iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Some friends and I are designing a cheap board to learn microcontrollers on. It will be a carrier board centered around the "ESP32-S3 supermini" and running Circuitpython. Any real "gotchas" with that chip or board we should be aware of? I've used ESP32s before but never got this deep into it.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Starting on the mass production of some give away swag for my booth at RisuCon 2026. A really simple (3 pieces!) snap together kit of spaceship Luna from 1950's Destination Moon. The real question is will I get totally bored printing these before I use up the full roll of filament :)

3D printed models of Luna from Destination Moon

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Having moved three times in the past 10 years, I have been repeatedly impressed by how community makerspaces are ideal for finding your way in a new community. They are invariably busy with welcoming and interesting people with a wide range of interests. Go take a tour, join up, and get engaged.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Busy and fun times at Syracuse Maker Faire. The usual amount of my stuff broke :| but that just provides motivation for rebuilding and improving. Watching how people interact with the stuff you create is fascinating. For example I discovered that there is a very narrow vertical band of attention...

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

I'll be sharing my latest techno gadgets and toys at Maker Faire Syracuse on May 2, 2026. Come and join the 140+ exhibitors and over 2000 attendees on Saturday: syracuse.makerfaire.com We (the planning committee) have grown this into a premiere Maker Faire over the past few years.

A group of people at the tinkerfarm exhibit at syracuse maker faire

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

I got the bug to recreate an early mini-computer terminal and settled on the DEC VT-05, arguably the swoopiest of them all. It's more of a re-interpretation--scaled down, similar but not identical lines, and running text-based games on a raspberry pi.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Remember this movie? I will be premiering my homage to Close Encounters (along with a bunch of other stuff) at Maker Faire Rochester, which will be at RIT on 11/15/2025. Be there if you enjoy fun. rochester.makerfaire.com

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

I’m finishing work on my BougieVend, a self-ordering kiosk for extreme materialist wannabes. You won’t get the products, but you will get an epic receipt documenting your purchase of them!

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Whizzo the Clown was the local TV station kid's show clown when I was growing up in Kansas City (Mo). So when I helped start up a mini sumo robot wrestling competition at my community makerspace (as we all do), I really needed to make a Whizzo bot to throw in the ring.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

I keep a folder called "inspirations" full of pictures like these. What do I find so compelling about them? I guess something about practical yet ridiculous (from our perspective) solutions in the industrial era.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

The value of 3D printing for rapid prototyping was amply demonstrated by a recent project to create controller for a 3D light display I built. I started believing I wanted something shaped like a computer mouse. But every variant of that design slipped out of my hand when lifted of the table.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

I was asked to design and construct Santa’s ”naughty or nice” device to entertain families during the holiday season. Due to unexplained forces I think all young children will be judged “nice” after the machine checks the list and checks it twice. Adults will be at serious risk, however.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Making sure my kettle corn was fresh made by checking its heat signature on U of R's FLIR camera at the Rochester Lilac Festival.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

I’ll be sharing some of my projects as an exhibitor at Makerfaire Syracuse on Saturday (5/3). We are expecting over 2000 people and 125 exhibitors at the event. Come and join us! syracuse.makerfaire.com #makerfaire #makerspace #maker

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

American Sign Museum, Cincinnati.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

"People" really seemed to enjoy the gadgets I brought out yesterday to promote the upcoming Makerfaire Syracuse (syracuse.makerfaire.com). But I'll definitely have to go back to the drawing board to accommodate big furry paws in addition to hands on the controls.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

What do you do with a 10lb 1980s laptop you couldn't resist buying off eBay? Turn it into a portable Raspberry Pi workstation, of course. Then what do you do with it? Write Zork-style text-based adventure game for people to play on it at events.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

My first work of interactive fiction (a visual short story) is playable online: wjball.itch.io/sargasso. In "Sargasso" you are the sole surviving crew member, stranded at sea with three potentially dangerous passengers onboard. There may or may not be a monster in the seaweed. Will you survive?

An image of the ship from the game Sargasso

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

A device from another planet? My homage to sci fi movies of the 50s and 60s. Few people find the hidden peephole. It's made from a 1958 Navy radio test generator and a bunch of blinky lights, sound effects, etc. One of many playthings I take to makerfaires and other events.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Just wow. From www.retroghosttown.com

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

"Failure to backup," another project I did for Shift2. When completed, it was made from 96 old hard drives. I wonder if one of them contained a huge bitcoin wallet :)

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

A “motherboard monolith,” one of two I fashioned out of e-waste and blinky lights for Shift2 (shift2nfp.org).

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

My project got busted by a storm trooper at Makerfaire Orlando (circa 2012).

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

My version of the common Twang, a one dimensional video game.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

I built my version of Aaed Musa's ball balancer.

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Bill Ball @wjball.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

I've been posting some recent projects of mine to tinkerfarm.net the maker blog I have published for the last 11 years. One of those, the Vortex cannon our group brought to the Rochester Makerfaire was a real "blast" www.facebook.com/watch/?v=457...

tinkerfarm.net

Tinkerfarm.net | Maker Tech Education

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