Sun: Oct 20, 2024

» Aerogarden shutting down (video on Mastodon). I have an older Aerogarden (I guess a "classic") that I've DIYed a few times over the years but those peat pellets are new to me, I'll be picking up a bag.     #


» Dummy 13 - version 1.0!. I love it, going to print one or two.     #


» A Complete Guide to Canon EOS R Mirrorless Cameras and Their Specifications. I've been debating upgrading my 7d Mark II but have been baffled by the currently available cameras, this was a nice guide.     #


Sat: Oct 19, 2024

» The Rural Purge: Death of the Country Broadcasting System. Interesting, I didn't realize that was how it happened (I remember a few of the shows from when I was a kid but not all of them). Also, I learned Mo Rocca has a podcast!     #


» DEF CON 23 - Samy Kamkar - Drive it like you Hacked it: New Attacks and Tools to Wireles. Super entertaining, and the price of the IM Me on ebay seems to be down to about $80 now at least.     #


» Synchronized NeoPixel Shoelaces with WLED, used this for my under-Rollerblade lights, it's pretty cool to have them synced. Also used this ESP32 firmware for the M5Stack Atom Lite and it works fantastic (no idea what the "staircase" addition has done but it's working well for me)     #


» DIY Bungee Cords. Clever, especially since the ones you buy at the store are never the right size...     #


» The Witch Trials band. Had no idea this was a thing but since it's on Spotify I gave it a listen. Glad I did but I still prefer the Dead Kennedys.     #


» Pixelblaze V3, A Wi-Fi-enabled, live-codable LED controller with a web-based development environment. I've been playing with WLED on some M5Stack devices and really like them but having a purpose built device like this is nice.     #


Mon: Sep 30, 2024

» Open Source Icon Sets, that's an impressive collection.     #


Sun: Sep 29, 2024

» Drivers Colorado, a coop ride share (the drivers also own the company). I don't do rideshare very often anymore but this looks great.     #


» Claude Dev, use Anthropic API credits to have Claude program with you.     #


» Making a Geiger Counter with ESPHome and Home Assistant. Because why not...     #


» Backup by Biolite Kickstarter. Wow, they've really expanded, I remember when they just had the same stove that used the heat of fire to charge your phone. Interesting they are going with single-room power backups, as opposed to the whole-house batteries.     #


» A CLI for REST APIs. I like that you can "register" an API with the client so you don't have to always re-type the headers and such.     #


» The storm before the break – HA and Air Conditioning. I've never used Tasmota but that's interesting. Currently my mini splits are using the climate integration with Home Assistant and while it works it's missing some features the remote controls have.     #


» Building the DataToaster 3000. I love it.     #


» Broadcast TV Simulator. That's amazing.     #


» Voter Registration Status. There's a lot of purging going on, be sure you can still actually vote.     #


» Tiny Toolkit Manifesto. Back in my travel days I had a couple of kits but not with tools (some of that stuff will be confiscated at the airport) and I do still have kits for the car and motorcycle and such. I was part of a manifesto before it was cool!     #


» How to make a Mini Neon Sign with 3D Printing - Tutorial DIY. I have some of those filament style LEDs, never thought to print a housing like that.     #


Sat: Sep 21, 2024

» Wildspaces.work, some folks in the Denver area who take their 4wd vehicles out in the woods, use a Starlink device for internet access, and just work very remote for a bit.     #


Thu: Sep 19, 2024

» Ten Strong Suggestions for Surviving the Age of Misinformation by AJ Jacobs. Years ago I subscribed to Esquire magazine and I always enjoyed his bits, his books have been great as well.     #


Sun: Sep 15, 2024

» esp32-staircase-m5stack-atom-lite firmware from github and WLED Sync Mode has my rollerblade skate lights working great, super happy. I was concerned because I was finding WLED info for the AtomS3 Lite, but I have the original Atom Lite (NON s3) and this firmware worked perfectly.     #


» A Brief History of Colorado Through Time (Geology of Colorado) (youtube video), super interesting.     #


» How to Make a Custom Sewing Machine Case, very nice.     #


» Be Alert to European Paper Wasps. Last year I had true yellow-jackets (ground dwelling, highly aggressive) and I've had paper wasps for a long time around this house and I think they've always been the European version.     #


» OPNSense and BSD Boot Environments. This worked great for the 24.7 upgrade, and now I see it built into the OPNSense UI so it'll be extra handy in the future.     #


» One Minute Park, just a calming minute long video of a random park.     #


» NoiseCard, Solar-powered decibel measuring business card. That's impressive.     #


» Nextion Thermostat with ESPHome (youtube video). That's a really nice interface, if I didn't already have a zwave thermostat I'd be tempted to build one myself. This github repo: kbx81 esphome-configs has the ESPHome details you'd need to add one to Home Assistant.     #


Fri: Sep 06, 2024

» 88MPH: The Story of the DeLorean Time Machine | Full Documentary (youtube). I recently re-watched Back to the Future, with my 19 year old niece who'd never seen it, and I still absolutely love that car.     #


Tue: Sep 03, 2024

» 3D printed Dupont connector for jumper cable. That's a great idea, I appreciate they've included a variety up to 8. Being able to make something like a ribbon cable is handy, and dealing with individual connectors is too fiddly.     #


» Dakota Hogback, I had no idea it had it's own Wikipedia page. And I recognized the view from the photo immediately.     #


» Live Lightning Maps, that's just fun to watch.     #


» DevToys. There's some duplication with what you can get via CyberChef but there's also something nice about having a local desktop application (and the cli is extra handy)     #


» Give Me the Green Lightpart 1 and part 2 - traffic camera hacking. I'm hoping there's a part 3 soon, this is interesting.     #


» Dunkey's Guide to Streaming Services (youtube). Hilarious and frustrating at the same time.     #


» 6 Open Source Tools to Query OpenStreetMap     #


» Defeating the Orange Haze – Lightroom Flat Field Correction – An Essential Tool for Digitising Film? I've been considering doing some film scanning recently and did a trial of VueScan since my old flatbed scanner has a film/slide mode. Turns out it not only drives the scanner just fine it also does the color (or black & white) conversion, figures out the edges of the frames, and scans the whole strip sequentially. Worth the $120 I paid for it last week. Before figuring all that out though I was considering my options for using my SLR to capture the negatives...     #


» The definitive collection of cool 1980s digital dashboards in American cars. I definitely remember a few of these.     #


Mon: Sep 02, 2024

» Letterboxd - Best Films People Haven’t Seen. I'm happy to say I've seen a surprising number of those.     #


» Don't be a Sucker, from the US National Archive (as in this is an official US Government produced film on not being a fascist...)     #


» Home-Assistant with Raspberry Pi 4 Camera on Bookworm. Huh, wonder if it's better to just scatter ESP32Cams around or wait for more Pi Zero 2 to come into stock...     #


» Use AI to convert your handcrafted diagrams to digital. Finally a good use of machine learning.     #


» [Tutorial] Libretuya - Flash ESPHome to Tuya Device (Non ESP chip). Tagged here because I have some led strips with Tuya controllers on their way from Aliexpress and I'd rather have ESPHome and Home Assistant integration than some app.     #


» OctoPrint Bed Level Visualizer – Complete Setup Guide!. Neat but I prefer to just let Octoprint deal with it in gcode.     #


» Siberian Elm, had one in the back yard that died so I'm having it removed soon but there's a bunch in the neighborhood so I keep getting the suckers popping up in the yard. Wikipedia isn't kidding when they call it invasive.     #


» Diy Presence Sensor. Using the mmWave is way better than a PIR if you are trying for presence detection, they just cost a lot more.     #


» Scientists find humans age dramatically in two bursts – at 44, then 60. Something to look forward to I guess.     #


» How to Reverse Engineer a Schematic From a Circuit Board. Interesting.     #


» Raspberry Pi - What to do if your camera is not detected. My old Pi3 that was taking a picture every minute out my window was having problems with the camera so I thought it'd be a good time to upgrade to a small Pi Zero 2 W that I got a Microcenter not too long ago. I 3d printed this case: Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W with Camera Module v 3 Case (which came out fantastic, just have some spare M2 screws on hand to assemble everything).

I ended up feeling like I was fighting everything including a new camera (since the old one was so flaky). I tried both Raspberry Pi OS Lite and DietPi images, going back and forth (the Pi OS Lite wouldn't boot unless I had an HDMI monitor plugged in!) and finally have a system that's working well.

Part of the issue is there's a LOT of information out there for older versions of Pi OS and cameras and very little for the Bookworm version that's current. This page was helpful, especially with the Do not use "vcgencmd get_camera" as it will only mislead you. statement.     #


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