prashnts

Few years ago I did an educational project to extract waveforms from logic capture - it was doable [1]. But this approach may have limits on newer faster FPGA based controllers.

[1] https://github.com/prashnts/betty-epd/blob/master/notebooks/...

packet-loss

For one it can adequately show if your WiFi is performing well...

In a home network setting I've got a UDP display sink (64x64px, RGB) with a custom protocol. It works fine-- no hard number as the performance varies based on other factors, including congestion. I've been able to push it to >90fps, but around 42fps there is virtually no flicker.

For context in my protocol I use all 512bytes, with 3 first being the "line number and such" data and the rest containing ~128 pixels.

I would give the LLM statistical tools that work to find general anomalies, distributions etc. from the spreadsheet. Then it's about an LLM interpreting (or not) those results in natural language.

Of course this is a can of worms for a product because we can still not guarantee accuracy.

Reduce Transparency in Accessibility settings removes the glass effect, but I believe has been updated to be closer to the translucent effects in current iOS.

Another option is water slide decal. It can give a really seamless look, but is time consuming and expensive.

Really cool!

A quick enhancement you can add, which will help mobile users, is adding appropriate touch specifiers to the element. Currently I am unable to drag the pen to draw -- the whole page moves. By fixing that, I should also be able to use my Apple Pencil.

Specifically, this page describes it better: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/touch-actio...

Better to draw boxes, print, then scan. I reckon it will somehow be possible to see through the sharpie -- for example change in shine.

As a hobbyist I use it to drive HUB75 LED matrix. I use the W version so it receives UDP packets of each line to draw a full frame. This equates to about ~5mbps at my desired framerate, and it handles the task like a champ!

I can't stress how fast it is when using on resource constrained envs like a Pi Zero.

I intend to use system python there but previously poetry will simply crash the whole Pi while installing itself.

What really helped me was doing some sessions with an Orthoptist to reeducate my eyes. I used to see double when stressed sometimes and could never imagine to converge/cross my eyes and retain focus. With the reeducation I was able to see the Impossible one in focus after a couple tries.

I tried to make a bidirectional channel from a webpage to a python script over MIDI. I'd just found that with sysex you can pack any arbitrary data that you want, that python can create virtual MIDI devices, and that Chrome can then connect to such devices.

I'm sure I'd more code than what's in my 8yo repo, but the premise is simply https://github.com/prashnts/midipacks/blob/master/midipacks/...

I find these a visual noise. What can be achieved with a subheading "Bug fixes", "Features" etc. is repeated in all lines.

At one point my laptop had some thermochromic indicators to indicate when the laptop became warm. I salvaged it from dead duracell batteries (ones which have a battery level indicator). I noticed that it's too slow to react though.

Sorry but at home I would like to connect to my WiFi, with my preferences and access to my local network. The last time I was forced to use a common access point was in my dorm at the university, and even then I bought a small travel router to rebroadcast the AP.

But I do understand what you mean. I guess one thing to do is to set the router to not broadcast at full power, and use 5GHz to limit the range.

A good read, thanks. I like the description of take/give sides and it's well portrayed. I wondered if there's any take home message here for salvaging a give-take conversation.

I'd crudely deduct that being takers/givers in a conversation may be a function of cultural, linguistic, social, and intellectual dimensions coupled with personal, emotional, and ambient states a person is in.

As such there's really very little just one party can do to have a better conversation flowing on their own. So apart from affordance, I think participation seems to also be a key factor and can be seen as "push or pull or slide" aspect of that doorknob.

I see gridlines on my iPhone, but only if I zoom in a lot. I'm guessing this is a case of "designed and exported on Retina display, for Retina display". Because yeah, in true 1-bit image there won't be a grey gridline.

M5Stack sells some really good quality modules and I think kits as well. These work fine with Arduino, and also with their own UiFlow software.

The advantage I think with their products is that you only need to connect wires in general -- soldering and stuff is optional. They have good UI on hardware, and even include touchscreens, buttons and so on.

I think it will meet your "mostly fun" for sure!

Technically it's not Arduino in a sense that they mostly use ESP chips (not AVR), which is supported by Arduino IDE.

The homepage has good pictures if you want to get an idea: https://m5stack.com/

(Not shilling :) Just really like their products!)

Correct, it's not possible in default PDF view in Chrome -- contentscript is not injected. However as long as you have full access to pages, you could intercept a PDF link, render it with, say, PdfJS, and start from there. Maybe!

Cheapest version is 31$. Without internal pullups. Which means it's basically gonna bit-bang if you want to interface with SPI, I2C etc. I'd consider a raspberry pi even if it costs more because it has a _lot_ of I/O capabilities and starts at 5$.

For a comparable option, consider one of the Pi-Picos, Arduinos with VUSB, or a USB-Serial board with extra GPIOS.

Long time reader of your blog, thanks for doing what you do!

So I've been into "connector technologies" (if that's a thing) for a while -- more specifically I really admire the simplicity of edge connectors that nowadays are basically free (except the higher amount of metal than traces, (gold?) plating etc.). Anything you'd like to add about these sort of connectors from this era? Were they reliable in mating-cycle sense? Could you just casually insert them or was there a specific process? Was there a standard?

As you can see I don't have a precise question, I'm looking more towards the considerations that an engineer at that time would have to take into account. Unfortunately it's not very easy to google this these days.

I'd like to do this in theory, but practically I find it not worth it. Consider a case where your partner or your kid lose their phone, are stranded, and borrow a phone from someone. They won't reach you.

I won't blame them -- It seems to be the hard-to-customize youtube embed that's breaking it.

This allowed other apps like MonitorControl [1] and DisplayBuddy [2] to port some Lunar features (like DDC on M1) to their own code. So I'd say it's still useful enough.

When I was trying to do some iOS dev, I basically noticed that having open source or even open core projects accessible for free helped a lot. It ranged from some hard-to-google things, like "how should I structure this part of the code", to fulfilling the utter lack of good documentation.

So, thank you for releasing this!

I'm not sure if it still holds, but Blink app (for ssh, €21) could be built yourself, but I still paid for it because it seemed easiest. So there is some possibility to keep source open while offering a paid app. Not everyone is going to bother to build it.

The banks (BnP, CdE) I use ask you to confirm in their apps, and have never seen this before! Not to say this isn't legit -- I can completely imagine this happening.

That said, I absolutely also hate having only a choice of a 6 digit pin on a UI that's intentionally designed to disallow any password manager usage. Plus they shuffle the inputs, make you change pin every n-usage/n-days. I really don't get the rationale other than it maybe avoids screen scraping, or keylogging?

Unfortunately the link is unreadable on mobile due to the sidebar taking all the space.

That's awesome, the end result seems enjoyable even for us adults! :)

Just curious if you could share how old is your daughter.

I have tried teaching coding (several approaches, but eventually on Scratch) my 9yo nephew, but ran into many issues. For example, trying to debug a counter, I thought it'd be fun if I asked "hey, what's 7 - 2", and he went "it's 5, duh" and then I went "and what's 2 - 7", ... and he went "that's not possible!"

Turns out his math teacher hasn't yet introduced negative numbers! I had to go back to number line...

Anyway, what you've done is really cool! I'm sure once he's old enough it might prove to be very useful.

Yeah same with a couple of apps I use, WLED, and HomeAssistant both work on HTTP.

Thank you! I’ll try that. Building an airgradient sensor is next in my list of projects!

I have a question since the author is around:

My sensor was working fine for a few months. It’s located near the area I smoke, so whenever I’m smoking it changes to red quickly. And after a few minutes (10 or so) it’d go back to green.

But for past few weeks it’s stuck at red. I disassembled it and cleaned the intake hole (which is covered with a fabric) and it worked after. However it went back to displaying red again all the time.

So my question is whether this sensor needs frequent cleaning? If so what are the alternatives?