Tweets
Replying to @siddacious
I have some 26 gauge silicone wire here which is fun to work with (so flexy!), but felt it was a bit too thick to squeeze into this build — kind of spaghetti-thick, not quite angel hair sized :)
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Finally! Finished the Hiking Log guide; one down, seven to go. Clocked in at ~7,000 words, with 33 photos, five diagrams and a GIF; topics include digital logic, reading a datasheet, Arduino programming, 3D printing and (optionally) painting. http://oddlyspecific.org/2020/02/20/road-to-book-1-the-hiking-log/
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Replying to @ryneches, @DrAndrewThaler and @thedailytexan
I think it’s awesome that y’all are leveraging the Feather platform! The V1 Hiking Log was an Adalogger 32u4; this new guide targets an M0 Express board. I love this amazing democratization of tools for everything from backpack gadgets to underwater scientific instrumentation :)
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Replying to @M_uh_lee
That’s our hymn!
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Ugh. I resolved not to watch this debate. To be clear: I’ll fight for the Democratic nominee no matter who. But I have specific, personal, living-in-NY-in-2011-related stop-and-frisk issues with @MikeBloomberg. Plz don’t make me knock on doors for him. I will. But I’d rather not.
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Replying to @ryneches and @DrAndrewThaler
Wow, this tweet brings me back! As a journalist for @thedailytexan way back when, I covered the last voyage of the R/V Longhorn; having memories of the crew conducting CTD measurements of hypoxic zones in the Gulf of Mexico. So cool to see y’all developing an open source design!
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Replying to @genuinebyte
hah yep, a data logger in the shape of a log. It’s the gadget that inspired the name “Oddly Specific Objects” :)
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Hiking Log: assembly and screen test. Some fit and finish issues, to be sure, but all things considered I think it’s looking pretty good! Good enough that I can finish writing, get this out and start on guide #2.
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Adding a screen (and notes on painting the enclosure) before I publish the Hiking Log guide, first in the ‘road to the book’ series. Hand-painted craft electronics for the outdoor enthusiast; that’s what I do now.
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Replying to @tannewt, @hassankanj, @LambaLabs, @adafruit, @AlaaSal91787251 and @this_marwan
For Arabic in particular, I’d suggest using the Arabic Presentation Forms A and B blocks of Unicode. Arabic letters connect to each other in specific ways, and Unicode encoded ligatures for all the possibilities. I have some notes on this here (line 243): https://github.com/joeycastillo/babel/blob/master/babelconvert/convert.py#L243
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Replying to @tannewt, @hassankanj, @LambaLabs, @adafruit, @AlaaSal91787251 and @this_marwan
There’s also something fun called “bidirectional mirroring” where something like, say, an open parentheses has to be replaced with its mirror image when being laid out right-to-left )otherwise you get something that looks like this(
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Replying to @tannewt, @hassankanj, @LambaLabs, @adafruit, @AlaaSal91787251 and @this_marwan
Unicode bidirectional algorithm is interesting! Basically, characters in languages like Arabic force a direction change to be laid out right-to-left, whereas left-to-right languages like English force a change to LTR layout. And some characters, like spaces, can go either way.
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Replying to @tannewt, @hassankanj, @LambaLabs, @adafruit, @AlaaSal91787251 and @this_marwan
I’ve actually been curious, what’s the state of CircuitPython support for RTL languages rn? I was working on this for the Babel library and I wasn’t sure how fontio intended to handle it; ended up rolling my own bidirectional glyph and label classes, would be happy to share notes
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Replying to @bigjoshlevine
Yes! Thank you! This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for
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out of anger at captcha’s I made a thing about the dystopian hellscape we’re headed toward. AI’s already running our world, why not enlist the internet in helping it burn?
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Replying to @mrkmully
ooh I must have missed this one, thanks for the rec!
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god i hate what the web has become
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Replying to @josecastillo
“People don’t only learn to cook so they can become chefs. Some do! But far more people learn to cook so they can eat better, or more affordably, or in a specific way… The list of reasons to ‘learn to cook’ overflows, and only a handful have anything to do with the marketplace.”
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Great blog post: “The exhortation ‘learn to code!’ has its foundations in market value. ‘Learn to code’ is suggested as… economic leverage, a squirt of power. ‘Learn to code’ goes on your resume. But let’s substitute a different phrase: ‘learn to cook.’” https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
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Hiking Log guide, WIP. Trying to get from “voltage is like a water tower” to “why is a pull-up resistor,” with stops at “let’s read a datasheet,” “how GPS works” and “infill is the squiggly bits.” Mostly hoping my bad sketches aren’t also wildly misleading https://github.com/joeycastillo/oddlyspecific.org/blob/master/_posts/2020-02-20-oso-1-the-hiking-log.md
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For this guide, I’ve been writing in Notes and taking photos of my progress with the macOS “Continuity Camera” feature. Little did I know, some long-suffering AI has been using OCR to guess filenames the whole time. My fave: this photo of an empty breadboard = FROSANRNGRARAR.JPG
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Coming up on two years now. Does anyone still use @Facebook? At this point I’d be embarrassed if someone so much as saw it in my browser cache. https://boingboing.net/2020/02/10/study-facebook-quitters-repor.html
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Replying to @Jon_Raymond_ and @MicrochipMakes
omg that’s huge! Or rather, that’s really tiny, and big news! Definitely trying that out asap :)
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Replying to @Dillon1337
That’s rad! I keep wanting to build an updated version of the log with a screen; as it stands now it just logs the data to a file, so I can’t check on it until I get back to civilization.
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Replying to @Lifewine1
I’ll definitely keep posting updates on twitter as I go, and there’s also a mailing list here: https://joeycastillo.us18.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=d31d40071448f3aa8acc39836&id=d9134648c8
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Replying to @Dillon1337
The Hiking Log will be the first guide! It’s a GPS-enabled temperature and humidity sensor, a data logger to log information about my hikes (that’s also shaped like a log). Mostly I leave it outside my tent to record the overnight lows.
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Replying to @ChengduLittleA
Truth, but I still want the board to look pretty! I’ve also played with clear acrylic as an enclosure so you can read the back silkscreen; some friends have even suggested glass. idk, for now it’s just a small run for DIY makers, thought it would be fun to consider some options.
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Replying to @tomfleet
“branding” sounds so serious, for a series of projects whose logo is a bear with lazer eyes and a shark for an arm :)
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Replying to @Jon_Raymond_ and @MicrochipMakes
Yep definitely! I was actually considering using the D10/D11 to make a touch matrix type thing, PTC -> UART (using the USB pins as two more Y channels); never got around to finishing it though, classic case of too many projects and not enough time 😬
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Replying to @neo_6060
not available from the PCB manufacturer I’d be using. Also I have this gut association between the purple and @oshpark; it would feel weird ordering a purple board from anyone else.
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Considering getting a slightly larger run of e-book wing PCB’s made, perhaps to put on Tindie. Torn on color choice. I’ve seen it in purple for so long, it’s tough to imagine it any other way.
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Replying to @Jon_Raymond_ and @MicrochipMakes
I haven’t, but I think the D10 is mostly identical, minus the native USB functionality. That bit is my reason for sticking to the D11 for projects, it makes programming it so much easier (at the cost of a 4kB bootloader).
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Replying to @Jon_Raymond_ and @MicrochipMakes
Using the MattAirTech core! I keep meaning to create my own custom board definitions, but for the moment I’m just using the generic D11 definitions in their core, which have worked out great.
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I’ve always had this vague existential dread that America wouldn’t last forever. Still, now, watching it fall apart, I’m mostly annoyed at what a shit ending we got. I was expecting the fall of Rome; instead we got “Watergate, but everyone who could have saved us was a coward.” https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1227408775855976449
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Been revisiting old projects of late; consolidating objects built and lessons learned into a series of guides, a road map to building the book. A countdown clock. The BPM bike light. DIY Feathers. And of course today’s work: The Hiking Log. Lots of writing and (re)making ahead :)
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Replying to @siddacious
The code size thing actually surprised me, but the bootloader is 4kB, and the SAMD core is ~7kB, so it ends up being more constrained than I would have anticipated. Still I like the SAMD11 for this sort of project, plus I find constraints like this fun to work with :)
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Replying to @siddacious
Presentable enough! And pretty short. The refactor was mostly for code size; I’d been using a library for tap tempo detection, but with only ~5kB for user code, I was ~5kB overweight. Floating point math, it turns out. Not small! https://gist.github.com/joeycastillo/e02044f3ef6be48ca367c124542bb596
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finally got around to refactoring my BPM bike light code to work on the simple SAMD11 feather. this may seem like a strange thing to be focusing on right now. It’ll make sense soon.
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Replying to @issackelly
Wow, that’s no good, it looks like they’re sold out at their website and on aliexpress. Waveshare sells them as well, a little more expensive but in stock. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t get the tri-color ones; their refresh is too slow for the book. https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/epaper-2/4.2inch-e-paper.htm
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Replying to @MichaelSternNYC and @adafruit
No speed data yet, not really my focus for this one, but if you added an I2C GPS you could probably get speed in knots directly from it. I’d be worried about memory footprint though; with as many notifications as I’m pulling over, I find myself bumping against limits right now.
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Replying to @schne1der_ and @adafruit
Believe it or not, it’s already built into your phone, the Apple Notificaton Center Service! I posted my code a tweet or two ago, and there’s a good learn guide here; basically anything that provides a notification, you can get forwarded: https://learn.adafruit.com/ancs-gizmo?view=all /cc @proquokid
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Replying to @siddacious
If it ever looks like I’m working fast, it’s only because y’all give us all a head start with things like CircuitPython, with well-documented libraries, awesome boards and standards that are thoughtfully designed for makers. Standing on the shoulders of giants, I am.
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Code and images for the CLUE bike computer! The compass heading is still a little off; need to maybe bring the accelerometer and gyro into the mix, learn some more about how it all works :) https://gist.github.com/joeycastillo/f8a899af88933f034b893c02de6fdd18
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Replying to @siddacious and @adafruit
hah!
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The @adafruit CLUE is the bike-mountable commuter computer I’ve always dreamed of. #CircuitPython powered connection to an iPhone for weather reports, reminders and turn-by-turn directions, plus tons of environment sensing (including ambient noise!) on-board. Such a cool product!
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Replying to @arturo182 and @adafruit
From the shadow on the quarter, I’d guess it was lit with a softbox from pretty much exactly 90 degrees. The exactly vertical traces get exactly the same amount of light across them, and the matte soldermask makes them invisible. Just a guess.
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Replying to @timonsku and @tinkercad
I really want to! In fact I set out yesterday trying to learn it by building this thing; got a couple of extrudes in before I decided to just knock it out in Tinkercad and move on with my day. But I know there’s some really powerful stuff in Fusion, gotta get there :)
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one of these days I will learn Fusion 360. until that day comes, I’m so grateful for @tinkercad.
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i’ll just leave this here… https://twitter.com/josecastillo/status/727314814528270337
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Oh look: the @adafruit CLUE is back in stock! Grab one while you can; this board has been selling like hotcakes. https://www.adafruit.com/product/4500
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