Printing a new prototype case for my science fair!
I can never seem to get PETG to print correctly without warping. Also doesn't help that my heated bed isn't working now. Oh well.
I got more fountain pen ink! Emerald of chivor, it's supposed to have a really cool sheen!
Rendering is fun. Especially at midnight. I have no clue what timezone scrappy uses, I hope it's est.
It's mind-boggling how long my new battery lasts. Much better than the old one. Yes, I'm using windows right now, my software needs it.
10pm productivity rush!
Scary server bios update! This hasn't been updated since 2015 or so!
Ok, update on the sketchy eBay 14-core $24 CPU: it has gotten a label, hasn't technically shipped yet.
Still awaitin for my sketchy eBay CPU to ship.
I took an SAT practice test today, and I got a huge jump in my math score. My language actually went down since the last one, so that was a bit disappointing, but it's progress I guess. If it didn't, that would have been 1400 territory.
I just finished smt soldering the 2.5th generation science fair hardware I designed (and built)!
Oh no.
Didn't get much done today, maybe I'll try to get some stuff done tonight. I made myself some ravioli for dinner (and burned my finger!)
I got the gen 2.5 science fair PCB's I designed today! This generation is faster, lighter, several times smaller, and more efficient!
Trying to study for the SAT so I don't mess up quite as much next time...
First order of business: I bombed the SAT today. That was a mess.
Other than that, I came up for this idea of a little text editor in your browser about half an hour ago. Kinda like a lightweight google docs. I call it Kleaflet. I just started working on this very recently, so it's a very rough draft. I don't know, it will probably end up being one of the projects I abandon. Who knows? Just something I started whipping up with react and figma in a few minutes. It looks very ugly right now. Don't pay too much attention to the details. Or how the menu bar at the top hides when you scroll the document.
Last-minute SAT cramming before tomorrow! The test is way too close now.
Today I resumed work on my personal website. I'm currently working on automating deployment to github pages, and turns out automatically creating a branch a copying a build folder is surprisingly complicated (thanks git). I set up react router as well, to operate the page-switching logic of the site.
I made some (very bad) pancakes this morning. They didn't taste absolutely horrible, but they weren't the best. Did get a cool slow-mo of turning on the stove though.
Today I worked on a project I was meaning to do for a while! It's a ESP32-based drop-in replacement for an Atmega328 microcontroller. Why replace an atmega328? They seem nearly impossible to get, and painfully slow for complex tasks (although they are often simple and convenient). I have an uno or two lying around that I'm not using, simply because I have more preformant microcontrollers, and I would love to retrofit those boards into an ESP32 dev board.
The goal of this project is to create a drop-in replacement for the Atmega328 with an ESP32. Sure, it won't be exactly the same, but the goal is to have it fully compatible to replace an Atmega328 in an Uno.
To be honest, I probably won't ever build this project, simply because I don't have the time, and I probably have better things to spend my money on than the PCB spin or two that I will need to manufacture the board. Who knows though, if I finish the design, I might simply open-source it, and maybe someone other than me will make it one day.
I've started using KiCad for the first time, and it's been an experience. I kinda just googled or played around with menus when I got confused, and KiCad doesn't seem too hard, it just has it's quirks to it, like any EDA tool.
I cleaned my laptop fan today! There was an insane amount of dust in it! Doing so really helped the performance, it's now operating at about 80c under load compared to the old 95c under load, so hopefully it will run cooler, last longer, and most importantly, throttle less.
It was a little bit of a dicy repair, considering how some parts of the laptop are breaking apart slowly, and I didn't want to aggravate any damage, but the lack of some screw covers due to failed adhesive made getting to the fan a little easier.
I really need to work on my winter hardware project. I haven't done that recently.
I also worked on my secret project, and collecting the data and building the UI were two major focuses today.
This post isn't quite as long as the other day, but it sure does have have a few images!
Houston, we have maximum CPU load, I repeat, we are using all 6 cores of the desktop i7.
I'm almost done my 2.5th generation hardware design for my science fair! I just need to figure out the layout of the PCB, which should be relatively simple for this design (nothing too complicated). I will finish it and order it later tonight.
I plan on working on my power app some tonight, and building a sprig game with my day off tomorrow!
On other notes, I made the scrapbook home page look really weird. My post is way too long. I think if a post is over xyz characters, it should be automatically made expandable. Maybe I'll look at the scrapbook code over the weekend. The image attached is zoomed out, it looks far worse zoomed in (and doesn't fit in anywhere close to my screen.
I did a bit today, and I originally wrote this all up, but I accidently posted it in confessions, then proceeded to delete my long write-up. Whoops. That was bad.
Starting with my science fair project, I've begun work on generation 2.5 hardware. Why 2.5, you may ask? Well, I designed generation 2 hardware, and it was never produced, and ended up being too big. So, I've began shrinking it, and creating a new PCB.
This one uses a faster esp32 module, which should simplify things for me, and more crucially, also contains a USB interface. This should simplify the design some, and although the module is larger, it removes the need for an pesky usb-to-serial converter to solder. I've moved to an vertical mount USB-C connector, which should simply mounting of the board in the case and allow me to increase the board size by several millimeters, all while simplifying the charging process.
Speaking of soldering, I've been forced to use smaller components for this revision of the board. I'm moving to 603 resistors (scary, those things are so easy to bump), though to be fair, I solder much smaller chips, and will be soldering much smaller chips anyways for this project. There's a lot of sacrifices that I am making to try to fit this as small as possible, but engineering is a game of calculated sacrifices, not everyone has the unlimited resources or budget for your project (most of the time).
I haven't worked on my power app for managing my servers, but I should tomorrow. It's moved along nicely, and I look forward to adding authentication soon. Auth is a bit complicated, and I wish there was an easy way... I did however work on a different personal project, whipped up some figma designs, and hit an API rate limit. It should have reset at this point (1,000/24hr, resets at 7EST), so I think I will work on that and integrating it with StatsD to get me analytics and errors from part of the backend app for collecting data for the project. I like mongo and FastAPI with python, so I'm honestly just looking for a way to tie integration to that. The whole authentication and keeping it secure part is where it gets difficult. And JavaScript web tokens and all that stuff.
I'm debating building the front end in react, I like the convivence, but it's probably unnecessary. Maybe I can shrink it down or something, it's a project designed to be integrated into other pages though. I'll figure it out, it's not too big. Not like my react is that good, I've just started learning it a few weeks ago, and I don't know too much yet.
I've begun to narrow down my search for a laptop, I'm looking at Lenovo Thinkpad T15's or P15's (or a variant), or a member of the Dell Precision 7xxx family. They are all awfully expensive though, which is unfortunate. There's not many computers that fit my needs (nvme, 15in, not a gaming laptop, not look too ugly, numpad, backlit white keyboard, ethernet port, lots of other ports, decent back or side-output thermals, user repairable, well preforming i7/Ryzen 7 or higher.
Tomorrow is a half day, and I plan to work on my power app and my science fair then. Friday I am fortunate enough to get off, so I might build a sprig game then... I have a few ideas, but none are set in stone yet. I'll see how it goes. I should check how many consoles are left, to be honest.
I'm a bit angry it appears autodesk stripped eagle from the education pack. I liked eagle, but I should probably learn kicad. Eagle, Fusion, and Autodesk are honestly the only reason I still dual-boot into windows on my laptop... speaking of that, I need to customize my grub screen.
I restrung my guitar today as well, I should have done that a while ago (It's been a bit!). For bonus points, I did a partial water change in my fish tank and watered my plants as well. My phone decided to die again, so that's a lot of fun. It just randomly turns off sometimes, and doesn't turn back on for days. I sent it to google; they said there wasn't an issue, but there clearly is. Oh well.
I'm facing a productivity and time crisis right now; I have so much projects and things I should be doing, and my grades suck and I really need to study for the SAT. There's so much to do, but I can't seem to do much. I don't know. I'm always lost.
Congratulations, you made it all the way through this message! I probably forgot something, but that's probably enough for now. Let's see how many emoji's that scrappy throws up. Probably enough to fill a cargo container. I'm sorry it's this long, this message just doesn't end (It's still not over..)
Ohh, I have a secret ship coming hopefully along in the next few weeks! It's top secret! You will need to have to wait to see what it is!
Back to scrapbook! I kinda just gave up when I lost my streak last time, I've had a lot going on. I'm currently desperately studying for an engineering test on trusses I can't pretend to fully understand, and I've begun redesigning the electronics in my science fair project. Oh, and yesterday I started building myself a website. At least the header of a website. This is an earlier version, I'm running a slightly newer one, and I think I finally figured out mobile, and how I'm going to do that (normal menus look ugly). I hope to work on my hardware project some later this week when I get the time. And maybe a sprig game.
I competed in science fair today, and I cleaned up my documents folder on the mac!
From ESP32's mind,
A message sent to the world,
"Hello, World!" it says.
Today, I worked on my science fair project some more! I've focused on a lot of the electronics and actual case design recently, hopefully I will have a quasi-functional prototype tomorrow. The fair is Tuesday, so I need to speed this up.
The science fair marches onward...
I'm working on sciencing the fair... putting my winter hardware project on hold for a few days while I panic on this hardware project. Then I can panic on my winter hardware project when that is done.
#hardware-party
I got my printer up and running today after it being down for a couple months and me being too lazy to fix it! Here's my first print (admittedly bad). Woohoo!
#hardware-party 1?/10: today I worked on bringing my 3D printer back online. I have all the axes working correctly now, and I'm working on getting the bltouch and auto-leveling functioning now. Hopefully I can start printing some tomorrow!
Ignore the mess of wires... It's not back on the printer yet...
#hardware-party day 1?/10. I worked on my power board today... I fixed some problems, and I found a lot more. I'll take a more thorough investigation tomorrow.
Although this might not look like much, and I'm sure people have seen bits and pieces of this, I made some significant architecture adjustments to my power app. I'm really close to getting the authentication method working, along with creating VM's.
Maxin out the CPU on my laptop trying to code my winter hardware project!
Waffles!
#hardware-party 10/??
Yes, I'm not completely done (grumble grumble), and I might not be able to count my says right, but I worked on the rendering software for my project after skiing today.
#hardware-party 9?/10
I didn't get too much done today, I had a bit of a rough day.
I charged this lipo with my charger I made and soldered some stuff. Sorry about the lack of good photos!
#hardware-party day 9?/10?
I finished soldering my power board, it's charging lipos now. The one chip does get a bit uncomfortably hot, but I think it's expected, and I should probably put a heatsink on it.
I messed up the design for one part, I was however able to hack together a solution. I hope. Will finish testing it tomorrow, hopefully integrating some.
This is taking longer than expected. Oh well.
#hardware-party 8?/10
Ok, I'm starting to run out of time. The printer is still broken, and this whole thing is taking longer than expected.
Tested the buttons today, messed with some software.
#hardware-party day 7/10!
I soldered together part of my graphing calculator power board, some of the leads are really small!
Kids, the components look really big on the internet, but are often tiny in real life. Don't do what I did.
My react is getting marginally better.
#hardware-party 6/10
Wow, time is flying. I can't believe we are on day 6 already. I felt like I was putting in the grant yesterday.
Anyways, I was tired today, so I took it a little chill and was prioritizing bringing my printer back online. I connected the board, set up the klipper for the first time, configured the motor directions, had the x successfully homing, got the thermocouple connected, ran a pid autotune test, and tightened the belts.
Hopefully I will have the printer working tomorrow, and I also plan on assembling the power board, learning react, setting up my power compute app, charging the lipo, and cranking out some case prototypes, especially for the keyboard buttons. That's a long post I guess.
#hardware-party day 5 of 10!
We're halfway there
Ohh ohh, Squidward in a chair!
I finished my keyboard PCB, and finally got the screen working, alas on an Arduino mega and not the Jetson. I also worked on getting my printer back online, and I now have serial communications between the controller and the computer again.
On the side, a bit unrelated, I've been learning react as well, and I've been making some strange web apps.
#hardware-party day 3/10! 🎇
I finally got the PCB's in the mail! Yay!
Started assembling the keyboard, there's so many diodes and buttons...
SMT Soldering is so much fun, but also really scary.
Installing debian on nvme drives is amazing. I completed an entire install in under ten minutes.
#hardware-party Got a bunch more components, still playing with getting the lcd working... I have a different error now! It's just a silent error! I might break out the oscilloscope tomorrow.
On a more positive note, more components arrived!
#hardware-party Day 2/10! I played around with the screen some more, (it doesn't seem to like me tbh), and got some more parts (solder paste). Still waiting on the PCB's, although the components are supposed to arrive tomorrow!
I'm also working on an engine to render html on the screen. Still very experimental.
Day 1/10 of #hardware-party! I didn't do as much as I liked today, but I soldered some stuff and I'm working on getting the libraries for the display all set up. I'm just using the circuitpython libraries because it's simple and easy, even though there's probably something better.
My mouser is coming!
Two laptops are better than one.
My daily entry for probably broken and very ugly schematic.
Designing some power switching!
Late night engineering
I should be done my winter PCB's by now and I'm not and I'm panicking and I'm not done and I need to redesign this one because I don't know what I was thinking when I designed this schematic, it's all wrong.
Trying to figure out how to set up a new printer control board so I can print for my winter hardware wonderland!
New laptop battery! Woohoo!
Don't mess up. Just light smt soldering.
Trees, I'm sorry.
My gitignore keeps getting ignored and I have no clue what I'm doing wrong😢
Working on creating a scheduling app to keep me on top of my hardware project and my insane life! I have way too much stuff to do.
Hardware is here!
Normal Thursday night.
I ordered some more parts for my calculator! Yay!
I just cleaned up my drive! So much storage now!
Trying to figure out where to hang up some posters! So many choices on my wall!
I survived: skiing
I just received the mother of all fire hazards: this massive lipo battery. 2000mah battery for scale.
DANGER: Lithium Polymer batteries may be larger than they appear on the screen.
Shopping for parts for my winter hardware project!
I just replaced my laptop wifi card! This creature will run until the end of time! 9 years strong, I'm hoping it can make it to 10.
Got some PCB's for my science fair!
Working on my sprig game! Turns out scrolling multiple objects at different speeds while competing animations and keeping track of them is complicated.
The moon is looking extra creepy tonight. Perfect environment for the winter hardware project.
Yay! Some parts arrived!
Slowly working towards my sprig game! This is still a rough draft, but at least it's something.The pcb's are coming... It's coming surprisingly fast from China. This is probably one of my fastest shipments from them. I also selected the green PCB color, which really sped up the production time.
Slowly building my sprig game! The editor was a little confusing at first, but I think I'm starting to get used to it.Bad sprig game, here we come!
In the process of shielding my guitar from EMI! Honestly, the factory should've done this, but this is a budget electric guitar from the early 2000's.
Update: it works! It's so much better now, the annoying static and buzzing is almost completely gone!
Working on the musk disclaimer for my project...
I'm quite surprised the hardest part of this project is just powering it. Power supplies are so complicated.
The march goes on towards absolute graphing calculator supremacy, moving towards the keyboard. Now, the interaction with the keyboard part may be trash. Or it might be good. I honestly don't know. I'll have to wait to find out.
So many buttons.... This is only one sheet. 😭
I just ordered some PCB's... and it's so scary. Wish me luck!
My layouts keep getting worse.
Slowly designing away... this time for my science fair project.
I'm officially ready to announce my candidacy for the world's ugliest PCB layout contest.
Just datasheets all the way down. I should probably organize this. I think I have some extra binders somewhere.
Just started building the new schematic for my majestic and glorious graphing calculator of doom!
