AI is nice. Only humans can be kind.

/

A nice person can be expected to give you what you want. A kind person can be expected to give you what you need (which might not be what you want). AI is in the business of being nice. Once it has figured out what you want it considers that the job is done. It is really hard for a human to work out how best to be kind, and it is a human thing to want to try.

I’m far from convinced that we can ever encode kindness into an AI. I think it adds a layer of introspection which would be an order of magnitude bigger than what we are doing at the moment. This doesn’t mean that we can’t use AI. It just means that when we do we need to remember that is only ever nice.

Snap Fit Fun

/

I’m trying something different with 3D printed components. Snap fitting. Rather than using screws and whatnot I’m cutting grooves in one element and putting a lip on the other so that they snap together. It’s all done by the software that makes the panels, and I’ll be able to tweak the size and configuration of the snapping bits. All I have to do now is print the parts and see if they snap together….

Light Leaks?

/

This one looks OK

I think I have a light leak. Either that, or something weird is happening with the film developing process.

At first I thought this was cloud, but it isn’t

This one has weirdness down the right hand side.

It’s here too

I don’t think it is problems developing because that would lead to dark marks, and these are light. I think some light is sneaking down the side of the dark slide and getting onto the film. It might be time to invest in some new felt here and there…

Photo Processing Hardware Meetup 12th November

/

Another fun meetup. With working, wandering robots. But at the next meetup the focus will be on photography (see what I did there?). I’ve been playing with “one-shot” developer, which makes developing black and white photographs as easy as it can be. At the next meetup I’m hoping we can take some pictures on film and then develop them during the evening. Should be fun. That will be on the 12th of November.

Pentax Auto 110 - A splendid little camera

/

Would you believe that you can get a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera that fits in your pocket along with a few lenses, takes super sharp pictures and costs less than a video game? Well, you can. It’s the Pentax Auto 110. It’s tiny because it uses narrow 110 film which is loaded in a little cassette. When you’ve taken your 24 pictures you send the cassette away for processing. The film negatives are very small and this does compromise quality a bit. However, it also brings to the fore the filmic nature of the shots that you take. I doubled down on this by using Lomography “Turquoise” film which has a deliberately wacky colour balance.

The Deep as you have never seen it before

I’ve got a conventional colour film in the 110 at the moment and I fully expect the results to look completely normal.

The camera is lovely to use. It is mostly automatic, but you do have to focus. This is easy to do. The centre of the viewfinder has a lovely “split image” rangefinder. Just adjust the lens until the halves of the split image line up and you are good to go. The camera sorts out exposure. It will show a yellow light in the display if it thinks you need to use a tripod to hold the camera steady.

I think the scratches were caused by the cassette

If it gets too dark you can add a dinky little custom flash gun which screws onto the top of the camera and makes the outfit look even better. There are several lenses to choose from. The standard one works very well and is super sharp. If you are felling lazy you can even get a little motor drive which fits on the bottom and winds the film on for you. Talking of film, only one place makes it nowadays, but Lomography do have a nice range and the prices are reasonable. You can get 110 film processed at most decent labs.

I love the way that Pentax took a look at what was a point and shoot film format and said “You know what? We could make a single lens reflex that used this”. And then went ahead and did just that. The camera is super solid, made of metal and pretty reliable. Make sure that the twin LR44 batteries that power it are present and correct and you should be in business. You can test it by pointing it outside and it will go “click”. Then point it inside and take another picture and it should go “ker-lick”. Winding on without a cassette in does work for testing, but you have to wind on quite a bit to get the shutter to reset. Pro tip: cover the film window in the back if the camera with black tape to stop light sneaking in and fogging your shots from the back.

Hull City Centre looking good

If you want something to take memorable pictures with a surprising amount of detail and you only want to carry something tiny, I would strongly recommend this camera. They made loads of them and you can find them on auction sites easily enough. If you are feeling flush you might fancy buying one of the “kits” they used to sell which comprise the camera, flash, winder and a couple of extra lenses.

Robot Rampage at our Hardware Meetup on Wednesday this week.

/

These folks are all coming…

We're going to have a mass robot rampage (well, at least 6) at the next Hardware Meetup in Hull Makerspace on the top floor of Hull Central Library on Wednesday 29th October. If you've always fancied controlling your own robot army this might be a chance to start.

I'm bringing 9 robots along to improve the odds of having 6 working. I'm also going to bring a bucket of bits for anyone who fancies building their own. But I’d like to keep the bucket if that’s OK.

Feeding the Obsession: The Concava Tessina

/

Image from Rick Soloway

I now have a new camera to obsess about. It’s the Concava Tessina It was released in the year I was born. It takes pictures on 35mm film loaded into custom cassettes. It is a twin lens reflex which uses a mirror to reflect the image from the lens down onto the film surface. It is tiny, fits in a cigarette packet (whatever that is), and you can wear it on your wrist like a watch. And it is pretty much impossible to find one anywhere.

Perfect.

Hull is one of the 25 best places in the world to travel to: offical

/

Everything on the menu is awesome. We speak from experience.

National Geographic magazine likes Hull. They like it so much that it is in their “25 best places in the world to travel to in 2026” list. It’s the only place in England, rubbing shoulders with places like the Dolomites in Italy and Route 66. Which are probably quite nice to visit too. Once you‘ve been to Hull of course. We were in Hull today and had lunch at Thieving Harry’s, one of the places singled out for praise by National Geographic. And I’d taken the big camera, because today the light in Hull was completely amazing.

There are a few more pictures on Flickr.

Super Secret Encoder

/

Behold, the super secret encoder. Each spy has their 3D printed encoder strip. Individually they are meaningless, but stack them together and the secret word is revealed. Other words can be entered if required.

You can create your own encoders using a little Python program that runs inside FreeCAD. The code is here: https://github.com/CrazyRobMiles/Python-in-FreeCAD

Might be fun for Christmas messages. It’s never too early to start.

Self Solving Wordsearch

/

they only have one left at this price…

I happened across some cheap 16x16 led panels. So I thought I’d make a “self-solving” wordsearch. I’ll put a custom printed front panel over the leds and then use a Raspberry Pi PICO to turn on the pixels that make up the words. You’ll be able to enter your own words and then make a completely custom search. I’m also planning a clock that works the same way. It’s going to be fun.

I’ve got this far. A little Python program in FreeCAD takes in words, builds a wordsearch and then cuts the letter shapes out of a flat panel. The letters look the wrong way round because this is the back of the panel. The pixels will shine through the letters and the words will be read from the front of the device. Next thing is to integrate the panel into my box building code and then make a box for it. Such fun.

Rather Useful Seminar Fun and Games

/

Click on the image to download the files.

I did a presentation in front of a bunch of students today. It was the first time in a while. I was worried that I might have forgotten how to do it, or that students these days would not be that impressed by a tall guy who talks fast and waves his arms a lot. Anyoo, they were a lovely audience and it was great fun. I wasn’t able to record the talk, but I will be making a video and posting it on the blog later in the week.

In case you are wondering what the talk was about, I pasted the whole thing into ChatGPT and asked it for a five line summary:

The presentation “Make Stuff and Change Your Life” by Rob Miles explores how creativity, self-promotion, and hands-on making can open new opportunities. It begins with examples of personal projects—from converting vintage cameras to building Raspberry Pi-based gadgets like the Pomodoro Timer, Chord Keyboard, and MIDI CheeseBox—to show how accessible digital making has become. Rob then discusses the importance of self-promotion, encouraging people to share what they create through blogs, open-source projects, and competitions. He offers practical advice on hosting a website, finding your writing “voice,” and balancing authenticity with visibility online. The talk closes by highlighting the Connected Little Boxes ecosystem and free resources for anyone wanting to start creating, coding, and sharing their own ideas.

I think that just about covers it. Although it got some of the hardware descriptions wrong.. Thanks very much to John for inviting me and Rob for turning up and providing moral support. And holding the flashgun.

Connected Little Boxes messages and PythonIsh now work together

/

Can you work out what this might do?

I’ve been playing with the PythonIsh interpreter in the robots and Connected Little Boxes today. You can now put JSON formatted commands in programs. It’s not quite perfect. The commands you send are fixed strings and can’t contain variable values yet, but it is a nice step on the road to a whole bunch of interesting device behaviours. I’ll have a video about how this works and what it means once I’ve got it working well enough to record…

Robot Renovation

/

Meet the newly renovated “Violet Redwheels”. Now with a new chassis, upgraded coprocessor (spiffy new 5v Arduino Pro-Mini) and brand new wheels because the old ones fell to bits. She’s now running the latest version of HullOS-Z which supports dual-processor robot configurations. I’ve spent the day getting more robots upgraded. With a bit of luck she’ll be on the playfield in a couple of weeks.