iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

ioctl() is basically slipping a tenner to the bouncer to let an unchecked bag of bytes in or out (or both!) of kernel space. It's the void* of typechecking/security. Paint it /proc and make every driver implement their own hand-rolled sscanf() and sprintf() ASCII string parsers? Sure. Why not.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

$ git tag list # Silently tags HEAD with "list" $ git tag --list # Lists tags $ git checkout foo # Switches branch to "foo" $ git checkout bar # Silently overwrites your unstaged file "bar" $ git reset # Doesn't reset commits; un-stages files $ git revert # Doesn't revert files; creates new commit

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

$ git stash --list error: unknown option `list' $ git stash list # lists stashes. $ git branch list # silently makes a branch named "list" $ git branch --list # lists branches.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Let's explore ESP32-S31 (on Korvo-1) together. (300Mhz, dual-core RISC-V on an eval board with a nice display and audio.) What would you like to explore first? www.robertlipe.com/esp32-s31-is...

robertlipe.com

ESP32-S31-Korvo-1 features Espressif ESP32-S31

A developer unpacks the newest ESP32, the ESP32-S31, considers how it fits into the ecosystem, documents journey with the board.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Running a web server in 256MB of RAM probably puts you on another short list. SCO Internet FastStart is a bit of a deep cut even amongst us SCO devotees!

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I was just planning an ESP32 project with an advanced second stage, which I referred to as the "with blackjack and hookers" feature set. I realized now that I'm unlikely to need to develop that. My project plan now refers to having "hookers in escrow."

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

It's not impossible to break an ESP32 class part, but it's pretty low stakes. I unplugged a light strip live and my data pin became ground for my 24v line? Bummer.. there went a buck eighty. /Checks drawer: only four left. Time so restock. [ Memegen: Oh no, anyway...]

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Cool! Good to have choices. Working with three registers and only zero page for indirects in modern times is pretty brain-bendy, but art comes from dealing with restrictions, right?

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Sensible. We're past typing in programs from Run! and Compute. (RIP Jim Butterfield!) I hadn't heard of Calypsi. Sounds surprisingly capable! It's been forever since I depended on a closed source toolchain. (If you're about to throw SCO /usr/bin/cc back at me, I had the source to it. :-)

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Interesting! There is a refreshing honesty in peek and poke and cli and sti doing EXACTLY what you expect them to do. No hidden OS running beneath you. No 134 stages of speculation to undo. It's why I now am back to mostly embedded for tinkertime. I'd struggle with BASIC again, though.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

I probably just offended you somehow and that's not my intent. I'm just saying that I HAD seen it and it just felt weird. I mean, I get the world ran out of SID chips, but a dual-core 240Mhz ESP32 emulating a SID isn't UNlike that CD in the Model T, is it? What's your take?

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

I knew that the KITT/Tesla dude bought the salvage (sorry) and set out to "get the band back together", but I have to say I don't get it. It's like a Model T made from fiberglass and with a CD Player and air conditioning. Is it _really_ retro? Is it more pure than an emulation?

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

I started on Vic (well, that and Tandy) before moving to and the UnixWare kernel on exotic hardware like ES7000 with 96 PCI slots! Now I tinker with ESP32 and RISC-V. Those same cycle-and-byte counting skills from the 80's still have their place. RTS

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

And yet, somewhere right now there's some code trying to whack on the keyboard controller to whack the A20 latch at just the right time to get out of segmented mode. (Or something like that - it's been a while.) PC legacy gravity has proven inescapable.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

My guess? Two minutes ago. Because someone has some app with lost source code, but that's their accounting system or (gasp) medical records or car parts database or whatever and it Just Works. So they just virtualize the whole system from 1994 and keep updating what's under it to keep the mirage.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

I doubt that it even boots and runs on "real" modern hardware. They shipped the last versions I helped make for like 15 more years, and those were on bailing wire then. UEFI was hanging over our head 20 years ago. IMO, they're surely just virtualizing it to run apps with lost source code.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Makes some sense. The hobbyist ship has clearly sailed. In 1995, the "I tinkered with this and I liked it; let's deploy it!" boat with OpenDesktop or OpenServer or UnixWare was stil sailing. By the time Xinuos bought the wreckage, there just wasn't a strategy for hobbyists.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

And, yes, I'm speaking first-person and from personal memories. I helped drive that effort, though technically it was before I joined the company as a kernel dude in the late 90's.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Ontario isn't exactly some computing backwater. We bought HCR and kept an office in Toronto for years. Much of the SDK development was done there. It was all over the newsgroups, press releases, Usenet, etc. It was hardly a secret. Even in Linux press: www.linuxjournal.com/article/1358

linuxjournal.com

Free SCO OpenServer Has Its Place | Linux Journal

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Tough to predict international markets. I'm just saying there ARE (nice) silicon solutions under C3 that won't give a developer culture shock. Still RISC-V, an STM-like peripheral set. Real C. Real C++. All (OK, most of) your tooling still works on these tiny 32-bitters that cost $0.10. C3's NICE!

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

IIRC, we limited it to two cores and physical console plus maybe - maybe - one remote login via pty or tty. The premise was that it was one USER and not a multi-user server. It wasn't THAT hard to circumvent, but hard enough that you had to make a conscious decision to abuse a free thing.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

There was a free version. There were some restrictions because they were still trying to make businesses actually pay (shock!) but to get a free license, you basically had to have a pulse. (Or have recently had one...) www.krsaborio.net/unix-source-...

krsaborio.net

SCO Ships 100,000th Free Unix System License

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

That said, I do think if you want a sane instruction set + WiFi, ESP32-C3 really is the sweet spot. If you're making a couple hundred, those sub-dollar parts make sense, but for a hobbyist that wants WiFi? Espressif has that market locked up. CH32V003/CH32V006 have their place. 8-bit is dead to me.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

There are smaller and cheaper ones that are still RISC-V, not some weirdo instruction set, and with decent peripherals. Look at CH32V for options from double core w/ USB3 down to single core and tens of KB of RAM for about $0.10. Good stuff! Open-source tools include github.com/cnlohr/ch32fun

github.com

GitHub - cnlohr/ch32fun: Open source minimal stack for the ch32 and ch5xx WCH RISC-V Microcontrollers

Open source minimal stack for the ch32 and ch5xx WCH RISC-V Microcontrollers - cnlohr/ch32fun

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Those are policy violations. I've reported the hell out of these & raised hell with the AdSense PM. (I was a Googler.) That said, the donation rate is so small it doesn't nearly cover licenses, batteries, cables, etc. Ads pay bills. If you're prepared to make a serious offer, contact me.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

But Martin's work is pretty darned impressive!

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

The Furbys from last century are the choice of many because the electronics are dead simple to hack. Single motor, bridge electronics that aren't alien to interface with, plentiful teardowns: community.element14.com/challenges-p...

community.element14.com

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

Bummer. The DevKitC's (not the Minis & Zeros) come out to a USB-C connector for exactly that reason. They can be dom or sub. The other connector is hooked to a legacy USB/Serial bridge (e.g. CH340) You may have to jimmy a jumper to get power to your USB target device, but they're awesome.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

Not to kill your buzz, but on most of mine, even the chubby ones will fit with one row on each side. Failing that, when I have two breadboards, I just span across them, like water skis. Failing THAT, I put it against the edge of a desk, give it a solid CHOP and they break in two and work fine!

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

I have a few. I love 'em for developing blinkies. A "strip" of 64 px, a dual-core S3, serial monitor, JTAG AND power, all on one USB cable is the bee's knees for development and testing. I don't need to blind the man in the moon. I need to write code that doesn't crash. github.com/PlummersSoft...

github.com

GitHub - PlummersSoftwareLLC/NightDriverStrip: NightDriver client for ESP32

NightDriver client for ESP32. Contribute to PlummersSoftwareLLC/NightDriverStrip development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

It's a whole Russian Nesting Doll stack of technologies from RF to Analog to old protocol (You've figured out the '83' in in "NMEA-83", surely. :-) ) to a whole field of annoyingly incompatible, specialized hardware and apps. Competitive windsurfing & parasailing, fitness running & cycling, etc...

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

I haven't needed to shop for one in about 20 years, when I did the hardest part of GPSBabel, but the big brother to these, a reradiating antenna, is handy if you're trying to ensure a whole herd on the bench has the "same" view of the sky. The gpsr got good enough to just "see" out the window.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Ian, to your GPS resource, please consider adding the cross-platform, free, and open-source GPSBabel. CLI and GUI. Twenty four years & counting. It can reduce, interpolate, toss out junk, etc. Coming soon (merged to Git): Kalman filter www.gpsbabel.org Specfically www.gpsbabel.org/htmldoc-deve...

gpsbabel.org

GPSBabel: convert, upload, download data from GPS and Map programs

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

TBF: "Wind at my back" means no walls & close enough to touch the Ubiquiti gear. It's totally unrelated to the real world. But a "mere" 800 mbps a wall or two away isn't UNpleasant. 2 Gbps to even prosumer single-family is pretty detached from reality. Web pushes are nice. Backup? Seeding? Maybe.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

I do love it when a telecom exceeds expectations. Shout out to rural TN provider United.net (Seemingly not on bsky; they're over on the Nazi place. :-( ) This is local copper. I get "only" 1300 mbps wifi w/ wind at my back. (P.S. disconnecting service at 8am on the day of upgrade is NOT cool!)

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

We're finally starting to see ESP32-P4 boards hit lower-price markets. www.waveshare.com/esp32-p4-wif... costs less than the shipping (grrr!) and is faster and has more RAM and flash than the common $6 ESP32-S3-N8R16. Dedicated off-board chip for radios. Two 32-bit 400Mhz cores. USB2. LGTM

waveshare.com

ESP32-P4-WIFI6 High-Performance Development Board, Based On ESP32-P4 and ESP32-C6, Supports Wi-Fi 6 And Bluetooth 5 / BLE | ESP32-P4-WIFI6

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Too much hardware works unless you can change the internal pullups. I don't use ESPHome, but I know they're pretty clueful about such realities. esphome.io/guides/confi...

esphome.io

Configuration Types

Documentation of different configuration types in ESPHome

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Sharing from Android, but "share.Google" links make you mad? 1. Launch the Google app. 2. Punch your own face. 3. Hammer Other settings 4. Turn off Shorten Links, as below. 5. Be mad at Google. Their own goo.gl Link shortener EOL is next month. So NOW they insert themselves in my links?

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Those are my go-to board. Nuttx also works really well with them.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

There's an API to set the pull state high, low, or high impedance. docs.espressif.com/projects/esp...

docs.espressif.com

GPIO & RTC GPIO - ESP32 - — ESP-IDF Programming Guide v5.5 documentation

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out soon.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

I don't remember a trick on C3, but it'd have been a year or two since I last tried, so I'm sure the versions, well, everything has changed since then. C6 is new-ish. Arduino 3 is still in turmoil. File bug reports. They burn them down pretty aggressively.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Thanks for the tip. I added it to my calendar to check it out! I'm not really into robotics, but I may have enough useful software and electronics skills to share. I'd welcome some 3D friends! I tried to fit in with the Maker group years ago and just didn't.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Here, I've selected the base class of each of their major product lines. C = Commodity 😉 ESP32-C3 - successor to 8266 C5 - Faster. Adds PSRAM. 5Ghz WiFi C6 - Zigbee, WiFi 6 S =Speedy. Faster the old esp32. S2 - single core "new" Xtensa. S3 - Dual core of same. NPI. Great part! P4 = Performance

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

It is a fair criticism that Espressif makes too many things named "ESP32" that are too hard to tell apart. They've recently added a product comparator. You can choose specific ones and you can suppress things that are the same in all of the choices. products.espressif.com#/product-com...

products.espressif.com

ESP Product Selector

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

@baileytownsend.dev oh, wow. Shout-out to the -other- embedded dev in Nashville. Howdy! We're not common.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

PlatformIO won't play nice with either Espressif OR Pi foundations for 2350, the corresponding fork that actually supports new ESP32 parts is pioarduino share.google/xL8F49FFItU1... - a fork actively maintained by the most excellent Jason2866&peers. It is to esp as Maxgerhardt's fork is to RP2350.

share.google

pioarduino

pioarduino has 26 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Indeed. Esp32-p4 also has i3c. "Only" usb-2 with high speed, but still steps forward. WCH is building some really nice interface "RISC-V+some kind of specialized I/O" parts these days. 80 gpios in the 307 is nuts.

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Robert Lipe @robertlipe.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Here's a migration guide. The changes aren't voluminous, but they're just wide enough to break a lot of projects. Like DMA registers got renamed, led arglists fixed, etc. It's the curse of it being in C Migration from 2.x to 3.0 - - — Arduino ESP32 latest documentation share.google/g8Q3TunAqPcw...

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