ChatGPT and HueForge

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It did a nice job with “Nissan cube”

Here’s a nice collision of useful technologies. HueForge is a great way to design 3D printable artworks. And ChatGPT is a great way to package expertise. So Jay has made a GPT which combines the two. You can ask it to make a HueForgeable (if that’s a word) image from a text prompt.

And this is a very presentable Twin lens REflex camear

I might even have a go at printing some of these.

Anyone got a spare P8?

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The kit was beautiflly presented in every other respect…

Spent some of today trying to build a “birthday present robot” for an important guest. Fell massively at the first fence when it turned out that our kit was lacking the P8 axle you can see above. We had two P6’s, but that doesn’t really help. The good news is that there are lots of these kinds of kits and they are quite cheap. The replacement should arrive tomorrow.

HP Sprout in "The Dengineers"

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The programme was made in 2016. Which makes sense..

One member of the family has a new favourite TV show. It’s “The Dengineers” from the BBC. We were watching it together and I noticed they had an HP Sprout in the cast. They were using it as part of their design process. I nearly fell off my chair. I’ve had a Sprout for ages. It still works, although successive Windows 10 updates have taken their toll and it’s no longer as sprightly as it used to be.

I was planning on popping the machine in eBay but it since it is now cool in the eyes of at least on family member I’m probably going to hang on to it for a while.

Carbonizing at the MakerSpace Meetup

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This was the setup

I took the Kinect sensor over to Hull Makerspace this evening. I’m still working on the latest release, so I used the previous code (ten years old) running on my Surface Pro 3 (ten years old).

It worked, but it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience. Things ran, but very slowly.

An image being worked on. Slowly.

Brian brought in a 3D printer he is donating to the space and fun was had by the few of us who turned up. Next meetup is Wednesday 21st Feb. All about photography.

Permission to Flail

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Just some trees

I was chatting today about student projects. As you do. I was wondering if there should be a period at the start of a project where folks should spend a while just flailing around with stuff. I find that when I’m starting a new project I tend to spend a while trying things and finding that they don’t work. At the time I’m doing this I can get a bit stressed because I don’t seem to be making any progress. However, after a while I find that things start to fit together a bit and some of the things I discovered while I was flailing around turn out to be useful. And other things might end up being used in a totally different context.

I’m now a lot more relaxed about flailing. I see time spent failing as actually useful. Of course flailing is only fun if the pressure level is lower. If the deadline is tomorrow flailing is no fun at all. But, if you manage your time correctly (top tip: always start before when you think you should) then you should be able to factor in a couple of days of flailing. I even suggested that there might be a formal period in a development project for some unstructured flailing around. Maybe flailing could become a thing. Here are my top tips for flailing:

  • Do it at the very start of the project, not when the deadline is close

  • Keep a very good log of what you’re doing. If you are using ChatGPT (a useful ally in the flailing process) you can ask it to summarise what you have just done and then you can drop that into your log.

  • As soon as you find an approach that you think might work, you are allowed to stop flailing and move onto the next phase.

  • Don’t regard it as a waste of time. It’s not. But if you have flailed for a while and nothing pops up it is best to step back from the project for a while (as long as you have time) and then come back to it.

Writing C# and Loving It

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3D rednering in XAML. Why not?

I’m writing some C# for the first time in a while. And I love it. It’s code I wrote ten years ago, and it seems like yesterday. Visual Studio Code is a great place to work, but Visual Studio 2022 just blows it away for sheer usability. Nothing to load or add - everything you need under your fingertips.

I love writing Python - it’s fun to just write a program and see what it does. JavaScript is amazing in the way that you can use it to create mostly working solutions really, really quickly. And C++ and C are hilarious if you want to tickle hardware directly and don’t mind things suddenly stopping for no reason.

But with C# you feel like you’re using a really well crafted tool to create your code. All of your silly mistakes are caught before it gets to run. The debugging experience in Visual Studio is sublime. And I love building UIs with XAML.

I’m going to have to get back into the C# habit.

Rubber Hammer

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It doesn’t look a bit like a murder weapon…

I bought a rubber hammer today. I used to have one, but it must have bounced away somewhere. I’ve got some shelves coming today that you just put together with a rubber hammer and so I thought I’d get one. Perhaps the best 3.50 I’ve spent in a while.

When the shelves arrive I plan to answer the door with the hammer in my hand and say “Aha! At last you’re here. Now I can begin…”

Then again, perhaps not.

Teenage Engineering OP-1 for sale

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You know you want it

I bought my Teenage Engineering OP-1 few years back when I thought I might be a musician. This has turned out not to be the case (through no fault of the device itself). I now think I might be a photographer (so stay tuned for a few years hence when I think I might be something else and start selling all my cameras).

Anyhoo, in a bid to fund my photographic excess I’ve popped my OP-1 on eBay. I’ve hardly used it much (it is like new) and I think the price is reasonable. If I decide I want to get back into music I can always sell a couple of cameras and buy another one. You can find it here.

TTArtisan APS-C 25mm F2 is silly good

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Really must replace that bulb

I’ve bought another camera. It’s ten years old and wonderful. I had to buy a lens to go with it and I happened across the TTArtisan APS-C 25mm F2. You can get this for the frankly silly price of 69.00 pounds.

My standard test shot came out pretty well too

The lens is metal bodied, immaculately presented and has a metal screw-on lens cap for extra class (although it makes it a bit harder to use). It’s manual focus and aperture, so you’ll have to adjust the settings yourself, but the quality of the output is wonderful. You would have to spend a lot of money to better it.

Stop your Circuit Python devices showing up as a disk drive

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Click the image to watch the video….

Got a message from Chris over on YouTube. He’s built my PICO Chord Keyboard design (it worked - phew) and he was wondering if there was a way to stop it appearing as a storage device each time it is plugged in. This is a very useful feature of Circuit Python - it’s how you get the program code onto the device - but it can be irritating, as well as giving folks access to your device that you might not want. I sent a reply and then I thought I’d share it on the blog:

You can stop the device appearing as a usb storage by editing the boot.py file (or adding one if it is not there) on the device. Put the following in there: 

import usb_cdc
import board

# Disable USB mass storage
storage.disable_usb_drive()

This should stop the device appearing as a file-store. But remember that if you do this it will be tricky to update the code in the device. You'd have to wipe the EEPROM to get your PICO back to a state when you can change the files.

More details here: https://docs.circuitpython.org/en/latest/shared-bindings/storage/index.html