xythobuz Electronics & Software Projects
...back to Input Devices overview For about three years, since September 2023, my daily-driver keyboard has been the Glove80 . It has always worked great, with the only downside being the battery life of the left half, which is much shorter due to it being the BLE central, the right half only operating as BLE peripheral. The manufacturer often mentioned it is possible to use a dongle to avoid that…
After using a Logitech M570 trackball for a while I switched to their MX Ergo model while the pandemic was going on. I've been pretty happy with it, but after around three or four years, it had now developed the "doubleclick issue". Apparently it's a common problem with these devices. In my case, the switch in the left mouse button started to register false clicks when holding it down. This caused…
For years the filament roll for my 3D printer has just been hanging from the front of my Lack tower . As I also often have long stretches of time where I don't use much filament, it tends to draw moisture from the air. This reduces print quality, so it's recommended to keep the filament dry. So I finally decided to upgrade my printing situation by adding an air-tight container for the filament…
Background For over two years now, since February 2024, I own a Xiaomi Mi 3 scooter. Of course I flashed it with SHFW using the ST-Link method, which then allows using the normal SHFW Android app to do all updating and configuring. This worked perfectly fine for about 2500km. Then the internal battery was noticeably degraded and I could no longer reach home from work in winter. So I got one of the…
After playing oscilloscope music the next obvious question that came up was: can we make it run Doom ? Turns out a couple of people already did that , even in different ways . The last link is just running normal Doom on a modern LCD osci, which seems a bit boring. Even more involved is modifying the game engine to output vectors, which has been done here or here, for Quake . For this project I…
...back to Smart Home overview After adding more actors to my Smart Home in the form of power sockets running Tasmota , I had to improve the ways to control all of these devices. The Telegram Bot and Web UI are a good start, but the Wife Acceptance Factor is pretty low, and they require access to a computer or smartphone. Recently I learned about the CYD (cheap yellow display) , a nice ESP32 dev…
Introduction I regularly watch the livestreams of fulltime GTA:SA speedrunner Joshimuz . A while ago he did a PS2 Retro Achievements run . As part of these he has to get a Top 5 score in the in-game arcade machine Duality in both the black and white highscore table. In Part 10 at 04:02:16 , when Josh starts playing Duality, chat user Caffie_ mentions how this could be a Game Boy game. So this…
I recently pulled out my old childhood Game Boy Color from a drawer to play around with it. The idea is to use LSDJ to accompany LARS . Unfortunately I kinda forgot how bad the GBC screen is, without any backlight. So I looked around AliExpress a bit and found the store of HISPEEDIDO . They offer many nice modding kits for old consoles, so I got the OLED screen and USB-C battery replacements . The…
Like many modern devices, some of the medical vaporizer devices from S&B (the Crafty , Venty and the Volcano Hybrid ) offer Bluetooth connectivity and an app to control them. Unfortunately the official mobile apps have / had some problems. The iOS version is no longer available after Apple decided to remove "drug related" Apps. So understandably the company no longer developed either their iOS or…
Years ago I bought a cheap chinese E-Cigarette 510 box mod, the Eleaf iStick Pico 25. It's running the ArcticFox custom firmware which sadly seems to be no longer available . I never really used it for anything, but for reasons I want to get it going again. Unfortunately the display is so dim that it can no longer be used. So I wanted to repair the device. I found this comment on Reddit explaining…
One of my two ~10 year old 23" 1080p main displays died recently. So I finally upgraded to two used 27" 1440p displays. These are now the first displays on my desktop that allow adjustments of the backlight from software. So I tried to find out how to go about that. Turns out on laptops both the display backlight intensity and the ambient light sensors are controlled via ACPI, with proper kernel…
So you may have read about our project LARS . As mentioned I didn't have any hardware in the end to finish firmware development. So I slightly updated the circuitry, layed out a new board, had it manufactured in China and assembled at home. This is LARS v2, the second iteration of the same idea. It's basically the same device, just with five additional switches. This allows for some more freedom…
...back to Smart Home overview A while ago my power net company installed new smart power meters, specifically the Iskra MT681 . It has a standardized infrared interface to get some data from it. There are different designs available to attach a microcontroller, both open-source and commercial. I've gone the lazy route and bought one from eBay . Unfortunately the meter is mounted in the basemet of…
A recurring problem I ran into with my projects is documentation. Especially with 3D printed parts or PCBs it's often required to generate preview images or PDFs so someone interested can take a look without having to clone the repo and install some development tools to open the original files. Doing this manually is time-consuming and repetitive. So it should be automated. I've come across a…
For the recent birthday party of one of our DrinkRobotics and musician friends, Kauzerei had the great idea to build a DIY drummachine as a present, to allow them to play the bass without having to gather a jam session group. He recruited me for some electronics design brainstorming and to write the firmware. It is mainly made out of repurposed old parts from the recycling bin. The drum body…
Last saturday our local hackerspace, the Toolbox Markdorf, held it's 10 year anniversary celebrations with an open-door-day. I set up my tents in the E-Lab 2 to show off some projects, mainly the Oscilloscope Music player and the LED Matrix as well as my Quadcopter stuff . Outside, in the afternoon, I also did a bit of FPV flying with a TV and receiver setup for the spectators. We had a…
Soon our local hackerspace Toolbox Bodensee has its 10-year anniversary , and it will also be present at the IBO fair 2024 in Friedrichshafen . Some five or six years ago I already prepared a small setup at one of the Toolbox open-door-days with an oscilloscope and a laptop playing Jerobeam Fendersons Oscilloscope Music . But it never looked quite right. So I decided to tackle the topic again this…
I initially bought a 32x32 RGB LED matrix in 2018. Back then the idea was to fit it onto a bag, as some kind of wearable device, for 35C3. But it never really worked out. So in preparation for CCCamp23 I noticed the LED panel again and decided to order some more of them. These are the 32x32 4mm pitch RGB LED Matrix Panels from Pimoroni , with either the Interstate 75 W or the Adafruit RGB Matrix…
...back to Flying RC Vehicles overview At the end of 2017 I had to give in to the urge of building a bigger more powerful copter. After my first failed attempts with large copters, gaining some experience with smaller frames seemed useful. But I had built up some skills and was ready for the next step. So I built a 220mm frame copter with 2205 motors. It has all the bells-and-whistles available at…
...back to Flying RC Vehicles overview Not being totally happy with the power available with my 2S xyAurora90 I decided to build a 3S Aurora100 in July 2017. The total weight with a 3S 450mAh battery is around 131g. Here are some recordings of the FPV footage. Be aware that these videos are recorded from the received signal on the ground. Not only can you see lots of interference and other HF…