-- Leo's gemini proxy
-- Connecting to gemini.tuxmachines.org:1965...
-- Connected
-- Sending request
-- Meta line: 20 text/gemini;lang=en-GB
Tux Machines
Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 23, 2024
> Technology has promised many solutions here, with all kinds of energy-saving products on the market claiming to cut energy bills in half while saving the planet. But how many of these gadgets actually work? And could it be better to make your own?
> In this article, we’ll look at some of the most common energy-saving devices and some examples of homemade alternatives from Arduino users.
> Arcade machines are a dying breed and that’s a shame, because their purpose-built approach to gaming is so wholesome. There is something intrinsically satisfying about a device that does one thing and does it well. If you want to bring that beauty into your own home, Migi has a great Instructables tutorial that will walk you through building your own arcade cabinet with custom Arduino-based controls.
> Also, Zilog’s Z80 processors hit End-of-Life, but are still available for a final purchase. On The Great Search this week: Z80 Processors
> Looking at the circuit board, I realised it would be trivial to ‘press’ the up and down buttons from an external microcontroller. All I’d need to do is use a transistor to bridge the contacts of the switch. I really wanted something a bit smarter than that though. I wanted whatever I built to be able to know the height of the desk. After studying the board for a bit and googling the random part numbers on the chips I could see on the board, I identified the AIP650 as the chip responsible for driving the LCD. Fortunately, a data sheet was available for this part, but unfortunately it was in Chinese, a language I do not speak.
> According to the data sheet, translated with DeepL, it receives data in an i2c ‘like’ format, and then drives a 3 segment LCD just like the one on this board based on what data it received. I was unable to determine from the data sheet what the data being sent to the controller actually “meant”, but wasn’t worried about that for the moment. I just wanted to capture the data.
> The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is connected to a Camera Module V3, which is positioned in the front center of the glasses frame. This makes it possible to capture images and video of whatever is directly in front of the wearer. As long as you're facing the person who's signing, the Pi will be able to read the gestures. According to Nekhil, the frames were designed using Fusion 360 and 3D printed just for this project.
> Over 25,000 young people send code to the International Space Station in this year's Astro Pi Challenge. Find out more.
> Raspberry Pi 5 distributes enough power via its Universal Serial Bus to run most modern USB disc drives correctly. This is in contrast to our last attempt, in 2020 with Raspberry Pi 4, when we couldn’t get modern dual-USB DVD and Blu-ray drives to power up correctly. Back then, in our CD-ROM console tutorial, we used a SATA DVD drive and USB adaptor kit. That approach still has its uses, but for most purposes, a modern external disc drive is now more convenient. We’ll also look at the current state of USB floppy drive support and show you how to create a single mount point for disk swapping.
> The Liberty phone has all the electronics manufactured in the United States of America at the Purism facility, the Liberty phone is one of the most advanced electronics coming out of the USA.
> I met lots of new people at the wedding, we often talk about our jobs. By this time, I’d given the elevator pitch about why I work for Purism a few times – “We should carry devices designed for our own benefit, not designed to maximize value to the shareholders of an advertising company.”
> Ronetix continues to expand its range of System on Modules (SoMs) with several new products powered by NXP and Renesas processors, addressing a broad spectrum of needs in industrial automation, intelligent energy management, and embedded systems.
-- Response ended
-- Page fetched on Sat May 4 05:24:46 2024