Recent content in Blog on Cal Bryant
The cover image above is of the first Cydar HQ, a converted water mill in Cambridgeshire. It was a glorious setting for a startup, and was a nice change from the corporate offices of Broadcom. 1 I was known to swim in the mill pond on hot days, and once had to chase a loose sheep! We even made some Cydar Cider 2 from the orchard on site in my first few weeks.
This post covers the background and design of Astralbrowser – a simple, fast file search engine I created. Here’s a demo of the final implementation in action:
Yep, that’s me dressed as Jaws 1 from Moonraker. We had a 007 themed opening party because everyone kept saying the motorised drinks cabinet looked like something from a Bond film.
Over the last 15 years (!) I have used Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems for various projects including a fairly elaborate home automation system, 1 a distributed public announcement system and a monitoring system. 2
A few years ago I developed a few clever ways of rackmounting non-rackmount equipment so it could look neat in my HiFi rack enclosure. 1 The goal was to have a professional-looking setup that would support input from my TV, Spotify, AirPlay, DJ controller and other sources while being able to drive a subwoofer with room correction and integrated crossover.
I really like the idea of a fully automated pipeline 1 when I build anything – it’s highly satisfying to see a machine do all the work for you. Combine this with parametric design, and it makes iteration and customisation a breeze. My flagship example is my recent speaker project.
This post documents a saga of speaker design dating back to 2019. Since then, I’ve been gradually working on a CAD model for a new set of what started as (yet another) subwoofer, but became some compact 2-way office ribbon speakers.
I’ve since managed to get it working reliably! Check the update I’ve added to the end of the article. Following on from my previous article, I added GPS 1 (well, GNSS ) to my tiny drone – the Meteor 75 Pro. I wanted to add GPS so I could make use of GPS rescue in Betaflight as well as see the altitude, speed and distance in the OSD.
Background Since the mid-2000s hobbyists have been building and flying quadcopter drones. 1 Since then, the technology has been improved – and commercialised. The goggles view on my first flight Despite the commercialisation, an incredibly diverse and open selection of hardware and software is available to hobbyists, in addition to the off-the-shelf ready-to-fly (RTF) drones.
I’ve recently got into a bit of a rabbit hole with FPV quadcopter drones . 1 Specifically with a “mini-whoop” style drone, the Meteor 75 Pro. ...sneak preview of the end product! As it turns out, it’s possible to connect a real drone controller to a computer to practice flying with many different simulators. I’ve tried a few of them, but I think the best one is…
I recently upgraded from a Ryzen 3700X to a 5950X. Double the cores, and nearly double the potential heat output. I didn’t upgrade my cooling solution, a 240mm Kraken X53 AIO liquid cooler.
I have a cable broadband connection at home. It’s actually reliable, which is refreshing compared to the poor experience had with the same provider as a student living in Leicester.