Notices by Ding Dang Trevor Flowers (trevorflowers@machines.social)

TIL about Embassy, a Rust environment for embedded work on small-ish chips like the RP2040 and ESP32s. I have a few ideas for small devices for camper vans so maybe if I can make time this Summer I'll give it a try. My initial impression from reading the docs is that it's early days but could be handy.
https://embassy.dev/

Hell, yes. We need more of *this*.
https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/16/2025-01-16-No-Billionares-at-FOSDEM-please.html

I understand all of the tradeoffs that make diesel, petro-gasses, and wood attractive for heating and cooking in vans.
I understand that making them safe is well understood.
I'm not there, yet. Maybe a few cold nights shivering and eating trail mix because my batteries are borked will do the trick. 😹
#vanLife

Ok, I've started packing up tools and materials I won't need until I have some sort of shop space on the new land. The plan is to have that in place by early Summer but I expect 2025 to be chaotic for supply chains and prices so 🤷♂️. Maybe it'll all live in a storage unit or shipping container while I hunker down on raw land.
#coldToast

This is a dry fit of a smol DECtape TU56 into Eurorack rails. Ignore the finish (that's a paper print instead of vinyl, draft quality 3D prints, etc) as this is a size test more than anything. Imagine a couple of these racks on your desk, filled with SMBs, SSDs, and a variety of hardware both fun (tiny spinning tape drives!) and useful (floppy drives that read SD cards!). That's the Desktop Computer Lab concept.
Next unit on my list is a PDP-11 controls panel.
#desktopComputerLab

@will @technomancy A dang nice keyboard (via Keybordio).

I'm a believer in modding tools to make them fit for purpose and that has the nice side effect of making them feel more "mine" instead of controlled by the manufacturers.
Even taking a minute to remove unnecessary stickers and then gaffer tape over logos has a large positive effect on my feeling for a device.
A few years ago I started covering logos for filming and realized it quiets my mind to remove them from my view. Now I cover logos on almost everything, including my TV remotes!
#shopLife

After a ~year of development, the 1:3 scale working VT100 terminal is ready to go!
🎉
https://store.transmutable.com/l/small-vt-100
🎉
It has a tiny working USB keyboard with ~80 keys. It has a cute little 3.5" display panel. It may be the cutest thing I've ever created but you tell me!
🤷
To celebrate the completion of what turned out to be a bear of a project, for one week there's a $75 discount code for friends of smol retros: DINGDANGFRIENDS
🛁
Ok, time for me to take a bath and weep for exhausted joy.

Hey, you. Yes, you.

Remember this:

👉 You are deserving of love. 👈

Every day, just for being alive. Down days. Up days. In the gutter days. On the moon days.

Every ding dang day.

You are deserving of love.

💛

If you're into #retrocomputing and someone gives you a hard time, just remind them that a fair portion of the world's infrastructure is old af.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/german-navy-aims-to-replace-aging-8-inch-floppy-drives-with-an-emulated-solution-for-its-anti-submarine-frigates

Hey, #retrocomputing folks. Is there a common name for this category of wedge-shaped toggle switch, as found on the PDP-11/70 and other machines of that era?

This is your friendly reminder that I make and sell delightful miniature retrocomputers like TRS-80s, Osborne Ones, and the occasional big friends like Connection Machines and Crays.
I'm a retired nerd who's living the dream. Well, if your dream is working in your garage on tiny art machines. 😺 ⚙️
#retrocomputing #miniatures #trs80 #cray #shamelessSelfPromotion
https://store.transmutable.com/

It's funny when people using the most common units believe that people in the US don't understand their units.

I can assure you that ~every nerd in the US converts between units on the regular. If we care about your measurements then we will convert them.

The people complaining about your units are either ignorant, performing outrage, or both. Feel free to ignore them.

This is a thoughtful piece about the balancing act of making physical things. How long should they work? What do recycling, repair, and durability bring to the equation? Whether you're making one-offs or runs of 110k, I think this is worth your time.
#manufacturing #machining
https://www.core77.com/posts/132088/Fantastic-Industrial-Design-Student-Work-How-Long-Should-Objects-Last

Friends, if Microsoft tries to squeeze you to buy a new computer to run version 11 when every new version of Windows gets worse and adds ads then please consider that more than 100 million people use Linux on their desktop computer, including people who make all sorts of projects with videos, illustrations, digital photographs, laser cuttings, animations, paper media, CAD, CAM, 3D printed stuff, circuit boards, etc.
Will it be exactly the same as Windows? No.
Can it be awesome? Yes.

When a rich person talks about all of the rich welders, send them this link. It's behind a paywall so the image (and description) shows a key paragraph.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/09/welding-doesnt-pay-as-well-as-republicans-think/597733/

TIL that Send Cut Send now waterjet cut phenolic (AKA micarta) which I suspect will feel nice as the top and bottom plates of my camera. Instead of that cold steel feel it'll be pressed linen.

Playing around with a new body shape for my ding dang cam. I plan to assemble prototype 02 using the previous body design but it's interesting to think about taking advantage of the blobject creation abilities of 3D printers.
#mdc

One could build a pretty cool "deck of cards" sized networked camera with these parts:
sensor: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5838
display: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5872
MCU: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5323
battery: https://www.adafruit.com/product/353
There would be a little soldering to connect the camera module to the MCU but AFAICT all of the hardware (camera, radios, display, touch...) is nicely supported by CircuitPython on the Espressif SoC and the board has power management, including charging via USB-C.

Maybe with one of the new wave of little boards that pair a SoC with a ML accelerator. They're mostly targeted at IoT but a camera can be a T on the I, right?
https://www.hackster.io/news/ov-tech-s-pi-mx8-offers-a-raspberry-pi-compute-module-4-alternative-with-on-board-ai-acceleration-4a377e1fdb7b