This article resonates with my recent experiences:
https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-cookware-got-worse-on-purpose
I put a Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave oven to reheat some food and it exploded. Now I understand why...
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Larry (Mr.Optimization)
@fast_code_r_us@floss.social
mastodon 4.7.3I work with bits, bytes and pixels. I'm also pretty good at optimizing code. Lately I've been doing a lot of proof of concepts for clients. I share my personal projects on GitHub here: https://github.com/bitbank2
I started programming as a teen in the late 70's with 8-bit micros.
Knowledge is to be shared, not hoarded.
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Joined October 22, 2022
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Now that I've got Pi-Hole running, I want to set it up for a family member, but there aren't any $20 Linux SBCs that have wired ethernet built-in. Those same boards are now $40-100. Anyone have a source of old, less powerful Linux boards for a low price?
Replying to on aus.social
@jpm@aus.social @Unixbigot@aus.social I've tested some lower power GPS receivers. The new ones from uBlox use about 1/3 of that power:
https://www.u-blox.com/en/product/max-m10-series
I'm currently reading @pluralistic@mamot.fr 's book "Chokepoint Capitalism". A fascinating look at the fine details of how our media has been gobbled up by a few companies. I don't patronize Kindle e-books, Audible audio books nor Spotify, but I am still negatively impacted by what they've done. Music discovery and acquisition for me has been very slow and deliberate in the age of streaming. I still buy music an album at a time through the least evil vendor I can find. I also use my library card 🤪
New in this week's mail - the Xteink X3. A teeny, tiny e-book reader. The hardware is smaller, yet more advanced that the X4. I added 1-bit B/W and 2-bit grayscale support for it to my bb_epaper library.
First demo of my H.263 video player running on the ESP32. No SIMD acceleration yet (soon). Since H.263 has fixed video sizes, it allows cropping of larger videos (352x288->320x240) and skips calculating the cropped macro blocks for better performance.
⚡ Caution ahead ⚡
AliExpress started their summer sale this week. Lots of deals/coupons available. This week I was going to say that my AliExpress order queue was empty, but nope; I can't say that any more 🤪
That didn't take long (FastEPD driving the Waveshare IT8951 Raspberry Pi HAT).
This product comes with minimal documentation and software. Hopefully FastEPD will unlock more uses for these parallel displays running on Linux. A bit more testing and code needed, then I'll release this version on Github.
Thanks to @lilygo@mastodon.online for financial support and equipment. My latest project - a new e-book reader program which can run on ALL ESP32 device types (color LCD, mono LCD, ePaper, parallel eink):
Early XTC viewer on LilyGo T5S3 Pro
A 'duh' moment today. I remembered that the digitalWrite() method is really slow in Arduino, so I replaced it with gpio_set_level() for ESP32 targets. Now my reflective LCD demo runs at 209 FPS full screen updates 🤪
New - I just shared an Arduino example for my FastEPD (parallel eink library). This is a low power clock which updates the time/date every minute with differential updates (no flicker). It can run for many months on a small battery (depending on the hardware you're using). It sets/corrects the time every day and a half with NTP and uses the ESP32's internal clock in between corrections.
https://github.com/bitbank2/FastEPD/tree/main/examples/Arduino/simple_clock
Tired: Compiling code on Raspberry Pi SBCs (any)
Wired: Compiling the same code more than 10x faster on a VM running on your Arm64 Mac
(UTM running a Debian image)
Is anyone else curious to see which companies start selling electronic devices with replaceable batteries BEFORE forced to do so by the EU rule in February '27? Some of my family's devices need replacements now and I would rather not wait another 8 months to buy new ones.
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@koen_hufkens@mastodon.social The control and extraction techniques that Apple, Google and others use are certainly true.
I have a different take on the 'loss' of power users angle. The difference between today vs 40 years ago is not the percentage of the population that is interested in learning the fine details of technology. The difference is that 40 years ago, only the technically minded people touched computers at all. Today billions of people have computers in their pockets and on their desks.
FYI - the latest version of Xcode (26.5) breaks storyboard functionality. You can no longer add referencing outlets or actions to objects on your storyboard. I reverted to Xcode 26.2 and it works again. 😡
In today's mail - the Waveshare 7.8" 1872x1404 parallel Eink display with RPI IT8951 HAT. My intention is to add support for this board to FastEPD to allow easier use of parallel displays on Linux. It amazes me that Waveshare has been selling these super fragile pieces of glass as a "retail product" to customers for years.
Boosted by @ferrix@mastodon.online
** New ** I added sensor support to the TRMNL firmware. On the back-end it becomes JSON variables (private to your account) that you can use in your plugins (HTML scripts). This allows you to put your live sensor data alongside any other plugin to create the 'control panel' that you like.
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@koen_hufkens@mastodon.social The same percentage of people explore this technology deeply enough to understand and control it. The rest treat it as a black box or appliance with 'magic' inside.
More Youtube/Google legal settlements inbound. With all of these class action lawsuit riches, I'll soon have enough money to buy a cup of coffee 🤪
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@alcinnz@floss.social To create that demo video took just a few lines of code using my FastEPD library. I'll release it to the public once it's a bit more fully formed.
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@kirtai@tech.lgbt It's actually quite fast for a low cost monochrome LCD. It could potentially update the pixels faster, but that would use more power. One of the goals of the ST730x controllers is to compete with Sharp MIP displays (lowest possible power).
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@kirtai@tech.lgbt Ah - that's an Arduino 'feature'. It's doing some kind of slow interrupt checking when you ask it to flip a GPIO bit.
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@circfruit@fosstodon.org P.S. - Claude must be very confused to have recommended that library 🤪
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@fdroidorg@floss.social Maybe we can get all of the F-Droid developers to walk away from the awful Java environment and put their energy into native apps running on Ubuntu Touch 🤪
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@Ronflaix@mastodon.gamedev.place @sako@mastodon.gamedev.place The controllers (UC81xx / SSD16xx) are designed for 1-bit B/W and 3/4 color was shoehorned in. The normal B/W functioning of the 2 planes is "current" and "previous" pixels so that you can do non-flashing partial updates.
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@dw@infosec.exchange I don't believe the "soon" part - if they can't be honest about the capacity, how can you trust them for anything else?
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@Ronflaix@mastodon.gamedev.place @sako@mastodon.gamedev.place It depends how you do it. EInk is a complex topic, but it can be done in a way where it looks perfect forever or where it slowly gets less contrast.
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@sako@mastodon.gamedev.place @Ronflaix@mastodon.gamedev.place The bitplane situation is how the eink controller arranges its internal framebuffer(s). External software can use image data any way it wants. Simple software just pushes the data unchanged into the display.
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@Ronflaix@mastodon.gamedev.place @sako@mastodon.gamedev.place 3 and 4 color eink dsplays have 2x 1-bit memory planes. For that 3-color it's:
Plane0 (black/white): black=0, white=1
Plane1 (red/nothing): red=1, nothing=0.
Red has priority, so if red is "on", black/white is ignored.
Also in this week's mail... The latest Pinecil soldering iron. I'm quite pleased with it. My only disappointment is that it doesn't work with my 40W Mac USB-C PD power supply. It starts up, and then crashes due to voltage sag. However, my 90W Mac power brick works fine.
Time for a poll. For those of you who bought one (or more) of those Waveshare eink products (loose display, cable, adapter). What happened to it?
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@koen_hufkens@mastodon.social I agree; companies have gotten very clever and the current laws protect them instead of consumers.
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@circfruit@fosstodon.org Are you using JPEGDEC with the S3 SIMD enabled?
In today's mail - some new HMIs from @Elecrow@mastodon.social - Looking forward to testing them. I will probably port some SIMD code to the ESP32-P4 to make my libraries go even faster 🤪
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@sako@mastodon.gamedev.place @Ronflaix@mastodon.gamedev.place It's not normal, it's specific to that software. My eink library allows you to decode images right into the display framebuffer (at any position). Even the Uno with 2K of RAM can do it:
https://youtu.be/Ow_Yd7A_qEU