Self Solving Wordsearch

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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

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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

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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

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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.

MQTT Resolution at the Hardware Meetup

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“OLd RED” gets a brain upgrade

Is it progress when you decide that something is definitely broken? We think it is. My lovely little cut-price mobile hotspot turns out not be lovely (or in, many cases a hotspot). We had the robots connected to Brian’s mobile phone and everything was working fine. Whereas connections on the mobile router were less than good.

The good news is that now we know how to get it to work. So at the next meetup (29th October if you want to come) we should have a whole bunch of robots squaring up to play ball.

The Stainless Steel Rat in Colour

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If you’ve not heard of Harry Harrison you really should look him up. He’s written some awesome stuff. Including the “Stainless Steel Rat”. It wasn’t until I was searching for his books that I discovered that in the 1980’s a few of his stories had been given the full comic book treatment.

I took a look and they are great fun. Of their time perhaps, but with a charm, humour and verve that really stands out.

Röyksopp Profound Mysteries are Profound and Mysterious

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I’ve actually been buying CDs. Weird eh? I’ve been listening to them ever since I got an old CD based Hi-Fi system from a charity shop a while back. I just like the sound. And I happened across a folder full of CDs that I’d made for use in the car ages ago. I like the way that music doesn’t sound over-processed and that I can start things playing just by pressing one button, rather than having to put into words what I want to hear and then make the “intelligent” device understand me.

Anyhoo, I discovered that Röyksopp - one of my favourite bands from way back was in the middle of a creative streak and had released not one, but three new albums in the last few months. The series is called “Profound Mysteries”. You can have a play with them (and their videos) here Click on the big logo and pick your track. I had a listen and I decided that I literally wanted to own a piece of this. And, the way things are, I ended up with all three. They have all kinds of different versions, including vinyl.

There are quite a few instrumentals and lots of vocalists I’ve never heard of but who sound amazing. And the whole thing is wonderful. It’s interesting that CDs are still around the same price they were forty years ago. And while Apple now make a lot of their “lossless” versions of music on their platform, it is worth remembering that CDs were lossless from the get go. And they sound superb. You should take a listen.

Canon Dial 35 Review

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Bell and Howell added their brand to the Dial version 2

The Canon Dial 35 came out in the 1960’s. It is a cool little half-frame 35mm film camera that got even cooler when featured in “The Prisoner”,

Sidenote: If you’ve not watched “The Prisoner” you really should. It could only have been made in the 1960’s.

The Dial uses a clockwork mechanism to wind on the film and cock the shutter. This makes a very satisfying (and spy like) click and whirr after each shot. The gears that transfer power from the external spring into the body of the camera are prone to getting gummed up. So, if you get lucky, you can bring back to life something sold cheap as “for parts only”. I’ve done this a couple of times. Watch this video to find out how.

The bad news is that I’ve also acquired “differently broken” Canon dials which have proved impossible to fix. But I’m hanging onto them because the lens in the Dial is wonderful and I plan to make an adapter so I can use it on other cameras.

If you are feeling brave (or foolish - sometimes you don’t find out which until afterwards) you can find the service manual here. It tells you everything about taking the camera to bits, although it does mention one or two “special tools” which you might have to come up with. However, the service manual does also contain some diagrams that I think would look great on T-shirts.

Anyhoo, enough background. What is the camera like to use? Very nice. The exposure is automatic. You set the shutter speed and the camera displays the selected aperture using a moving needle in the viewfinder. The viewfinder also shows the current focus distance which you adjust with a small control around the lens. And the pictures? Oh yes, the pictures..

These images are from scans made when the film was developed so they don’t really show the sharpness you can get from the lens in this camera. Two versions of the camera were made. The version 2 improves on the original by adding a hot shoe for a flashgun, slightly wider film speed range and some slight viewfinder improvements. But they didn’t tamper with the lovely design and cracking lens.

If you want to be able to pull something out of your pocket and have everyone go “What on earth is that?” then this camera is for you. But if you want a stylish travel companion that can also deliver high quality pictorial memories (with 72 on a single roll of 36 exposure film) then this might be for you too.

In Praise of Drudgery

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I was refactoring some code today and I had to go through a bunch of function calls to give them more sensible names and change their parameters slightly. As I was grinding through the search and replace process it occurred to me that I could probably use a fancy AI powered CoPilot thing to automate the job. But I didn’t. I quite enjoyed the laborious grind through the code. I have some of my best ideas when I’m washing the car or mowing the lawn. I rather like a task which is mildly engaging, but gives my mind time to wander a bit.

I think AI tools that claim to remove boring tasks are missing the point a bit. While I’m checking each replace and making sure it makes sense I’m reinforcing my understanding of what is happening around the code, and also giving time for the back of my brain to get on with planning the next part of the development. If all you think about are the complicated and challenging bits of a project you can end up feeling a bit burned out after a while. A bit of boring work might not be relaxing as such but it can give time for the rest of your thought processes to catch up.

Olympus Pen EE-S

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Here’s another cracking little camera that you can pick up for around the price of a video game. This one is the Olympus Pen-EES. It shoots half frame pictures on 35mm film, meaning that you can get 72 pictures on a roll . The exposure is automatic. Just set the film speed (with a maximum speed of 200ASA) and press the shutter button. A very clever mechanism uses an internal meter needle to select between two shutter speeds and a range of apertures. If there is not enough light you get a red flag in the viewfinder and can’t take a picture. It’s exactly the same system as the Olympus Trip 35 which I also like a lot.

The camera has a super sharp little F2.8 lens which you have to focus. This is a bit of a pain (it makes possible out of focus shots) but it does mean that you can get blurred backgrounds if you want.

I reckon the camera has got the exposure pretty much perfect here

Blurred backgrounds are possible

You can use it with a flash, but you will need a bracket for the flash gun

If you want to have a film camera with you all the time this would be a great candidate. Things to bear in mind.

  • Make sure that the exposure works. The camera has two shutter speeds, ker-lick and click. If you point the camera at a bright scene and press the shutter button you should hear a click sound as the shutter fires. A dimly lit scene should produce ker-lick. A blackout should produce a red flag.

  • The camera doesn’t need batteries for the light meter to work, but the selenium cell which it uses can be damaged if it is left in the light for a long time. Cameras that have been kept in a case or have a lens cap have the most chance of still working.

  • The EE-S2 is a slightly newer version which can be set for 400ASA speed which might be useful. But it can be slightly more expensive.

  • There are other EE and Pen variants, some with fixed focus. These are less likely to take a completely blurred shot, but sometimes you like to add some blur.

  • If you half press the shutter button this will lock the exposure. If you want to brighten your shots, point the camera at the ground, half press the shutter, reframe and then take the shot.

  • In flash mode you can set the aperture by hand and the shutter speed is a fortieth of a second. This means that you can use it as a manual camera with a slow fixed shutter speed if you wish.

  • The camera takes “portrait” orientation pictures (see above). These are all the rage in SnapTock and TickChat.

If you are looking for something bomb-proof to start your photography journey I’d recommend a Pen EES. I think they are super stylish, they seem to be coming down in price a bit at the moment (that’s how I got mine) and they tend to be reliable.