Tweets
Replying to @InstantArcade
🥲
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with god as my witness, i’ll never run out of 0.1" pin header again.
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Replying to @captainwonkish
yea ever since the watch, I am careful to power gate *everything* :)
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Replying to @captainwonkish
if I ever get my SAM L22 CircuitPython port done, it should be relatively simple to make the L21 work. No reason it shouldn’t work, it’s a Cortex M0+ just like the D21 and most of the peripherals are identical.
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Replying to @captainwonkish
I did watch the video on that ABLIC chip, it looks cool! But the SAM L21 in deep sleep can give it a run for its money: with the RTC running, its BACKUP mode consumes under 0.7 µA @ 25° C. Not quite the 0.2 µA of the ABLIC, but I think quite respectable for a one-chip solution.
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Replying to @Chuck1eJ
the plan is max 1.5A at 5V
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Replying to @captainwonkish
ah yeah, one involves outdoor art where we don’t have mains power; low power and solar harvesting by day, but driving LED stuff at twilight and night. Another does involve wireless comms, but added on via a FeatherWing — one of the reasons I do love to build for this form factor.
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Replying to @captainwonkish
ah yeah for sure; I think my instinct tho is that if I’m designing it in the feather form factor, I want it to adhere to the spec religiously. I’d hate to have one feather in my parts bin that requires special oddball treatment. IDK, definitely worth exploring more!
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Replying to @MakeAugusta
(I really want to move some of these before I take off for a week)
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Replying to @MakeAugusta
product link! https://www.tindie.com/products/joeycastillo/lcd-featherwing/ https://www.tindie.com/products/joeycastillo/lcd-featherwing/
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Replying to @captainwonkish
That’s a great idea, but alas I don’t know enough about NiMH charging to make moves quickly on this. Also: Adafruit’s Feather spec is rather specific that if it is a Feather, it should use LiPo, so a NiMH-based device might end up being a different gadget. https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather/feather-specification
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Replying to @MarkKomus
A weather station is exactly one of the things I have in mind! What happened to yours, I take it that crash to the ground might have been literal? I’m considering mounting mine someplace fairly remote; would love to hear your experience with your weather station!
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Replying to @ehippy
ah sorry you missed it! On the plus side: it’s already on the way :)
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solar testing. It’s kind of funny to me that my light pin is technically just outputting a square wave with a 54% duty cycle, albeit one with a frequency of 1/86400 Hz. (the graph so far is battery drain without the panel attached; now it’s time to see how long it lasts with)
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Replying to @the_perigoso
No jest but jostles truth.
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Paying workers their contractually specificed wage is “quiet layoffs”. Your workers are doing you a favor spending their time working for your business, and you have the audacity to pay only what was promised? If you truly believed in the mission surely you’d go above and beyond. https://twitter.com/kfury/status/1562151973134094336
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Replying to @josecastillo
Button / Buzzer wing. Note that this is a bare PCB, but all the parts you need are inexpensive and readily available from Adafruit. The price: $4.95, same as a FeatherWing Proto. https://www.tindie.com/products/joeycastillo/button-buzzer-featherwing-bare-pcb/
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Replying to @josecastillo
LCD FeatherWing. Also, I know I bumped up the price, but for today you can get it for $4 off with promo code D8A340D5. That brings it to just $15.95! https://www.tindie.com/products/joeycastillo/lcd-featherwing/
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ADVISORY: If you want either the LCD FeatherWing or the Button / Buzzer FeatherWing (2nd and 3rd wings in this photo), order them today; tomorrow I’m putting the store in vacation mode while I pick up some stuff left at the workshop in BK, and drive it home. Product links follow:
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Replying to @twilliability
I’m definitely gonna build one at some point to test, then open source the design. As to whether I’ll make them, it’s tough; especially in parts shortage era, making even 100 of something is a much bigger commitment than making a few for my use. Like the watch is taking all year!
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Replying to @josecastillo
like this, this is probably a good thing to add. by default there’s just a 10K resistor tied to the bq24074 temperature sensor pin (net name: THISISFINE). And it is, indoors! but if I leave this in the desert, I definitely want to make sure it can monitor the battery temperature.
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Replying to @josecastillo
anyway, I need to stare at this for a few days before I order it, especially because it involves moving around decent amounts of power (these are the chunkiest traces I have ever routed). but I’ll probably end up making one of these for a solar-oriented installation this fall.
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Replying to @josecastillo
(the obvious thing would’ve been to put TX and RX on adjacent pins; instead, TX is SERCOM5.0 on pin 47 and RX is SERCOM5.3 on pin 30. This lets us use the low power features of pin 47, including outputting a level and generating a slow waveform — 0.5–64 Hz — even in backup mode!)
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Replying to @josecastillo
I’m also very proud of the pin mux on this one. All opamp pins exposed on pins A0-A5. DACs on A0/A1. Five external wake pins and eight touch channels. Access to all but one TC and TCC output; PWM on every pin except A0. And I managed to break out SUPC/OUT[1], which is really fun.
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Replying to @josecastillo
Benefits of a SAM L21 over a D21: optimized for low power. Familiar, with many of the same peripherals (plus 3 opamps!). Also: there’s an option for adding a coin cell as a backup battery, to keep the RTC ticking if the main battery dies. Naturally it’s on the Feather “free pin”.
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Replying to @josecastillo
the gist of the design: what if Adafruit’s bq24074 universal solar charger, but on a Feather board designed for extremely low power consumption. I’m basically imagining it for a gadget I can set out in the field and leave there for a few months to years. https://www.adafruit.com/product/4755
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Aw man. I’d resolved on not designing any new gadgets this year. But I have a couple of solar-oriented things on the horizon, and after SAM L21 low power tests proved just too promising, I couldn’t help myself. (I also have eight of the chips left over from The Before Times)
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while helping mom with dinner tonight I noticed @pencerw’s Public Radio and @rohansingh’s @HelloTidbyt sitting side by side on the kitchen counter. Added my Sensor Watch to the mix and snapped a family photo: a trio of products, nurtured to life at the workshop of @the_prepared.
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😶
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RT @L0ST_VEGAS: Long-term nuclear waste storage warnings but on the backs of booty shorts
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Replying to @josecastillo
New battery test, day 180: 3.08 volts. Up 10 millivolts from last check, but that’s probably temperature related; I slept with it on, so it’s been at 88° F for like 30 hours. (Original battery test, not pictured, is at day 285 and 2.86 volts: down 20 mV in the last 12 days)
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Replying to @josecastillo
“Mexicans are to forgetting what the Jews are to remembering. We have made selective forgetting a sacramental obligation. Leave it all in the past, all that you were, and all that you could not be. There is pain enough in the present to go around.” https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/santos-places.html
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Replying to @josecastillo
this one I actually read this a few years back, and I adored it. It was written by a cousin of mine, and in a moment of magical realism my grandfather (who passed away when I was very young) makes a short appearance. Anyway. It’s a wonderful book. https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780140292022
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Replying to @josecastillo
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781538749715
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Replying to @josecastillo
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780735217737
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Replying to @josecastillo
it’s nice being home and making more time to read; we’ve always been a family of readers. Anyway, links: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250237750
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Family reading list:
Me: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Mom: The Line Becomes a River — Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú
Dad: Origin — A Genetic History of the Americas by Jennifer Raff
Sis: Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation by John Phillip Santos(original)
Replying to @highenergybeams
Not amplified, but you can drive it differentially from two MCU pins for extra volume. It can be decent loud!
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Replying to @josecastillo
Serving suggestion:
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Well that was quick! It’s true: I have a new product on Tindie. It’s a dead simple board with spots for three buttons and a piezo buzzer. Pairs well with the LCD FeatherWing and CircuitPython deep sleep for low power projects. It’s also just $4.95 — cheap! https://www.tindie.com/products/joeycastillo/button-buzzer-featherwing-bare-pcb/ https://twitter.com/tindie/status/1560403330496491520
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Replying to @embedsys
yep, that attribution works and describes the photo!
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perhaps the most useful object I ever 3D printed was a thing I made for mom during lockdown era. She’d bought a solar powered light from the hardware store that only came with a ground stake. I printed this tiny peg in PETG, and more than two years later, it still lights our way.
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Replying to @josecastillo
(I am suddenly reminded of this moment) https://mobile.twitter.com/josecastillo/status/1444407287980957696
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Out with my grandma today getting her glasses fixed at a Walmart, and happened upon the watch aisle. The biggest reason I chose the F-91W as the donor watch for Sensor Watch? It’s so ubiquitous that you can find it practically anywhere (even if you have to scour the bottom shelf)
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Replying to @fast_code_r_us
I know you had been doing a little bit of work with B/W/R panels… despite the name of the library, are you considering doing anything with two-bit grayscale for these?
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Replying to @AtomSoft and @MakeAugusta
Thanks! I mean it works well enough, and we’re going to do the remainder of this run as-is since… but if I ever do a rev 2, that’s one of two changes at the top of my list.
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Replying to @AtomSoft and @MakeAugusta
It’s a little tighter than you’d expect just because of the plastic housing that the board fits into, but you are totally right: I could have shifted the bottom cap down and the top one further to the right. Valuable lesson learned; I’m much more careful with courtyards nowadays.
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Replying to @embedsys
This is the full res I’ve got it at, and a crop of the relevant area at 3000x2000 and 960x720; let’s see if Twitter’s image resizing lets any of that through.
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Replying to @embedsys
Absolutely, feel free to use whatever you like from the thread!
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Replying to @josecastillo
Anyway. </thread><😴>
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