iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

2.6 KW now on the roof of the Nomadness 24-ft mobile lab, getting closer to launch. This is arranged as a pair of 2S2P split longitudinally, each with a Victron MPPT controller (no wires cross the unserviceable center line)

2.6 KW solar array on 24 ft cargo trailer

Detail of solar panel cross members and longitudinal rails on cargo trailer lab, with ladder in place

View of solar array support structure on mobile lab

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Mobile lab folding cooktop, powered by the Lithium bank with 2.6 kW solar, tow vehicle alternator, and shore 30A connection. This completes the little galley area, and saves the butane cooker with potentially scarce bottled fuel for emergencies.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Darlin's Law - survival of the cutest.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Animated from still newspaper photo in 1983. Loops well once saved. Ahhhh memories... 43 years ago and i can feel it !

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Forgive my posting about posting, but I'm trying to decide where to do fine-grained progress reports on mobile lab and Bionode. They get lost in Substack notes, I've dialed Facebook use down to almost zero, and I've not used Twitter/X whatever for years. Here? Little tech details and bits?

Memtest 86 passed on 48 gig RAM in TrueNAS on Terramaster f8 with crash problems, used as graphic in post about moving daily detailed updates here

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

The most honest USB-C connector labeling I've ever seen. Is this a real standard?

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

I decided to be open about the bionode project... History, architecture, and mostly why. I've been coming to realize that we're nibbling around the edges of a new kind of information appliance... open.substack.com/pub/microshi...

open.substack.com

A Cloud on Wheels

Meet Bionode - archivist, production studio, info survival pod, comm center, and geek workstation built into a hand truck

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

@nudibranch.bsky.social #Nudivember A Melibe leonina from a few years ago, invited aboard my boat while docked in Anacortes....

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

My dad was on the maiden voyage of the liner America in August 1940 and did some beautiful 8mm film of this part of the world... Including shore time in Port-au-Prince, Havana, and St Thomas. That's what started my digitizing business. This is a postcard that was in the collection of memorabilia

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

It's the ratio of all you put out to all you get back. Only part of that is financial.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

I'm using an F8 with 14 TB and TrueNAS... what an amazing little machine! Almost dead quiet even when cranking huge Immich imports across Tailscale.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

In insane times, we have to refine our tools. I've never thought of myself as a "prepper" per se, but building all my geek systems onto a hand truck feels like a really good idea. A distant descendant of BEHEMOTH now under construction in my lab... microship.com/meet-bionode/

microship.com

Meet Bionode - Nomadic Research Labs

A Mobile Minilab by Steven K. Roberts Nomadic Research Labs Introducing an information toolkit and cognitive prosthesis built into a hand truck… with 14TB of NAS, video and audio production, sensor su...

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

Bionodal branding, using a beautiful artifact from about 30 years ago -- something that began life as quarter inch stainless steel plate and was cut with wire EDM at a friend's machine shop in Chicago, attached with 3M High Bond to the soundbar.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

I drove a school bus around the country for a year, and calculated that it got 1.2 light years per cubic mile of gasoline

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Whereas over on this side of the pond, any reference to that forbidden topic is asking for trouble. Science bad! Headdesk.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

I know I haven't talked about the big picture of this project yet, but here's another close up... The PiKVM is great at some things but not so much at local console. Fixed this with series connected cheapie for "manual and auto" modes, selecting local console devices or complex network stuff.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Reviews are pouring in? A splash of publicity? A flood of orders?

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

More blinkies! Third Pi in the cluster now alive - installed to SD and then cloned image to 1 TB SSD and changed boot order. And the KVM is working after lots of hair pulling.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

PiKVM headbutting this weekend, complex and counterintuitive. But it is well clamped to a rack shelf and now blinking.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Observing elevated plasma concentrations of Atrial Natriuretic Peptide after nocturnal AFib episodes, correlated with my cat's refusal to engage with adhesive CPAP-adjunct lip tape residue, I created a retrospective study on potential Jacobsonian diagnostic modality. 🧪 microship.com/feline-afib-...

microship.com

Feline AFib Detection - Nomadic Research Labs

Retrospective Atrial Fibrillation Detection via Feline Jacobsonian Substrate Analysis of Nocturnal Adhesive Artifacts Steven K. Roberts, Nomadic Research Labs, with Isabel and Alice Abstract In a long...

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Agreed .. i always spoke of my technomadic adventure as a combination of all my passions. Besides, interesting things happen at the boundaries between specialties

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

A random moment from 40 years ago, east Texas, on the road with the Winnebiko

Sign in texas, 1984, road construction next 5.051 mi.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Current state of the Winnebiko 2 console, which I moved into the shop yesterday while clearing a workspace for the new project. I've always really liked this version, which covered about 6,000 mi on both coasts of the US.

Current photo of console from the Winnebiko 2 computerized recumbent bicycle, circa 1986

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Been swamped with a new project (still in stealth mode), digitizing, and reacting with dread to the goings on that dominate the news. Now and then, we just need a bit of sanity preserving humor. Isabelle, who is now 15, wrote a book. Lead photo AI, writing biological. microship.com/feline-exist...

microship.com

Feline Existential Angst - Nomadic Research Labs

Isabelle the cat is writing a philosophical trilogy about individual autonomy and the cat's view of self, summarized here along with a photo.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Making things with 20/20 t-slot extrusion... Geek Tinker Toys!

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

I just parked my "prehistory of a technomad" on YouTube, a little under 7 minutes. Plan is to do additional videos spanning the whole adventure epoch (including Deep Geekery), with the main body of the story continuing in text. youtu.be/-RzBPcDYCF0 (And I'm back to work on Substack!)

youtu.be

Prehistory of a Technomad - 1963-1983

YouTube video by Nomadic Research Labs

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Hope it goes smoothly! Alice weighed in with this lovely graphic....

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

1984. Cold, cold, snow on the banks, tires rushing, trucks changing lanes, ears popping. Deep chill, violent shivers, insane grins, teeth frozen, all lost in the blast of wind. Headlight off to save the battery. If I’m going to kill myself, it might as well be with dramatic intensity...

The beginning of a long day pedaling across Utah in 1984, 100 mi between services. Flying down the pass in the darkness, the wind chill was minus 18.

Map showing riding days in Utah on Computing Across America adventure, 1984

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Fun digitizing some of my own photos for a change... old slide binders and carousels are turning up treasures from those halcyon days. This one is from sometime in 1987, during the Winnebiko 2 era.

Winnebiko 2 computerized recumbent bicycle at a shore, parked in front of an END sign. Taking some time in 1987, about midway during the technomadic adventures.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

A moment on the road in 1991 with Macintosh Portable in the BEHEMOTH bicycle console (controlled by ultrasonic head mouse and handlebar keyboard).

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

What scares me about him snagging all that data is that it's now trivial to correlate with voting rolls and medical histories.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

It was a treat getting off the rock for a day in America... I have gotten jaded about ferry trips over the past decade. I took a break from working on system design to play tourist. (In the looming darkness of the age in which we find ourselves, the little moments count... I must do more of them.)

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

This is Isabelle, who's now 15. She helps with everything, including lab overload, pain, the dread of imminent autocracy, existential angst, procrastination followed by despair, unkempt adulting, and the annoyance of being biological and finite.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I made the Sunday funnies on September 30th, 1984... With more details in their monthly Enter magazine. Good times.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Another shipment of home movies trundling up I-5 for digitizing...

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Roberts Law of Non-Triviality: “There is an inverse relationship between the number of words required to describe a task and the amount of time required to complete it.” Something to do with the What-How spectrum…

Working on the structural bulkhead in a 30 ft folding trimaran, 1996

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

The Roberts Law of Fractal To-Do List Complexity: “Each item on a list is merely the title of another list.”

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

The Apollo AIR-1 keeps an eye on air quality in the mobile lab, with the VOC level (SEN55) spiking from film cleaner when I scan old movies. I'm adding an automation to turn on the new ventilation fan whenever it decides things are getting unreasonable. this amazing ESP32 box is about 2.5" across.

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

I've been noticing how quickly CO2 levels build up in the lab, especially with more than one person in there... not uncommon to push 2000 ppm with visitors (450 is normal outdoor level). This fan retrofit replaces the original equipment piece of junk, and dropped 1700 to 700 in about 15 minutes.

Vortex 2 fan retrofit in cargo trailer mobile laboratory bathroom vent fixture

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Parts of this story are difficult, with relationships, life choices, and a cultural shift that demands surgical precision. I just posted chapter 6, in which our technomadling finds that the shakedown is more complex than expected. open.substack.com/pub/nomadicr...

open.substack.com

Rolling into Dataspace

6 - Geographic and emotional states - a shakedown (October, 1983)

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

(it would not really be a faraday cage, as it has plywood floor, couple of roof vents, and a few other leaks. But it feels like it sometimes when I try to use Wi-Fi for remote access elsewhere in the compound!)

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Just hung this in the mobile lab window for times when I'm recording. This 48 ft trailer is basically a big metal box that would be a Faraday cage if it weren't for this tiny window... and it already has a Zigbee hub, cellular antenna, and security camera. Time for a roof platform!

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

I've been so busy with Nomadic Research Labs editing, digitizing, and election horror that I had not posted a digitizing report since April! Fixed that today, with a piece about the wire recorder including sample audio. Fun paleogeekery... microship.substack.com/p/the-wire-r...

microship.substack.com

The Wire Recorder

Recover audio treasures from the 1940s

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Steven Roberts @nomadness.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

"activator" gags me! Made the mistake of going to one of those people a few years ago, skeptical but recommended by a friend of mine. I was wearing a heavy wool sweater, and she approached me with that thing. I said "let me take this off for maximum coupling." "Oh, it doesn't matter," she said.

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