Tweets
so this is the board I’ve been testing the sensor cap with. Tiny, about the size of a quarter, with an ADT7410 temperature sensor, ADXL343 accelerometer and PAM8301 amplifier for the little speaker. I like this one. https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/sPoSvHVT
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Replying to @josecastillo
(also, obligatory “don’t try this at home”: experiencing even mild hyperthermia in a hot tub can increase your risk of drowning due to drowsiness or lethargy, especially when combined with drinking alcohol. stay safe, keep cool 🙂)
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Replying to @josecastillo
Update! Not sure if it was my forehead or the proximity to the hot water, but finally got the hat to (briefly) trigger its 37° red beepy warning. CVS thermometer says 37.6° C (99.8° F) core temp, which is high enough to want to maybe stop and check myself with a real thermometer.
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Replying to @josecastillo
For the record, I’m starting to think a permanently mounted forehead thermometer might not actually work, for a variety of reasons; some of them become apparent just looking at that chart! Still, I think some useful thinking and engineering has come from this little diversion :)
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Temperature hat test! Til now I haven’t had a reliable way to give myself a fever. Then I realized I’m basically a big bag of water, so I’m soaking myself in a 40° hot tub; 10 mins in, I’ve tripped the yellow alert, 36° on the forehead, which my CVS thermometer says is 37.4° core
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Replying to @petrillic and @adafruit
oh god no that could cause another financial crisis
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Wow. If I’m reading this right, tomorrow every bank gets to send a single XML file with (minimum) 15,000 loans for the PPP. I assume there’s tooling for this, but still, the idea that tens of thousands of small businesses are depending on the parsing of one XML file is something. https://twitter.com/Zachary/status/1254490702735687680
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today’s low-tech project: staining a picnic table
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Replying to @dan_rudmann and @oshpark
This looks awesome! Is is like a virtual conference? I’m definitely down to learn more, will DM you my email!
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Replying to @fewalab
I just use a Feather with an SD card and the Adafruit DAP library, which might cost $0 if you have a spare one laying around :) https://learn.adafruit.com/programming-an-m0-using-an-arduino
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Having successfully avoided Amazon for the last ~5 years, a simple life pro tip: go to your search engine, type in the thing you want to buy and add “-amazon” (like, minus amazon) at the end. It’ll list every non-Amazon place on the Internet where you can buy your thing. https://twitter.com/bcmerchant/status/1253453498030501888
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RT @tarahaelle: One month to the day, apparently. https://twitter.com/WesClarkjr/status/1242218850474577920
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Replying to @M_uh_lee
“And then, there’s the Nisha call.”
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Replying to @bigjoshlevine
I’d much prefer to pay Twitter for an ad-free feed, tho I doubt they’d offer one, since the demographic of people-with-money-to-spend is probably pretty valuable to advertisers. I don’t have a good answer here; I just know they’ve given me a mechanism to opt out, so I’m using it.
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Replying to @bigjoshlevine
(the pinned tweet is mostly there in case Pepsi or Star Wars or the University of Phoenix Online is confused as to why they’re blocked. I don’t want to hurt any brands’ feelings 🙂)
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Replying to @bigjoshlevine
Mostly what it says on the tin: I want an ad-free feed for myself. It’s mostly worked; I see an ad here maybe once every couple of weeks? I could “dislike” each ad, but blocking the advertiser hides any future attempts to reach me. Don’t particularly care if they try anyone else.
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Maybe I’m cynical but so many of these memes seem like they’re fishing for answers to my banking security questions. “OK! Your quarantine movie title is the name of your childhood best friend, the city where you met your spouse and the third digit of your ATM pin.” https://twitter.com/Andr6wMale/status/1252918940063412224
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Replying to @adafruit
I’ll try and drop by the show and tell with it!
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this was a productive day
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does anyone else find it wild that a crystal oscillator is basically a rock that we tricked into keeping time?
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Replying to @starsprout
even better, I open sourced it. partly because I doubt there’s anything particularly patentable in it, but mostly because I think it’s more interesting to share :) https://github.com/joeycastillo/Feather-Projects/tree/master/Temperature%20Hat
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Replying to @caitlinsdad and @adafruit
OMG I just OMG’ed out loud at this — love it!!
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Replying to @josecastillo
I swear I’m not a crazy person. Sometimes I make some things that make some kind of sense. Anyway. Thermometer hat.
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oh SHINY! /cc @oshpark
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Replying to @josecastillo
luckily this happens to be the last book I bought before the world broke down; whatever I need to figure this out, I bet it’s in here.
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using a phototransistor and IR led to capture something resembling a heart rate. Seems to match up with a real pulse sensor, at least. I sense there’s a way to clean up and amplify this signal, but right now I feel like the dog in the meme, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
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why am I awake at 5am hanging upside down off a sofa smashing circuit boards against various parts of my face? oh yeah. for science. I think? or idk it could just be my quarantine vibe.
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Replying to @joshu
mostly I worry I’m bumping against design constraints of the human body. like there’s a reason pulse oximeters clip on to a finger and not a forehead (where a sensor-filled cap would live): it seems really easy to get a signal at one site, and a bit harder to get it at the other.
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Replying to @josecastillo
(side note: logging heart rate might be a pipe dream; so far I’ve only barely been able to detect my pulse on a finger, much less on a forehead. IDK. first sensor boards arrive monday; I’ll wear those for a bit to see what data I can get that makes sense)
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Replying to @josecastillo
A two byte timestamp, plus 7 bits for body temperature and 7 more for heart rate. maybe an accelerometer interrupt to capture coughing events: 0, 1, 2 or >3 per hour. we could fit 80 days of data into 8 kB. might be just enough data to feed to a machine learning model.
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imagining a data structure for the temperature cap. assuming the COVID epoch begins 1/1/2020, and we log one data point per hour, the timestamp can be two bytes long, right? Surely we’ll be out of the woods by 2027? https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E16+hours+from+midnight+UTC%2C+January+1%2C+2020
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Replying to @TrentonEmory
I mean, it’s been little over a month and *I* desperately want to go back to something, anything else! It’s difficult to accept, after having lived with such freedom, that I need to flip the switch off and accept a lost year. I sense we all (mostly) will. But it’s gonna be tough.
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Replying to @josecastillo
I have infinite faith. We will get through this. But it ain’t happening by Christmas. Let’s rip that band-aid off now, accept that 2020 is likely to be our most difficult year, and start making plans to care for ourselves and others. Realism feels more useful than optimism today.
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Replying to @josecastillo
“I can tell you who didn’t make it out. It was the optimists… They were the ones who always said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ Christmas would come and it would go. And there would be another Christmas. And they died of a broken heart.”
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Replying to @josecastillo
Yesterday @gruber linked to a story about Admiral Jim Stockdale, a POW held for 7 years at the Hanoi Hilton. Worth reading in full, but there was one bit — quoted in this next tweet — about who survived and who didn’t that felt especially relevant: https://www.jimcollins.com/media_topics/TheStockdaleParadox.html
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Replying to @josecastillo
It’s a mega downer to talk about this, but it’s necessary. When I hear talk about how we may be turning a corner, how we can maybe get back to normal by summer, I’ll admit: it feels nice! But it’s gonna lead to a SUPER mega downer if summer comes and the world’s still upside down
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Replying to @josecastillo
“The only viable endgame is to play whack-a-mole with the coronavirus, suppressing it until a vaccine can be produced. With luck, that will take 18 to 24 months.”
“People haven’t understood that this isn’t about the next couple of weeks… This is about the next two years.”(original)
This piece articulates something that’s been difficult for me to confront: normal isn’t coming back. Not for a while. Like, you can’t meet friends at a crowded bar or play soccer in the park until a vaccine exists, and that simply is not happening in 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-summer-coronavirus-reopening-back-normal/609940/
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Replying to @ehi
personally I’m going to keep using Touch ID on my phone, and make a series of juggalo-makeup-style-bandanas for when I actually do have to leave the house https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/07/juggalo-makeup-facial-recognition/
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Replying to @josecastillo
update: second time’s (kinda) the charm. UF2 bootloader works; gadget shows up as a USB drive. Neopixel doesn’t work for some reason (but does light up white when flashing the bootloader, since it shares the SWCLK line). Can’t yet upload a sketch, so, hmm. To be continued mañana.
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in other news, sensor cap boards are in! assembled one last night (right) and it hilariously did not work, so tonight I’m taking it slow (left) and triple checking as I place each block of functionality. came up with this in self-quarantine four weeks ago; finally becoming real.
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it goes without saying that this is insane and unprecedented in our nation’s history. at the same time, if we could get reliable tests rolled out nationwide by letting the president put his stupid shitty name on them, I almost wouldn’t care at this point. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/coming-to-your-1200-relief-check-donald-j-trumps-name/2020/04/14/071016c2-7e82-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.html
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Replying to @josecastillo
don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to be healthy and safe, to be here with family, to be able to support them and be supported. still, ever since the world turned upside down, it’s been so much harder to do the things. never mind being certain of which things are even worth doing.
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Replying to @josecastillo
I don’t really know what best to do with my time, except for everyone’s full time job of not getting sick. also in sheltering-in-place with my folks, there’s the added worry of making sure they stay healthy. And the only timeline for a return to normal is “longer than you think.”
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as a side note, the photo of the log with chunky sensor on a tail looks like a lot of what I’m working on these days: half-right, half-wrong, only half-working as I’d hoped. It’s been over a month since I hightailed it from NYC. my life and workshop are in two states of disarray.
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Last week @tomfleet wrote about (and @MicrochipMakes retweeted) the Hiking Log, a project dear to my heart. The final version added a screen, but I never finished the code for it. Finally wrote that code today, though sadly no one is hiking anywhere now :( https://gist.github.com/joeycastillo/2ec46bc5f2bc0fb46d312439439c32b6
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Replying to @cogliano and @MicrochipMakes
Awesome!
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this really is like the moment in SimCity 2000 where you get bored of building libraries and instead unleash all the disasters at once https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/world/europe/chernobyl-wildfire.html
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I don’t watch Bill Maher, but it was on last night and I did hear this mediocre take. FWIW the Spanish Flu didn’t start in Spain; the world just perceived it as having hit Spain harder. So let’s stick to COVID-19, lest this become the American coronavirus.
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RT @maddow: Watch this. Just watch. https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1248287038580891649
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