Tweets
Replying to @josecastillo
uh-oh. not promising. after following installation instructions, no sign of the Inkplate 6COLOR board definition. 🤔
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Replying to @josecastillo
a brief interlude while we download the inkplate board definitions to find out
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Replying to @oakdevtech
it’s okay, my life is a joke to me too 🙃
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Replying to @josecastillo
promising: in theory, bluemarble.raw contains bytes formatted for the Inkplate screen.
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Replying to @josecastillo
“Real programmers use emacs.” “Real programmers use vim.” fuck the gatekeeping; today this programmer is using nano while ssh’ed into a live web server because what is life if you’re not living a little
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Replying to @josecastillo
past-Joey left a python script in gist that did this conversion (plus some helpful tweaks like “blow out the saturation” and “cover up the logos”), but it depended on Waveshare’s EPD library since it was bitbanging an e-paper panel (which my server lacks). https://gist.github.com/joeycastillo/0a90f56681329729f3a56a95af4495ab/
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well holy shit. writing a web service to convert blue marble imagery to e-paper display colors, and I’m wondering if it really is going to be this easy. #LateNightHacking
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Replying to @rohansingh
I’d love to see that localization file. “A %s has delayed delivery.” (train derailment / flight delay / labor stoppage / civil war / large boulder the size of a small boulder)
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Replying to @RealTimeKodi, @crowd_supply and @eradionica
Thankfully I posted the source code for the thing in a findable thread; I think it’s the same e-paper display, and past-Joey left some notes that’ll give me a head start tonight. https://mobile.twitter.com/josecastillo/status/1289656152104542212
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Replying to @RealTimeKodi, @crowd_supply and @eradionica
I bought this with a very specific project in mind: recreating this old gadget, sans the immense complexity of the first go-around (battery powered Raspberry Pi Zero W run through a boost converter controlled by a Feather and an RTC, it was absurd) https://mobile.twitter.com/josecastillo/status/1301894722814963713
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oh and speaking of @crowd_supply projects and boxes arriving: Inkplate 6COLOR just landed on my doorstep. Needless to say I’ll be late-night hacking on this tonight.
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Replying to @josecastillo
anyway, idk the story behind the derailed train w/ my box of parts. but it made me think of the wide angle lens. “Wall Street greed and investor demands. 16,450-foot trains weighing more than 42 million pounds are gratifying someone with power. Someone who wants it all and more.”
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Replying to @josecastillo
“[131 tons] of chlorine gas is approximately two-thirds of what the German army used during the trench warfare of all of WWI. One tank car alone. And then we pick up more enroute! My conductor is three miles away while I reverse… into an active rail yard! https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/it-is-getting-worse-people-are-leaving/
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Replying to @josecastillo
“PSR has made engineer’s trains almost impossible to control. Imagine a train 16,400 feet in length weighing 17,500 tons: That is three miles, 560 feet and 35 million pounds. One train. And it is hauling hazmat, tanks of say, chlorine gas. Just one tank car alone weighs 131 tons.
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Replying to @josecastillo
y’all should read this open letter from April, in which a locomotive engineer lays out the case that Wall Street’s greed is behind my delayed package. “Monster trains keep derailing to the point where it seems… this has become normalized and acceptable.” https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/it-is-getting-worse-people-are-leaving/
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“hey wasn’t I expecting a package today?”
“oh.”
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I’ve had @darianbjohnson’s Newt on our fridge for like a month now, and while I got it for the cool display tech and low power possibilities, I didn’t anticipate how much I’d appreciate the daily pick-me-up of the quotes module. Love this product! https://www.crowdsupply.com/phambili/newt
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Replying to @tahnok
also somehow when I drop the sqlite sources into my project, platformio inexplicably adds Doom to my list of dependencies, which is more yak shaving than I have time for today 😬
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Replying to @tahnok
yea I think it’s just getting it to build at all; sqlite seems to have the dependency of running on, y’know, an operating system, with threads and mutexes and syscalls that interact with a working file system. getting it to compile for something like the pico is gonna be a Thing.
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Replying to @nudelbrot
Quite usable for short stories; once I get the new firmware storing your place in the book between sessions, it’ll be usable for longer works.
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Replying to @josecastillo
ugh what I really want is an ORM layer on top of a database. is it wrong to want sqlite on an embedded system? i’m just so tired of everything being files that i’m personally responsible for.
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Replying to @josecastillo
coda: tried making my change (storing book progress in the database) but it didn’t work; on further investigation, realized past-joey wrote it so it blows away the database every boot and rewrites it. he also left a TODO item that seems… sus. Whatev, present-joey’s going to bed.
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Replying to @SaguaroLynx
It is, like, staggeringly prescient.
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Replying to @josecastillo
well: I didn’t get around to hacking on the database change I wanted to make. but I did manage to get the design files for the Pi Pico book uploaded, along with a basic BOM and some notes on how to buy (and have made) everything you need to build your own: https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book/tree/reboot
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Replying to @kennohan
I hope to have a handful of kits put together in time to bring to Hackaday Supercon, but the real goal is to make it so open source and accessible that folks can put together the kit themselves. I’ve published the design files and some notes here: https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book/tree/reboot
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Replying to @kennohan
It’s a DIY project whose design files I hadn’t yet published, but y’know what, it’s time, it’s close enough; I can push them up tonight. BRB
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Replying to @yacky_yam
Oh wow, I hadn’t seen that product before but it would very likely work just great!
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Replying to @josecastillo
Holy wow. Y’all have to read this.
“We created the Machine to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now… The Machine develops — but not on our lines. The Machine proceeds — but not to our goal.” this was written in 1909. https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf(original)
I want to do some late night hacking on the Open Book, but it involves the book database file (such as it is) and I sense I’m going to corrupt it straight away. So before I break it, I’m reading a short story I’ve been meaning to get to (The Machine Stops by by E. M. Forster).
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Replying to @MTiberium
I hope this email finds you in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. I hope this email finds you asking yourself, “How did I get here?”
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I hope this email does not find you — our time here is short, each hour precious — and yet I fear that it will.
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Sneak preview of tonight’s (or tomorrow’s) Sensor Watch backer update! Notes on the next shipment, a manufacturing timeline update, AND a new battery graph at Day 323 — which, by sheer luck, puts us exactly 1,000 hours out from the one-year mark. Check it! https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/sensor-watch/updates/green-boards-shipping-battery-life-updates-and-other-news-of-the-watch
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RT @theavalkyrie: This is happening like very very soon! Come hang out. :D
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Replying to @arturo182
what can i say, i’ve grown attached to it
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life pro tip: do not go gentle into that good night.
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RT @Gabe_Ochoa: I spent the afternoon putting together a soil sensor for a fickle fiddle leaf.
It was great to finally use circuit python,…
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lately wherever I go I can’t shake this optimistic sense that the world is full of possibilities.
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RT @AlpenglowInd: What an excellent thread, @josecastillo ! Read on for details about the work still needed between getting all the parts…
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Replying to @ZaphodB17
You love to see it! If it helps, here’s the thread where I put it all together. It’s an inexpensive lantern I got at a random convenience store on Padre Island, so I sense that they’re pretty ubiquitous! https://mobile.twitter.com/josecastillo/status/1331033862911127553
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goals tbh https://twitter.com/twi_kingyo/status/1573541526910607360
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Replying to @mattk
It’s all about timing. We’re lucky we got indoor smoking bans in when we did; in today’s political climate, it would never happen.
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Replying to @josecastillo
coda: took the power outage as a signal I should sleep on it and I did; first thing this morning, got the rest of the job untangled. The clock’s too big for the D11’s memory, but it can at least say hello. Anyway, that’s it for gossamer this week: weekend begins… now :)
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Replying to @getur
Funny thing, it’s not quite this but I do have a lighting related product on the roadmap. (I had to meet a MOQ on red/green LEDs and now I have to use them up somehow)
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Replying to @josecastillo
(it’s also a more skeuomorphic way to enter sleep mode eventually, once all the folks at the camp site have done the same)
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Replying to @josecastillo
rage, rage against the dying of the light! (You’re supposed to be able to rekindle by pressing a button, but the button got jostled out of place so I’m power cycling it. Either way this an important feature, because a campfire requires a tender; those social dynamics are crucial)
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Replying to @josecastillo
update: I was able to find my trusty Campfire in a Can, an old battery-powered lantern that I retrofitted with 24 Neopixels and an @adafruit QT Py. It has more warmth & personality than a flashlight (tho I did program it to require tending from time to time, like a real campfire)
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Replying to @josecastillo
this is super creepy. I’ve never seen the power go out for both us and the houses across the street (they’re on a different substation). Only light is cellphone screens, solar landscaping spikes and confused people with flashlights.
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Replying to @josecastillo
haha or maybe not. Almost the moment I tweeted this, the power went out to the whole block. (tho the feather is still blinky on battery power)
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Replying to @josecastillo
wow the feather designs are *ANCIENT*, so much so that I can’t even find schematics for them. once again, mercifully, past-Joey put mostly-legible pin assignments on the silkscreen. TONIGHT’S PLAN: get the I²C peripheral working on SAMD11, and make the clock sketch dual-platform.
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went searching for an old SAM D11 gadget for some more gossamer tests. ended up finding three. That’s a win.
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