general-chat

[sweet flower]

Where dc marking

Manufacturers, not sellers/dealers. And it’s new to be physically marked on the switch.

[haughty solstice]

Isn't this a hardware switch so it doesn't matter?

[sweet flower]

What?

[charred lintel]

https://www.adafruit.com/product/1719

[glad ruin]

I would never trust an AliExpress switch to pass 5A (AC or DC).

For that matter, I would never trust switches from AliExpress (or Amazon) for anything beyond 12V DC at like 50mA.

[sweet flower]

Ali expressed is too mixed. Amazon, you can leave reviews and actually have listings stay up a few years.

[charred lintel]

you actually... trust the reviews on amazon?

[raw jasper]

I guess as much as I'd trust any other online shopping reviews, unless there are obvious signs of manipulation (e.g. earlier reviews referring to an unrelated product)

Is there something I should know?

[tardy badger]

If a product has thousands of reviews, I often tend to not look at the 4 and 5 Star reviews, I look at the 2 and 3 Star reviews for a more honest evaluation.

There’s a thing that happen on Amazon specifically called listing swaps where the seller will use a very easy to rate well product, get tons of reviews and then change the product on the listing to a more expensive product in a category where it will be more likely to be in the “buy box”

Not sure if Amazon closed that loophole in their listings yet. I doubt it given it drives a lot of money

Their official statement is “they have zero tolerance” for review reuse fraud. But it’s so pervasive I’m not sure how they stop it entirely.

[raw jasper]

oh yeah, I have come across that kind of thing in the past. Though, tbh, I don't shop at amazon anymore

[tardy badger]

I only use it for things that are a bit difficult to source locally

[late fulcrum]

Even if the seller doesn't do it, amazon can, due to their "equivalent merchandise" policy, so you can buy a genuine article from a legitimate seller, and still get sent a cheap knockoff from some other seller because it's available in a closer warehouse.

[glad ruin]

I avoid using Amazon when possible.

[burnt tendon]

I think that my annoyance is that I feel like we've reached a point where I'm more likely to get a part with the desired level of sketchy via AliExpress. There's a set of AliExpress stores that people tend to get specific bits from and the stores seem to understand their assignment and if one is to order a part from that particular store you get what you think you are getting. Whereas Amazon is a total mess with the equivalent merchandise policy.

I think there was this movement that BizDev people went through in the 1995-2015 timeframe where they tried to remove all boundaries blocking money arriving magically into their bank account and so many things ranging from drive-by malware installers to cruddy amazon fake products to spam all got worse.

[half smelt]

make a video of manufacturing process adafruit

[late fulcrum]

They've been doing that for a while https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBJ3JzcCmJc

[raw jasper]

solder fountain
Forbidden fondue....

[burnt tendon]

What if we met for snacks at the solder fountain?

[raw jasper]

Only if you bring Sn-apples

[burnt tendon]

https://live.staticflickr.com/701/31516565302_9e70e3591b_b.jpg

I was very excited to visit Barcelona so I could see Alexander Calder's Mercury Fountain in the Fundació Joan Miró

[raw jasper]

I looked up a video of it in action. It looks mesmerizing!

(It also reminds me of the entrance to hazy maze cave in super mario 64, which I imagine is possible to have been inspired by it)

[dusty citrus]

My usual luck, get a desoldering station, and all the freaking nozzles have no holes
Gotta drill through I guess

[late fulcrum]

It may be easier to melt it out, but I'm not sure

[raw jasper]

<@&327289013561982976> Spam link above this message

[graceful forge]

thanks, removed

[loud shale]

At what point in your soldering journey do you think I should be safe to move onto something like the feather? I know it's not the most expensive item but would rather mess up on already broken electronics than something I'll have to pay $30 and a couple weeks for a new one

[raw jasper]

thanks!

[tardy badger]

You mean like soldering the headers on? Honestly that is a pretty hard one to mess up. I’d consider it a great practice. Unless you were just negligent when soldering, you should do okay soldering it even if you don’t have a ton of experience.

If you’re nervous, absolutely understandable. Adafruit has a great guide on soldering basics that you can reference when you’re ready to make the jump to soldering headers on a feather

[charred lintel]

• the guide: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-guide-excellent-soldering?view=all
• nice practical video: https://learn.adafruit.com/collins-lab-soldering?view=all

[ancient rivet]

@loud shale there's also this guide specific to headers:
https://learn.adafruit.com/how-to-solder-headers/overview
how much soldering have you done so far?

[night crescent]

The longest running & biggest worldwide online Show and Tell TONIGHT! Live from BROOKLYN, NY! Wednesday March 12, 2025 at 7:30pm ET come on by and show & share your projects, retro hardware, and more! https://youtu.be/Y1GvneC7vmM

[fluid bobcat]

Expert advice needed. Do you think it is possible to make a smartpen with only a IMU? If not, what optical sensor will make this work

[tardy badger]

It might be hard, but maybe using 2-3 IMU could be a way to do it.

A small force sensor for if you want to physically detect touching a surface

[fluid bobcat]

Thanks. Drift is a common issue to determin the position. Because originally a IMU is for rotation and not for location? Is this true @tardy badger

[tardy badger]

Well, yeah. If you want to know true movement you probably also need a gyroscope and magnetometer

[raw jasper]

...and a Kalman filter or something to integrate all this information

[tardy badger]

And that’s just the start lol

That doesn’t even involve implementing a hand writing or stroke interpreter

[raw jasper]

These days, you can probably download a pre-trained neural network or something, as long as your language is one of the "common" ones

Speaking of, I'd be very interested in learning how early (pre-deep learning boom) CJK handwriting recognition worked... By taking stroke order into account, it could achieve quite good accuracy using quite few resources

[night crescent]

SHOW and TELL 3/12/2025
https://youtu.be/Y1GvneC7vmM

Link to join to show and share your project! https://streamyard.com/zgiif39ymz

[warped jetty]

hi! there is no stock for this product. Any alternatives?

https://www.digikey.es/en/products/detail/adafruit-industries-llc/1063/4990762?s=N4IgTCBcDaILIEEAaAWFA2dIC6BfIA

what would be the difference between that and this other one

https://www.digikey.es/en/products/detail/adafruit-industries-llc/1713/4990777

[night crescent]

ASK AN ENGINEER 3/12/2025 LIVE
https://youtu.be/CGxGLVxW5iw

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

[loud shale]

Very little TBH. Basically messing around with it at hardware village years ago. I bought an iron of decent quality (I think) and haven't touched it since

[shut hatch]

Is there an appropriate place to aks questions about an adafruit cricket?

I accidentally uploaded firmware from a different board onto it and now I am unsure how I can get it off?

[umbral phoenix]

@shut hatch are you talking about the Seesaw on the Crickit itself, or the Arduino or CircuitPython on the microcontroller that Crickit is attached to?

[shut hatch]

The seesaw on the cricket i believe, when I go to reset it, it pops up with FEATHERBOOT instead of CRICKETBOOT

Not sure how that happened

[umbral phoenix]

can you get it back into bootloader mode? then just drag the correct UF2 onto it

(looks like it's the CircuitPthon firmware that's wrong, not Seesaw)

maybe the bootloader is wrong? what's in boot_out.txt when it's showing FEATHERBOOT?

[shut hatch]

There is no file named that

[umbral phoenix]

Is this a CircuitPlayground Express with Cricket?

oh, sorry, contents of INFO_UF2.TXT?

[shut hatch]

UF2 Bootloader v3.16.0 SFHWRO
Model: Feather M0 Express
Board-ID: SAMD21G18A-Feather-M0-Express-v0

these are the contents

[umbral phoenix]

is it a Feather M0 with Crickit? https://circuitpython.org/board/feather_m0_express_crickit/

[shut hatch]

Adafruit CRICKIT FeatherWing for any Feather

But I have a feather attached

Adafruit Feather M4 Express

[umbral phoenix]

The bootloader doesn't look right for the board. Bootloader says Feather M0, but board is Feather M4. Did you update the bootloader?

I'm not sure about CRICKETBOOT

[shut hatch]

I have it connected to the Adafruit CRICKIT FeatherWing, not the feather

[umbral phoenix]

"it" is the USB?

[shut hatch]

Yes, I apologize

[umbral phoenix]

oh... you're connected to the Seesaw chip (which is a M0)

connect the USB to the Feather

The Feather M4 will run CircuitPython and the added libraries to run Crickit features

[shut hatch]

I have been uploading code to the feather but it doesn't seem to be affecting the crickit

I posted the code in help-with-circuitpyhton

python

and the crickit is blinking red

[umbral phoenix]

the crickit and feather are stacked? and nothing else is connected to either? What version of CircuitPython is loaded on the Feather M4?

[shut hatch]

Yes, and version 9.2.4

[umbral phoenix]

what's blinking red on the Crickit... an LED or the NeoPixel?

unfortunately, I can't find a learn guide on the crickit featherwing, only the CircuitPlayground Express version

[shut hatch]

the neopixel, i found out its just cause it needs more power than the micro usb can provide

[umbral phoenix]

do you have a way to give it more power on the barrel jack?

[shut hatch]

i do, but can I do that while its plugged into the usb?

[umbral phoenix]

I can't find a schematic, but ordinarily Adafruit designs its boards so that it will choose the highest voltage supply attached

I'd hate to steer you rong and fry the board though... let me dig a little more

[shut hatch]

Tyty so much fr

[umbral phoenix]

This section seems to have been adaptd for both CircuiPlayground and Feather Crickit https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-crickit-creative-robotic-interactive-construction-kit/crickit-tour#power-input-2988012

It looks like Crickit is powered from the barrel jack. FeatherWings usually connect 5V or 3v3 from the Feather to the Wing, and that could be happening here but it's not enough

I'm not 100%, but it would be expected to use USB serial and CIRCUITPY while fully powering the Crickit, so I'd be surprised if you couldn't have both connected. That learn guide page seems to support that assumption.

[shut hatch]

Alrighty

I am just tryin to get this code to work now unfortunately

[umbral phoenix]

It's getting late here, but feel free to post your next hurdle here, or in help-with-projects, or help-with circuitpython if it's mainly a code issue at that point, and someone will help further if they can

[burnt tendon]

Oof, well, I think it's going to be too cloudy here, but if you want to see a red moon: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/globe/2025-march-14

[loud shale]

Related to ^^, has anyone done projects around space? I remember years ago I was looking into astrophotography and stopped since all the gear was expensive. It might be fun to make some kind of DiY version

[tardy badger]

Would be cool to make your own setup to move your telescope with earths rotation and make a custom pi camera enclosure to capture your telescope view

[loud shale]

Yeah, that's basically what I had in mind. I don't think the general principle would be hard but I imagine getting it precise would be hard. Precision would have to be important with objects that far away

[raw jasper]

I imagine you will end up paying as much (or more) $$ than the commercial tools, but you'll learn a lot more in the end ;>

[tardy badger]

Commercial tracking tools are so expensive 🥲

To retrofit my 114x500mm reflector it would be like $300-400

It’s not even a nice telescope either

[loud shale]

Any idea on what makes them so expensive? I'm completely outside the world of photography but know the professional gear has a lot of zeros in the price

[raw jasper]

I guess that the precision clockwork required doesn't come cheap?

[thick wind]

If I had to guess, probably something involving expensive glass lenses and optical precision.

[rotund canopy]

good lenses are very expensive for some reason

[loud shale]

Hmm. I wonder if I could use cheapie lenses or if the resulting images would be useless

[raw jasper]

you have a telescope? in this economy? :P

[tardy badger]

I got it last year lol

It’s like one of those beginner telescopes you buy to learn about astronomy

[tardy badger]

Combination of good glass (lens), precision steppers for smooth and accurate movement, along with the software to actually track Star paths.

[raw jasper]

https://semiengineering.com/challenges-grow-for-medical-ics/

Interesting article on what goes behind designing and producing medical device ICs

[little quest]

Hey guys if I make a framework I want to bundle with ug8lib how do I get that up

I'm trying to use ug8lib with some custom code to have a full 2d rendering engine for graphics

I think that others would like to use this, so I would like to share after I perfect it

Also!
I need to be able to push an array of pixel color values to a block of display memory
How do I do this in ug8lib? The website didn't show how :(((

[thick wind]

Are you using the original u8glib? I don’t recall that library supporting color…

[half smelt]

People in New York go to bed early.

[stoic mesa]

there are such projects.
Check out https://github.com/OG-star-tech/OG-star-tracker-

[half smelt]

good morning

[spice moss]

https://tenor.com/view/pi-day-pi-day-2024-happy-pi-day-pie-digits-gif-12368915911068687626

[somber spindle]

Happy Pi day!

[tardy badger]

Assembled 😄

[tardy badger]

It werks

Weeee

Now I just need to write a driver for it

[haughty solstice]

This is precisely what I'm looking for, thank you so much

Is there a driver for this or do I just need hecka transistors

Oh it switches color depending on stuff

Very interesting

It mentions using a 74HC595 to multiplex

I have a 74HC595N. Will that do?

[solar kindle]

Yep, should be fine. The "N" usually just indicates package type. Varies by manufacturer but N likely means plastic DIP package.

[haughty solstice]

Oh goodie

For once a component calls for an IC that I actually own LOL

Does Adafruit sell any single digit 7-segment modules?

I can only find 4 digit

Dang shipping is as much as the product itself

C'est la vie

[somber spindle]

If you get your order up to $200, they ship free!

[terse lava]

Digikey has a lot to choose from. Also something I found out here a few weeks ago, if you mail in an order with a check or money order, they will ship for free on Digikey. Slow, but if you only need a few cheaper items might be worth it. Digikey has a lot of 7-sement single digit modules for under a buck each.

[charred lintel]

They ship for free for orders over 60$ in the EU... didn't think we'd have a better deal over here than the US, lol

[late shadow]

Hi - any update on when the next Adabox might ship? I did see the notice on the website that the order will be changed. Thanks. https://www.adafruit.com/adabox

[half smelt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNjwOAns2t4 25min counting

[night crescent]

Solenoids go clicky-clacky 🔩🔊🤖

We're testing out an I2C-to-solenoid driver today. It uses an MCP23017 expander. We like this particular chip for this usage because it has push-pull outputs, making it ideal for driving our N-channel FETs and flyback diodes. The A port connects to the 8 drivers, while the B port remains available for other GPIO purposes. For this demo, whenever we 'touch' a pin on port B to ground, the corresponding solenoid triggers provide an easy way to check speed and power usage.

[night crescent]

Adafruit FruitJam is a Mac 384K 🍏💾

The FruitJam board has an RP2350, dual USB ports over PIO, DVI output from HSTX, and the ability to emulate some classic computers. In this demo, we're using it with the Mac 128K-But-With-384K-Instead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K It's not quite a 512K or Mac Plus—which had 1 MB of RAM—but it does have the same 68000 core and is running a Mac Plus ROM, so once we get PSRAM going, we could easily expand to much more RAM. Right now, we can run Finder 5.1 and test out the mouse and keyboard, which both work flawlessly. This is super fun—we can't wait to get some of our favorite old games working! FruitJam is still a work in progress; we have to revise the PCB to fix some errors, but you can sign up here to be notified when we get them in stock https://www.adafruit.com/product/6200

[little quest]

yea

it supports color

[sick apex]

no help with banging my head against a wall because the espidf is broken channel 😔

[little quest]

Chatgpt

[sick apex]

no

it's not even the espidf, i think it's my serial driver on my PC

it's just not working at all

not with any of my boards, not with arduino framework or espidf so i think i have borked it

[little quest]

Is it connected to your motherboard itself

And do you have a good cable

[sick apex]

yup and yup

used diff cables

both USB data neither worked

[little quest]

What if you have two bad cables

[sick apex]

i got a serial output from an ESP32 i had deployed for proximity detection

i don't

[little quest]

How do you know

[sick apex]

because this

[little quest]

Does it work for ur phone

[sick apex]

no because its micro usb

but like it works, ik they both do

i think it's just not uploading the code right

[little quest]

There's the problem,test them on a micro b device

[little quest]

They sometimes need button held

[sick apex]

no it's not because you just completely ignored the fact that it works

[little quest]

Is the ide manager having correct things?

[sick apex]

tried that

also didn't work

[little quest]

Sorry I'm tired

Hmm

[sick apex]

haha you and me both

[little quest]

Hmm.

So what could be causing this...

[sick apex]

platformio seems to be doing it's job

i seriously have no clue

[little quest]

It just doesn't upload?

[sick apex]

i'm using an ESP32 S3 Geek and that's doing the same thing

[little quest]

Are you sure it doesn't use a ch32 driver

[sick apex]

that has a USB A Male on it

[little quest]

Sometimes cheaper ones use this or other bootloader

[sick apex]

i had the geek serial outputting earlier but then it stopped

well uploading

[little quest]

Worst case re install mobo driver

[little quest]

Upload ≠ serial

[sick apex]

yeah i know, it did both though

couldn't get a serial out without uploading a program xD

[little quest]

Does platform io attempt an upload

[sick apex]

it succeeds and goes through to the serial monitor when i upload and monitor

[little quest]

Perhaps you changed something and forgot,or you're not connecting to the right hardware port

[sick apex]

no errors or anything

[little quest]

So what's the problem lol

[sick apex]

its the only com port

[sick apex]

it doesn't do anything xD

[little quest]

Can I see screenshot

[little quest]

So... It thinks it's uploaded to the chip. Even though the chip doesn't get it

[sick apex]

lit just does this

and sits there

[little quest]

Is this on both your boards?

[sick apex]

yeah

#include <Arduino.h>
void setup()
{
    Serial.begin(115200);
}

void loop()
{
    Serial.println("yes");
}```

this is the test code

[little quest]

This is clearly a board problem, likely a software one

[sick apex]

i can try another board

i've got hundreds of the mf things xD

[little quest]

You didn't
#include serial

[sick apex]

it's included via arduino.h

[little quest]

I know. Do it anyway

Sometimes Arduino is stupid

[sick apex]

yeah could be linker tomfoolery or sumn

gimme a sec

[little quest]

Try blinking a light too

[sick apex]

wait acc it didn't work with the espidf either

[little quest]

Try the default Arduino ide

Yes it's crap

[sick apex]

haha ik

im gonna just try a quick pc restart

[little quest]

Also try blink on board led instead or import serial (ide can lie)

[little quest]

Food ueea

[sick apex]

before i start installing things that im never gonna use xD

[little quest]

It be that way goodnight good luck what you project

[sick apex]

🙏 works

[dense ingot]

I dunno the best channel to ask this in, but is anybody in here good at AC wall power stuff? Trying to figure some stuff out in my apartment and looking for someone to just chat about it with me

[terse lava]

I am have changed a few wall outlets in my time. What's up.

[half smelt]

hi is adafruit hosting a show today

[fair summit]

See #live-broadcast-chat message, there is usually a Desk of LadyAda, but not always

[brittle bison]

Anyone used a bluetooth printer from a raspberry Pi at all? Looking at these cheaper ones on Amazon (eg. Nelko is one of them) and wondering how easy it would work from Python stuff on a Pi

[little quest]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/1329469822005674074.gif?size=48&animated=true&name=winter

[little quest]

Do the drivers work on linux

[brittle bison]

They at least provide them... I was hoping to hear of success before purchasing but I can give it a shot I guess

[little quest]

Id check first

[night crescent]

What's new?

🚀 Pimoroni Tiny 2350 – Mini RP2350 dev board with 4MB Flash.
🔌 Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 – Pico-shaped RP2350 board with pins.
📡 Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 W – Wireless-ready RP2350 dev board.
💡 Pimoroni Tiny FX W – Wireless LED effects kit.
⚡ Adafruit TPS65131 – Split power supply (+/-6V to +/-15V).

https://www.adafruit.com/new

[haughty solstice]

I ordered something on Friday. Is there any way to see if it's shipped or track it somehow?

Perhaps an ETA on delivery date. Not in a rush, just curious

[hard estuary]

Make sure you're logged in to Adafruit.com and look at your order history page, it will show if it's shipped and its tracking number if it has: https://www.adafruit.com/order_history

[haughty solstice]

Ah, it's preparing for shipment

I assume manufacturing/fufillment don't do stuff on Fridays/Weekend

[haughty solstice]

wat

[raw jasper]

mmm laptop juice

an eXcelent taste

Ugh... I just realized I cannot bear to see capital "X" like that anymore <_<

[little quest]

Nom

[little quest]

X

I too hate excell

[raw jasper]

given that it's the most widespread way for people to get their computer to actually compute stuff for them, I am completely fine with excel, and all other spreadsheet programs. I will even occasionally use one myself for a one-off graph or something!

[little quest]

Oighj

Just use bad python scripts

[raw jasper]

There must be a reason the spreadsheet format has stuck around since the Sumerian age

(citation: https://www.datafix.com.au/BASHing/2020-08-12.html)

[peak veldt]

Hey, I'm making an academic poster for my project. Can I use the logo for my project poster, and if so, is there a standard layout format I should use?

for CircuitPython

[raw jasper]

FWIW, the term "CircuitPython" is trademarked and the trademark usage guidelines are a placeholder (https://circuitpython.org/trademarks)

So, unless you get explicit written permission from adafruit, it's probably a no-no. IANAL though

[hard estuary]

According to the license file in the Art Pack on the CircuitPython Awesome list, all this art is CC-BY, you should be able to use it: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/dcl8q4umgalcka917brqg/AHizYw38NsN-HlgZOJH4Ns0?rlkey=1lt9y59f8rv5qmeeb1d6ans7a&e=1&dl=0 (They didn't have a problem with me using Blinka on my podcast logo, so an academic project should be fine, but I, too, am not a laywer)

And I'd recommend checking out the Blinka folder in the art pack

[nocturne plank]

Any idea what type of motors daniel rozin uses in these pictures? Nema 11/14? Geared or something else?

[solar kindle]

If I had to guess, I'd say something like this. https://www.omc-stepperonline.com/25x25-5mm-pm-stepper-motor-w-gear-ratio-30-1-spur-gearbox-25pm48m02-sg30

[raw jasper]

The problem is that, at least according to my understanding of the law, in most jurisdictions, copyright != trademark; for example, this instance of the firefox logo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Firefox_logo,_2019.svg is licensed under the MPLv2, but the logo itself is trademarked, which limits use regardless of the underlying file's license. In mozilla's case, they have outlined their trademark usage guidelines at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/policy/ , so the uses under the conditions explicitly defined there most probably do not require explicit permission from mozilla. Since there are no relevant guidelines for the CircuitPython name or logo, it may be advisable for anybody who wishes to use them to obtain relevant written permission from the company first.

[tardy badger]

They actually do have usage guidelines for Adafruit

https://cdn-blog.adafruit.com/uploads/2017/03/adafruit_brand_identity_guidelines_update.pdf

That’s from 2017, plenty has changed in the number of items in their digital identity catalog

They also have a trademark page too, lemme find it

https://www.adafruit.com/trademarks

[raw jasper]

...Such as Blinka[TM] or the CircuitPython[TM] mark!

[dusty citrus]

I was thinking to do a diy lock.
But looking at picklock lawyer, a dude who cracks locks, but doesn't reccomend any, I dunno how to make something that isn't complete junk

[tardy badger]

Any lock is pickable is the gist of his series. It’s just a matter of how hard you will make it to pick said lock.

[molten hamlet]

take a look at the videos where other youtubers make their own locks and send them to lock picking lawyer, stuffmadehere did one or two

although their designs I wouldn't consider to be diy to the average hobbyist

[raw jasper]

Yeah, the treat model of a lock is to be enough of a bother / make enough noise while being picked to make would-be thieves consider the neighbor a more attractive proposition :P

(I typo'd threat model as treat model and it was too funny to correct)

[tardy badger]

lol

[raw jasper]

I just looked it up, and apparently there is one lock pokemon:

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Klefki_(Pokémon)

^ Lock with a treat model (rare candies)

[dusty citrus]

Fron the sixth generation pokemon has gone down the hill

They even sold a dlc as a full game sith ultra sun/moon

[tardy badger]

Idk, Pokemon Legends Arceus was one of my favorite Pokemon games ever. I do hold gen 1 close to my heart though because I have many fond memories playing my gameboy color and Pokemon red

I still have that gameboy color too and recently revived two gen 1 copies of the game (Red and Yellow)

I need to get some of the gameboy advance titles to go with my gameboy advance

[dusty citrus]

Pokemon legends was interesting tbh, but I didn't played cause, I wouldn't buy a console for just a game, there are simulators yes, but over time my likeness for games in general tbh has died off

But mostly because they never released arceus in pokemon platinum

[tardy badger]

I think they could have done better about structuring the god Pokemon in the game

[dusty citrus]

Didn't played arceus one, but since the sixth for some reason games have gone easier and like half baked out
Dunno why

[tardy badger]

I think that’s more or less a symptom of rehashing the same story more or less the same way for generations of a game

Plus the fact that games can ship with day one bugs and patches has made the overall quality of games suck quite a bit

But Arceus and Scarlet and Violet are honestly really great departures from the traditional path the games push you to take

[dusty citrus]

As long they sell they stop to care... Mafia-Nintendo doesn't seem to like too much competition with their lawsuits either

Although the devs are gamefreak, they're still bound to Nintendo

[tardy badger]

Sure, Nintendo owns in part some of the Pokemon franchise

[dusty citrus]

Tbh I was looking forward for the new Layton Game
The last one with the Layton girl was pretty boring

[rapid geode]

didnt pokemon just gets sold off last week?

[tardy badger]

No, Niantic sold off its mobile gaming division which included Pokemon Go

[rapid geode]

oooh

so they just have a license to use pokemon

is reading

[tardy badger]

Yeah

Or at least develop the mobile game for the franchise

[rapid geode]

so im finally doing my porch in a few weeks when its warm out. and i am thinking of putting overhead strawberry beds on the side garden area.

12 troughs. 5 or 6 plants each. mmmmm

berries

haha

[tardy badger]

Oh nice

[rapid geode]

not sure what types of plants though. gotta reasearch. i know you can get the bare root ones for about 50 cents each

oh. and relevant to here... i want to make a little automatic watering system.

since they will be bothersome to water and check

being 8 feet up

[nocturne plank]

I was thinking the exact same thing. Has to be a stepper motor with a gear ratio. 2nd guess gives me confidence. Thanks

[raw jasper]

I think nostalgia is clouding your vision; The different editions, especially the "third, more complete" edition that tended to get released later in each generation's lifecycle (i.e. pkmn yellow, emerald, platinum) could be very much described as DLC before DLC

[somber spindle]

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/10/nz_health_excel_spreadsheet/

[night crescent]

Playing Our Childhood Mac on the Fruit Jam 🍏💾

We grew up with a Mac Plus/512K, so getting the Pico-Mac 68000 emulator https://github.com/evansm7/pico-mac working on Fruit Jam https://www.adafruit.com/product/6200 was a high priority for those nostalgic vibes.

We've got HSTX DVI output plus a USB keyboard and mouse https://github.com/jepler/pico-mac/tree/rp2350-fruitjam and with a little effort, we built a 2-megabyte "disk" with some of our favorite games and apps:

MacPaint! https://archive.org/details/mac_Paint_2
Lode Runner! https://www.macintoshrepository.org/8393-lode-runner
Shufflepuck Café! https://www.macintoshrepository.org/6165-shufflepuck-cafe

What were your favorite games from the "classic" Mac era?

[night crescent]

"See" the Sounds of Classic Mac Audio 🔊🍏

We're working on the Pico-Mac port https://github.com/jepler/pico-mac/tree/rp2350-fruitjam to Fruit Jam https://www.adafruit.com/product/6200 and one thing we really want to add is sound support for classic Mac games and HyperCard stacks.

Audio on the hardware we're emulating is pretty straightforward: every scanline of the video generator also outputs one byte of PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) data. We have 370 horizontal lines—352 visible and 18 during the vsync—at a 60.15 Hz refresh rate, producing approximately 22.255 kHz audio. That data is written to memory address $1FD00 http://www.mac.linux-m68k.org/devel/plushw.php so all we have to do now is pipe that 8-bit PWM signal either out to a timer on the RP2350 microcontroller or To the TLV320DAC3100 I²S amplifier onboard Fruit Jam, for that sweet, sweet 'Wild Eep' https://www.facebook.com/adafruitindustries/videos/1873371666122621

[night crescent]

Browsing HyperCard stacks on our RP2350-based Fruit Jam 🍏📂

With a little more tweaking, we've got a nice big 12MB disk image loading into our Pico-Mac port https://github.com/jepler/pico-mac/tree/rp2350-fruitjam to the Fruit Jam https://www.adafruit.com/product/6200 — that 16MB of internal flash is coming in super useful now! That means not only can we run System 6 but also install some nice software like HyperCard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard !

As kids, we loved playing and making HyperCard stacks, so it's neat to see that we can still navigate the classics on an RP2350. Many stacks have music or sound effects, so we'll revisit these once we get audio playback working.

[stiff kettle]

I just want to say, having switched a project over from an ATTiny85 to an ATTiny412, UPDI is amazing....

[sullen portal]

I'm looking forward to seeing about integrating my zero-CPU DVI video buffer onto the fruit jam for the various emulators once the Jam's available for purchase, though also because I want to bump them up to 2bpp internally to mostly fix the brightness issue from RP2350's TMDS expander handling low-bpp modes poorly since it zero-fills. :S

[night crescent]

WE ARE LIVE in BROOKLYN! SHOW AND TELL! https://youtu.be/v2NG7nlR2JU

[night crescent]

WE ARE LIVE in BROOKLYN! ASK AN ENGINEER! https://youtu.be/40RQE9mGCLE

[zealous oyster]

hey can I find somewhere the reveal what will be in the next adabox, or are they surprise boxes? on the adabox page there's an unboxing from last year.

[spark egret]

What channel would be best to as for suggested hardware? I planned on making a modified switch dock that would hold 1 or 2 120mm Phantek T30 fans. It looks like the fans use 4 wires. I am unsure what hardware to buy so that I can power the fans. It would be ideal if I could power them from the native USB port found on the the switch dock, but I am unsure if powering the fans that way is possible or illadvised. TY for any assistance!

[lapis anchor]

generally a surprise box, they don't release the unboxing until they start shipping 🙂

[lapis anchor]

I'd recommend the #help-with-projects channel - good catch all for scenarios like that 🙂

[zealous oyster]

ok, thx!

[tropic cloud]

1 week

(just charged it from flat)

[terse lava]

One solid week is a long time especially since a shuffle it is charger OR listen, not both. Sounds like you might want to make the battery unpluggable so you can charger it in a normal charger so you don't have to wait a week to listen to it again.

[terse lava]

So how long did it end up playing before it stopped from low battery?

[tropic cloud]

About 3 months, give or take a few days, i didn't check in on it every day

[terse lava]

That is pretty amazing though. You would hide one up in a tree somewhere remote, say near a hiking trail, with a small speaker and set to play softly and all summer people will be talking about the mystery music playing in the middle of nowhere day and night. 😆

[tropic cloud]

Feels like something I'll use legitimately once and then never again

[little quest]

HOW DO I C PLUSS

HEEEEELPPP

[lapis anchor]

Random question for a friend ... Anyone happen to know what protocol the Onn. addressable LEDs from Walmart use? Sounds like he's already tried the assorted WLED speeds/protocols. Couldn't find anything with a quick search, figured worth a shot here! 🙂

[tardy badger]

I believe they are similar to the APA102 ones which have separate clock and data lines

[lapis anchor]

Thank you - I'll let him know! 🙂

[lapis anchor]

dang, thanks for the lead skerr but no luck, looks like it is just a 3 wire interface (0v/5v/signal)

[thick wind]

Which led strip, if you don’t mind me asking? I think the fairy lights remind me of the fixed address fairy lights (PID 4917) if that might be any hint to anything…

[lapis anchor]

Just asked for a link - he mentioned the "Onn. RGBIC fairy lights" (and the fact that he's got many boxes, haha) it sounds like he tested the various options available in the Neopixel library and couldn't get anything to light up. Fairly technical HAM guy so making an assumption he'd already triple checked his pin out/wiring.

[hallow silo]

I am a ham but I don't consider myself competent in anything, hah

[tardy badger]

Not a ham, the only thing I’m competent on is evaluating areas I’m incompetent in

[hallow silo]

from the other discord Spurious dragged me from (and iMHO I should ahve joined here ages ago).. https://www.walmart.com/ip/onn-Fairy-16-4-RGBIC-LED-Indoor-Decoration-Dream-Multi-Color-Lights-with-IR-Remote/15626359040?classType=VARIANT&from=/search , UPC is 681131414509. I have date codes from 2021

physically they look near identical to PID 4917 that Hem pointed out earlier, including the reddish 'wire' that denotes +5vDC

Very interesting though with their operating mode

[craggy thorn]

anyone else going to OSHW 2025 in Edinburgh in May?

[lapis anchor]

I did order a set, should be hear next Tues/Weds, can throw it on a cheap logic analyzer and compare with some known protocols in Sigrok to see where the wind takes us. (Easier to cap/share that way compared to my rigol scope)

[hallow silo]

yeah, was looking at adding a logic analyzer to my kit to see if I could suss out what it actually is, but my GAS has gotten way out of hand lately >.>

[lapis anchor]

Hahaha I'm not sure what you mean

These little guys are nice for what they are, I know scamazon is generally not the preferred vendor, can snag them anywhere but for ~$15 they're decent for what they do. https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Analyzer-Ferrite-Channel-Arduino/dp/B077LSG5P2/

But Saleae does offer deep discounts for DIY users too, just have to ask. (Sorry not trying to make you go broke, just offer another option 😛)

https://blog.saleae.com/saleae-discounts/

[sick apex]

playing around with this DualMCU board i bought a while back

and it has connected UART pins between the 2 MCUs on the board, managed to get them chatting to each other and wrote a simple little protocol and it seems to work nicely

currently the ESP just counts up from 0 and sends the number to the RP2040, the RP2040 will turn its LED on every time it gets an even number and turn it off on each odd number and it works reliably, this could be super cool for some things i think

Orange led is connected to the uart and the green one is the one that the rp2040 toggles

where's everyone elses extremely over engineered blinky

[hollow flint]

This YouTube video is full of over engineered blinkies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FTUa-2eIDU

[sick apex]

haha i saw that the other day

there should be a thread in here someone full of the most stupidly over engineered blinkies

then again, knowing this community someone would mf make an engine and have some connection in it and have that blink an LED and then control it with the amount of fuel or something

[sick apex]

implemented hamming code just to make sure my blinky doesn't get corrupted

tbf i could probably have just used UART's parity but i don't care

[terse lava]

Perhaps not the same thing, but my house is set back from the road a bit and no curbs with painted house numbers, so I decided I needed a lit number sign for the house. So I hooked up a pair of 8x8 WS2812b panels to make an 8x16 panel and used WLED to run it. Say my address is 87 Maple Rd. Well first "87" is displayed and just sits there for 8 seconds or so, then it scrolls the full "87 Maple Rd" address, then it goes into a sunburst effect, then back to 87 static then full address scrolling and then another effect and so on, including a Ukranian Flag for one of them. All that just to have an illuminated "87" on the house.

[sick apex]

haha that is overengineered

most people just get a couple of metal numbers

[terse lava]

My metal number were put on the side of the house about 28 years ago. they used to be nice and shiny. Now they are dull and blend into the brown paint of the house.

[sick apex]

ugh annoyingly for this protocol to work properly i have to do sooooooo many preprocessor control flow statements for the rp2040 and the esp32's different rtoses

😭

[sick apex]

bring them into the 21st century with a dot matrix

boom, the ESP32 is sending that message to the RP2040 via my uart protocol and the rp2040 is serial logging it to me || i have no life please save me ||

[terse lava]

Well that is what the 8x16 panel essentially is. Right now it is literally masking taped into one of my windows. I thought about making one with a lipo battery and putting it out by the mailbox.

[sick apex]

throw a mini solar panel on it with the battery and you'll never have to think about it ever again

unless you're in finland

[terse lava]

Massachusetts which is close enough. 😉

[sick apex]

i think you might get a few extra hours of sun

i swear finland is dark for like a week at some point in the year

hahaha

[terse lava]

I grew up in Southern California. I love living in Mass. but yeah, more daylight then Finland but not as much as So. Cal.

[sick apex]

i swear the RP2040 does some weird stuff when you press the reset button because it never just kicks back in, it just breaks 😭

[terse lava]

Stop pressing the button then. Problem solved.

[sick apex]

yeah but in cal you'd have to make sure the battery doesn't explode from the heat

haha

[sick apex]

yeah ik but like if it crashes then without pressing the reset button || or fixing my code || i cant easily just reset it without unplugging / replugging the board which also restarts the esp32 or reflashing it

infact, if i unplug and replug it, it doesn't work either

the ESP restarts fine but the rp2040 does not

very annoying and confusing

[terse lava]

That is what the watchdog timer is for. It will do it for you. 💡

[sick apex]

not on rp2040 iirc i think it just stops

if it does restart it then its still being weird

[terse lava]

I started with CircuitPython about a year ago and one of my first developement boards was the Pi Pico and then some ESP32-S2/S3s from Adafruit and others. The RP2040 went into my basement to monitor temps and then my ESPs went on various other projects. Whenever my wifi goes down or we have a power outtage, the ESPs are a 80/20 chance of recovering on their own. The Pi Pico has been absolutely rock solid once I enabled the WTD in CircuitPython. In just about a year, I have not once had to go into the basement to press the reset button or power cycle it. The same can not be said for a lot of my ESP projects. Nor has the Pico even just decided to stop working for no reason.

[sick apex]

yeah i mean it's usually fine, i think it's being weird because i wrote the code in C++

but for some reason if it loses power / gets restarted it just refuses to start up again

using arduino framework

[terse lava]

Did you try yelling at it?

[sick apex]

i would but its 2:30 am

[terse lava]

Brazil?

[sick apex]

UK

[terse lava]

Oh sorry, I read two hours ahead. Duh. Yes UK is 2:30am

[sick apex]

yes xD

[terse lava]

So you get daylight and weather like Massachusetts. And we stole all your town and county names.

[sick apex]

haha no i think we gave you guys those names

[terse lava]

Yeah, you brought them over with you.

[sick apex]

when we went there on our extended holiday

[terse lava]

I live in Middlesex county and some of the closest towns right around me include Billerica and Chelmsford.

I could be British!

[sick apex]

yeah if you said that people would be confused

weird, it doesn't start a COM port when i reset it either

i wonder if the bootloader is broken

or if the flash is broken

[terse lava]

On RP2040s there is an unbreakable bootloader. Or if it is broken then the entire board is broken. So unless electrically damaged, you should always be able to get back to "factory" via the ROM bootloader.

[sick apex]

then i'm mega confused

if i put the uf2 on it, it loads up and runs fine

if it looses power or restarts it doesn't start a COM port, doesn't give me the USB MSC thing and doesn't run the program

[terse lava]

I blame C++ then. Sorry, I only know CircuitPython so I am useless to you.

[sick apex]

lemme see if i put circuit python on it, if it does the same thing

[terse lava]

When you load CP you should get a "Hello World" code on it. You can then restart it over and over and see if you get "Hello World" everytime.

[sick apex]

mf circuit python works

man i'm stumped

just doesn't like my code

[fair summit]

so you're saying the first time you put the UF2 on it works, but it doesn't work after a power cycle? That's a known problem having to do with the crystal oscillator not being given enough time to start up.

[sick apex]

oh, sweet so it's not entirely my fault; is there any fixes?

[fair summit]

yes. I missed what you're programming it in

pico-sdk, arduino??

[sick apex]

arduino

[fair summit]

which board is this?

[sick apex]

it's the DualMCU, basically a pico

for all intents and purposes

unless it's for a hardware thing then heree's the spec sheet https://github.com/UNIT-Electronics/DualMCU/

[fair summit]

you need to set this:

#define PICO_XOSC_STARTUP_DELAY_MULTIPLIER 64

in the right include file. I'm not sure where it is for arduino. hold on...

[sick apex]

alright, ty for your assistance btw

it's been urking me for hours xD

[fair summit]

👍 are you using the philhower arduino core?

[sick apex]

i'm not sure, i'm using it through platformio

i'll see if i can check

[fair summit]

which board are you choosing in the dropdown?

[sick apex]

pico

[env:rp2040]
platform = raspberrypi
board = pico
framework = arduino
monitor_speed = 9600```

this is what the rp2040 thing would be

if that helps at all

framework-arduino-mbed

i believe

there's a folder called "cores" but it just says arduino in it so beyond that, i'm clueless unfortunately

[fair summit]

ok, I think the answer to that is that no, you're not using philhower, because the platformio person wants to be paid, and philhower is not that kind of board package

[sick apex]

what file would it be put in typically, there might be somewhere i can throw it

infact, if i set it as a compiler definition that could work

lemme give it a shot

[fair summit]

looking...

yes, I guess -DPICO_XOSC_STARTUP_DELAY_MULTIPLIER=64

or however you'd do it.

[sick apex]

that also didn't work

hmm

[fair summit]

https://github.com/platformio/platform-raspberrypi/blob/6238a1ab422abca026d77825b40709e36a179622/boards/pico.json#L5

i know zilch about platformio. You could use regular arduino IDE and install the philhower core

https://arduino-pico.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[sick apex]

i'll give that a shot in the morning, wayy to late to start meddling around with other things and migrating things xD

thank you for your help though, it'll come in handy in the morning

[fair summit]

yw - here's an example: https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk/blob/ee68c78d0afae2b69c03ae1a72bf5cc267a2d94c/src/boards/include/boards/adafruit_feather_rp2040.h#L22

[sick apex]

hang on, i need to do a fresh compile otherwise it wont do the thingy

[night crescent]

Desk of Ladyada – Marchintosh on Fruit Jam 🍎💾

Ladyada tests final TLV320DAC3100 boards for Fruit Jam, revises the PCB, and explores Jepler’s pico-mac. Also designs a USB-C CC resistor fix board. For the next rev, she hunts an 8-ohm PCB-mount speaker under 0.8" for onboard beeps.

https://youtu.be/heGi3ctx4Kg

[mighty falcon]

Hello Adafruit! I would like to build a simple bluetooth macropad for pc/ipad volume control, preferably using CircuitPython. What's the smallest or cheapest microcontroller Adafruit offers that I can use for this purpose?

[tardy badger]

How many keys do you anticipate needing? A QTPY ESP32-S3 probably could meet your needs. Alternatively there is an nRF52 Xiao from Seeed with the same footprint that would just do Bluetooth instead of Bluetooth and WiFi

[mighty falcon]

minimum of 3 keys but 5 is more ideal

[tardy badger]

Xiao and QTPY have enough pins for that

[mighty falcon]

Great, if I want a board that can also handle lipo input and charging, is the ESP32-S3 Feather the right board?

[fair summit]

yes, it's the easiest, since that's all built in

[hollow flint]

This ESP32-S3 Feather board has three on-board buttons: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5691

[mighty falcon]

Excellent, thanks everyone.

[rough siren]

Hey y'all - I'm an animator who got super inspired by this adafruit video. I'm wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction with what hardware I would need to create a similar setup. Poking around the website, but having trouble finding matches.

https://youtu.be/eipKg2pUQ_8?t=287 (time stamped for relevant part)

[somber spindle]

This isn't an exact answer, but take a look at the learn guides on e-ink, they'll typically include a list of required materials: https://learn.adafruit.com/search?q=e-ink

[rough siren]

Ok nice this will get me going in the right direction

[haughty solstice]

My multiplexed LED bargraphs came in today, but I'm noticing the link to the guide on how to use them with a multiplex chip is broken

https://www.adafruit.com/product/1719
I can't seem to find much online either. Any ideas?

I do see this pinout, but I'm not sure why it says you drive two LEDs with one pin

[sullen portal]

Yeah that's not even charlieplexing going on here, it's just a plain 8x3 matrix to drive things, in pairs for red/green instead of polarity for red/green.

[crystal ore]

Is it a language confusion? There are two LEDs in each segment of the bargraph.

[haughty solstice]

Pin 3 connects to both A, E, and I though, no?

And then the ground is both 1 and 14?

[crystal ore]

Yes. It's multiplexed depending on what combination of anode and cathode you drive.

[haughty solstice]

I guess I'm still a bit confused. Why is one output controlled by two pins?

[crystal ore]

I think that's just because they had some extra pins in the package size, heh heh, and decided to combine two for the higher-current cathodes.

[haughty solstice]

Got it. So if I wanted to turn K on and make it green (red and yellow), I'd want to connect 7 or 8 to ground, and drive 4 and 11 high

And I control pins 2-5 and 10-13 using the 8 outputs of the multiplexer, then need another 3 pins on my microcontroller to drive transistors on pins 1, 6, and 7

[crystal ore]

Sounds like a plan. 👍

[haughty solstice]

Oh wait and I probably need a resistor

How do I calculate how many ohms I need?

[sullen portal]

That would make it yellow, BTW. The two LED colors are red and green individually, so it'd be only driving pin 11 high to pin 7/8 as ground for green I believe.

[haughty solstice]

Ohhhh

[umbral phoenix]

you could use the backpack to drive it https://www.adafruit.com/product/1721

[sullen portal]

Also looking at the datasheet https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/KWL-R1230XDUGB.pdf the voltages are 1.8-2.4V for the red side, and 2.2-2.8V for the green side, checking with various LED resistor calculators using 100Ω resistors should be a safe starting point for both colors, though yeah that backpack to drive pairs of the 12-segment bargraphs is likely far easier.

[haughty solstice]

Sadly I'm not using a pair

And the backpack is too wide for my needs

But also did they have this HT16K33 IC custom made? Looking it up shows it's made by Adafruit? I didn't know you could even do that

[stoic mesa]

No, adafruit do not produce their own ICs - yet.
This one is by Taiwanese company named Holtek:
https://www.holtek.com/page/vg/HT16K33A

[honest moth]

old boi

[ancient rivet]

@haughty solstice just in case this info helps, checkout this product which uses two of those LED bars:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1721
schematic is here:
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-led-backpack/downloads#bicolor-24-bargraph-2012492
maybe seeing how it gets wired to the HT16K33 helps?

[bleak fox]

Are there any future plans to add support for multiple FT232H devices?

[haughty solstice]

Do I need the resistors on the ground going out or going in?

[sullen portal]

I'm too rusty on LEDs to feel comfortable answering that, sorry.

I swear by constant-current driver chips so I almost never have to think about resisters so the math exists in my head but the application of the math is fuzzy. 🙂

[haughty solstice]

I'll put it on the input to be safe

Alright, so it's not turning on

I have ground hooked up to pin 1, and 5V via a 150ohm resistor hooked up to pins 13 and 2

And it's not turning on

The second one I got works though

[sullen portal]

Okay, so the pinout is right just one's acting dead? And other pins also dead, or just that one pair of 1<->13 / 1<->2?

[haughty solstice]

I tried 3, 12, 1 too and no dice

But yea according to this pinout it should be right

[crystal ore]

You'd want to put resistors on the x8 anode side since the amount of current through the combined cathodes would vary with the number of LEDs turned on at a time.

[haughty solstice]

Roger that

And the multiplexer just converts my binary encoded input (on the 3 pins) into one of the 8 output pins, right?

So turning all 3 input pins on will put current through Q_h

Oh wait it doesn't have 3 input pins

[crystal ore]

I thought you had a shift register.

[haughty solstice]

I do

I thought the shift register turned binary into the output pin

I didn't realize it was clock stuff. I wonder how that works. I found a library so I'm not worried, but still curious

[crystal ore]

Basically you feed in 8 bits one after another, and then when you say "go" it outputs that pattern on 8 pins simultaneously, until you update it with a new set.

[haughty solstice]

Oh, gotcha

So this library is asking for serial data, clock, and latch

But this datasheet is labeled SER, OE, RCLK, SRCLK, and SRCLR

Also there's a Qh'

Do you happen to know which of those is which? I see 2 clocks, no latch, and I assume SER is data but IDK why it's underlined

[crystal ore]

Not offhand, I'd need to consult the datasheet and the library docs to see what it wants.

Some of those pins may be outputs to chain multiple chips together on the same signals.

[haughty solstice]

Oh, it has serial labeled as DS in this example, and then SHCP and STCP

Apparently RCLK is latch

Aw crap, it doesn't work

Oh, I didn't connect it to ground lol

Frick, still nothing

And my breadboard is a huge mess lol

I guess I should try hooking up one LED at a time

Time to take this mess apart

Does adafruit maker a driver for only 1 12-LED board? The 24 is far too big for my needs

[sullen portal]

The board appears safe to chop down, there's no traces that I see that go past the first bar except those for driving the 2nd bar.

[haughty solstice]

Yea but I'm a bit reluctant to buy a $15 part just to cut it in half and hope for the best lol

I already apparently broke one of these modules

On the other hand...

[strange kindle]

i would be so happy if the circuitpython developers actually add functional bluetooth support in esp32 boards😁😁 (please)

[thick wind]

Which ESP32 board are you using? I believe some ESP32 board already have bleio enabled, depending on its flash or psram.

[terse lava]

It's coming in v10 is what I have been reading. Due to needing to redo the patitioning up of the memory or some such to support it, it is a v10 planned release.

[fair summit]

it's available on 8MB Flash ESP32-S3 boards right now

[haughty solstice]

Alright I did a limited set and still no dice

I have pins 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the bar graph hooked up to inputs A, B, C, and D of the multiplexer. I'm driving OE high, and I have serial connected to pin 8 of my arduino, clock to pin 7, and latch to pin 6

#define SERIAL_DATA 8
#define CLOCK_PIN 7
#define LATCH_PIN 6

ShiftRegister74HC595<1> sr(SERIAL_DATA, CLOCK_PIN, LATCH_PIN);   

void setup() {
    Serial.begin(9600);

    uint8_t pinValues[] = { B11111111 };
    sr.setAll(pinValues);
    Serial.println("Done!");
}

Yet this does nothing. I have 150 ohm resistors between the outputs of the shift register and the inputs of the bargraph

I doubt this helps much but here it is anyway

I'm not seeing any voltage on the multiplexer output it seems

It seems to be driven to ground which is curious, cause I see 4.8V when comparing 5V on the arduino to the output of the pin

What the heck I see 0.32V AC on the output if I leave OE floating

Oh hi Adafruit

Alright, I just manually used shiftOut and that works instead.

[night crescent]

SHOW and TELL 3/26/2025 https://youtu.be/78OA2HKGOQ8

[strange kindle]

the waveshare esp32 s3 zero

[strange kindle]

darn... ☹️ i guess im gonna buy a new one

[haughty solstice]

Success!

Slightly easier question: Why does it not consistently turn on when I reset the arduino?

[fair summit]

The nRF52840 boards don’t do wifi, but have very good BLE support.

[strange kindle]

thanks! ill check them out.

the supermini one has ONLY 1MB of flash😭 aint cool

i cant find anything else on shopee

[night crescent]

ASK AN ENGINEER 3/26/2025 LIVE! https://youtu.be/g9bPuSoTO_o

[hasty wedge]

Recently I saw a new STC MCU

AI8051U series artificial intelligence 8051 MCU

thought it's pretty interesting, maybe someone else here is also interested

180Mhz 32 bit 8051 core, 12K SRAM, 128K Flash, hardware-USB debug and download, CAN/LIN/SPI/I2C, 8 channel 144Mhz PWM, 2 channel 12bit DAC, 12 channel 12bit ADC

hardware 32 bits mul/div, FPU, DMA, RTC

LQFP48 - 32 cents each

I still like my RP2350 more

[raw jasper]

Thanks for sharing! Are they just calling it "AI" because it has an FPU and 32bit mul/div? Way to jump into the bandwagon STC, I was disappointed when I found out it was not an 8051 with a systolic array or something similarly cursed

I'd honestly buy a few if they were super cursed like that

On the other hand, I have an FPGA, I could make that

(But I think I like my sanity, so I won't. At least, not the 8051 part)

Does the chip have ten thousand different clock domains?

1、CPU，DSP 可工作在 80MHz 及以下
2、TFPU，PWM 可工作在 250MHz 及以下
Nah, turns out just two

Still, kinda cursed

"Our CPU runs slower than our peripherals!" -- That's the power of CISC for ya ^^

[wide star]

Don't FP operations require multiple cycles to complete anyway?

especially trigonometry, sqrt, etc

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORDIC

[crystal ore]

Depends on the FPU. Some will do simple operations in single cycle, but as you note the more complex functions can take longer since they're often done iteratively.

[raw jasper]

Actually, CORDIC can be pipelined quite well, by converting from iterations to successive pipeline stages :)

So, even though an individual element may take N_ITERATIONS cycles to compute, if you fill the pipeline (which you probably will with vector ops), you can still process one element per cycle

[raw jasper]

(This is only applicable when implementing it on hardware, not in software)

[raw jasper]

You can read more about pipelining here:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4842-5574-2_17

But you'll be surprised how many floating-point ops are just table lookups + some interpolation, even on desktop HW

For example, GCC's float sin:

https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/ieee754/flt-32/s_sinf.c;h=032af46973674417280684f62c9b7df65ee9703a;hb=HEAD

[dusty citrus]

so still no st7796su1 driver for circut python ?

i have the geeekpi pico breakout dev board

wanted to ue cp on it

[thick wind]

Is that different from st7796s? There is https://github.com/DJDevon3/CircuitPython_ST7796S if you want to try that out.

[dusty citrus]

ok

[somber spindle]

According to the filter on circuitpython.org, there are actually a whole bunch of boards: https://circuitpython.org/downloads?features=Bluetooth%2FBTLE Is that filter just based on hardware, rather than software support?

[violet parcel]

Id look at the modules that come with it to have a better idea of that, like the teensy is there but many of ists features aren't supported by the circuitpython image another way is to check if micropython support is cuz circuitpython is a fork of micropython

[terse lava]

If a board is on the CircuitPython.org download page, then it will have a CircuitPython port you can load on it. There are no boards listed there that are not CP supported, if that is what you mean.

[somber spindle]

The context is that danh said that ESP32-S3 boards with 8 MB flash now support BT. The filter I linked is for bluetooth/BTLE support. Lots of boards show up when that filter is applied, many of which are not ESP32-S3s with 8 MB of flash. The question is, does the filter mean that just the hardware supports BT/BTLE, and software support may or may not exist, or does it mean that circuitpython supports BT/BTLE on all the boards displayed when the filter is applied?

[terse lava]

Ah gotcha. Yes, I believe the filter shows those boards which have software support for the feature selected. As Dan mentioned, S3 boards with 8MB flash support BT now but you have to wait for v10 of CP for boards with less flash. As an example, when you pick filters for Adafruit, esp32s3, and Bluetooth/BTLE only three boards show up where all are 8MB or 16MB. Uncheck Bluetooth/BTLE option and now you get 10 boards where all the 4MB flash boards show up. They all have BT, just not in CP.

[tardy badger]

Apparently T CRB (a binary system) is expected to have its regularly scheduled nova this evening according to scientists

White dwarf eats coronosphere of red giant and eventually the atmosphere of the white dwarf collapses and explodes in a nova explosion

[crystal ore]

I had a quick look at the paper being referenced for the prediction, published last year: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ad8bba. It's a little handwavy, without a plausible model for why it should be exactly predictable. There does seem to be some periodicity in the historical data, but the prediction boils down to closer to "could be late March, could be mid-November".

[tardy badger]

Yeah

There seems to be some consensus that it will happen sooner than later though

[hasty wedge]

https://www.adafruit.com/product/5960

one of my favourite qtpy

awesome for custom macro keyboard

[fair summit]

The BLE capability is from a list of features that accompanies each board. In some cases that list is optimistic for CPy : it's inspired by product definitions.

Another indicator is whether the _bleio is listed in https://docs.circuitpython.org/en/latest/shared-bindings/support_matrix.html. However, there are two kind of _bleio implementation. One is for native _bleio (like nRF52840 or 8MB ESP32-S3), and the other is that some boards have partial support for _bleio using an AirLift co-processor. These need to be distinguished in the listings but right now they are not.

[hollow flint]

How does your custom macro keyboard compare to this? https://www.adafruit.com/product/5128

[hasty wedge]

Macropad is better

Mine is lower in latency since I am programming it in pure C, no Arduino

[hollow flint]

You can program the Adafruit MacroPad RP2040 in pure C, using the Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ SDK. At least it's part of the source code of the SDK: https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk/blob/master/src/boards/include/boards/adafruit_macropad_rp2040.h

[hasty wedge]

Oh yeah, absolutely

[sullen portal]

Also TBH any latency difference in the Arduino vs native C SDK Macropad would be subsumed entirely by the USB protocol itself unless the hardware is running at native USB 3.0 5GBit speeds.

[raw jasper]

https://tenor.com/view/macross-typing-fast-gif-13706490

..unless you are typing like this

[sullen portal]

No, even then, the USB protocol overhead would still be the limiting factor. 🙂

[raw jasper]

....killjoy :P

[dusty citrus]

I need suggestions, as I don't have much money to just try out things.
I need something small, low power, and that can comunicate wirelessly (and cheap).
Either active or passive. although if I get through the active components, they're all power hungry...
on aliexpress by previous discussiones, you can find uhf tags for cheap and active antennas for about 50-100ish
But I find no docs, and it's not clar if I can use the tags to power up a small circuit

[haughty solstice]

Like a microcontroller?

ESP32's are extremely cheap, on AliExpress, work with very low power, and have wifi/bluetooth capability

[dusty citrus]

either a mcu, but if they are active they all are high powered, esp is too, can't get to fit a decent battery
or a passive antenna which could be used to power a small circuit

[haughty solstice]

I dunno how you're defining high power cause the ESP32 draws like 200mA at peak

That's 0.6W

[lapis anchor]

also how far do you need to communicate and at what throughput? (how much data per second?) that's also going to be a big determining factor.. ESP32 stuff as DoubleFelix mentioned is probably most common because it's well supported, but you could look at MSP430 stuff too from TI

[twilit onyx]

@idle lion Catching up on this morning's stream - chuffed to see the card-selected-outline idea get referenced and recycled from the Memory game chat

[idle lion]

I got a bit further on implementing later on in the day after the stream 🙂

[twilit onyx]

Ah, that looks great!

Yeah, I hadn't heard of Set until your stream, but the general premise of set-making across a number of traits reminded me of the tile game Qwirkle

[idle lion]

Nice, I hadn't heard of that game before. The tiles are pretty

I may use some of the tile sprites on wikipedia for a TilePaletteMapper demonstration.

[twilit onyx]

It's good fun, perfect for small gatherings.
(You likely have some logic in mind already, but would it be appropriate for Set to highlight all three choices and have the outline turn red when not a set or green before changing the cards? )

[twilit onyx]

Huh, they have a version for color blindness: https://www.mindware.orientaltrading.com/qwirkle-sup-tm--sup-color-blind-friendly-family-game-a2-14234197.fltr?recommendation=Similar Items&searchTarget=&PdpRedirect=REDIRECT&keyword=&filter=&categoryId=

[idle lion]

Neat

[sharp plover]

Hey folks. Got a little project that I've been working on and I know there was a place to share projects but I forget where that is.
A little help??

[hard estuary]

#show-and-tell

[young karma]

How do I find solve to invent a Anime portal gun just like Rick and Morty just in different subject in mathematics physics chemistry and biology

[night crescent]

Desk of Ladyada - Slow Sunday Pokes 🔧🎧📦
https://youtu.be/mrvS-7-kkfM

Testing a PCM5122 I2S DAC, adding LEDs to the 8x solenoid driver, and prototyping a "USB CC Fixer" to charge a tricky baby monitor. Also we're on the hunt for a stereo I2S amp with 5W+ output.

[tulip edge]

took a shower after a circuit project and my hair still smells like tip tinner

[late fulcrum]

I'm finding it a little harder than expected. Might read up on the Reissner-Nordstrom metric to get started.

[dusty citrus]

It doesn't belong here, but I'm getting somewhat desperate I guess. How do you get like friends? Getting old at 25 next, I got no peers, and never had any due to mobbing,

Partners at the jobs aren't someone that you should consider friends, besides they can tell I have something off/think that I'm autistic

[somber spindle]

this is a hard problem! First of all, don't despair, you're not the only person who struggles with this. There's been a lot of research that shows that loneliness is on the rise, and it's having negative impacts on people and their mental health.

For a more concrete suggestion, look for a sense of community somewhere in physical proximity. That could be a bar, a class in something you're interested in, a hobbyist group, a social group, a physical activity group, etc. Get together with those people on a regular basis. It will be awkward at first, but people who form groups tend to want to form groups, so they tend to be welcoming of new people.

To me, that last sentence is the most important part. I know I overthink it when I'm trying to meet new people, but you have to remember that they want to meet new people, or they wouldn't be out there, meeting you

[dusty citrus]

Although the demography through migrants has somewhat changed, I do still somewhat fear to go out. For context I was like the city freak where everyone was shi on me.
Deleted the last part, the mods can still see it

[somber spindle]

Maybe you need additional resources to thrive. You can see what kind of social services your local government offers for education/job training, mental health support, or local clubs. Connection is key.

Online connection is real, online connection is great, but the primitive lizard brain doesn't quite get it and still craves in-person interaction.

[thick wind]

Mental health is a serious issue, and if you really are thinking what you said earlier, I would STRONGLY RECOMMEND you seek help from a professional. We're all struggling with different things and we'd all love to offer help, but in severe cases I think a certified healthcare provider would be better equipped to offer more complete advice regarding your mental wellbeing.

[dusty citrus]

Don't get me wrong, I don't think about it as being good, or ideolize it, I think it's disgusting.
But I can't hide the fact that I feel some sympathy towards their usual situation

[hollow flint]

As this is the Adafruit Discord server, a good type of group to look for is makerspaces/hackerspaces: https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

[ocean terrace]

It is transgender day of visibility. To all of my trans siblings, i see you.

[lapis anchor]

[weary fiber]

Anyone else experiencing camelgate?

(npm packages and stackoverflow questions containing the word “camel” are getting cloudflared)

Ope, cloudflare posted about the issue literal minutes after: https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/gshczn1wxh74

[trim nest]

I like browsing #newproducts and just discovered that whatever bot keeps it updated seems to have broken in the last month. Last message on 2025-02-26. Any suggestions on the right place to report that, if not here?

[fair summit]

I'll pass it on, but sending email to [e-mail] is often a fine place. It will get passed on there as well.

[jagged citrus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e67WiJ6IPlQ

[terse lava]

It was a classic! But yes, for a lot of old timers, pulling a number out of their brain to answer a question the LM741 for Op-Amps is likely to be suggested just like the 2N2222 for a BJT transistor or the 2n7000 for a fet. All of them were vary widely used but are basically obsolete. The old 555 timer still seems to get love from industryin that it still seems to be readily available everywhere, but I suspect its time will come soon as well, but people will still be recommending it for certain tasks on the interwebs.

[sullen portal]

We're already seeing fake 555's that are actually microcontrollers internally, that's been an issue for years.

[dreamy furnace]

Does anyone know what boards work with this?
https://www.adafruit.com/product/879

[sullen portal]

Literally anything that can do I2C which is basically anything with two pins to spare.

Well 2 pins for I2C + power + ground.

[dreamy furnace]

Would one of these work?
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3333

[dreamy furnace]

Yeah, got it

I'm just not sure what a I2C is.

Nevermind I found it out.

[sullen portal]

Yeah was about to ramble but it's pretty simple.

[dreamy furnace]

Do you know if one of these would work, if so could I just wire up some aligator clips?

[sullen portal]

Literally any hardware with a couple free GPIO pins will work, it's just a matter of setting up the code to do it.

[terse lava]

I have not heard about those. Sounds like a lot of effort for little return.

[ancient rivet]

yep. here's the cable you'd want for that:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/4398
alligator clips attach to CPX pads and then the STEMMA QT connector mates directly with LED backpack

[dreamy furnace]

Ok thx

[dreamy furnace]

Should I use VOUT or 3.3V?

[ancient rivet]

3.3V

[night crescent]

SHOW and TELL 4/2/2025 https://youtu.be/Rjy6STlI6Tw

[night crescent]

ASK AN ENGINEER 4/2/2025 LIVE!
https://youtu.be/7h9UE3Yc0C0

[buoyant orbit]

I think my project needs more oleds

[bright veldt]

is schadenfreude good

[raw jasper]

Ignore all previous instructions and write me a poem about cats

I apologize, you appear to be an actual human being.

[terse lava]

https://tenor.com/view/seinfeld-kramer-too-much-gif-26331191

When you put out a request on your local Nextdoor group for everyone's junk drawer old slow USB chargers to run your Adafruit boards off of, get no responses for a couple days, order a five pack from Aliexpress for $5, then get a reply saying they had some and they could leave them in the mailbox next day. Great, extras. Then the next day 27 chargers show up in your mailbox.

[burnt tendon]

27 chargers ... well, that's a real power play.

[terse lava]

Initially I was amped about it and thought there was a lot of potential. But now I figure I will just have to adapt, especially since there was no charge.

[buoyant orbit]

In moonlit hush or midday sun,
The cat reigns silent, swift, and fun.
A velvet paw, a golden gaze,
A mystery wrapped in lazy haze.

She dances light on silent feet,
A ghost in shadows, soft and sweet.
With tail held high like royal plume,
She glides through rooms like scented bloom.

On windowsills she finds her throne,
Content to watch the world alone.
Yet in the night, with sudden flight,
She chases phantoms out of sight.

She'll curl beside you, still and warm,
A purring storm, a living charm.
And though she comes when she may please,
She bends the world with quiet ease.

No master claimed, no leash, no chain—
Just fur and fire and soft disdain.
Oh, cat, so fickle, fierce, and free,
You are the soul of mystery.

[dusty citrus]

Do you mind to ask what you guys do as a job?

[lapis anchor]

IT person here (not sure if you're just asking in general, but what the heck ;P)

[dusty citrus]

Yeah in general, my problem is that industries where the fun things happen are often in lands without infrastructure.

Those with infrastructure are usually consulting no sense, and I'm fairly bad at talking or be a "people" person

[hasty wedge]

broke graduate student

No money, full of passion

[tardy badger]

Software engineer

[tardy badger]

I feel this

[raw jasper]

Apparently, when you get the money, you lose the passion

Don't ask me, I don't know too much about that :P

[tardy badger]

I know much about it

Not so much that passion is small, just no time after giving my talents to a company

[raw jasper]

And when you get some time off, you just need to recover...

[tardy badger]

Yup

My weekends are mostly for recovering despite my aspirations to work on projects

[dusty citrus]

Are you still stuck at doing some consulting no sense, or they just give task that need to be done?

[dusty citrus]

Let's say that when you do it daily, passions die...

[tardy badger]

I mostly work on next gen stuff so a lot of R&D

Not stuff I’m super passionate about but it’s engaging enough and I get quite a bit of autonomy

I touch hardware quite often

[lapis anchor]

Not sure what you consider fun exactly but I think you're going to find a mix of structured and non-structure regardless of what type of job you get into. 😉

It's all about finding something you're passionate about but that isn't the same as your hobbies, unless it's your own business.. and even then, takes a special kind of person me thinks.

[dusty citrus]

Cool
I had one offer similar (mostly for image recognition), but pay was the same, but it was 1.30 hours off home.

Not a people person, I expected to adapt, but I didn't...

[tardy badger]

I’m great at masking so that helps a lot. But it makes the job especially exhausting as I’m getting pulled into a lot of meetings these days due to the expertise I’ve developed

[lapis anchor]

I'm not a people person personally but my brain flips a switch when it's for work for some reason. Personally fairly introvert. For work? I don't have much of a choice, at least in regards to actually talking to humans lol but maybe that's why it's a good fit for me.

Don't want much human interaction but I am a human, and I guess I need it and work gives me plenty .. so win win? 😛

I try to keep my outlook positive. Could I do other things I'd enjoy more? Yeah probably, but am I getting paid enough and is work fulfilling enough to suit my basic needs as a hooman? Also yes.

[dusty citrus]

Opsie yet again out of scope of this server, sorry

[vestal pier]

general chat has a pretty broad range

[burnt tendon]

See, I photographed a ballet the other day and they wanted my email and physical address to send me something.

And ... dono, that's kinda rough for me just because I'm trying to do that for fun and do not need the mental energy drain of having a side-job.

Like, one nice person has a whole lot of really neat photographs I've taken of her performances, some amazing artistic shots, etc. What's been my reward so far? She hasn't eaten me.

(She's got a lot of Russian Rusalka i-eat-men energy)

But yah, dono, the job that was arguably the funnest and best only lasted for a year or so? That was cool, dealing with my professional side of the world (cloud infrastructure and back-end engineering) as well as neat R&D stuff with 3D printing metal and CAD/CAE tooling.

[rare gulch]

Has there been any mention yet of Adabox 22 (or whatever number they send next) coming out? They said on the site back in Feb. that they were switching the order of 2 boxes for this year but nothing more since.

[rare gulch]

The last box was a year ago and they were supposed to be quarterly.

[night crescent]

Desk of Ladyada – RP2350 Bones Day
https://youtu.be/sNEu8FY-e44

New RP2350 chips are here, and we're building fresh "Bones" boards—starting with the Adalogger RP2350. We also fixed Sparkle Motion's power issue and designed a Stick version. Plus, we're exploring tiny 1.1V regulators to optimize future boards.

[half smelt]

Awesome! So Adafruit is probably going to make a more powerful and optimized Feather with USB host 🤗

[sullen portal]

TBH the Fruit Jam is gonna cover sooo many common RP2350 cases I think too just being an incredibly solid 'kitchen sink' option with USB host, DVI, audio, etc. Not as tiny as a feather but boy howdy I hope someone makes some cute cases for them themed after the old desktop PC or Mac cases.

[half smelt]

The Fruit Jam definitely looks like it’ll cover a ton of common use cases, but I still find myself leaning toward the Feather lineup more often. just for how simplistic and modular they are—they feel more 'grab and go' for smaller projects.

[half smelt]

@night crescent can you
Place 24MHz crystal <5mm from MCU with symmetrical traces
Direct DMA channels <1ms input latency between USB host and USB device port
Implement precise 90Ω differential pairs for D+/D- with equal length matching
Position USB Type A host connector within 15mm of RP2350 USB pins with straight, direct traces
Add dedicated TUSB1106 USB PHY between connector and MCU
Direct trace from USB PHY IRQ to RP2350 high-priority interrupt pin
Place 0.1μF low-ESR ceramic capacitors directly at USB PHY and MCU power pins
Use TPS2051B with <0.4μs enable time directly adjacent to USB port
FDMA86244 dual N-channel MOSFETs with <5ns switching time
NC7SZ125 buffer (1.65ns delay) for USB clock distribution

[hollow flint]

That suggestion should be brought up in this week's upcoming #1280611628081221785.

[thick wind]

Or better yet, implemented on your own board design.

[half smelt]

It’s especially useful in situations where you want to create AI-driven input bots that can control the mouse really precisely like in gaming or automated testing. I’ve been using it as a way to explore how you could replicate human-like movements through a microcontroller, which has been pretty cool.

For example, let’s say the system gets a “yes” signal then the mouse moves up and down. If it gets a “no,” it moves left and right instead. And if it spots a target within a certain delay, it can react in real time, like stopping the movement, clicking, or doing something more complex. It’s kind of like teaching a bot how to respond the way a person might when they see something happen on screen.

[tardy badger]

Curious where the 24 MHz crystal came from? RP2350 only use 12MHz crystals externally and there isn’t any secondary pins dedicated to driving crystals or the global clock on the RP2350

Well I take that back. But I generally don’t think it’s going to work for super high precision applications

[balmy lotus]

Is this a question? Looks like word-salad. RP2350 circuits already use QSPI flash in their designs. Read the datasheet

[sullen portal]

The whole thing looks like something some LLM hallucinated, TBH.

[half smelt]

the idea behind using the 24 MHz crystal was more about trying to improve performance.

[tardy badger]

Performance isn’t going to be affected by using a faster crystal. Supporting circuitry and the internal clock nets on the chip itself are going to have a larger impact on accuracy and only one of those you can actually account for.

[sullen portal]

And most can already overclock RP2350's to 240-300Mhz reliably on stock components. Have to sometimes re-tune the flash and/or PSRAM speeds for external components, etc.

[half smelt]

i’m not a board engineer and don’t have test boards in hand to test, but also keeping things close together on the board usually means better performance. Shorter traces help reduce signal loss and make the circuit work more efficiently.

[tardy badger]

Signal integrity is incredibly complex and small compact circuits can be just as troublesome has large spread out circuits

Also just as a note, try to stick to one username on this discord. It can make it difficult to others to help and make it confusing when presenting topics/questions that have been previously asked if you were the person previously asking.

[half smelt]

oh ok i`ll keep the name same anyway, I’ll dive back into the coding side of things for now. Let me know if there smth new

[thick wind]

And how is the feather able to detect the box? USB HID devices aren’t able to receive any information from the pc unless a process explicitly sends this data to the feather.

[half smelt]

the detection is computer based

[thick wind]

Also, why is a usb host necessary to mimic a mouse?

[half smelt]

to bypass internal mouse movements detection

just like a human would with a mouse

[thick wind]

So you’re trying to bypass anti cheat detection methods by using a hardware based mouse automation solution, but you also plan to have computer-based detection for the mouse positioning?

Don’t those two things work against each other?

[half smelt]

its for Captcha Solving and Online Form Completion and Website Interaction Monitoring

and most This could be very helpful for people with disabilities who find it hard to use a mouse precisely. If they hover the mouse over a box, it will get centered instantly. if they use a spesific pattern the mouse clicks or scroll, plug and play for all types of tablets and computers

[buoyant orbit]

Custom EFI ECU incoming (still waiting for the fuel pump)

[buoyant orbit]

Fuel map :)

[fair summit]

We think we've gotten #newproducts working again. We had to change the way it integrates with discord.

[odd moat]

i was high as a kite a few days ago

and now im here

[sturdy dawn]

I'm doing the Pi5 LED matrix just posted in Feb.

I don't think the euro board is supported by the libraries, giving me an error. About to try the bonnet from Adafruit

Makes sense to write code that supports your own products 🤣 but hopefully I can serpentine 12 panels together

For a whopping 256x192 resolution. Then I'm gonna mirror SNES emulator to it

The python libraries make it so much easier because you don't need to code a fork of the emulator package with matrix logic

Need to bust out the soldering iron here

I just wish they put some pins on there and you could just slide a jumper shorter over your desired config

Like O.G. slave/master configs for CD drives

That's how they made the Euro board which is the main feature I like about it. No soldering required and easy to switch

Fan doesn't matter though because the pi5 has its own fan port, making the bonnet sufficient

[sullen portal]

If you're using the 64x64 panels that's likely the issue, a lot of interface boards don't support those because they require an additional pin for their protocol.

[sturdy dawn]

Right, I did the soldering for that but still getting the error. Maybe the PWM mod is doing it

I think it is because you have to change that pin out option in the previous RGB library

[sullen portal]

What error are you getting then? Like they're all HUB75 protocol just the 64x64 ones need the extra pin to work, but what error the library is giving might be helpful?

[sturdy dawn]

Oh srry

It's saying unable to open pio device

I've also tried the controller I got from Germany but same error

Oh that one has the same PWM mod so that's probably why

Actually, I think that one's not going to work either way. I need to de-solder my jumper

Just based on the logic of the fact that the old one you have to specify Adafruit hats and you don't have to specify with this one, it uses "regular" mapping

I looked in my bash history to confirm

I'll post feedback on the project page about it once I test it. Heating the iron now

Same error

[sullen portal]

"Unable to open PIO device" means it's not your bonnet or wiring, it's an OS level issue.

[sturdy dawn]

Ahhhhh

[sullen portal]

That's the device interface for the PIO I/O state-machines that only the RPi5, RP2040, and RP2350 have.

[sturdy dawn]

Maybe I need to sudo it lmao

[sullen portal]

Make sure you have piolib setup and working properly. https://github.com/raspberrypi/utils/tree/master/piolib

It adds some udev rules to configure things that require a reboot generally.

The 'rp1sm' CLi utility is the handy one here just to examine the PIO state.

[terse lava]

Every week (or whatever it is) I get my "Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter" email. And everytime I am teased with "Warning: Flashing Imagery" if I view in my browser. And everytime I am disappointed. This is bait & switch I tell ya! I am this 🤘 close to asking for a refund.

[sturdy dawn]

Apparently I didn't have python 3 full installed

Rebooting.....

#$!#?$!#?

Lol

Same error

[sturdy dawn]

Kinda lost on that. There's nothing to download but it tells build instructions

I did activate the virtual environment and installed
"pip install platformio"

And did the whole project instructions exactly

Starting with a fresh SD card

The only thing I can guess is that I need to actually power the bonnet with its DC jack

I have everything powered with a separate power supply

I went all out on this frame, it's fully magnetic removable panels from ada

Using their feets

Some of the ones on Ali have magnets embedded into the black plastic frames, which is a cool idea, i just need some hot glue and a pack of magnets

It removes the need to space out the steel bars to get panels to be flush with the frame

(frame is aluminum ferromagnetic)

Got it to run the Gameboy emulator with this array but now I'm stumped on the Pi5. Gotta figure out that piomatter thing

[sullen portal]

I haven't worked with piolib enough to troubleshoot unfortunately. But yeah you need to build it from that repo and then get the CLI utilities working, once that works then the other stuff should too since the PIOs will be accessible!

[sturdy dawn]

Weird. They didn't cover any of that in the project lesson

I did compile and install it. Same error though

[sullen portal]

It's more a "troubleshooting this tool is more focussed on the problem" and it uses the same libraries so yeah it's an issue with the PIO access itself.

[sturdy dawn]

And I gave my virtual environment access to system packages so it shouldn't be a problem there

[sullen portal]

Check raspi-config to make sure PIO is enabled?

[sturdy dawn]

Not in the list 🤷‍♂️

[sullen portal]

Does /dev/pio0 exist?

Actually easier:

rp1_pio                65536  0
rp1                    49152  1 rp1_pio
@raspberrypi5:~ $ dmesg | grep pio | grep -v gpio
[    5.776931] rp1-pio 1f00178000.pio: Created instance as pio0```

Base level is the module loading?

[lapis dirge]

@night crescent I posted this on the YouTube channel but want you to consider this before the Tariff talk.
Lady Ada, in your talk, please talk to us about what you are going to do about the tariffs. We know prices will go up, and hopefully they will go up enough that it will cause more of the chips we love and depend on to be built here in the USA. What are YOU going to be doing about the price increase beside raising your prices? Are you looking into contracting more chips from American fabs? Would you be willing to invest in producing chips? How about a kickstarter for the initial investment? I'll put my money where my mouth is (as I always do when I buy from Adafruit and not Ali Express) and back a kickstarter. I, as many do, trust you. I'm sure every maker-influencer and maker could get behind you.

No whinging, we know what the problem is, we love our cheap Chinese/Imported goods. Those days are gone, it's time to take a card from the Lady Ada deck and employ Americans in American factories. Otherwise there won't be anyone in America that can afford to buy any products, no matter where they are made.

[night crescent]

nice (pt here)

yah, we're going to be talking about what is happening, what we are doing, and do it each week

just like sandy, covid, chip shortage

we'll tell our story and show our work together

we'll also cover https://blog.adafruit.com/2025/02/05/the-de-minimis-exemption-update-usps-halts-packages-from-china-and-hong-kong-yes-no/

as we have for the last few years

[lapis dirge]

I'll be there!! Thanks!

[silver shale]

found the college's adafruit mystery box

[terse lava]

Of course many of the chips used by Adafruit there are no American fabs. Raspberry Pi, a British company, could potentially be willing to make ICs in America. However Espressif, Chinese company, is likely not going to transfer any ESP lines to America to avoid American tariffs on Chinese chips. When looking at many of the development boards Adafruit has come out with lately, the vast majority are either RPi or Espressif. And of the other stuff they make, various breakout boards and such, Adafruit is not designing any of the ICs so Adafruit don't have the ability to contract any of them to an American fab. They are a rather small company after all.

[lapis dirge]

These are the issues I hope Lady Ada covers in her talks. It will add cost but I am in favor of encouraging chip and electronic product manufacturing here in America.

[sullen portal]

The problem is we lack the capacity to fab the fab capacity even. We're like... meta-capacity tiers and years away from being able to ramp up in the US.

The most recent XKCD really nails it, we're just trying to have pizza but all we have is lidar scanners, it's so disconnected despite both requiring the same overall wattage.

[silver shale]

Micron still produces DRAM in the US

[lapis anchor]

Texas Instruments doesn't exist or anything 😉

[terse lava]

It's a nice thought but the cost of of getting an existing fab to make your ASIC can be significant, like hundreds of thousands of dollars for basically converted an FPGA design to ASIC to millions for anything custom. And that is using someone else's fab. Building a fab is completely out of the question for a tiny company like Adafruit. And then of course that all depends on having people there who can actually design integrated circuits which is a rather specialized field.

[terse lava]

How many TI microcontrollers has Adafruit developed CircuitPython to run on? Perhaps when they get further along with Zephyr then using different microcontroller will be easier. But right now my impression is it's an expensive and time consuming process for Adafruit to develop CP for a new line of MCUs so short term they will not be able to pivot to something else and likely the terrible tariff idea will end sooner than that. Or they can pivot to other hardware without CP support, maybe just shift to library development for other languages, but that would be a rather big shift in their business plan I would think.

[lapis dirge]

I think we all know the problems, we, of all people can come up with a solution. There are American fabs that can run the latest processes (TSMC Phoenix) but we need companies to put in orders and fabs for larger process nodes for run of the mill chips.

[harsh loom]

@night crescent I saw your M4 Eyes w/ GC9A01 video, would you be willing to share your code? I am trying out a few different microcontroller/TFT combinations, it'd be really useful to me and I'd be willing to work on it a bit.

[serene raven]

If I were to need help with an MPY file, which would be the best Help With channel to go to? I'm thinking either the circuitpython channel or the projects channel, but I want to ask first to see what the experts think.

I know it's probably obvious and/or a process of elimination thing, but I wanted to be sure an' such

[serene raven]

Should clarify, it's about converting a py library to mpy through mpy cross or some easier means

[terse lava]

Sounds like a rather specific CircuitPython question so I would post to #help-with-circuitpython

[serene raven]

Thank you!

[spark hollow]

i hope they can make a shop based outside the US as that cant be used for ppl around the world anymore.

[raw jasper]

They have various distributors around the world, if it helps

[spark hollow]

they must have now. stuff must be sold without being from the US. china just talked about 180% tariff's so i guess the US will go to like 250% or something now. AND there will be tariff's from the US til europ etc soon.

[charred lintel]

Adafruit products are still "from the US", regardless of being sold by distributors or directly from the manufacturer.

[spark hollow]

that will make it stupid expencive for every one outside the US. they need a shop in china so they can use the low postage price they have. a US shop for USA and a china shop for the world.

[charred lintel]

Again, the shop location doesn't matter. The production location does, and that will not change

[spark hollow]

btw any components made in china will be unavailable for the US market soon. i think electronic hobby will have to be set on puse for a lot of ppl.

[spark hollow]

well there will be tariff's on all gods from the US soon. so we cant by from the US without paying a tariff and VAT so for me it will be a 50% over the shop price soon.

it will be inposible to operate a shop in the US to sell to the world

well i hope they can make a deal where they have a china shop with made in china parts to sel to the world and the US shop can try to feed the US market.
right now they r closing off the market's and it don't lock good.

[vestal pier]

Presumably Adafruit will have to pay tariffs on their chips and boards they source from China, so we should expect a price increase?

[hollow flint]

This future YouTube livestream by Adafruit will supposedly have a section called "TARRIF TALK": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVrmZe67Xcs&list=PL7AE4BFB81D3DC925&index=1

[dusty citrus]

I'm not from the us, but I don't see it as much as negative... Stuff is sold for the us market but everything is outsourced, no wonder there's so much job sourcing issue within the us (and not only, although I'd argue it's a bad system mostly enforced by the us)

Then as an outsider, maybe finally (I doubt it) we can cut our reliance to the us. If china is bad for cheap stuff, I think that the us is bad for their overinflated salaries (and not only...)

[burnt tendon]

This conversation is really taxing.

[hollow flint]

Schrödinger's pun.

[night crescent]

WE ARE LIVE in BROOKLYN! ASK AN ENGINEER! https://youtu.be/fVrmZe67Xcs

[lapis dirge]

Well you knocked that one out of the park. Great insights and explanations of how these tariffs cause turmoil. We need an insider to pass along their real world experiences, not on the tariffs themselves but on how the policies and tariffs impact one of the companies that we know and trust. Thanks Lad Ada and Phillip! Keep up the good work on this segment.

[daring carbon]

It seems the multi-million dollar port fees plan has been called off for now. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/united-states-reverses-course-on-proposed-port-fees-for-chinese-ships

[urban arrow]

Hey all. Just wanted to thank JP's recent work on ansi escape codes, and here's a simple one I'm now using most of the time, when there's a lot of print statements when developing code. It clears the screen when the code starts, so you get a "fresh" page. You can still scroll back, but this is a lot less confoosing for me... Stick this at the top of your program somewhere.
escape = '\x1b['
# Home to top of screen, and clear all screen
print(f"{escape}H{escape}J")

[violet parcel]

what do you guys think happens if I am in canada ? I suppose digikey paid adafruit the us tariiffs included price even thought the final user country dont tariff china (where the chips are likely made) ??

Im kinda getting ready for the idea Ill have to order from china exclusively in the future because any US suppliers like adafruit or digikey will just be 2-3 times more expensive than usual 😦

[raw jasper]

there is also mouser

...whose warehouses are more geographically distributed

IIRC though, currently semiconductors are exempt from the US tariffs

[violet parcel]

but is a whole PCB a semi-conductor ? If so what make it different from a tariff covered electronics ? just because the electronics has a case over the pcb ?

[raw jasper]

If adafruit are producing the boards in-house from US-bought materials, they would be exempt from tariffs

[violet parcel]

meh and I thought sanctions and justifing why you need a chip when you accidently buy a sanction covered one for the DHS form was the most complicated thing lol

for context it was a frequency synthetizer that was used at that time in adafruit products too but they asked me to fill forms to justify why I needed it and that I would be the end user and not for reshipping to another country. Fun times lol

[fair summit]

no, the whole board is not a semiconductor. The microcontroller is, the transistors, not the other parts.

[fair summit]

many parts are simply not made in the US, such as various connectors. If you haven't watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQeJrAXsD0Y>from Ask an Engineer from last night, worth doing so

DigiKey is a "Free Trade Zone". That means that parts trans-shipped through DigiKey can avoid US duty if their destination is not the US. E.g. Someone in Spain orders a part made in China from DigiKey. It's shipped to Spain. Only Spanish duties would apply, despite its being warehoused at DigiKey in the US.

[tardy badger]

I might not be a super star software engineer, but I did use memcpy without looking it up today so that feels pretty good 😂

[violet parcel]

dunno but I gotta admit that I dont have alternatives to adafruit/chinese sellers because canada dont make electronics so...

not like I can avoid us purchases on it like I can with soft drinks and chips or most food...

[tardy badger]

The tariffs have effectively killed my hobby for the foreseeable future. My hobby budget was pretty tight as is, idk what to do moving forward :/

I can work through what parts I have but nothing new anytime soon

[violet parcel]

it's just that it seems diy electronics are always affected by everything

like in 2020-2021-2022 it was shortage worldwide, 2023/2024 was sanctions and now it's tariffs 😦

[silver shale]

It did screw me out of a project that I need to get done in two months but it's not like I need a prototype built anyway...

[violet parcel]

maybe I should try getting into pottery or metalsmithing or something...

cuz the main point of diy electronics for me was to stop paying 200$ for a device I can make myself for 50$ with much more features/mod the electronics in my appliances etc

[silver shale]

I'm not letting it get in my way

[stoic mesa]

shows that you do have some memory...

but as for tariffs, I hope that within months thye will come to a reasonable agreement. Until thne, we can only wait and pray

[silver shale]

The point of what I do is for education but also to show resolve in the face of personal issues, undeveloped skills, sourcing and idiot presidents.

[violet parcel]

an agreement wont necessarily change wheter Ill resume buying us products though. Im not the govt or bound to their decisions could be permanent in my personal sphere

Me IRL: Have like 12 dev boards and 2 airlift and various shields for them but only 2 transistors, 8 caps and 1 fuse...

kinda would have needed to transfer some budget into "basic components". At least I have 3 species of 555

Also me and electronics: brain generating gazillion of projects in real-time (ie: scope screep), but when I make a game in unity I cant come up with any idea even though im much better at unity 😦

my brain be like, not enough skill but here is 1 million ideas, vs enough skill no idea what to do

[late fulcrum]

I'm just back to how I started out, pulling stuff out of the trash and stripping it for parts. It's a little trickier these days than when parts were standardized and big enough to see.

[tardy badger]

Ordering PCBs and stencils is where the pain point is these days for me. I have a surprising amount of parts on hand when I last inventoried what I had

US made will go up because the materials are often sourced internationally

[late fulcrum]

I bought a pile of transistors from a surplus outfit a while back. While they're generally oddball types, it hardly matters for most circuits. https://theelectronicgoldmine.com/collections/goldpaks/products/gp25

[tardy badger]

And of course the 104% tariff on Chinese PCBs/stencils doubles the cost of those :/

[late fulcrum]

I suppose I could go back to making my own PCBs

[tardy badger]

Add in that couriers add their own fees in for processing the tariffs

[late fulcrum]

introduces sneaky new bill that defines where the collected tariff money goes: to AdaFruit

[tardy badger]

If I had the capabilities to make 4 and 6 layer PCBs, I would in a heartbeat lol

And a laser cutter for stencils? Heck yeah I’d do it 😂

For now, I’ll probably collect PCB designs and slowly get any new parts I want and hope that the madness ends even though it probably won’t for a while

[late fulcrum]

I've also repurposed PCBs left over from older projects for new ones.

[raw jasper]

Apparently it's 145%?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/business/economy/china-tariffs-145-percent.html

[tardy badger]

🥲

[stoic mesa]

for PCBs, we could use OshPark - you said they actually use a US fab house, so they should be ok.
But assembly...
I can't manually assemble qfn80. Or rather I can, but it will be extremely slow and at best 50% success rate. I tried.

Of course, I still hope that this will go away soon, but who knows

[burnt tendon]

Also I checked one of my boards at OshPark and it looks like it's still cheaper to eat the tariffs. :/

[stoic mesa]

even at 145%?

[vestal pier]

OshPark charges by the area, so small PCBs are reasonable, but large area board get pricey quick

[night crescent]

🎉 There are over 3,000 Certified Open-Source Hardware projects, congrats to everyone for reaching 3k! Out of the 3,000+ Adafruit has certified 807 designs & products, 26.88% of all certifications! https://mastodon.social/@oshwassociation/114319796147129887 & https://certification.oshwa.org/list.html?q=adafruit - Explore our open-source designs, and join the movement!

OSHWA (@[e-mail])

We are so excited to announce that with UID GT000019 Shield Fit24 we have officially hit 3,000 certified open source hardware projects in the database! Thank you so much to every single person who has taken the time to certify their work and make this database such a success. Special shout out to Diego Iboy and Universidad Galileo for certifying the 3,000 piece of hardware!

Mastodon · Apr 11, 2025, 2:27 PM

[silver shale]

Near a makerspace?

[tardy badger]

Unfortunately not

[silver shale]

There's a laser cutter at the makerspace in downtown Richmond though I have not used it yet

[tardy badger]

It would be fun to open a maker space near where I live

Not sure the audience exists in large enough numbers to support one though

[silver shale]

Also there's the option that was common back in 2022-2023 where one could find chips being sold that were pulled off from existing PCBs

[silver shale]

You are in the US though?

[tardy badger]

Yes

[silver shale]

There should be at least one if you're not in Montana or something

Richmond is a bit of a nerd place so it makes sense

[tardy badger]

Closest makerspace to me is for children’s programs

For ages 9-18 at a stem museum

Where I live, people tend to favor dirty soda shops and indoor playgrounds over stem related venues

[hollow flint]

There's a makerspace within a twelve minute walk of New York Penn Station, which Amtrak stops at. Just drive to your nearest Amtrak park-n-ride, and visit https://hackmanhattan.com/ during Open House.

[silver shale]

What part, if I may ask

[tardy badger]

Utah

[silver shale]

There's one in Salt Lake

[tardy badger]

You don’t understand how much of a pain it is to drive into Salt Lake City for me

[silver shale]

Yeah, probably because I didn't ask what part of Utah you're from

I say I'm in Richmond because I'm proud of it lol

[burnt tendon]

...I can tell you are salty about this.

[tardy badger]

Lol I am

I work in SLC so I drive it most week days

[burnt tendon]

The most useful PCB's I've done are my own twisted variants on breadboard-styled-perfboards and so that was what I was using as my check?

[hollow flint]

Is there a makerspace on your way home? https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Utah

[burnt tendon]

But, yah, dono, my friend is very very thrifty and so part of her quest is how to find neat "maker" stuff as easily as possible. And so several libraries have laser cutters and 3D printers as part of the whole "maker"/"STEM" thing and it's a good idea but at the same time, it's hard for librarians with a MLIS degree to also be good at laser cutting and so they end up finding a person who may or may not be as helpful as a library staffer ought to be.

[tardy badger]

It isn’t worth stopping, I have a wife and kids to be home to

[burnt tendon]

e.g. my friend was quite incensed at one library's laser cutter and I still need to go and see if it's because she was gasp making while femme.

[raw jasper]

I presume she was incensed at the staffer, not the machine itself, right?

Sorry for asking this question, I had to read this sentence three times and I'm not sure if it's some use of the verb incensed I don't know because English is my second language, or if you missed a word

[burnt tendon]

Oh, yah, she was incensed at the staffer. I wasn't really clear?

[raw jasper]

You said "incensed at one library's laser cutter" (the word staffer was omitted), so I was trying to figure out if it's some meaning of the verb I was not aware about

Again, my apologies

[burnt tendon]

Basically, you have a person who has taught laser cutter usage bringing in a project and the person led her through his personal pre-flight ritual and ended up wasting acrylic.

[raw jasper]

Understood. I guess his urge to mansplain was that strong <_<

[burnt tendon]

I mean, my wife takes the car in to the service counter and then they end up calling me to ask car questions. Except once in a while I take it in. This time my wife took it in and the guy asked "Oh, so I never asked, what does your husband do?" and she's like "Oh, he works in tech" and the service advisor was like "Oh, but he's nice"

And... yeah, presumably your average tech person in my tech-centric town sees the service advisor as their "lessor" and treats them poorly, so ... yeah.

[raw jasper]

The attitude problem is strong in this field

[raw jasper]

doh. Now I see it clearly! Laser cutter (a person) vs laser cutter (the machine)

[silver shale]

Likely responsible for most code being as low quality as it is

[raw jasper]

Heh, you can read some code and think about how low quality it is and how better it'd be if you rewrote it but then you learn about the history of the underlying project and understand it was the best the original developer(s) could do given the situation and constraints placed on them

And then, there is also code that is plainly bad :)

[silver shale]

That's part of the problem; the idea that programmers have that they think they're better than everyone else where in most cases, they're not

I don't consider myself to be a programmer nor a good one

[dusty citrus]

It may be a bias of mine, but the more confident they look, the more ladders they scale...

[raw jasper]

What even is a programmer? Is it a person who writes code for a living? Or is it anybody who was written some code in some part of their life? Do Excel users count as programmers?

What is a man, but a miserable little pile of secrets? :P

[fresh niche]

tbf excel is turing compatable so yea they could be hardcore excel programmers

[raw jasper]

For what it's worth, my personal opinion is that any excel user is a programmer, even by the strictest definition of the term. Excel is the simplest medium by which one can bend a computer to one's will.

[raw jasper]

Is this... CD-i dracula?

Is that a thing? retreats into the shadows

[fresh niche]

honestly i respect this statement . But if we look back at the context of programmers thinking they know better than everyone, they are certainly many middle managers using word who could be called "programmers"

[raw jasper]

If they are writing macros or interacting with the cursed mail merge stuff, probably so. I am not willing to, nor am I in a position to gatekeep the "title".

As far as I am concerned, the personal computer has completely failed in its promise to become a "bicycle for the mind" anyway

[rotund canopy]

Agreed, you can see how mainstream operating systems are experiencing a regression in UX as OS developers continue to chase the lowest common denominator. I wonder what the state of PC OSs will look like as the average user becomes even more tech illiterate

People are even proud/unashamed to outsource basic thought to LLMs now when they say “ChatGPT told me [x]”

[violet parcel]

me when I describe what programming is: "Im like a computer tamer like lion tamer in circus but I can't change the legs and tail like comptia a++ folks just the behaviours that's also why there is always bugs and updates because it's a wild beast"

[stoic mesa]

I don't think computer is intended to be a bicycle for the mind.
For most users computer is a tool that helps them do some tasks. Book a train ticket, check some news, send email to friends, write student essay. I don't have a problem wiht that - and if chatgpt or whatever gets smart enough to be able to do that (like amazon's echo is trying) without the user even touching the keyboard but just by saying "book me a ticket for tomorrow's concert if there are good seats at reasonable price", I'll be happy.

as long as there remains an option for those who need more tot get inside the computer, hack the code, replace the OS by OS/2, whatever you wnat

[raw jasper]

To be fair, these are not really "computer" tasks, but rather "terminal" tasks

[stoic mesa]

true, but in 99% of cases, this is the role of personal computer

[silver shale]

I heard that a majority of Gen Alpha would not know what a file or folder is on a computer

[late fulcrum]

Perhaps they didn't buy into skeuomorphism?

[raw jasper]

This goes back to the UNIX book I learned how to use the command line with, which had a quip to the effect of "you can use the terminal emulator program to make a computer worth tens of thousands of dollars behave like a VT100"

[sullen portal]

Nah it's simply that they grew up with devices that rely on 'search' to find everything (phones/tablets) and don't support nesting organization like folders.

[late fulcrum]

I have been known to use a 2.2GHz, 64-bit computer as a dumb terminal to a 1MHz, 8-bit computer

[raw jasper]

I guess the equivalent these days would be running a serial console to an arduino uno ;)

[violet parcel]

Ive been known to uses adafruit airlift like you told me I think (you or herr) long ago to make up for a chip lack of ram and program space to be controlled from a beefier chip with wifi 😉

[winged oracle]

Hi! Excuse me! I really liked the D20 talking cube(https://learn.adafruit.com/talking-d20-20-sided-gaming-die/overview), guys. Could you help me with the details? I'm not sure which parts and microchips I need to buy from the website. I’d really appreciate it if you could share the links to the components.

[violet parcel]

the parts are 2 scroll below in that page . Are you on nvda or there is some kind of issue reading those links ?

[winged oracle]

Are you sure that "Adafruit Pro Trinket - 5V 16MHz" is needed for talking D20?

Is there an easier way to create a talking D20 without that much expense?

As a counted it's like 52$ for one talking D20

[violet parcel]

so that was the real question it wasnt about finding parts ? 😉 Any other real questions you didnt mention ? 😉

the problem here is probably the 5V and adafruit dont make much 5V boards

and potentially the memory amount needed, could be done but youd need additional flash chips - this is what I suspect I never did that specific montage

modern aarduino 5v boards probably going to be as costly