general-chat

[radiant root]

Some company Tenstar Robot also makes them, but purple pcb

• no battery circuitry
  So will it charge and discharge it or not?

[fair summit]

nope, not safely.

I see no battery-charging IC

you can use a USB power pack on any board and get battery support that wya

[radiant root]

You are a really cool guy

Wanted to say that since you are online

Sometimes I see your old posts (like from 6 years old) and they help me

[fair summit]

well, thanks!

[radiant root]

But, If I can't get BMS on-board, I have found some other solutions

Like this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005024043964.html

[fair summit]

If you connect battery voltage to the C6 board, you'll need to add a diode to protect the battery from being charged by 5V, which could cause an explosion.

[radiant root]

Got it

I also used some boards from XIAO Seeed Studio, they are pretty cool

So they do have this board: XIAO_ESP32C3, which also has battery pins on the bottom
GitHub: XIAO ESP32C3 Getting Started

[fair summit]

That is a better-designed board, and has way more documentation than these Ali Express "bargains". Your time is worth more than 2 - 5 Euro

[radiant root]

Thank you!

Okay, I feel better now, we found something, I learned something

I will go to sleep, it's too late in my timezone

[fair summit]

https://forum.seeedstudio.com/t/xiao-esp32c3-battery-ussage/266185/18 of interest; good night!

[radiant root]

They also have an interesting way to Check the battery voltage

[radiant root]

Will look into it tomorrow 🤝

[thick wind]

If only they had pads to solder a proper jst connector…

[ancient phoenix]

What battery connector does this board use

[ocean sigil]

This JST-PH connector https://www.adafruit.com/product/261

[ancient phoenix]

I mean the male one

[ocean sigil]

ah the other end of this https://www.adafruit.com/product/1131. Sorry - I don’t have any more information than this.

or do you want. the connector that goes on the board.?

https://www.adafruit.com/product/1769

[inland sonnet]

Hi I am new to Adafruit IO. I copied a micropython code that allows me to connect to my raspberry pico using Adafruit IO, however the section shown below was not explained on the YouTube video and I got the following error. Could somebody advise me on what to do next. Thanks

[thick wind]

https://www.jst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ePH.pdf

should be the s2b-ph-sm-tb if I’m not wrong

[inland sonnet]

Enter a random ID for this MQTT Client

It needs to be globally unique across all of Adafruit IO.

mqtt_client_id = "somethingreallyrandomandunique123"

Initialize our MQTTClient and connect to the MQTT server

mqtt_client = MQTTClient(
client_id=mqtt_client_id,
server=mqtt_host,
user=mqtt_username,
password=mqtt_password)

So that we can respond to messages on an MQTT topic, we need a callback

function that will handle the messages.

def mqtt_subscription_callback(topic, message):
print (f'Topic {topic} received message {message}') # Debug print out of what was received over MQTT
if message == b'on':
print("LED ON")
led.value(1)
elif message == b'off':
print("LED OFF")
led.value(0)

Before connecting, tell the MQTT client to use the callback

mqtt_client.set_callback(mqtt_subscription_callback)
mqtt_client.connect()

error message MPY: soft reboot
wlan connected
IP address = 192.168.68.151
subnet mask = 255.255.255.0
gateway = 192.168.68.1
DNS server = 194.168.4.100
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 83, in <module>
File "/lib/umqtt/simple.py", line 107, in connect
MQTTException: 5

Not sure whether you are receiving all of my message. Anyway thanks for your reply, I will come back to this later in the week. Thanks

[radiant root]

I mean you can still solder jst connector with wires, not that clean, but works, I saw some people do that

[radiant root]

If only it was smaller and with USB type-C

[radiant root]

Hello again!
What can you say about this one?
https://lilygo.cc/products/lilygo®-ttgo-t-display-1-14-inch-lcd-esp32-control-board

• USB type-C
• BMS
• Wifi and BLE
• even display
• Many pins while being quite compact and powerful

[thick wind]

The main downside to lilygo boards that I know of is their usb C implementation doesn’t really adhere to usb specifications. With this board in particular, you may run into trouble using e-marked cables with it due to its single cc resistor.

Aside from that, though, they tend to be pretty good for the price.

[radiant root]

On AliExpress I found a copy from TENSTAR ROBOT company called T-Display ESP32 WiFi and Bluetooth - CH9102F 16MB
It's basically the same board, with more memory for cheaper price (with free shipping)

I already have an ESP-C3 SuperMini from that company and it's amazing, but I did not find software to put on it, so pins are not working at the moment. But wifi, BLE, and ESP-NOW all work, for just €1.59

[thick wind]

Lilygo designs are open source, so the existence of cheap clones does not surprise me one bit. Can’t speak to quality differences in this case, but that’s always a risk you take with clones.

[night crescent]

Desk of Ladyada - LDACs, Sparkle Motion Mini & Claude 🔧🤖
https://youtu.be/bFcRxufkZjI

Sparkle Motion Mini PCBs are here, featuring a compact 5V-only design. We are also refining small breakout boards like the DAC7578 and working on a TMC2209 driver by refactoring BusIO for versatile interfaces. Lastly, Claude & exploring compact, sensorless BLDC motor drivers via DigiKey.

[fair summit]

You could pick an Espressif dev board or other generic board that has all the pins exposed.

Note that the lack of support info for these boards is an example of what you don't get by not paying for a manufacturer who charges more to help pay support people.

[fair summit]

I don't think you are going to get an answer without more info. Please see about posting code: #welcome message. And a better place to post with more details is https://discord.com/channels/327254708534116352/355063529302392832

[radiant root]

Got it, makes sense

[night crescent]

Cuttable Neopixel sheet sample test ✂️🌈

We got this kind of nifty sample of a Neopixel 'sheet,' which is uncut LED strips - the whole thing is flexible PCB material with a cuttable square pitch of 1 cm per pixel. it's arranged as a zigzag, so you can immediately use it as one strand of neopixel in a 12 x 24 arrangement. Or you could cut it into funky shapes and connect the data to data input between segments. the panel also requires 12VDC, but that's not too challenging; it could be useful when you need a flexible sheet in an unusual shape and don't want to piece together individual NeoPixel dots! Coming soon.

[radiant root]

@fair summit How to Flash MicroPython Firmware on a ESP32 C3 SuperMini board

[fair summit]

(I am deleting the embed so it takes up less room.)

[radiant root]

I like that board, it is small and cheap.

[fair summit]

also https://circuitpython.org/board/lolin_c3_mini/

[radiant root]

So I will buy and test this Expansion Board with battery charge/discharge functionality

[radiant root]

Yeah, I saw that, but (I think) you said that USB implementation on the C3 Supermini does not allow for HID, and afaik circuitPython allows basically that, so if there is no HID possibility, then micropython is a better choice for low-level possibilities (Please fix me if I am wrong)

[fair summit]

HID is not possible with either -- that's a hardware limitation. The CircuitPython and MicroPython impls have the typical features available in either, and neither can provide full USB.

[radiant root]

I did HID with CircuitPython on Seeed Studio XIAO RP2040 board

[fair summit]

Yes, but the C3 is a different chip, without full USB.

nothing can provide HID on C3

[radiant root]

Yeah, that is what you have said, and that's why I don't use circuipython on it nor in my small GH gist )

[fair summit]

I am just saying MicroPython won't either

[radiant root]

Okay, thank you!

This board is really simple and cheap, I will not use it for HID, because for that I have RP2040 boards, some even come with USB-A by default

Like this one, I made and 3D printed cool case for it)))

It also has a cute little switch that allows to select mode:

1. Run code headless (without allowing PC to see files on it, so without standard popup on flash connection)
2. Don't run the code, allow to edit it in safe environment.

[sharp plover]

dumb question but with my intention tremors,I've gotta ask; Is there a non solder solution for the GPIO header on a RPi Zero 2W?

[radiant root]

Maybe I didn't fully understand your question, but some shops sell boards already with all pre-soldered GPIO pins making it just a tiny bit more expensive.

[late fulcrum]

There are "hammer headers", but they seem like a violent approach

[fair summit]

There are a number of suppliers for ones with pre-soldered headers: do a websearch for raspberry pi zero 2 w pre-soldered. Adafriuit itself is out of stock but we have stocked it.

[sharp plover]

already have the board and really don't want to buy another one when I have dozens of male/female headers in my parts box. I'll just have to proceed VERY carefully.

[sharp plover]

the only hammer headers I know of swim in the ocean or big aquariums. Am I missing something or are you just yanking my chain???

[raw jasper]

I think another term would be "pogo pins"?

nvm, they're a different product (I think?) https://www.adafruit.com/product/3413

[sharp plover]

I've heard of them. Didn't know they were available for GPIO pimouts

[sharp plover]

Checked out the site. Very interesting but some of the reviewssaid they can damage the RPi Zero so I think it's going to be a couple of hours of very CAREFUL soldering with this setup. That Weller iron is 45 years old. Bought it when I worked for RCA HiRel as a lab tech.
But thanks for the link!
@late fulcrum I stand corrected. There are hammer headers that don't swim
🙄

[raw jasper]

Take care!

[fair summit]

I read that weighted gloves or wrist weights have helped some people with essential tremor. Also for some people holding something under tension (e.g. with an attached strap) helped.

[bright veldt]

neat setup

VB.NET, lol

[sharp plover]

Tried all those things. Didn’t help. I also have soldered over a couple of the GPIO holes, was thinking to tin them first, but I closed up the holes……BAH!
After my knee gets done, probably this summer I’m going to have intention tremor surgery. Not really surgery. They stick my head in an MRI cage and use focused ultrasound to burn out the brain cells that are causing the tremors. To date it’s about 80% effective. Until then, no more trying to solder GPIO pins. Just buy the boards with the pins done.

[night crescent]

⚡🔋🌟 Discover the newest - Adafruit Sparkle Motion WLED/xLights board, Feather RP2350 with HSTX port and PSRAM, and Raspberry Pi 500 Desktop Kit. Solar charging enclosures, handy breadboard strips, Lightning Bolt LED Filament, and the TMC2209 stepper driver.

https://www.adafruit.com/new

[half plank]

Does anyone have the board layout and schematic or just the data sheet?

[late fulcrum]

https://files.waveshare.com/wiki/ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.69/ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.69-Sch.pdf

[half plank]

Perfect and do you know where I could just find the display. I wanted just their new round rect amoled, but couldn’t find just the display or schematic

[late fulcrum]

I would guess it's this one https://www.waveshare.com/1.69inch-lcd-module.htm

[half plank]

Ok thank you!

[sharp plover]

@late fulcrum I got the Zero 2W up and running but have run into graphic issues. My target is to try to put 6 radio buttons below or on top of a PyGame display. I have all the libs that I need loaded, I think, but I wrote the code on the RPi 4B and it doesn't seem to like the PySide6 library on the Zero. I keep throwing "This plug-in does not support propagateSizeHints()" errors. I'm just getting my hear wrapped around doing graphics (3D visualization) and I even have BLE running on the Zero. Do you know which graphics package would work and fit on the Zero?
Right now I'm running a full 64 bit Debian OS with desktop. Should I drop the desktop and go to the 64 bit Lite version? Would I just be using command line all the time?
THANKS!

[late fulcrum]

Alas, that's beyond what I know about.

[sharp plover]

nm. the Zero4U board didn't like my monitor. With some "creative" cabling (adapters micro-usb to usb-c, others) I have the code working on both my touchscreens. The 15" and the 7". Go figure. I also am using an old Apple Bluetooth keyboard and with the touchscreen working there is no need for a mouse, hence no need for the Zero4U.
Still would like your opinion on whether I need the desktop OS. I've actually gotten a lot more comfortable, with my Linux for Dummies and O'Reilly Linux books by my side, so I don't fear command line like I used to.

[late fulcrum]

You know your needs better than I do. Sometimes I use the desktop OS, sometimes I go headless, it depends on what I intend to do with it.

[raw jasper]

Since you are apparently making a graphical application, keeping the full desktop image for prototyping and making a "lite" image for production with only the graphical server + needed libraries + a startup script to boot up directly to your app so that you have more RAM & CPU cycles available at a later stage if needed would be OK IMO

[sharp plover]

All I'm looking to do is read BLE data and display orientations of 2 cylinders. The buttons would be Start, Stop, Visualization, Chart, Save, Clear.I've decided it would be more efficient to just capture the data first (100 tuples with 6 values), then do the visualization or charts, save the data or clear it out. I'm using a 64GB SD card and the data sets eventually get transfered out as .csv files.
@raw jasper Thanks for the suggestion!

[raw jasper]

If you are not planning to save the data it might be best to log it directly to some data structure in memory so as not to quickly exhaust the write limit of the SD card

They can be fairly fickle

[sharp plover]

Yup, thinking of putting the data in an array as I capture it. Haven't figured the memory needed but 100 sets of 6 fp numbers. I think if I go without the desktop I should have the memory. Have to start crunching......

[raw jasper]

Tip: If you use the numpy library you can specify the width of the floats, e.g. np.float16, np.float32, np.float64 etc (assuming you are using python)

[late fulcrum]

Single precision floats take 4 bytes. 4 * 6 * 100 is 2.4kB That's tiny

[sharp plover]

thanks folks!!!! VERY good info

[raw jasper]

(Also if you are storing the floats in a numpy array it's much easier to crunch the numbers en masse because you don't have to go through a python for loop)

[late fulcrum]

Faster too

[raw jasper]

Yup, I accidentally a word (and a conjunction)

[sharp plover]

NP👍

[raw jasper]

@sharp plover
As a demo, you can do stuff like:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> arr = np.zeros((100, 6), dtype=np.float32) # initialize 100 x 6 float32 array 
>>> arr[0] = [1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4, 5.5, 6.6] # Set the first column to some random numbers
>>> arr[0] # inspect the array's contents
array([1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4, 5.5, 6.6], dtype=float32)
>>> arr = 2*arr # double the entire array
>>> arr[0]
array([ 2.2,  4.4,  6.6,  8.8, 11. , 13.2], dtype=float32)
>>> arr = np.sqrt(arr) # get square root of array
>>> arr[0]
array([1.4832398, 2.0976176, 2.5690465, 2.9664795, 3.3166249, 3.6331804],
      dtype=float32)
>>> arr.mean() # Compute the mean over the entire array
np.float32(0.02677698)
>>> arr.std() # Compute the array's standard deviation
np.float32(0.27619377)

[sharp plover]

effin' awesome 😀

[raw jasper]

I actually found the name of the famiclone I was trying to remember back then. It was the 步步高　多媒体学生电脑. It had floppy disk support and a built-in(?) 6502 assembler that could compile to the equivalent of .COM files for the DOS-like "OS" it shipped with.

Apparently, to make up for the 6502's lack of interrupts, you accessed DOS functions by loading the "ID" of the function you wanted to access to the A register and parameters to the X & Y registers, then JSRing to a special function that served as a jump table

[sharp plover]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take a look for it while I'm out tomorrow. I seem to remember solder wick as well.

[bitter badge]

Yeah, solder wick is good stuff. You can also get a spring loaded solder sucker, but I prefer the wick. It's also really handy for recycling components from old electronics!

[sharp plover]

I've got a "sucker" but it just doesn't seem to work on those tiny holes. Probably because getting everything lined up with the tremors gets dicey and the more I have trouble, the more I shake. Nasty condition, especially for a former lab tech who spent decades soldering very small electronics. Another thing that frustrates me.

[bitter badge]

Yeah, I can see how a sucker would be hard to use if you have trouble keeping it still. With the wick you might be able to line it up with the tremors so that there's always some wick on the spot you need. I wish you luck. I do a lot of fine handwork stuff (soldering, painting minis when I have the time,...), and one of the worries I have is that I'll end up getting tremors as I age. Just thinking about is scary.

[sharp plover]

I'm looking at a non-invasive surgical procedure that I've been following for around 15+ years. Its started out with success percentages around 40%-60%. Now it's up to 80% and they have it in a local hospital so I'm setting up the referrals to get it done.
Your head goes in an MRI cage and they aim focused ultrasound at a group of cells that sporadically or under "intention" fire off and cause the tremors. The ultrasound burns out the offending cells.
So keep the faith, over the years it's gotten MUCH better so in a few years I'm sure it'll get even better. What I like is it's outpatient, no standard surgery and it's about a 90 minute procedure, last I read.

[fair summit]

Plumbing flux is acidic and corrosive, and contains stuff like zinc chloride. Do not use plumbing flux for electronics. It will eventually eat away at your connections. Maybe it's worked for you so far, but it's not a good choice at all. Use rosin flux for electronics. e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/6f2d7w/can_i_use_this_oatey_flux_and_solder_on/
I cannot emphasize this enough.

[bitter badge]

Do you know if tinning flux for electronics eixsts?

[bitter badge]

I hope it works out well!

[fair summit]

sure https://superiorflux.com/products/electronics-soldering-flux/electronics-wire-tinning-flux/

but "regular" flux can be used for tinning. I have a tub of rosin flux I use for regular soldering use, and also some Chip-Quik fluxes in syringes

[bitter badge]

Good to know. I've generally only used it for larger wires, which is typically magnet wire in projects that are not connected directly to circuit boards. This is probably why I've not had any issues. I also use it to tin soldering tips. It all burns off when I do that. I'll avoid using in places where corrosion would be an issue. (I don't think I've used it on circuit boards, mainly because most of what I've done at that scale has been with gold or tin plated contacts.)

[fair summit]

would you mind editing your previous post (or deleting it)

[bitter badge]

Tinning flux isn't flux to be used with tinning. It's flux with tin particles in it. This way there's no gap between getting hot enough to melt the solder and applying it. Even rosin flux on its own burns off pretty fast, so while it will clean the contact, there will be a brief gap between the flux burning off and the metal getting hot enough to melt the solder.

[bitter badge]

Deleted.

[fair summit]

thanks

I don't know if there's electronics flux with tin particles, but one would have to be careful with it, due to the conductive particles

[bitter badge]

No problem. I guess the reason I've never had problems with it is that I've never used it directly on anything with very thin conductors.

[fair summit]

or it would be used in some manufacturing process (I don't know how wire ends up being tinned during production)

Heathkit would void your warranty if they discovered you had used plumbing flux for assembly. And they would decline to repair such kits.

[bitter badge]

That does make sense. Pure tin can also develop spurs, so you wouldn't want to apply much unless you are immediately soldering on it. This is part of why gold plating is more common today.

When hand soldering, we tin merely by applying some solder to the wire, but this can be very finicky, due to the rosin boiling and burning off before the metal is hot enough to solder. With microelectronics, it's generally not a huge problem, because the leads and pads heat up so quickly. With wire gauges thicker than around 18 or 16 gauge though, rosin doesn't work terribly well and it's easy to end up with oxidized patches that won't tin properly.

There is another option for easy tinning: Solder paste. I'm not sure that would work well for someone with tremors though, because the metal density in the paste is quite high, making it difficult to apply very small amounts by hand even if you don't have tremors.

[sharp plover]

And of course this ALL depends on finding a store that sells it or it's back to spamazon

[bitter badge]

I do have a tub of rosin soldering flux. I guess you could thin out solder paste with that to get a simple tinning flux suitable for electronics...

And mixing solder paste with flux wouldn't put pure tin on the contacts, so you wouldn't have to worry about spurs.

[sharp plover]

realizing you're not resellers which flux (brand) is what you folks use?

[bitter badge]

I have a tub of RadioShack brand flux that I bought...honestly, probably in the late 1990s or early 2000s. I generally rely on the rosin core of my solder, unless I'm soldering something with enough mass to make heating rapidly a problem, so most of it is still left. (I only have a cheap iron right now.) Where I have used it though, it worked quite well.

I'm not sure if RadioShack still sells it (or is even still running; last I heard, most of their stores had closed, but they were still going online and occasionally had stock carried in small local hardware stores).

[hollow flint]

Adafruit promotes DigiKey on their YouTube channel. Does DigiKey carry it?

[bitter badge]

They might. That would certainly be a good choice and likely cheaper than RadioShack.

Yes, I just checked. Digikey has rather a lot of options. Give me a moment and I'll see if they have a rosin tinning flux.

[sharp plover]

Thanks folks. Yeah I'm doing the DigiKey thing. Need a board as well

[bitter badge]

I don't see a tinning flux, but they have a two tub set with rosin flux in one and tip tinner in the other. If you wanted to mix your own tinning flux, that would probably be a good starting point.

I couldn't tell you what ratio would be good, but I don't think you would need a lot of tip tinner. I would experiment, starting with a low concentration of tip tinner and working up.

Of course, they also have solder paste in rosin flux that could be diluted.

[lapis anchor]

I'm a big fan of the MG Chemicals solder and flux, Digikey carries their stuff. I can't say I've used their tinner, I just throw some excess solder on the tip when you put it down - works great.

[bitter badge]

The particular context is tinning circuit board contacts when you have hand tremors. It's extremely easy to accidentally close up through holes even when you don't have tremors. A potential solution is to use some kind of tinning flux that has a small amount of fine solder or tin particles in it. Tinning electrical flux doesn't seem to be a thing, but it doesn't look like it would be hard to mix your own.

[late fulcrum]

Many modern boards are tinned or gold flashed and don't require pretinning to get a good solder bond. And yes, you can thin solder paste with soldering flux to get something like electronics grade tinning flux.

[raw jasper]

Can somebody recommend a good taobao proxy?

[late fulcrum]

I usually use bhiner, myself

[raw jasper]

Thanks! Is there a way to search directly in Chinese with it? Chinese queries yield "no results"...

[late fulcrum]

Erf, that used to work. Sometimes I'll search taobao directly then search Bhiner for the item number. I know that's awkward, however

[raw jasper]

I found some proxy service called "superbuy" that lets you search directly in Chinese and even see the original listing in Chinese if you set it right

(select "no translation search" and set language to 中文)

But I have no idea if they are reputable

[late fulcrum]

Me either 😦

[raw jasper]

In any case, you can use it to search taobao in Chinese if you get firewalled out

Because sometimes I've had Alibaba group sites throw so many CAPTCHAs at me they end up being almost unusable

[late fulcrum]

Alas, the searches I used to do (like 氦氖激光) don't return much in the way of useful results these days

[raw jasper]

That sounds like a search for alibaba, not taobao xD

[late fulcrum]

True, I was just casting my net around, as there's not a lot of modern production.

[raw jasper]

Seriously? I had no idea

[late fulcrum]

Most folks just use cheap, low voltage diode lasers these days

[raw jasper]

ooh

And why'd you need it specifically?

[late fulcrum]

The beam quality from gas lasers is superior. I'm also a fan of high voltage electronics in general (hence searches like 电视高压包), and I also enjoy the æsthetics.

[raw jasper]

That looks absolutely beautiful, as long as you're viewing it behind appropriate safety glasses I guess

[late fulcrum]

There's a bunch of useful industrial kit that's difficult or expensive to fabricate except in quantity, so I keep imagining there's a factory or warehouse somewhere with stacks of the parts I'm looking for, but finding them is the trick.

I do use all appropriate safety gear with higher power lasers, but these are class I lasers, producing on the order of a couple hundred microwatts.

I am totally wearing safety glasses when I fire up the big argon ion lasers

[raw jasper]

I wouldn't know, I don't work with optics!

[raw jasper]

This looks like a microscope beam setup...

[thick wind]

Taobao is a pain outside of China. I’m so glad my mother has an account I can use…

[sharp plover]

Ever do anything with dye lasers or are they a thing of the past?

[late fulcrum]

No, I've only worked with gas lasers. I assume dye lasers are still in use, as they're capable of producing some useful wavelengths that are otherwise unavailable.

[sharp plover]

I used to sweep the floors at Spectra Physics in Piscataway, NJ as a summer job

[late fulcrum]

I have several Spectra Physics lasers, my favourite might be this SP-127

I do like their sidearm style tubes: this one had sat for decades and was hydrogen contaminated so it lit lavender instead of the usual pinkish orange, and with no laser output. Running it for a few weeks cleaned up the contamination, and it now works again as a laser.

[ruby pasture]

Hi guys. I have some trouble with ESP32. Sometimes my ESP32 board gets restarted continuously when uploading some programs. No errors. (433Mhz rf transmitter and receiver code with esp32). Without any physical impact. I haven't any Screenshots related to this case. But anyone has this issue.

[late fulcrum]

I have had boards restart because a 433MHz transmitter nearby induced electrical noise into the circuitry

[ebon dew]

@thin canopy just read your weather architecture playground note. brilliantly done. excellent read.

[thin canopy]

Thank you. I appreciate all the work you did to build your weather monitors and to characterize web APIs. Very inspirational with some useful examples.

[valid spoke]

I have a friend that would be bothered in a good way by these photos

There's dozens of you photonics guys

Dozens

[lapis anchor]

was that a Tobias Fünke reference I just saw? 👀

[valid spoke]

https://youtu.be/lKie-vgUGdI?si=_i-gsV1d-AalhDrM

I didn't group myself with them tho photonics guys are too scary

I'm currently on the search for the perfect screen for one of my projects

It has been more annoying than I thought

[lapis anchor]

haha, such a great show. 🙂 anyone who throws out those kinds of references is a-okay in my book!

[valid spoke]

Thank you

I try to be

Going to be rewatching it soon ish

Hoping to have free time in 7 months

That ada fruit color OLED is very nice but I need it bigger

[ruby pasture]

Is it not an issue with the program? For instance, are these libraries incompatible with the ESP32?

[tardy badger]

Long time no speak 👋

[late fulcrum]

I'm not saying it's not an issue with the program, just that another possibility exists.

[sharp plover]

@late fulcrum If I may ask, what is it you do?

[late fulcrum]

Currently, I'm a software developer, previously I was a hardware developer. Several jobs ago, I worked in a high performance fiber optics lab, and previous to that I worked in a particle beam lab with a dye laser lab next door.

When I was in high school, our physics department had a HeNe laser students could borrow. I really enjoyed using it, and wanted one of my own. Later, it has perhaps gotten a bit out of hand...

[sharp plover]

@late fulcrum Very cool! Only lasers I've played with are small stage lasers at home and setting up massive ones near the end of my "roadie" days.
Over my career I've run the whole hardware/software gamut, mostly self taught except for classes at places I worked.

[late fulcrum]

Sounds like we're birds of a feather!

My roadie days didn't include big lasers, mostly sound, lights, and big fog machines made out of 55 gallon drums

[sharp plover]

Yeah, those are what I played with. I think I technically was the first person to use lasers on a stage in a New Jersey disco bar. Used a couple of spinning motors with round front surface mirrors.
AHHHhhh. The old days. Then at RCA I got to play with fun stuff like the F-16 avionics, Hydrogen bomb fuses and most of the Ford automotive electronics.
I" have a small 30 gallon fog machine I made for Halloween

I used to run quite a Halloween production until the local Sheriff asked me to tone it down because I would have a few hundred kids and parents dancing in my driveway and I backed up the traffic.

I DJ'd on the side while I was a Data Architect at Wells Fargo Corporate. This past year I decided my DJ days were over at 75 so I sold most of my equipment.

[late fulcrum]

That's great! I never ran my own Halloween, but did help out and build stuff for local haunted trails

[sharp plover]

I ran about 15 songs I programmed with DMX Show Buddy so I'd just click a switch and away it went. Ran for about 2 hours but the programming took me about 6 months. One song (Black Magic Woman) had about 275 lighting cues. Here's the lighting rig as I was building it.
Birds of a feather INDEED!!

[late fulcrum]

Ah, automation is great, but boy does it take some time

[sharp plover]

Like most nifty things. But the overwhelming joy of watching it run is priceless.
Sucks being an old fart, I'd love to DJ again. Purely Classic rock.

brb, breakfast calls.....

[tight zinc]

Anyone know where to get a relatively cheap supply of ESP32 Wroom 32U modules?.....

I Would like to start building my projects round this board as it has external antenna Or does anyone know if i can / How to add an external antenna to the existing ESP32 Wroom 32E boards bypassing the pcb antenna. Need a bit of range on espnow protocol with a couple walls in between.
[15:06]
the only thing i can find is the dev board bit i don't need all the extra junk on the board

[hollow flint]

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/espressif-systems/ESP32-WROOM-32UE-4MB/11613136 and https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Espressif-Systems/ESP32-WROOM-32UE-N4?qs=sGAEpiMZZMu3sxpa5v1qrkR/6t0IkXq879qH6LphFh8%3D

[tight zinc]

Amazing i typed that in last night on Digikey &. nothing !!. Thank you 😄

[hollow flint]

Also, if you want a through-hole but still cheap dev board, you should consider https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/seeed-technology-co-ltd/113991114/19285530 and https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Seeed-Studio/113991114?qs=3Rah4i%252BhyCEHk7Z4Wa73Xg%3D%3D

[hollow flint]

Just note that these are ESP32-S3 rather than ESP32. It should be close enough to work for most use-cases.

[tight zinc]

I can rearrange my PCB top accommodate, its purely just to pick up some switches attached to a shed the other end of the property.... need the external antenna to get round some walls that are in the way.

[floral fiber]

I've got the RP2040 Macropad that i love but i'm wondering if there is a way to make it Bluetooth and powered. Maybe a new one could be developed?

[fair summit]

You can build something functionally equivalent, but we don't have an all-in-one product: https://learn.adafruit.com/ble-hid-keyboard-buttons-with-circuitpython

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3954

https://www.adafruit.com/product/5157

https://www.adafruit.com/product/4980

[pliant loom]

Hi everyone,
I'm trying to run some tests on my ESP32-S3 Super Mini and my TFT LCD with the GC9A01 driver.
I'm uploading this simple code with a basic configuration, but I'm getting the following error in the serial monitor:
Could someone please help me?

ELF file SHA256: fea01dc48368d571

E (123) esp_core_dump_flash: Core dump flash config is corrupted! CRC=0x7bd5c66f instead of 0x0
Rebooting...
ESP-ROM:esp32s3-20210327
Build:Mar 27 2021
rst:0xc (RTC_SW_CPU_RST),boot:0x28 (SPI_FAST_FLASH_BOOT)
Saved PC:0x40377368
SPIWP:0xee
mode:DIO, clock div:1
load:0x3fce3808,len:0x41c
load:0x403c9700,len:0x9a8
load:0x403cc700,len:0x28ac
entry 0x403c98b8
E (93) spi_flash: Detected size(4096k) smaller than the size in the binary image header(8192k). Probe failed.

assert failed: do_core_init startup.c:328 (flash_ret == ESP_OK)

[pliant loom]

Even using such a simple code, it gives me the same error.

[late fulcrum]

It looks like the board itself needs to be set up or formatted or something. However, I don't know about these particular boards.

[pliant loom]

this is my board esp32 s3, basic config are right?

the other thing is, i can't find datasheet of this board.
I bought it on Temu

[late fulcrum]

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Temu didn't properly initialize a board. Expressif describes the various functions: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32s3/api-reference/peripherals/spi_flash/index.html

[pliant loom]

Sorry, what does it mean?

[late fulcrum]

My guess is that the flash chip on the board has to be initialized to work (kind of like formatting a blank floppy disk or USB drive) before you can use it. Most sellers will do this for you, but the low end ones (DealExtreme, Wish, Amazon, Temu, etc.) often skip such things.

[fair summit]

E (93) spi_flash: Detected size(4096k) smaller than the size in the binary image header(8192k). Probe failed.
This seems like a key error. Something in your compile settings is assuming a larger flash size than is present. Are you using Arduino? Check the settings menu.

[pliant loom]

I'm using platformio with arduino framework

[fair summit]

Tools menu

Something like this:

I don't know what's in platformio

maybe try in Arduino first

[pliant loom]

I think Is "board_build.flash_size"

[fair summit]

so 4MB, not 8MB

[pliant loom]

I have different problems on arduino IdE

[pliant loom]

I tried, but same error🙈

[fair summit]

maybe restart the IDE. But I'm at the end of my suggestions. It certainly seems to be compiling for a flash size that's too big, and that's the fundamental problem. Try another similar board def that's definitely 4MB

[raw jasper]

I was scrolling up and was greatly amused to see that the battery's make is "SAFT", which is the German word for juice 🧃

[rapid geode]

lemony

[night crescent]

SHOW and TELL 1/15/2025 🔧⚡️ - https://youtu.be/Uy2WAdBSXxg

[night crescent]

ASK AN ENGINEER 1/15/2025 LIVE! 🔧⚡️🏭💪👩‍🔧🗽🇺🇸 - https://youtu.be/Vm_R5diG9Wg

10% off! Use code: sparklemotion on checkout, expires 11:59PM ET go go go go! https://adafruit.com/new

[spice moss]

new glenn is a go

[spice moss]

blue origin seems did the great first launch

[fading hare]

I am looking at PCB-mount 2 position terminal blocks for higher current, and a lot of them have four pins. What is the purpose of this, and how do I account for that when designing?

Like this Wiedmüller connector, for instance. Are there two pins to improve current flow? Or do they have some other purpose?

That terminal block looks like this in KiCad. My assumption here is that 1,2 are for one slot, and 3,4 for another? Trying to make sense of this.

So if I have a basic battery connected to this + would be on 1,2 and - would be on 3,4?

[cursive hazel]

Is the Display contained?

[sharp plover]

@raw jasper Just wanted to thank you again for the array setup. I've integrated it into my code and it's working VERY nicely. I'm writing out to a csv which I'm then importing into Excel/Numbers/Open Office. When I get the chance I'm going to do the graphs in the code itself, but still have the option to reload the file into another part of the app. The files are about 5.1K. Thanks again!!

@late fulcrum Thanks to you as well! I'm developing my code on a Raspberry Pi 4B but then sending the file over to the RPi Zero 2W with a 7" touchscreen. The performance is pretty good and I'm sure once I clean all the debug messages out it will work really well. I'm using a 64GB card with the full Raspbian OS with the desktop but will be moving over to a non-desktop OS. As you see with my note to @raw jasper things are moving right along.

@fair summit Well danh, I finally got there. I have a bunch more work to do but I have the Feather Sense nRF52840 running CircuitPython with a LSM6DSOX LIS3MDL board sitting on the I2C bus. Two 9DoF boards! The sensor boards are sending the data via BLE over to the Rasp Pi Zero 2W hooked up to a small touch display. I have the 3D visualization working with simple Blender objs. Only took 5 months, learning CurcuitPython, Python, BLE and all the other graphics libs. Plus Linux, Raspberry Pi hardware, etc.
To you go my biggest thanks for putting up with my whining and complaining and a couple of months of handholding but boy have I learned a lot. AGAIN thanks to you!

and here's my little Frankenstein lab where it all happened.

And thank God for desolder wick. Got the RPi GPIO holes all cleaned out and a new header soldered in. Off to bed......

[cursive hazel]

Ah ok

[late fulcrum]

I suspect the two pins are a combination of current flow, anchoring (to support heavier wires), and an effect of the way the terminals are constructed.

[fair summit]

Are you saying that you are seeing breakout boards where pins 1 and 2, and separately pins 3 and 4, are connected together? Of course there are other applications where 4 (or more connections) may be necessary because the signals/power are separate. As madbodger mentioned, there may be paralleled pins to support more current flow.

Terminal blocks like that are available from 2 terminals on up.

[fair summit]

You're welcome! I thought you would get there!

[raw jasper]

No problem! Regarding the graphs, I have no idea how well it's gonna run on the pi zero, but check out https://matplotlib.org/

You could also have the graph update live using an animation https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/explain/animations/animations.html

And you can embed the plot output to a qt (https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/user_interfaces/embedding_in_qt_sgskip.html) or tk (https://matplotlib.org/3.1.0/gallery/user_interfaces/embedding_in_tk_sgskip.html) GUI

[native oriole]

Hello! Quite unused to Discord, I hope that's the right place for this inquiry: I'm looking at the Adafruit_CircuitPython_BLE_File_Transfer repo, and wonder if there is a C implementation somewhere already? I'm quite far along the development of my project in C (on an STM32WB55) and switching to CircuitPython now seems like a hard sell. All I found so far in C are much less capable projects.

[fair summit]

did you find https://petewarden.com/2021/04/11/how-to-transfer-files-over-ble/, which points to https://github.com/petewarden/ble_file_transfer ?

[remote fern]

Hello

[fair summit]

you could convert the python code to C/C++ -- it would be some work but you have the structure there

[remote fern]

So

Wanna see my glorious laptop of all time

The thing thats been my riveting and absolutely amazing daily driver for about 4 years now

Sorry I suck at introductions i'm just trying to make it sound interesting

His name is Kermit

[ruby pasture]

Anyway, Have you worked with a 433MHz transmitter-receiver with an ESP32 board?

[native oriole]

Hi, thanks for the answer! I did indeed find this one, though it is another interesting code base, it only works for sending a file to the device (and is not considered well-tested). Feature-wise, I'm more insterested in Adafruit's BLE File Transfer protocol.
Indeed, will probably just have to re-write the libray in C. Starting from a proven design will still remove lots of dev time 🙂

[remote fern]

I also have a HP Stream 14 named Jon

He's the silver one,the pink ones my friend's

This is W11 underneath,but I attempted to recreate Longhorn 4047 lol

[icy bear]

I have a board with a TMP119 here. Is it possible to use the adafruit TMP117 library for that chip?

[late fulcrum]

No, I haven't. I've mostly used ATmega, SAMD, and MK20 boards

[fair summit]

It's not clear from the marketing language if their I2C commands are the same. TI advertises that it's "pin for pin" compatible. I'd have to compare the datasheets. But it would be easy enough to try it

[icy bear]

I2C addresses and the "whoami" constant appear to be equal, and my chip shows up at 0x48 when I run an I2C scan.

The library seems to return false from the begin() method though.

[fair summit]

can you test with the CircuitPython library too?

[icy bear]

I'll have to see how that works but I can give it a try as long as I have the required hardware. I've got a teensy 3.2, some RP2040 and probably others when I dig deep enough

[fair summit]

RP2040 will be easy to test with

but ultimately, it's just looking at the datasheets side-by-side

[icy bear]

I have this guy, will add headers and get back for hand holding

[pliant loom]

I’m running several tests to get my TFT LCD with GC9A01 driver to work, but unfortunately without success. I have tried using an ESP32 C6, an ESP32 32 S3 super mini 4MB, and an ESP32 S3 WROOM1 N16R8, with different libraries, such as TFT_eSPI and arduino_GFX, but with all these combinations, I haven’t been able to get anything to display on my LCD. Could someone confirm if the TFT_eSPI library is the correct one to use, and which IDE I should work with?

[fair summit]

we have a build for that: https://circuitpython.org/board/waveshare_rp2040_zero/

[icy bear]

ok I've installed mu on my PC and the build you linked on my RP2040

[fair summit]

You can follow the directions here: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-tmp117-high-accuracy-i2c-temperature-monitor/python-circuitpython
Basically, get the library adafruit_tmp117.mpy file from the latest bundle, or use the circup tool (can be installed with pip), and put it in the CIRCUITPY/lib directory. Then try some examples from the REPL (click the Serial button in Mu). Lastly you can try the simple loop here: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-tmp117-high-accuracy-i2c-temperature-monitor/python-circuitpython#basic-example-code-3077611

[icy bear]

hm...it complains about missing pull-ups but I do have them on the breadboard, GP27 and GP26

which should be SCL and SDA of I2C1

this is my code:

import time
import adafruit_tmp117
import busio
i2c = busio.I2C(board.GP27, board.GP26)````

when I try to use GP0 and GP1 it complains that the pins are invalid

[fair summit]

that looks OK, but I can't see the resistors. Can you check with a voltmeter? What value are the resistors

did you use GP1 and GP0 in that order?

[icy bear]

resistors are 2k7
voltage is fine (3V3) when measured at the GPIOs

[fair summit]

does busio.I2C(board.GP1, board.GP0) say invalid pins?

[icy bear]

I'll check in a couple of minutes, got distracted

i2c = busio.I2C(board.GP1, board.GP0)
worked

let's try again with 27 and 26...

now those work, too. bad cable

[fair summit]

so one of those jumpers was bad? I was confounded by this; I'll add that to my list of possible issues.

[icy bear]

yes, one was bad

ok, a simple I2C scan finds a device on 0x48
TMP117 example doesn't find the chip

i2c scan derived from the first example here: https://learn.adafruit.com/circuitpython-essentials/circuitpython-i2c

TMP117 example as here: https://docs.circuitpython.org/projects/tmp117/en/latest/

I've had the exact same result with arduino on Teensy 3.2 yesterday. Scan showed the device, but TMP117 library didn't find it.

@fair summit found a potential reason: the TMP117 class init method populates a device ID field with the value read from register 0x0F. For the TMP117, that value should be 0x0117. For the TMP119, it's 0x2117

import time
import adafruit_tmp117
import busio
i2c = busio.I2C(board.GP27, board.GP26)
adafruit_tmp117._DEVICE_ID_VALUE = 0x2117
tmp117 = adafruit_tmp117.TMP117(i2c)
while True:
    print("Temperature: %.2f degrees C"%tmp117.temperature)
    time.sleep(1)```

changing the library's desired device ID helped

in the arduino lib, the device ID can be passed to the begin() method I think

I'll try that next

[icy bear]

the arduino library takes a sensor_id argument in begin(), but doesn't use it for what I expected. It's passed on to _init(), but then it's just stored in _sensorid_temp. It's not used for chip validation

quick and dirty changing the define in the library header to 0x2117 helped here

@fair summit thanks for the RP2040 help, maybe my findings help others.

[remote fern]

I have recieved more of them

The hoard of Samsung J3s expands ever so often

(The one on the right is a Shiny,btw)

[fair summit]

If/when we start selling a TMP117 TMP119 board, we'd augment the libraries. Or if you'd like to submit a PR, that would be fine.

[icy bear]

you mean TMP119? I think you're already selling the 117

[fair summit]

yes, I do 🙂

[icy bear]

I guess I'd have to modify the lib anyway so I could create a PR, but we'd have to decide on how to implement this. We could pass the device ID value to begin() as well and handle both sensors that way, but that puts a burden on the user (they'd have to code accordingly)

[fair summit]

If the sensor capabilities are otherwise identical, we could just check for either ID. The only reason to check for an ID is to verify that it's not some other kind of device at the same I2C address. We'd probably rename it to TMP11x. If the capabilities are significantly different, cloning the library might make sense. In similar situations, we have also had a common superclass and then multiple subclasses that reflect the differences, e.g. adafruit_tmp11x.TMP117() and .TMP119() (and similar for Arduino).

I'm not asking you to do this work unless you want to; you could also just do it for yourself.

[late fulcrum]

Wow, the Teensy 3.2 is a great board, sadly not available any more except a few places with some at high prices

[icy bear]

maybe look at the Teensy 4.0 as well, or 4.1 if you want something with a micro SD card slot

I've been using PJRC boards since the very early days of Teensy 1.0 and they've always been great. Paul is very supportive

[late fulcrum]

I do like the Teensy 4, it's just overkill and I suspect it draws more power

[icy bear]

TMP117's functionality is a subset of TMP119's, so I think that the library would work for the 119, but in the long run it would need its own lib

[glass tendon]

Hello! I am having an issue and I am not sure where to put the issue. I am going to be making a fluid simulator using a feather M4 Express, maker wing and a 1.28 inch Round LCD IPS Module. However when I try to put the new UF2 after getting in the bootloader, on the feather or interact with any file on it, it completely crashes Explorer. The only way to fix the crash is to restart my computer or unplug the usb
Trouble shooting:
USB cable is a data transfer cable that I have used before
Tried different usb ports
UF2 file: adafruit-circuitpython-feather_m4_express-en_US-9.2.2.uf2 from https://circuitpython.org/board/feather_m4_express/
Adafruit drivers are up to date

[fair summit]

See https://learn.adafruit.com/welcome-to-circuitpython/troubleshooting#windows-explorer-locks-up-when-accessing-boardnameboot-drive-2999180 and other items on that page. These problems are often due to third-party utility programs.

[glass tendon]

!!!
Thank you. I litteraly looked up "explorer crashes when accessing board"
That link never showed up

[tribal compass]

Is there a way to engage with support for Adafruit IO?

[ocean sigil]

post to the support forum https://forums.adafruit.com/viewforum.php?f=56

[tribal compass]

yes, I have posted, but I'm not getting engagement on the issue. Is there any way to tag in someone from Adafruit or escalate?

[ocean sigil]

try posting in #iot

[fair summit]

#help-with-wippersnapper-and-adafruitio is more specific in this case

[fair summit]

which is your post in the forums?

[tribal compass]

https://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?t=216044

[fair summit]

you're using the free version of AIO?

[tribal compass]

no, I have 2 accounts and the main one has AIO+ with 260 data/min boosts

[fair summit]

I have noted your post internally. It would be good to post that you are an AIO+ subscriber when asking for support.

[tribal compass]

ok, thank you very much @fair summit

[fair summit]

assuming you can recover from the temporary ban, did you already try doing just the subscriptions, but not the data postings, etc.? to narrow it down?

[tribal compass]

so far my efforts have been focused on trying to space out the subscriptions. The temp ban does clear after several minutes (up to 1 hr) but it's quite painful each time, as it takes out my whole fleet of devices.

[fair summit]

i understand. I don't know myself if there is some logging that gives the exact reason or not.

[tribal compass]

ah. I was hoping the 'request flood' error would be a smoking gun.

Is there any way to buy more subscriptions/minute ?

[fair summit]

I don't know, sorry - the AIO folks would know more.

[tribal compass]

ok, thanks for your help.

[ebon dew]

Tyeth is really good with questions about AIO rate limiting and avoiding temp bans. there's some kind of alert you can setup if using mqtt with AIO.

there's a way you can self-throttle. https://io.adafruit.com/api/docs/#rate-limiting

it's better to have slow service than no service.

[winged tangle]

kinda off q but if I were to want to get some sort of cover or rubber thingymabob to cover the GPIO port of a raspberry pi 500 or 400,

what the heck kind of vocabulary or key term am I looking for like 'blind header?' 'pin cover?' getting a lot of nice cool ribbon cable and other accessory results when looking that I'm having to note down for later stuff (which is distracting) but nothign that's giving me an idea of what to even call what I'm trying to find

[supple depot]

anyone know where i can get help with a micro python project

[radiant root]

Hello @hard geode, it's me again

What do you think about this one? Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C6

• Cheap, compact
• Lithium battery charge management
• 2.4GHz Wi-Fi 6, BLE 5.0, Zigbee, and Thread

[mint silo]

is adafruit planning on bringing back a thermal receipt printer just like the ones you once had?

[hard estuary]

There's not a lot of MicroPython expertise here, but in #help-with-circuitpython in the pinned messages is the link to the MicroPython Discord

[hasty wedge]

You can use it with most Adafruit qtpy carriers

If you can figure out the Zigbee part you can use it with HomeAssistant

(I am not sure who copied who, Xiao copied QTpy or vice versa)

[outer hornet]

sorry if this isn't the place to ask something like this, but I don't see another channel obviously better suited to this question. I bought a NeoPixel Digital RGB LED Strip and am only getting around to using it in a project two years later. It appears to be completely faulty or somehow went bad in those two years. I still need something like this, though. Would folks suggest that I buy another and chalk it up to a freak thing or bad storage conditions, or should I try another product?

[late fulcrum]

This eBay listing https://www.ebay.com/itm/395130844824 seems to be the sort of thing you're looking for, and a source of possible search terms, but I'm not finding anything the size of a Pi GPIO port. Another approach could be to use an unpopulated connector housing as a pin protector (search for 2x20 housing and you should find some)

[late fulcrum]

My first inclination would be to email [e-mail]: they can help debug it, and possibly offer a replacement.

[outer hornet]

thanks, I'll do that. I guess I feel silly asking for support for a two-year old purchase XD

[night crescent]

Light up your imagination, all the new at Adafruit... USB-ready panel mount cables & SparkleMotion mini ESP32. Create mesmerizing displays with outdoor NeoPixel nets - perfect for your next light installation. WLED compatibility = endless possibilities! ✨🔌💫 https://adafruit.com/new

[tardy badger]

Xiao came first, Adafruit liked the format and made the QTPY as is my understanding

[night crescent]

A little Espressif helper for programming

While developing boards, we often want to program ESP chips without going through the onboard USB port; this adapter will help us (and others) do that! It has a CP2102N USB-serial chip (https://www.digikey.com/short/bm7n3p5z) with RX/TX signal LEDs and two transistors wired up to the DTR/RTS line for the 'esptool standard' reset procedure technique. The output IO, plus a 3.3V 500mA regulated output, is available on a socket header, so you can plug wires in for quick programming and debugging. You can use this for everything from an ESP8266 to an ESP32-P4!

[terse lava]

OK. i'll bite. Why?

[remote fern]

Why not?

Also, I'm texting you from a J3 now for absolutely no reason = >

[terse lava]

Because it is hoarding might be a reason not to? 😆

[remote fern]

Naaaaah I love my J3s lol

If you got one,you should donate it to me for real

[terse lava]

Ain't got one. But I am still using a Samsung Galaxy S8, so I also tend to hang onto my phones until I absolutely have to move up (although usually it is more for hardware issues than software but the S8 has been a rock solid phone for me). but I only have one! 😉

[remote fern]

Aw dang, would have absolutely loved more J3s for the J3 collection lol

[fierce prawn]

Battery connector hard to solder

I have one and just soldered the battery on

[radiant root]

Does it charge/discharge and has protections?

[fierce prawn]

Yes

Yes to both

[ruby pasture]

ok thank youu

[glass tendon]

I am having this issue again. WD Utilities is still removed

[lapis anchor]

Try disable flash/external drive scanning in whatever antivirus you're using.

[glass tendon]

I dont have an antivirus as far as I can see

[lapis anchor]

Someone else might have a another idea but my immediate thought is to run something like LockSmith to see which program(s) are accessing the files. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/file-locksmith

I use defender and haven't had any issues like that personally (default in windows), so there's likely some other program accessing the files.

[glass tendon]

what program do I use the locksmith on?

[lapis anchor]

You should be able to use it on the drive itself I believe, or files in the drive, to see what programs are currently accessing it. (Likely what's causing the crash)

[glass tendon]

It only says explorer is accessing it

[lapis anchor]

Odd, maybe try the uf2 file and see if you can see anything before it crashes. (Recording screen with a phone is usually what we do in IT to try catch stuff like that lol)

[glass tendon]

It clicked on the wrong drive last time. explorer crashes as soon as I left or right click on featherboot

[lapis anchor]

Hmm. If you have another PC I'd try that just to rule out the board. I would personally try to run sfc /scannow in an elevated command line prompt and let it see if it finds any corrupt files. (Likely don't need the first commands they recommend in the article)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files-79aa86cb-ca52-166a-92a3-966e85d4094e

[glass tendon]

I dont have a second computer and the scan says everything is good

[lapis anchor]

well shucks, can try boot into Safe Mode in Windows and load it that way... haven't tried personally, but you should be able to load the UF2 through here. if it works there, you can confidently say something in the OS. If not, I'm not sure what it means but I'd lean towards the board. (can try flash the bootloader again if you have the means?)
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000124344/how-to-boot-to-safe-mode-in-windows-10

[fair summit]

It's hard to uninstall the Acronis and WD utilities completely. Their uninstaller can leave traces behind, including interfering drivers. when you connect the CIrcuitPython board, look in Device Manager for the drive, and see which drivers it's using. They should be Microsoft's. If you see WD or Acronis, uninstall the driver, and tell it to delete the driver as well.

[burnt tendon]

Weird driver tools provided by the manufacturer: A bad idea since the whole LBA thing in the mid 90s.

[glass tendon]

I dont know what I did but after doing nothing and trying it again it finally let me upload the uf2

[tardy badger]

And just like that TikTok is dark 🥲

Welp, might as well figure out Next.JS and get better at React

[raw jasper]

You're switching to web dev?

[tardy badger]

I’ve always done some kind of web development

[raw jasper]

I see

[tardy badger]

For instance

[raw jasper]

I don't really do frontend stuff

[tardy badger]

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

[raw jasper]

Nice, inventory management at home

[tardy badger]

Still a WIP, slowly getting back into my creative mode

[raw jasper]

Wishing ya all the best

[tardy badger]

Idk if I’d actually launch an alternative to TikTok but I’m interested in the AT Protocol BlueSky develops for transparent social media data.

[raw jasper]

FWIW, I'd go for activitypub. My understanding is it's more open/documented

It's the thing behind mastodon IIRC

Though IIRC there's already a Federated TikTok clone, though the name escapes me... Short-form vertical videos are not my thing

Though to be honest, I would not touch that hornet's nest at all. I would not want any of the liability of running a social network

[tardy badger]

Yeah, content moderation is a very tricky subject and there isn’t a nuanced answer that won’t get you figuratively crucified by some ideological group. Which is probably why I don’t think I’ll launch anything officially

But it’s a good exercise of keeping up on technology at least

[tardy badger]

So far it’s pretty interesting

[night crescent]

Desk of Ladyada - Sparkle Motion Tester Troubles & Samples Sunday 🤖🧠✨🦖📦
https://youtu.be/xrueaEeTHEU

Sparkle Motion Mini testers. The Mini came together fast, but classic testers had cascading issues. We used Claude for firmware and got cool samples, including filament letters and enclosures for Sparkle Motion Stick. And our dinosaur tissue holder fell, disassembling an arm! Time to find strong foam tape for reattachment.

[tardy badger]

Learned me how to set up a content delivery network with AWS CloudFront and S3 Buckets. Now to make my own local open source version lol..

[bitter badge]

I have a question for Lady Ada herself. (I don't see a user that appears to be her, so if anyone can let her know I'm asking, I would really appreciate it.) I'm still having issues with the QT Py CH552. I've managed to upload programs consistently with WCHISPStudio (provided by the chip vendor), but I can't get Arduino to upload in Windows. I now suspect it is an issue with the vnproch55x program it is using to upload.

My question: I recently watched the video announcing the QT Py CH552, and Lady Ada says in the video that she's using a Python script to handle the uploads. I need to know which script that was. I've come across several, and I would prefer to start with a known working one.

If I can solve this, I plan to open an issue on ch55xdiuno and suggest using a different uploader. I'm hoping this will solve this problem once and for all, both for me and for everyone else.

[karmic fox]

@worthy pumice 💖

[charred lintel]

Questions for ladyada are best asked in the Ask an engineer channel, and she will answer them during the next live stream.

But I'm assuming you mean this video https://youtu.be/9Bb1QzFJNCU?si=hB08qX7Y0a8GmGpd

The links for the tools she's using, including the ch552tool, are in the video description.

[bitter badge]

I think it was that clip but in the middle of the original new product video it came from. That's exactly the information I needed though. Thank you!

Probably worth noting: The link in the video doesn't work. Somehow there's a trailing closing paren in the link to ch55tool. Removing that from the URL gets to the right place though.

[charred lintel]

The large videos (live streams) are usually posted later on the YT channel as smaller topic specific videos, with more details. Just fyi, if you need to look other stuff up in the future.

[bitter badge]

That's a good point. I'll try to look for that first next time around!

[gloomy briar]

Does anyone want to share how they organize their WIP electronics projects so that it is easy to pack them away and pick them back up again to continue work? Any good ideas out there?

[charred lintel]

GitHub or any other versioning system option. With relevant commit messages, and comments / readme files your future self will thank you for.

[gloomy briar]

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I meant the electronics part of my projects 🙂

[charred lintel]

Same versioning thing for the datasheets and other relevant documentation, labelled box for the actual hardware? 😅

[gloomy briar]

Yeah I guess that would work 😅 I was hoping someone has some clever Idea that I had not though of yet, but I suppose a couple of labeled boxes is a pretty easy system. Thanks for the help!

[bitter badge]

Part of the problem is that each electronics project tends to have it's own specific hardware and such, so there's no universal solution. I've got a few projects in plastic "tote" style boxes. It seems to work as well as anything. Maybe someone else has a better idea?

It can also help if you get those cheap mini-breadboards, so you can leave stuff on breadboards until the project is complete. I've got some of those floating around too (not really well organized...I should probably fix that...).

[fair summit]

I have fixed the link so it doesn't have a trailing parenthesis.

[terse lava]

Re: small cheap breadboards - that is what I do as well. Have a handful of the tiny ones are great for being able to prototype up some simpler stuff and so cheap that having several allow you to put projects aside and grab another when you switch gears.

[valid spoke]

i am currently faced with a big multi month project and i have a tremendous amount of options as to how to do it. Problem is i dont know enough as to which one to choose since ive never done something of this caliber. has someone in here designed an ADC front end before

ive been tearing through all my books and a LOT of reference designs but none really fit what i want to do and eveyrtime i find anew option im encountered with a plethora of compromises or new issues

[late fulcrum]

That, unfortunately, is par for the course. I keep having people say they want something like 24 bit resolution and then don't understand why I'm suddenly prattling on about microvolts, bandwidth, and Johnson noise.

[valid spoke]

Yeah sadly I have already met the trials and tribulations of datasheet vs useable

I have done a lot of ADC coursework but it isn't as applicable to making a deal circuit

[late fulcrum]

It's a frustrating intersection of several realms of engineering at once

[valid spoke]

Making an ADC driver circuit has really shown me how strong Dunnin Krueger can be

It is

It's like an 8 ended seesaw

[late fulcrum]

That's a really good analogy!

[valid spoke]

Thank you it's my secret power

[raw jasper]

The funny thing is that the Dunning-Krueger study's findings were themselves misinterpreted :P

[late fulcrum]

Irony of ironies!

[valid spoke]

Right now my room has enough post it notes datasheet and writing on my whiteboard to make the whole pepe Silva thing look sane

[valid spoke]

https://tenor.com/view/guardians-of-the-galaxy-guardians-of-the-galaxy2-peter-quill-star-lord-star-lord-what-gif-24549462

[late fulcrum]

Now put copies of Analog Circuit Design and Art of Electronics in view!

[valid spoke]

Not pictured are my DSP books and by linear circuit books

I settled on ADC and ADC driver but now I have looked at 800 bajillion solutions for level control and it has caused me to age 800 years

[raw jasper]

TBH, I'm more of a Gartner hype cycle fan myself

[valid spoke]

I taste the red from the Texas instruments reference PDFs

[late fulcrum]

Level control? Ouch.

[valid spoke]

i didnt know how much it would hurt

[raw jasper]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dunning-kruger-effect-isnt-what-you-think-it-is/

[valid spoke]

this is anew concept and this is a lot cooler sounding

[valid spoke]

thanks im gonna read this now as i take a break

[raw jasper]

enjoy your break!

[valid spoke]

i defined my characteristics and i thought it would be hard due to it and now i know how wrong i was
Frequency: 10Hz - 24kHz
Amplitude: 1mv Rms to 10V rms(80 dB dynamic range)
Waveform type: Sine wave
Harmonic distortion: 0.1 - 2% THD
Impedance @ output: 600Ω
May Contain a small DC offset that needs to be measured

[valid spoke]

i will not cause i will lie to myself and keep reading the books

[raw jasper]

I thankfully haven't had to deal with analog stuff yet (nor do I have the knowledge to TBH)

[valid spoke]

the only advisor i have on this that kinda knows about circuits wants me to do a compressor circuit but it feels subpar

[raw jasper]

Oh, is this a thesis project?

[valid spoke]

yeah

[raw jasper]

Figured as much from the use of the word "advisor"

[valid spoke]

i dont know if thesis is the right word if its for a bachelors

but it is the last thing i need to do

[raw jasper]

It depends on whether you are in Europe or not ;)

[valid spoke]

i am as of now in the USA

[raw jasper]

I guess the Americana-flavored term is "capstone project"?

[valid spoke]

i believe it is

im making an audio analyzer

for old magnetic tape based equipment

[raw jasper]

How far is your deadline?

[valid spoke]

7.5 months

[raw jasper]

Not great, not terrible

Make sure to listen to your body and not get burnt out until then

take breaks when you need to

[valid spoke]

as long as i can crank out the front end i can get started on the meat and potatoes

[valid spoke]

i have a set schedule for it to prevent this

i also have a partner but he is very much programming and digital based

[raw jasper]

That sounds good

[valid spoke]

and even BJTs make him angry

i might just do what oscilloscopes do it just seems overkill

[late fulcrum]

He prefers vacuum tubes? Huh, so do I!

[valid spoke]

hes gonna lose his marbles when he finds out that the transistors are after him

[raw jasper]

I'd love to learn The Analog Stuff one day, but it'd be a hobby and my free time is already limited

[valid spoke]

i do for looks and cool factor

but solid state makes my life easier

[valid spoke]

free time never gets better which scares me

[raw jasper]

...also with solid state your project usually can't kill you

[valid spoke]

currently i got uhhh 2 jobs and my degree work

i am hoping when i graduate ill have free time again

[raw jasper]

LOL

hah

[valid spoke]

ii know i know

i used to be a mechanic before

automotuive and then industrial

and man i had so much free time

[raw jasper]

That... sounds nice actually

Why'd you give up on it?

[valid spoke]

there was a limit to the skill

it gets repetitive

dont get me wrong i love taking stuff apart

especially the big 4000v motors

but id rather be the one designing the stuff than implementing it

ideally both

its tough on the body and the pay is meh

and car stuff is fun as a hobby but even more repetitive

i was doing engineering before but dropped out twice due to calc the great filter

i dont know what indutry ill end up after but i know ill have to tools to whatever i want to do

[late fulcrum]

So you're already past avoiding stuff that can cause harm

[valid spoke]

degree wise or job wise

[late fulcrum]

the big 4000v motors specifically. After working with those, vacuum tubes shouldn't seem bulky or scary

[valid spoke]

they are!

its easy to get complacent with a cute little distortion bulb

its hard to get complacent with a multi ton machine of death that will vaporize you

which has bearings that cost a 250k

i actually find it easier to stay safe in enviroments like that

[late fulcrum]

They do seem like friendly little things

[valid spoke]

and they have a nice warmth and glow

its specifically why i dont work on CRT an vacuum tube stuff anymore

i dont feel like i can be as safe as i want to with them yet

i feel like the damage my psyche has endured due to this stuff is much greater than any physical harm i endured in my previous jobs tho

[raw jasper]

I wish you all the best! :D

[valid spoke]

thank you

[late fulcrum]

Whereas I love working with CRTs, but I have the knowledge, experience, and supplies to do safely.

(I'll admit this lashup is no illustration for safe practices)

[valid spoke]

I have Calibrated CRT stuff but it feels like I'm an EOD team when I touch those thing

[late fulcrum]

I have this "learn how CRTs work" kit made for kids back in the days where people were more blasé about children and danger

The top kit (also aimed at kids) teaches basic electric concepts with circuitry powered directly by AC mains. The bottom one is much safer.

[valid spoke]

that is pretty sick

i think i recognize the bottom kit from something

i am pretty sure i used those to teahc kids about electronics when i was younger

[valid spoke]

theres no mercury and lead in there that seems pretty safe

[burnt tendon]

I hope you store it next to your genuine Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory set.

[raw jasper]

Sadly, lead in children's toys is still a thing, usually from the more questionable brands

[late fulcrum]

Yes, that's LittleBits

Many vacuum tubes are made with lead glass.

[raw jasper]

isn't lead glass the only option to block the λ~X-ray radiation emitted by the electron gun(?)

or were other materials used?

(I honestly do not know)

[late fulcrum]

Yes, in picture tubes, the faceplate was normally lead glass to block X rays. But ordinary receiving tubes were also often made with lead glass, as it makes mechanized processes easier

[valid spoke]

okay ive actually decided that differential ADCs are very hard and maybe this project should start off with a single ended one

[late fulcrum]

That seems like a good idea

[valid spoke]

Yeah otherwise I feel like I'm punching quite above my class

Differential would be great if my input signal was differential

But I have to add a stage to make it differential

Plus attenuation before that

Plus then the driver

And choosing VRef VCOM correctly and then adjusting all of this to fully maximize the ADC input range

Single ended makes the seesaw 4 ended

[late fulcrum]

Right, differential just buys you complexity if your signal isn't differential.

[valid spoke]

yeah i wanted to get better CMRR and better dynamic range

but at this point im pretty sure a single ended one is the way to go

[sharp plover]

been working on optimizing my FeatherSense nRF52840 code. I am putting the 9 data values (accel,gyro,mag) into an array and then sending the array over BLE to a receiver. The numbers seem to be fluctuating a lot. Is there a setup time to allow the sensors to settle and return more stable values?
I also have noted data missing when I am sending it over BLE to a receiver. Same setup question for BLE send/receive.

FYI...
I was doing AHRS analysis on the FeatherSense but I want to go to a more robust, i.e. more math intensive AHRS so I am sending the array from the Sense to a RPi Zero 2W for analysis/display/saving

[graceful lagoon]

I'm not sure the best spot to offer product feedback or not, but I just received my Metro rp2040 (looks great) and went to install it to the Arduino uno r3 case from adafruit, only to have it partially rip off the side reset button that seems to only be used on this metro version.

Every other metro board seems to use standard push buttons, which would work with this case.

Thankfully looks like I can tack the ripped support legs back on with solder or maybe super glue. Just disappointed at this change causing case compat issues and I didn't notice it.

Seems like maybe it was mimicking the design of the solder party stamp carrier? Or maybe vice versa.

[graceful lagoon]

Ugh, yeah, the product page for the case even states it is compatible with this Metro, but will "cover" the reset button:

Adafruit Metro RP2040 but covers up the on-off switch, reset button, boot button, debug port, microSD slot, and SWD connector

Looking closer... that is true. Not sure how this jammed so badly the first time I tried to insert it.

I guess consider this PEBKAC. Apologies.

[hasty wedge]

Let's port my melody code to even more platform!

This time STM32F103 blue pill

Also the code is no longer blocking

It's also reading the melody data from that green ROM card

Dual tone melody or PCM speech, not both at the same time

[late fulcrum]

That's neat!

It does remind me of those ice cream trucks that play a recorded "Hello!" and then play a tune.

[raw jasper]

All you are missing is some sort of display/sprite controller and you have a fantasy console

@late fulcrum , how's your robovac experience so far?

[hasty wedge]

It's the exact "hello" sound you're referencing to

Still puzzles me that why it says "hello" instead of "ice cream!"

Also, Arduino for STM32 won't cut it, I have to use IAR EWARM to program it bare metally

[raw jasper]

"IAR EWARM" sounds like a medical device name :P

[hasty wedge]

Lol that is very true

The full name is too long and I am lazy
IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM

Its kinda guilty but I have to admit I am using some compiler quirks to make this dual tone melody work

GCC does not work, IAR EWARM and Keil MDK works

Keil 礦ision IDE is too old, so IAR it is

[raw jasper]

What kind of mojibake magic makes μ 礦?

[hasty wedge]

Idk

[raw jasper]

On the other hand, thinking about it, I feel "mineral vision" fits an embedded IDE quite well, what with ICs being made from silicon and all

[hasty wedge]

I think uV turns into that character

[hasty wedge]

That kinda makes sense

https://community.arm.com/support-forums/f/keil-forum/55489/vision-shows-ision-problem

Also, very off topic but I had this very cute curry for dinner

[raw jasper]

"Wonderful precure"?

What is "precure"?

[hasty wedge]

It's an anime series

[raw jasper]

Was it any good, taste-wise? More importantly, was the included sticker any good?

[raw jasper]

oh, icic

[hasty wedge]

Yeah, it tastes pretty good, and those stickers are already on the back of my laptop

[raw jasper]

I do not really follow anime things

[raw jasper]

Ooh, neat!

[hasty wedge]

Along with things like Adafruit logo and such

[raw jasper]

I don't put stickers on my stuff, I feel I am wasting them because they will be inevitably destroyed when I'll try to move them between devices ;_;

[hasty wedge]

I have a very cursed NZXT 510 chassis with cursed stickers on it

Like having an Intel Iris Xe logo on it while rocking a 100% AMD build

[raw jasper]

I have saved an "intel Pentium inside" sticker for this exact purpose xD

[hasty wedge]

[raw jasper]

BTW, have you seen https://www.etsy.com/shop/unsafewarnings/ ?

I haven't bought anything from them, but the stickers look cool

[hasty wedge]

Omg

I love those designs

[raw jasper]

Yeah, they're neat!

[night crescent]

WE ARE LIVE in BROOKLYN! ASK AN ENGINEER! https://youtu.be/9YoWMhHrAEo

[raw jasper]

I couldn't resist making a shortcut called "礦ision" to the GDS viewer

[late fulcrum]

The robot does a decent job, but sure enough it does seem to prefer internet connectivity at least for initial setup. I'm going to see what happens if I put it on a private closed network, but I haven't gotten around to that. For people who just don't want to deal, I'd suggest one of their non WiFi models.

[hasty wedge]

lmao

[ebon dew]

I need a sticker with a picard facepalm "Warning: Frequent User Error".

[hasty wedge]

I want one that says "Non-Ionizing Radiation"

[unreal grove]

Hi all, STEM teacher here from Melbourne, Australia. Only started working/making/tinkering with the Adafruit CPX last year and loving it. Just recently coded and assembled a glove mouse with forearm buttons for my neighbour who has contracted hands from CMT:

My next project is to try and reverse engineer something like this timer that sets its timeframe based on which side of the hexagon you lay it on:

I can 3D print it easily enough and embed the CPX, but my question is this: do I have to accept that the Graph LED function will only count down counter-clockwise from the 1 o'clock position to to the 11 o'clock position for just ONE of the 6 orientations/faces of the hexagon?
Or is there a way (in Python perhaps) to define the start and end LED #'s for the Graph? 🤔

TIA 🙏

Or...... is there a smart mathematical way to do it with code? Like to add/subtract a certain offset value to the time variable based on which side I rest it on?

[tardy badger]

So to start off, CPX is amazing and how cool is it to help your neighbor out in being able to better access their world.

As for the clock, I suspect the CPX (running a SAM D21 M0) won’t be able to run the display you want. It’s more of a RAM limitation more than anything.

I’d highly recommend something like a FeatherS3 from Unexpected Maker since you’re in Australia (they’re Australian based if you haven’t heard of them). It would provide enough horsepower and RAM to manage the display.

There is a way to set rotation of objects you display on your display, so absolutely doable. You might checkout some of the Clock GUI others here have made with circuitpython.

[unreal grove]

Thanks for that @tardy badger I will definitely check out Unexpected Maker and the FeatherS3!

But assuming I MUST make it with the CPX... and I DON'T care to connect an external OLED display to have the time display digitally like the real thing... just the 10 LEDs slowly switching off 1 by 1 as a representative sign of how much time is left...... can I define which is the start/min and end/Max LED# for the Graph function?

Otherwise I'm thinking of:

Graph 'time remaining - (1/6th of set time x number of sides away from default orientation) from 0 to set time,
then something like...
IF time remaining is equal to or less than (1/6th of set time x sides away from default orientation) THEN add 5/6ths of set time to it.

And the CPX would know orientation (# of sides away from default) based on accelerometer

[tardy badger]

If you just want to use LEDs, yeah. That’s possible with the CPX. Might I recommend a shift register like the 74 series 595 shift register. Gives you 8 outputs and can be chained together. Or even using an IO expander using I2C.

For the different time sides, use an IMU to determine orientation to pick which time amount you want to set. (A little bit of math, not too bad though). You would convert your time to milliseconds to give you a sufficiently large enough number to divide by the number of LEDs, and keep a counter to set the number of LEDs on or off based on the time remaining.

Oh I misinterpreted the clock sides

You set them with buttons rather than placing it on the side to pick a specific duration. Interesting

[unreal grove]

No actually, my understanding is that by placing it on a specific side you get a specific duration- hence the numbers etched into the sides of the body.

I also am not too familiar with shift registers or I2C but I gather you mean additional external LEDs? I'd like to try doing this with just the 10 on-board ones.

[tardy badger]

Oh, you can definitely use the onboard ones, out the front and then use the same maths as I described above

I2C is straightforward with circuitpython too, most every i2c IMU sensor Adafruit sells has a circuitpython learn guide for it

[raw jasper]

Just because it's non-ionizing doesn't mean it's safe ;>

[raw jasper]

Sadly, the models they are listing in their support record as being offline appear to be out of production...

[golden saffron]

Found this random flux gel tube at my master thesis place. It makes no sense what they mean with ready to print for 36 hours

[hasty wedge]

Oh yeah definitely

As a HAM I need to know this

[raw jasper]

I know you know, I was just kidding

Now I was reminded of the time I was in a store and noticed they had posted a sign boasting that they had installed "Faraday Cage Paint" and that the store grounds were "Protected From Radiation" -- The window was open and my phone was getting reception just fine :P

[hasty wedge]

where was that

[raw jasper]

$HOMECOUNTRY

[hasty wedge]

China？

Japan？

[raw jasper]

I'm European haha

I just like learning foreign languages

[hasty wedge]

[tardy badger]

Lol HOMECOUNTRY.. I like that, I’m going to add that to my bashrc

[hexed talon]

Is there a microcontroller akin to esp32/atmega32u4, but 12v input to power and control RGB/LED strips? As i'm currently using a locally sold one that uses barrel jack for power, but it's just IR controlled. And i want to hook it up to home assistant and setup a schedule for it to turn off, and turn back on in the morning.

[thick wind]

What kind of rgb led strips? First thing that comes to mind is the metro esp32 boards, and they all have a barrel jack that takes a 12v input.

If you’re working with 5v addressable LEDs, best fit would probably be uno r4 wifi, as it’s got the 5v operating voltage for your light strips. I think the esp metros are a bit more convenient, but you may need a level shifter for best results.

[hexed talon]

https://www.biltema.no/bygg/belysning/innendorsbelysning/led-lister/led-list-rgb-2000035296
https://www.biltema.no/bygg/belysning/innendorsbelysning/led-lister/led-list-600-lm-forlengelse-3-m-varmhvit-2000051725

These.

Snapped off a pin to control the 12v on the adapter.

[thick wind]

Ohhh those guys. Yeah, you will need to wire some transistors in order to control the lights.

That snapped pin is unfortunate.

[fair summit]

How about his brand new product? https://www.adafruit.com/product/6100

[brave copper]

coukld I use a 22 IC pin socket for soundfx mini?

[hexed talon]

Aye, someone on another server mentioned it as well :D

But didn't see any manual/docs on it. How do I use each output port? As it has a bunch x)

[fair summit]

It was released Wednesday. A guide at https://learn.adafruit.com is in preparation and will be out very soon. In the meantime you can watch the product announcement video linked on <#general-chat message>. There are also several discussions of it here https://www.youtube.com/@adafruit/search?query=sparkle motion

[night crescent]

🌟 Having doubts about your commitment to Sparkle Motion? Explore the latest from Adafruit! The CLUE with Bluetooth LE, NeoPixel LED Netting, SparkleMotion boards for WLED and xLights 🐇💀⏰

https://www.adafruit.com/new

[late fulcrum]

It looks to me like the rows of pins are 0.8" apart, which is an unusual size for IC sockets, which are usually 0.3" (narrow) or 0.6" (wide). However two rows of 11-pin female receptacles would work.

[dusty citrus]

is the usb_host module supported with pi pico?

[mint silo]

will there be thermal printers again in the adafruit products? I really enjoyed the old ones and would need some for projects, but they are not available anymore :/

[modest crest]

Anyone happen to know if QMK works on the RP2350?

Probably a little early given availability but I just got a batch of PCBs in and it would be easier to throw together a quick layout than try to write my own matrix scanning code. KMK would also work I guess but I'm not sure if it polls as quickly

[fair summit]

Due to RP2350-E9 (errata 9), don't rely on the internal pull-downs when doing matrix scanning. Use pull-ups instead.

[modest crest]

Understood - I figured E9 would play into it somehow

I know this probably isn't the ideal server for this, but is there a way to configure KMK to use pullups? Struggling a bit to figure out whether my wiring is bad or if the pulldown errata is causing issues

[tardy badger]

I think they even replicated it with external pulldowns too

[fair summit]

Yes, you have to use <=8.2k pulldowns to override the hw bug. And matrix scanning usually depends on enabling/disabling internal pulls. So you can't even do it with the internal pulldowns.

[modest crest]

I'm using CircuitPython for the Pico 2 as a stand-in right now. Does it have any software workarounds built in for E9?

I'm not against bodging in some external resistors in the meantime if not - I just can't afford for this board to not work haha. Definitely on me for not adding some in just in case

[fair summit]

Raspberry Pi folks via the pico-sdk, MicroPython, CircuitPython, and the philhower arduino core all decided not to attempt software workarounds. It's not possible to work around the problem in a general way. The problm has been documented, and the users need to be aware.

If you set up QMK to use internal pull-ups, then there's no problem. I don't know how QMK is configured, but I'd assume that is possible.

[modest crest]

Understood, appreciate the clarification

[modest crest]

I'm using KMK currently as an alternative to QMK, which runs on top of circuitpython. Really just trying to narrow down what might've gone wrong

[fair summit]

so it didn't work with KMK, or it didn't work with QMK?

[modest crest]

Not able to test with QMK at the moment, so I tried with KMK since the setup is easier on the go

Pressing a key will also trigger the key immediately beneath it in the matrix

[fair summit]

is this a matrix keyboard?

[modest crest]

Yep

I have a really low quality screencap of the schematic via my KVM, I remember triple checking this before ordering the boards but I might still have missed something

Direction is configured as col2row

[fair summit]

did you try the board with an RP2040, or is the RP2350 on the board itself?

[modest crest]

It's on the board itself 😔 I'm not against bodging some wires to a Pico to double check once I'm home, though

It's a slow day at work so I'm just doing what I can with the materials I have at the moment

[fair summit]

ok, so DiodeOrientation.COL2ROW is 1 (https://github.com/KMKfw/kmk_firmware/blob/main/kmk/scanners/__init__.py#L11) ...

which means diode_orientation is 1, which means keypad.KeyMatrix(..., columns_to_anodes=1). The 1 gets taken as True...

which means in https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/blob/main/shared-module/keypad/KeyMatrix.c, all the pulls are PULL_UP. So I don't think your problem is a pull problem.

you could check my work 🙂

[modest crest]

Thank you for taking the time to check, it's a huge help! Looks like you're right

I'll play around with the code a little more. See if I can make it cooperate

I'm not sure why triggering one key would also trigger the one below it. There's no physical short since the state of either pin on the key below doesn't change when I press the top one.

[fair summit]

Insteae of using KMK, you could try using just keypad.KeyMatrix to make it simpler to check.

https://learn.adafruit.com/key-pad-matrix-scanning-in-circuitpython

[modest crest]

Will give that a try!

[fair summit]

simple test programs and a schematic to compare with on this page https://learn.adafruit.com/key-pad-matrix-scanning-in-circuitpython/keymatrix

[modest crest]

It does indeed see 2 simultaneous presses/releases

<Event: key_number 0 pressed>
<Event: key_number 7 pressed>
<Event: key_number 0 released>
<Event: key_number 7 released>

That's just from one press on the top leftmost key

First 2 rows have 7 keys, third row only has 6, if that's important at all

[modest crest]

Everything on row2 and col6 in this schematic behaves as it should

[fair summit]

so that sounds like a hw error of some kind. Maybe do some continuity testing with the power off.

[modest crest]

It's very bizarre. It sounds like a hardware problem for sure but probing with a continuity tester doesn't show anything out of the ordinary

Each full column has continuity, but that should be intended. No continuity between the row pins on the buttons, thanks to the diodes. Rows have continuity after the diodes

[fair summit]

maybe try all the rows and columns but row 0 or col 0.

If it wasn't hardwired I would say disconnect row or column one at a time.

are you using CIrcuitPython 9.2.3 or something earlier?

[modest crest]

9.2.3

[fair summit]

did you solder the chip on the board, or are you using it as a carrier for a separate RP2350 board?

[modest crest]

Chip is soldered directly to the board

Got it done by JLC so I have 5 of them. All 5 exhibit the same problem, so it isn't just a one-off error with manufacturing

I really regret not thinking of adding external resistors, or at least footprints for them

Not sure if having a visual is any help in this particular scenario, but just in case there's anything obviously wrong here (this is the back side of the board so it's mirrored compared to the schematic from earlier)

[fair summit]

you don't need and cannot use external resistors when doing a keymatrix

[modest crest]

Gotcha

[fair summit]

you could test by not using keypad. Set all the column pins to outpus and set them high, and then set all the row pins to inputs and read them in a loop

[modest crest]

Ah yeah I didn't even think of that

I'll give that a shot in a bit here. Thanks a ton for your assistance here so far, it's been a huge help

[fair summit]

👍 or do the above one column at a time, too

good luck!

[modest crest]

Thanks!

[unreal grove]

I did it 🤓

Since then have also added Pause functionality when it's flat on its back/vertical triggered by the z-accelerometer, and started designing the 3D print that will be a longer hexagonal prism and hold a battery case inside.

[tardy badger]

Great work! 😎

[fleet rampart]

54L15 feather :D

[modest crest]

Little update - went home and rewrote the KMK config that I'd lost while using the work PC earlier, just to give myself a starting point. No idea what changed. But, now it just works, no more issues. I'm not even gonna question it, I'll just take it

Thanks again for your help, I learned a few things and I really appreciate it 🙏

[modest crest]

And... Now it's suddenly doing the same thing again, what gives lol

[dusty citrus]

I was seeing https://youtube.com/shorts/P7L-UAamgJQ?si=Ah2_RCBHcZD7yHGg . anyone can tell me what spray paint is he using as a solder mask?

[wide mortar]

ESP32-PICO-V3-02

There is a resistor on the QT PY next to the +/- pads on the back.... what is that resistor?

When I was soldering wire to the +/- pads the resistor fell off... is it important?

[tardy badger]

They look like a voltage divider for the USB Serial chip so probably important

You’re talking about these here:

[raw jasper]

Usually, on commercial electronics, if the part is there, it's probably important or it would've been BOM-optimized out (removed to make the device less costly to produce)

[tardy badger]

I mean, varying degrees of important. If you lose a capacitor for power filtering, it’s likely not going to noticeably affect performance. Losing CC line resistors or a voltage divider used to feed a pin to detect USB power.. probably not going to be able to operate well or at all

[raw jasper]

...or a decoupling capacitor for your high-frequency data lines ;)

(Am I remembering the term correctly? Now I'm not sure )

[tardy badger]

Line filters or termination resistors could ensure you never get data if you lose them

[raw jasper]

thanks for the correction 🍻

[wide mortar]

that one

[wide mortar]

the one directly under the pad... whatever it is

[tardy badger]

Ah, that’s a capacitor. Should be okay

[wide mortar]

it is a terrible placement

i borked 3 boards.... none of them connect to usb

i didnt even notice it

so now i have 3 dead boards

[tardy badger]

Smöl boards are hard

[wide mortar]

yeah its too close

[tardy badger]

Especially with chips like the ESP32 Pico chips since they require off chip USB to Serial

Ah wait, that capacitor is for the internal oscillator

So yeah, that explains why it doesn’t work

Internal oscillator won’t start up without it.

[raw jasper]

I'm curious, why are these capacitors not done in fabric?

[tardy badger]

Space, consistency, overall reliability

It’s hard to get more than a few hundred femtofarad in capacitance

[raw jasper]

Got it

[tardy badger]

There are a handful of instances where they can be very reliable but usually for very specific applications

Though funny enough there is a flavor of multi layer capacitors that use silicon for the dielectric

https://www.murata.com.cn/zh-cn/products/capacitor/siliconcapacitors/design-development/-/media/webrenewal/products/capacitor/siliconcapacitors/technical/product/silicon_capacitor_space_application_white_paper_v3-2.ashx?la=zh-cn

[raw jasper]

funny how they've formatted their whitepaper as if it's an academic publication

[tardy badger]

Yeah lol

[raw jasper]

Though, to be fair, from a skim, it does appear to be more informative than most white papers out there

At least, I can see less buzzwords

(Now I'm imagining a whitepaper for a capacitor powered by Blockchain[TM] and AI[TM])

[tardy badger]

Yeah, it’s targeted towards engineers developing satellites

[raw jasper]

"If the capacitor fails, then you are having a very bad time and You Will Not Go To Space Today"

[night crescent]

LIVE in 15 mins! Desk of Ladyada - ST7796S Screen & So Many Sunday Samples
https://youtu.be/2pSYMB8lCgM

Testing ESP programmer board, working on 3.5" Captouch TFT with new ST7796S display & FT6236 touch chips. Board needs redesign for new FPC. Got exciting screen samples (round/bar/rect). Also found great ultra-fine tweezers on DigiKey, for both engineers & entomologists! 🔬🐛🐜

WE ARE LIVE! Desk of Ladyada - ST7796S Screen & So Many Sunday Samples 🔬🐛🐜
https://youtu.be/2pSYMB8lCgM

[iron light]

hello everybody, im having trouble finding the fritzing file for this part: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3246

there is a similar one in the github link in the description but it has 5 pin locations and is a little bigger, if anybody could help me find this breakout board and better yet this thumbstick to pair with it: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2765, i would be very thankful

[raw jasper]

<@&327289013561982976> There is a spam msg above

Thanks for taking care of it! ^^^

[tardy badger]

The power of open source:

This is NVDIA following the DeepSeek release this morning

Or yesterday, I forget when it was released

[spice moss]

yeah https://youtubetranscriptoptimizer.com/blog/05_the_short_case_for_nvda

[dusty citrus]

what a better time to buy stocks.
They're a monopoly after all

anyways, where can I get done some custom paint from a sample?

[raw jasper]

IME, most paint shops will do that for you

[dusty citrus]

I'm not in the us... around here it's all restaurants

[raw jasper]

I'm not in the US either :P

There must be a paint shop near you (at least within driving distance!), look at your local yellow pages, map services, etc

Give them a call, most likely they'll be more than happy to do it for you

[dusty citrus]

Buut, for pcbs what sort of spray paint could I use?
I guess anything not conductive may work fine, but acrylic based things have a really bad look

[raw jasper]

Ah, you did not specify you wanted to color a PCB, I assumed you needed paint for your walls!

AFAIK, usually you don't paint PCBs, you specify the silkscreen color you want during manufacturing

[dusty citrus]

Yes, but they have limited ranges of colours for the soldermask, and in those who don't usually are expensive, besides there are some colours who are ip protected...
I saw this https://youtube.com/shorts/P7L-UAamgJQ?si=QB5GQ8LfNiIRRSSx who he pretty much laser etches a plate and then sprays something up

[night crescent]

Espressif programmer test success! 💻✨🔧

While developing boards, there are oftentimes we want to program ESP chips without going through the onboard USB port; this adapter will help us (and others) do that! It has a CP2102N USB-serial chip (https://www.digikey.com/short/bm7n3p5z) with RX/TX signal LEDs and two transistors wired up to the DTR/RTS line for the 'esptool standard' reset procedure technique. The output IO, plus a 3.3V 500mA regulated output, is available on a socket header, so you can plug wires in for quick programming and debugging. You can use this for everything from an ESP8266 up to the ESP32-P4! Here, we are testing it with a HUZZAH ESP8266 breakout board (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2471), one of our first Espressif chipset products.

[vestal pier]

ugh, Mouser is charging tariffs for Adafruit products

Digikey isn't yet

[fair summit]

can you give an example link?

it says "Tariff may apply", but I don't see any price increases.

ok, now I do

"estimated tariff" in shopping cart

[vestal pier]

yeah, saw it on battery packs, stemma cables, and a couple of other products so far

[night crescent]

@vestal pier thanks for the heads up, we'll see what we can find out, looks like mouser is charging tariffs before there are (new) tariffs

[night crescent]

What's N E W ??? these glowing alphanumeric filaments! 🔡💡

Last month we stocked some fun filament shapes, like snowflakes (https://www.adafruit.com/product/6093) or unicorns (https://www.adafruit.com/product/6094) these are easy to use: simply power with 3V like any LED and they glow with a tungsten-eque warmth (but without the 120VAC or burning heat). This week we got some samples of the same COB 'chip on board' filaments but in letters and numbers! Sure we'll have to stock 36 SKUs, but how fun would it be to display custom words? You can drive these in series - 3V total with about 30mA per filament - or parallel - 30mA and 3V * n where n is the number of letters in a row.

[night crescent]

Round display EYESPI tester is a go! 👁️🔍

This 1.3" round TFT display will be in the shop soon, thanks to this tester, which lets us quickly verify all functionality: We're reading a display bitmap off of the SD card, displaying it, and then pulsing the backlight. We do this all through the EYESPI connector https://www.adafruit.com/search?q=eyespi and this one is passing just fine. After we package the display, we can stock it in the shop!

[dusty citrus]

where can you buy imaging conduits or a stable supplier of natural ulexite?

The only two source that I could find are either schott.com which refuses to sell to consumers, or Edmund optics, which sells pretty much only pipes, which do also cost a kidney. There are also other random edu shops, which are pretty much the same, always a kidney

if I go down to the ulexite path, ignoring the imperfections, it seems like there's no stable market, ie stuff can cost a couple of euros, 50ish or a couple of hundreds for the same thing

[hollow flint]

At least in the United States, you can use your legal name as a business name (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_proprietorship#United_States). I've done this to purchase directly from a company that requires a business name, once before. Specifically https://www.gmpopcorn.com/.

Also, just curious, is Corning RGB 400
Specialty Optical Fiber (https://www.corning.com/microsites/coc/oem/documents/specialty-fiber/OEM-079-AEN.pdf) any different from that?

[vestal pier]

Depending on your length, resolution requirements, and transmission quality, imaging conduits get super expensive super quick

[night crescent]

PCM510x MCLK-less I2S DAC with line level out 🎧💻

We're starting to stock a lot of chips that are able to do digital I2S out, which makes for great-quality audio playback. That's great when you have enough processing power to decode WAVs or MP3s in real-time. However, we could really use some better DACs in the shop. We like the UDA1334A (https://www.adafruit.com/product/3678), but that's technically discontinued - it's great because it doesn't require an MCLK that some boards like the Raspberry Pi don't have and doesn't need I2C configuration either. The PCM510x is a good family, too; it ranges from the inexpensive PCM5100 (https://www.digikey.com/short/z50cnp0h) to the PCM5102 (https://www.digikey.com/short/80z2nh3h) which has high quality output at a higher cost. This breakout could use any of the family chips & gives you all the GPIO needed with a 3.5mm headphone jack for line-level output.

[ebon dew]

Looks like it uses a lot of pins.

Learn guide coming for it?

ohh seems like the other pins are for I2C audio controls?

[sharp plover]

I want to mount a few small boards to my wrist and hand but want to use a plastic form that fits to my wrist. Adafruit has the soft formable plastic that will get me to the shape but I would like a more rigid form. Ultimately there will be neoprene inside the rigid plastic to give a much more stable but comfortable mounting. I am thinking of using the “soft” plastic to create a plaster form which I could pour the hard plastic into and then set the hard plastic with UV.
Has anyone tried something similar and if not does anyone have any suggestions. It is really important that I track as closely as possible the movement of the bones.

[late fulcrum]

What kind of detail are you looking for? Cheap fiber optic borescopes might be a way forward.

[ebon dew]

Adafruit has something in the store that might work for you. https://www.adafruit.com/product/2504

Silicone is great for making molds too. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CVQJ4YD I've used this stuff before and works well for casting resin parts. The problem with using silicone on the skin for things like watch bands is it can cause a skin irritation. Fitbit watch bands were/are notorious for that.

However it's extremely flexible even when cured so it would do well for the wrist rotation.

Ah neoprene where the silicon would touch the skin would probably work very well.

[dusty citrus]

I should have pretended to be business then... I'll dm them back after some time to not be excessively obvious... although I really wonder why b2b are dismissive with pricing and dealing with individuals, it should be in their interests selling.
I don't need fiber, I pretty much need a cubic/cilindrical rock

[dusty citrus]

something like https://packaged-media.redd.it/up0y3lz910821/pb/m2-res_360p.mp4?m=DASHPlaylist.mpd&v=1&e=1738101600&s=008723f43cae3f1b616496a03b51e844ef4c8efd but less tall

[raw jasper]

What sort of business is doing business using social media DMs?

Don't they have an e-mail address or something? shakes fist at cloud

[hollow flint]

Maybe for the same reason why many companies have minimum order quantity requirements? I only "pretended to be a business" because the business name was a required field on their account sign-up page.

[raw jasper]

Yeah, perhaps you'll need to buy 1 metric tonne of the stuff or something :P

[hollow flint]

I was able to select "Not for Re-Sale" as the business type.

[dusty citrus]

yeah but put it in your website, make the catalogue public, they waste more money on their agents

over friviousl comunication

[raw jasper]

Most of the time, such business will have formed contracts governing pricing with their customers

And, due to their nature, such contracts tend to be customer-specific

[dusty citrus]

ie they see how much can they price gouge you...
anyway, any other source? couldn't find much outside schott

[dusty citrus]

another one http://tapervision.com/ yet expensive, also I am not us based, so shipping (if they even ship), + dogane + 22%vat + other taxes....

[late fulcrum]

Hmm, search for "TV rock", "Icelandic spar" or "calcite", maybe?

[raw jasper]

Yup, that's the still I was thinking of

I--Is e-mail the new fax?

[tardy badger]

I feel like plaintext messages are the new fax

[jagged citrus]

People rely too much on tech nowadays
We should return to messenger pidgeons

[tardy badger]

Too bad messenger pigeons are extinct ☹️

(Formally known as the Passenger Pigeon)

[raw jasper]

As in, non-HTML e-mail? Or SMS?

[tardy badger]

SMS

[raw jasper]

I thought the pigeons we used for messaging are the regular birds you see in town all the time?

[tardy badger]

Passenger pigeons were used for sending messages

[hollow flint]

Or what about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet?

[tardy badger]

Normal pigeons have like 3 brain cells and two of them are for strategic stick placement for their nests

10/10 best birb

[raw jasper]

Do you want to plug in cousin Norbert's virus-ridden USB flash drive to get some of 'em MP3s?

[hollow flint]

With https://tails.net/ and microSD cards, how much of that is still a concern?

[raw jasper]

OK, I will let you be the one to persuade cousin Norbert to use that :>

(also, I don't think there is anything inherently special about microSD cards that makes them less prone to spread malware)

[hollow flint]

But they're less prone to bad USB.

[raw jasper]

You think cousin Norbert is gonna give you BadUSB? Nah, it's probably gonna be some variant of Zeus, or Conficker or whatever lies behind never_gonna_give_you_up.mp3.exe

[raw jasper]

According to this, it was "just" a variant of the garden-variety domestic pigeon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon

It appears that, with enough selective breeding, pidgey can unlock Additional Braincell

[tardy badger]

SE Asian folks are known to take their honing pigeons far from their homes and see how long it takes for them to return home

I say SE Asian because I’ve not encountered an article talking about Americans or Europeans taking their pigeons on incredibly long journeys

They even do homing pigeon races

[raw jasper]

Apparently, pigeon racing is a thing in many areas of the world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_racing#By_region

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers

[tardy badger]

Maybe my Google content algorithm only shows me Asian pigeon races

Which, feel cooler because these pigeons typically end up flying across sizable stretches of water

[raw jasper]

I can disable result personalization. No idea if it's an EU-exclusive feature though

Also TIL there is no pigeon emoji o_O

[tardy badger]

🐦

Closest I have is that

[raw jasper]

Yeah, and that's what the unicode committee, of CJK unification fame, would say too

But, hey, we got multiocular O ꙮ

[valid spoke]

@late fulcrumive been using the crap out of LT SPICE

its awesome

been making models to test certain circuits ive tried

ive almost gotten there for the ADC front end design

i got it to the point where i can have less than 1% acc for signals that are high amplitude from 0 to 30khz

but the moment i do low amplitude and high freq

the PGA doesnt have enough slew rate

i got new ideas but thank god for the amount of references companies put out there

[dusty citrus]

that's also an option, but they're all natural formation, ie full of impurities/not clean...
I asked tampervision and they dont ship in the eu

[valid spoke]

keysight has insanely good videos on scope design

[night crescent]

WE ARE LIVE in BROOKLYN! SHOW AND TELL! https://youtu.be/4Gy-PDP7iCA

[night crescent]

WE ARE LIVE in BROOKLYN! ASK AN ENGINEER! https://youtu.be/huO1ildzuYE

[dusty citrus]

I'm looking for collaborator.
I'm web developer.
so please send me DM.

[distant anchor]

i put this on the ask an engineer chat but didnt get an answer. if anyone has any suggestions lmk

I graduated with an EE degree in May and have had trouble finding employment since. Often in interviews I get asked whether I have "real" experience after I've finished discussing personal/school projects that I've made. This has made me feel like I'm somewhat stuck in the classic "can't get a job to get experience to get a job to get experience..." loop. My question is whether there's a good way of getting "real" engineering experience in some volunteer sort of way? Something similar to contributing to open source software projects but for PCB / circuit design work.

[dusty citrus]

hello . @distant anchor

I'd like work with you.

I'm web developer.

[distant anchor]

oh lol well i guess that works

[dusty citrus]

what do you mean?

[distant anchor]

i sent a friend request. feel free to dm

[glad ruin]

Yep wanting non-existent experience is a thing in the industry. And right now the semiconductor companies are in the biannual panic/layoff mode. The two jobs I landed were because I was able to get my resume forwarded directly to hiring managers who were interested in interviewing.

[distant anchor]

biannual as in every 2 years or twice within one year?

[glad ruin]

Every 2 years-ish

[distant anchor]

any suggestions on how to do that? like was it networking with people you knew or where you using like linkedin and stuff somehow

[glad ruin]

It's not a set-in-stone schedule, but the semiconductor industry as a whole sort of has a weird hiring cycle. There will be times where companies mass-hire and then other times where they lay off entire departments or reorg half the company.

[glad ruin]

Personal contacts. I never once received a useful offer from LinkedIn. I'm not saying it's completely useless, but I've found that the types of people frequenting LinkedIn are not the types of people I want to interact with. Also I got tired of being gaslit by the barrage of "1 person viewed your profile... subscribe to LinkedIn Pro to find out who" email notifications. I ended up deleting my account.

[distant anchor]

I see. Did you use any other job board type website or anything? Or just contacts?

[glad ruin]

Disclaimer: this is based on my personal job hunting experience. It was not fun. Also I just got laid off.

[distant anchor]

also thanks for answering i really appreciate your time and help

[glad ruin]

Typically I'd search and apply directly through company websites.

Oh, another thing to note: at least in the US, there is no legal requirement for job postings to be for positions that actually exist. And there are multiple reasons that companies and recruiters may be incentivized to either post openings that they have no intention of filling or leave up posts that have already been filled. These are called "ghost jobs" by some. It was something that I long expected was the case, but now there have been actual studies confirming it.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/03/ghost_job_epidemic/

My recommendation is that if you find a post of interest that it may be worth trying to reach HR at the company to determine whether applying may be worth your time.

[distant anchor]

yeah I'd seen stuff about ghost jobs. I guess I'm mostly just not sure how I would find smaller semiconductor/electronics companies without linkedin if you have any suggestions

[glad ruin]

I wish I did. Maybe I'll try it again eventually, but not unless I decide I have to. Most of the "content" and articles on there tend to just be ragebait for me and that's not something I really want to have to deal with.

Anyways, it's nearly 01:00 here, so I'd better sleep.

[distant anchor]

haha nw tysm!

[tardy badger]

I have received a number of messages that have lead to interviews through LinkedIn. But the catch here is that these messages were usually one in maybe 100 actual messages received

I even got a job through one of them

[late fulcrum]

I'm probably about to be laid off myself, so I'm paying attention here...

[tardy badger]

😦

I’m expecting more layoffs to happen where I work, I just don’t have a good grasp of where those will be targeted

I’m applying/interviewing currently to try and make sure I have a backup plan

One of the bigger downsides of working defense is you usually pick up very niche skills that are hard to articulate on a résumé 🙃

Not that I’m doing anything particularly unique, it’s just hard to describe

[tardy badger]

I hope you don’t face any big hurdles finding new employment. It’s rough out there

[tranquil swallow]

I think I’ll have to call up old acquaintances and beg for a good word

[glad ruin]

I'm taking a serious look at going back to school for a masters degree.

[tardy badger]

Same

[jaunty igloo]

Hey, anyone have a minute to help me with an Adafruit TFT?

[tardy badger]

Try #help-with-projects and explain as clearly what you’re having trouble with. Include any code you’re using, schematics, etc..

[dusty citrus]

I wonder how people work.
I suggest to automate some things, at the job, it's always a no, as for insert whatever reson

someone else suggest the same thing after some time, we're going to implement it

[lapis anchor]

I hear through the grapevines Sierra Space is hiring for lots of different positions - assorted software and hardware positions. No affiliation, just so happen to be poking around there the other day. 🙂

[twilit onyx]

@idle lion You're probably already aware, but MIT OpenCourseWare recently added to its available cryptography lectures https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP61EZllk7zwgvPbI4kbnKhWz

[idle lion]

I wasn't, thank you! that is awesome 🎉

[tardy badger]

Interesting, Sierra Nevada is also hiring for a program them won last year called HADES

[tardy badger]

@late fulcrum I should hope you know that you cross my mind when I see any mention of Hello Kitty Island Adventure lol

(I just got an email saying it’s coming to Nintendo Switch lol…)

[lapis anchor]

Yeah the idea of looking around at space companies came to me after that Blue Origins launch the other day, looks like most of them are hiring. (Blue Origins has some jobs up currently too, but i know not everyone is keen on Bezos 🤷‍♂️)

[raw jasper]

Same!!!! I actually saw that that game was releasing on switch & PC and thought about pinging you (that is, madbodger) with the link

[tardy badger]

Not a fan of Bozo I mean Bezos. But I appreciate that they took the time to get New Glenn right without fiery explosions over the Caribbean

[raw jasper]

So, nintendo actually sends e-mails about upcoming games to switch users?

[tardy badger]

Yeah

If you have a NSO account

[raw jasper]

The last nintendo console I bought was the Wii

[tardy badger]

Lol

[raw jasper]

My DS still works. No idea about the wii (it's in storage)

[tardy badger]

Abbreviating Nintendo Switch Online to NSO makes it seem a bit more ominous than it is lol

(National Security Organization)

IYKYK

[raw jasper]

That's for when Miyamoto sends the nintendo ninjas after you!

[tardy badger]

Lol

[raw jasper]

BTW, I'm curious how bad joycon drift is. How many times have you had to replace 'em?

(Or did you just do the hall effect joystick mod?)

[tardy badger]

I’ve never replaced mine

Though, tbf.. I don’t play as much as I used to

[raw jasper]

How frequently do you use it?

(/did)

[tardy badger]

Once or twice a week these days

I used to play most days

I’ve had one switch since 2019 (switch lite) and a larger switch since 2022

Or late 2021

[raw jasper]

Sounds reasonable TBH -- Are you planning to buy the switch2?

Personally I'm still happy with the DS lol

[tardy badger]

I’m not sure

[raw jasper]

(Plus I can find used games for it for cheap)

BTW, have you seen https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/ ?

[tardy badger]

I haven’t

[raw jasper]

https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-ds/ Read up on how the two ARM cores inside the DS talked to one another

It certainly was a solution :P

[tardy badger]

Oh I have read about that

Pretty interesting stuff

[raw jasper]

Yeah. It seems nintendo actually made custom SoCs back in the day

I wonder if that division's still around

[tardy badger]

If it is, probably a relic of its former self

[raw jasper]

Who knows? Apparently they recently made an alarm clock

Using technology from their quality of life research project

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/38874/first-details-of-nintendos-quality-of-life-platform-revealed

[glad ruin]

Nintendo loves their weird hybrid architectures.

[raw jasper]

Having to do three consoles' worth of backwards compat will do that to you (talking about the 3DS, which did 3DS, DS and GBA at the hardware level)

[tardy badger]

Happy Friday everyone

[hollow flint]

The people running Meshtastic in my area said the same message:

[burnt tendon]

I am annoyed because I was supposed to get a package with some meshtastic antennas yesterday and they didn't show.

The stubby one is some combination of not beefy and not well tuned for the frequency according to my VNA.

[stuck moth]

what antenna did you order instead?

[ebon dew]

Sounds like someone butchered your delivery yesterday

[burnt tendon]

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804421300249.html and https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256801688016561.html

[burnt tendon]

Some antenna from each brand was on the Meshtastic list and I have a VNA to test them before use and I have weird plans so I didn't want to spend too much money on antennas right now?

[raw jasper]

I'm guessing you actually have a local community using meshtastic?

[burnt tendon]

Yeah, it's got enough crossover with the ham community that there's meshtastic router nodes up in the mountains and some hundreds of nodes online at any point.

[raw jasper]

That sounds interesting

[burnt tendon]

Yeah, the 33cm band is kinda interesting because it's got an easier time going through stuff than wifi but at the same time, pretty much any interesting antenna is not going to be particularly huge.

And you can use it in ISM mode ... or you can crank that hawg and use it as a Part 97 amateur radio device at higher power.

So it was vaggguuueeelly interesting just on it's own for the low-speed-long-range funs but seeing that there's actual meshtasticness to mess with raised my interest level.

[raw jasper]

*to mesh with :>

Did you just pelt me? :P

[burnt tendon]

You made the pun.

I just ... hacked your brainstem over a long period of time with my incessant puns to build up your mental bloom filters so as to cause more puns to exist.

[raw jasper]

I hope the people you'll get to interact with will be nice

(With this sort of stuff, I always worry that it would attract the kind of people who are in the prepper community)

[burnt tendon]

Yeah, I guess the thing is that my spouse's friend was in the middle of the Asheville flooding and amateur radio was the main form of working communication and so another friend looked at that and basically sat on a few people, including my spouse, in the friend circle to get an amateur radio. So a not-Baofeng Yaesu HF shows up, my wife explains, and I figure... welp, ham radio, should get licensed myself and, because I'm extra, might as well go to Extra.

I'm not the sort of person who's in that community?

[raw jasper]

Of course not

Yaesu, eh? It seems you jumped for the Big Boy right away 💸

[burnt tendon]

Yeah, and so there's two sides of the coin? There's the "self-resilient" person who completely missed out on the lessons of history that community is what makes us human, where the Baofeng is a fashion accessory, and then there's the side that sees how communications makes us human.

[raw jasper]

Agreed

[burnt tendon]

My spouse's friend told her to get that particular radio. HT-60. So, not that fancy, just.... solid with good filters.

[raw jasper]

||It's not as if the basement full of soup stock and cans will get you very far in an apocalypse||

[burnt tendon]

I guess the highlight is that studying for the Extra test really made impedance finally click.

Also, joined the local ARES/RACES group, got a badge from the city as a disaster volunteer and everything.

[raw jasper]

In my locale, if you have a ham radio license and have antennas, you have to have a physical sign below them stating your full name and callsign. I'm curious if it's the same in your country