iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Had a serious discussion today: 'AI is so good writing reports for me, saves me doing that work' I remark: it is the most annoying thing to read. The reply was: I don't expect anybody to read it. an AI reads and then query it that way. Person->AI->AI ->Person Luckily nothing gets lost this way.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Fixed some more issues and made a small rust upload client.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Worked out and implemented OTA over mqtt for my #esp32* projects today. Was on my todo for a while. You send the size of the new image (this cancel current ota and start new), then send the image in sequential chunks. Once done; it checksum checks the image, applies it and reboots into new.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

At work I have a HP laptop with i7-13700H. It's horrible. Lets talk about this expensive-ish powerfull cpu. 6P8E Cores, 20 threads. If you run a single process, it cooks one core at 100C. even under light load. Tweaking the bios (to always on the fan) it gets better idle. Still 100C load.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Fun issue, upgraded (working) code to esp-idf 5 and added some new feature.. It all worked, until I started it without the USB connected (default state). Even the prev. working version failed. After some tweaking got it to a point it worked for receiving and sending started only after plug in.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Finally fixed my last 4 display clock. One of the previous displays had a different color/white balance then the others. The replacement is not perfect, but a lot better. Now to see what to use this one for. 4 displays on one esp32s3.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Saw this display on aliexpress, curious to try. Anybody has experience with it?

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Don't you hate it when you look at an old project (that is in use for years) and realize there is a mistake. Fixing the mistake reduces a weird offset and seems to improve its linearity.. Now to take out all the units that are in use and fix them, incl. the software that had workarounds.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Because some quality and damage issues with @aisler.net recently (privately & at work) decided to order same pcb from @jlcpcb.bsky.social. First big difference is packaging quality, with aisler I got damaged stencils, jlc comes in a solid box. On the pcb its less clear, the jlc cut-out is better.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Latest Aliexpress package has another weact studio power monitor (super useful as quick usb-c power supply) and two 2.1" 360x360 screens. It feels a lot larger then the 1.5" I've been using up to now, cannot wait to use it.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Need to get 9 or 12V out of a powerbank. Current setup uses a (expensive) PD chip. Trying to go cheaper, I made a QuickCharge trigger. This works, except on the ikea powerbank we use. It works when plug-in if power bank is off. It doesn't work when using on/off switch, or plug-in when on. Sh*t.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

New alie package arrived. This time two radar based zigbee presence sensors. I've been using home-brew ones that are powered and wifi based. I hope with these I can simplify my setup. Curious how long the battery will last, spec say ~1year. 2nd thing is a small grinding tools to help fixing pcbs.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I think the garmin speed sensor is drunk.. Pretty sure I did not do 112.2 km/h average on my bicycle.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Added some more small features, before printing it now overlays the state. Looking at it, I need to center the box better around the text. Trying to print ASA, first print warped, its even a closed box (it closes the vents) and I brought it up to temp. Maybe I should add chamber temp to display.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I have a hate relationship with freecad. This morning it crashed, it could not recover the file (corrupt) and the backup. So lost 45m of work again To keep my sanity, I went to openscad again. Atleast it does not crash and destroy my model. Tons of things are way easier and a few things way harder.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Posted about this a while back, but the project is getting more awesome daily github.com/espkvm/espkvm A esp32-p4 and a hdmi to csi board and you got a fully fledged KVM.. * FHD * ethernet/wifi * keyboard/mouse/media emulation * wireguard/tailscale support * Status display/mqtt * WOL or hardwire

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Put some extra information on my Elegoo Status display. The API is not completely as described, but got most stuff up and running. Used github.com/mcufont/mcuf... for nicely rendering the fonts! Next time it gives an error, I should figure out how to render that as an overlay on top off it.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

So finally 80 FPGAs now running of there new control system. One board failed to read the SD card. With these control boards, I can see this from the board's current. Green is failing board, yellow is a successful boot.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Cute little variable resistor.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

So one of the things I wanted to do with new pcb, add a 3d printer status screen to my status wall (13 round screens). Got the video stream working, found out there is an MQTT server on the printer, that gives some status (temp, remaining time, etc). Next to render this on the screen.

could not get the color balance to work out, the object is purple.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

New PCB from @aisler.net. Had to flatten the stencil first (thanks DHL premium), but it soldered fine in the end. Now to test if everything works using it with the 360x360 qspi display.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

I caved and bought a alientek hotplate that allows me to set a 'simplistic' curve. I need to figure out the bluetooth interface to see if I can log/automate stuff. Its kinda weird that a simple hotplate and USB-C charger now by default come with bluetooth interface.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Opened up my uyue 946 to look around its build. This one does not have an SSR like the old one Should be easy enough to add for control I also spend some time making it a bit saver: multiple, 3x220V multistrand wires twisted together in a screw terminal, next to each other waiting for a short, sigh

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Soldered the last of the 18 boards. (missing some connectors for power still). I really need a better hotplate at home, I had to use my (cheap) bigger one. But it takes ages to cool down enough so you can solder the next one. Maybe I should build one that can cool itself and follow a curve.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Made an updated version of my ESP32 board. With the esp32s3 (this time no antenna sticking out) and the connector for the 360x360 qspi screen. Base form factor still the same (size/screw holes, power connector), but button/headers moved.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Playing with this one: github.com/jrowny/p4kvm work well. There is an nice patch proposed: github.com/jrowny/p4kvm.... This will be a good use for my stack of esp32-p4 boards! The esp32p4 seems to be very suited for these types of tasks. Also made my immich frame version 3.0 compatible.

github.com

GitHub - jrowny/p4kvm: A proof of concept IP KVM built on espressif ESP32-P4

A proof of concept IP KVM built on espressif ESP32-P4 - jrowny/p4kvm

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Anybody knows what this is? I just soldered 4 pcbs from same batch. Out of the 4; 1 has these weird grey/silver on the pads.. All soldered on the hotplate within a few minutes from eachother, same temperature and time. I had this before with aisler PCBs, curious what it is? works fine, just ugly

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Today saw a website that sells a fake casio FX-82MS with build in bluetooth for p2p communication, googling and notes. It was expli. sold for cheating on exams. These are impossible to spot, it looked identical to a €5 euro fake one I bought a while back. Consequence, no more calculators on exams.

casio.com

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Fun bug, via mqtt I could control all the boards from 00 up to 40, but not board 08 and 09. Locally via buttons it worked fine. The number parsing uses strtoull. I am happy it took me only a few mins to realize my mistake, as I would not have been surprised if it would have cost me hours to find.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

3 more done between meetings.. 8 left.. Luckily they work as expected and work significantly better then the old setup.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I got, slightly unreasonably, annoyed when asking how a feature worked in an application and I had to go to the source code to figure it out, the answer was. > Try to use AI for this? it has an MCP integration. Maybe I don't want to hook up my app to an AI to use it feature to draw a graph.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Making my own life hard, by having a nicely packed pcb. Fun by hand! So far it seems to work, now to add the remaining channels. Weirdly enough, the channel (that use the copy layout in kicad) had some production error, 7/90 (18pcbs) failed. It passed DRC and all. Should be fixable with a bodge.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Doing stepper driving on an ESP32. Never used the mcpwm blocks before, mostly used fpga's for this. I think I got it working. At the moment I can do a full speed homing cycle and control it with 0.02mm steps.. Hopefully it works with all the UI stuff added and multiple axis, if not ULP.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

I just noticed, that the memory in my 1 year old pc now costs €100+ more then I spend on the whole PC. (CPU, mobo, psu, expensive cpu heatsink, case and memory) Crazy.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Thanks to AMD's direction with xilinx, working on alternatives. @raspberrypi.com trying to plan for the next 10 years (~700 boards a year), are there follow up plans for the pi zero 2 W? I see its production up to 2030. Will a follow up be same form-factor/pinout?

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Finally got the 25MHz crystal in, I should have gotten a bigger one. But it sits, and it works.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

@timberborn.bsky.social There is an award for 250 beavers, 500 beavers, but no award for 1000? The beavers do play hell on FPS, even though both CPU and GPU have low-ish utilization.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Love you can now buy a esp32 display module, create a PCB for it. Then with 0 effort, download a 3d model (where you can enable/disable parts) and generate a same model for your PCB. Match everything up, and see if you made any errors in all the sizes, alignment, etc. It makes things so easy!

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Watched this one this morning, www.imdb.com/title/tt0327.... Enjoyed it, wonder how I missed it up to now.

imdb.com

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Played a bit with wifi settings and tweaking the queue'ing and got it to play without deadline miss. I wonder if I can push it to RGB666 instead of RGB565 (uses 3 bytes per pixel, so a big increase in space needed).

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

I hate shipping companies.. I was home, did not ring the doorbell, it was small, so it would fit in mailbox. No, just drop it in front of apartment complex.. Luckely I noticed it in time. and this is how it looked..

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

2nd version soldered.. Shacking hands is getting a bigger issue, needed two hands to place components, one to hold the tweezers, one to stabilize first hand. The hotplate way luckely helps straightening out the components. It all worked out, but I wonder at what point I cannot do this anymore :-/

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Got my own si5351c board in from @aisler.net. The solder job is very bad (shaky hands today), but so far it is findable over i2c. And yes, I forgot to order the 25MHz crystal, but luckely I ordered this one because it can take in an external clock (all the hobby boards I found have the si5351a).

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Another ali haul. Got a round 1.54" screen. I've been using 1.5" screens for years now, they are cheap ( ~3€), high res (240x240) and good viewing angles. This one is *slightly* larger, higher resolution 360x360 pixels, cheap (3.90 €) and is qspi. Hopefully this one is the new go to screen.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Made a small case for the Icepi Zero. Link here: makerworld.com/en/models/26...

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The opensource tools for the zeropi/lattice are great. Got a platform with our riscv32i cpu up and running with little effort. A synthesis takes 10~14 seconds, even for a small design that is pretty amazing. Got PLL working, Tri-state input/outputs and the uart that is hooked up to the usb.

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Got a icepi zero to play with. First step is to see if I can get my RiscV running on it and the sdram to work. Hopefully all with opensource tools!

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

*sigh* where ever you go, spam/e-begging will follow you around..

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Qball @qballcow.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Now replaced the npn transistor in my flux 8120 by one a bit more appropriate. It still works, did a quick calibration check and it seems to be still pretty good, but not into spec. Still better then several cheap dmms I had lying around.

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