from raising a keyboard’s poll rate above 1KHz actually begin to outweigh the gains.

If you really want to save pins without sacrificing speed, you can also theoretically use encoders on the output end of the keys as well haha

[static flare]

oh yeah! i did think of it, and dismissed it, but I just realised my objections made no sense

so you'd need just a clock line, and the data out of the matrix

and a counter reset line

[thick wind]

I mean you’re not wrong, at least from a technical perspective. From a cost perspective, you can certainly do better, but sometimes that’s just not the fun way to do things, is it?

[static flare]

exactly!

[thick wind]

All this discussion has me considering a single cpld driving a full size keyboard now haha

[static flare]

11 GPIO pins (plus the 2 I2C pins that are technically GPIO but I'm not sure they'd be needed) would make a 30 key using just matrix stuff, and using this fun method could run a 512 key keyboard

for a QTPY RP2040 (as an example device)

[thick wind]

If I’m thinking what you’re thinking (which I might not be) the principle is basically a vibrating membrane similar to a speaker, but vibrating at frequencies not easily audible to most humans. It propels superfine droplets of water into the surrounding air, creating a cool mist.

[dusty citrus]

yes, but what are they called? don't they have like a specific name or something?

[thick wind]

Something like https://www.amazon.com/ITROLLE-Atomizing-Transducer-Ultrasonic-Humidifier/dp/B094V7VWVS/ perhaps?

[dusty citrus]

thanks

[tardy badger]

I tell ya, I’m feeling a strong urge to make a custom Bluetooth speaker. Custom board and everything

[tardy badger]

Earthquakes are so strange

[late fulcrum]

Diodes are needed to avoid "ghosting", but you can do a matrix (row/column) keyboard without diodes, it's just you can get ghosting in cases where multiple keys are pressed at once.

[tardy badger]

I was in Greensboro, NC when one around a 5.2 hit Elkin,NC

[late fulcrum]

I prefer earthquacks

[tardy badger]

I thought my wife was tapping her foot on the couch causing it to shake

But her foot was no where near it lol

[blissful roost]

So... What does that do for n-key rollover when using a Pico as the controller?

[late fulcrum]

Rollover is a different but related concept. There are situations where you might press (say) 3 keys at a time, and without diodes, a matrix keyboard might read that as 4 keys pressed. What it does with this information can influence the rollover behavior, but that's generally more timing/buffer related (the keys are generally transmitted in the order they are depressed, but the ghost key will show up simultaneously with the actual key, so the chip will generally choose one to send first; additionally, if you run out of rollover due to ghost keys, they can increase the likelihood of missed keystrokes)

[tidal flare]

Hey everyone! Want to learn how to contribute to CircuitPython? Join me for the Community Help Desk on Sept. 29th at 7pm EST as I walk you through how to participate in Hacktoberfest! All levels of experience are welcome! I'll walk you through how to sign up, what tools you'll need, how to find issues to work on, and how to submit code changes. I'll share my screen in the Community Help Desk voice channel so you can follow along. Hope to see you there!