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Welcome to The Bootloader. I'm Paul Cutler.

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And I'm Tod Kurt. If you want to learn more about this podcast, visit thebootloader.net

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for show notes and transcripts, and we can also find our newsletter. Paul, what's the

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first thing we're going to talk about today?

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We're going to talk about drama in the world of 3D printing, because there's just been

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a little of that lately.

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Just a little.

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And some of the drama includes Printables pulling the 3D Benchy models. The 3D Benchy

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model is a small boat that's used to diagnose issues with your 3D printer.

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It was originally created by Creative Tools, who was recently acquired by another company

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called NTI Group, and it was originally licensed under a CC BY no derivatives license.

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The non-derivatives license means you can't use the model and remix it into other shapes.

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And if you're in the 3D printing community, you probably know that there are dozens of

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remixes.

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And remixes are kind of a thing one does in the 3D printing community.

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always like sticking some random head on some other random part of a 3D print.

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Well, it turns out that Printables is doing this on their own. That they saw

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the license and they're just shutting it down. The original copyright holders

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don't have a problem with it, even though they haven't changed their license. But

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I'll leave the links to that in the show notes. That's not the real drama going on

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these last few weeks in the world of 3D printing. Let's talk about Bambu Labs,

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who's going to add a new authorization control system, they call it, to their 3D printing software.

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So we've talked about Bambu Labs many times in the podcast going all the way back to episode one.

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Back in episode one, I had shared it as my best friend had bought one. Six months later,

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I bought a P1P. I've been a big fan of Bambu. I know they're not open source, but I was willing

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to put that aside for the benefits of speed and quality that came with it. Well, the community is

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up in arms. To oversimplify, Bambu claims that this is a security enhancement, but hasn't exactly

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said why it's needed. So let's just break it down because I'll oversimplify a couple of different

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things. First up is there's one Reddit user who is the main developer behind a project called

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OpenSpool who hypothesizes that their project might have contributed to this problem.

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With OpenSpool, you attach an NFC sticker to your filament and then you build an ESP32 NFC reader

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and place it next to your printer.

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Touching the filament to the reader

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automatically updates your filament settings

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on your Bambu printer.

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They say it's almost as seamless as

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using the Bambu filament with an AMS.

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Maybe Bambu saw that as a threat to

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their filament business and wants to shut that down.

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The other one that's really affected is OrcaSlicer.

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This is the slicer I personally use instead of BambuSlicer.

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I like OrcaSlicer because one, it's open source,

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and I use it primarily for some of its calibration features,

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and they tend to release features a bit faster than Bambu does.

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Bambu did release a short video showing how it adds one extra step to OrcaSlicer

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by using their new Bambu Connect app.

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Anyway, Bambu shared a blog post where they tried to clarify that this isn't about third-party software integration,

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but it's hard to not think that it is,

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especially when it's not clear what they're trying to secure.

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Yeah.

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So what can you do?

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Bambu claims that the firmware update will be optional,

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but even that raises questions.

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If you don't update, you'll probably miss out on future features and better improvements.

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You can also jailbreak your Bambu X1 Carbon.

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There's the X1 Plus firmware, which we covered back in episode 13 last October.

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And someone is also working on a Clipper conversion for Bambu printers as well.

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I have lots of links in the show notes with more information and details for those who want them.

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Suffice to say that Reddit is up in arms.

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There's hundreds of posts, and I've tried to break them down into just a couple that give you

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information about it. The moderators of one of the Bambu subreddits tended to

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be Bambu employees, so now there's a new subreddit up for Bambu customers to use.

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And it's just crazy how much up in arms the community is. It's debatable whether

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it's in shitification or not. I can understand their concerns. There was a

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security engineer who did post on Reddit and said this isn't actually a bad thing

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and here's kind of why.

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But at the same time, like I've mentioned earlier,

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they haven't really said why they need these security

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enhancements or what they're trying to protect from

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other than people in the community going, well, my

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project is going to be affected and here's how and

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why. Yeah, it's super frustrating because like Bambu

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has been so good in their communication, both their

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technical design, but also the design of like the

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documentation and the software that controls the

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printer. It's just like they know how to run a company.

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you know, much more than a lot of these other open source 3D printer companies that turned popular

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and then had to like backtrack on their open source sort of promises. But Bambu has always

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been very professional and this seems kind of an unprofessional response from them. So it's

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unclear what's truly going on. One of the hypotheses I heard that I, like the more

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charitable hypothesis, is that Bambu has seen a lot more use in institutional settings like schools

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and companies that have small 3D printer farms.

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Because of the current setup, you can on your phone just start a print when you're not on

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the premises, which is a terrible, not a security problem, but just a terrible access control

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problem for the printer.

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What could cause the printer to mess up at three in the morning if some person randomly

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butt prints off their phone?

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You bring up a good point.

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that print farms might be one of the leading causes of this as well.

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Yeah, and so you often see systems having to be redesigned a bit to work in a multi-user

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environment with like potentially less skilled users that don't have true ownership of the

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device. And so I can see like that's like kind of the more charitable reading. Unfortunately,

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I'm a victim of both the MakerBot problem where they went from being a very community-driven thing

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to being owned by Stratasys and you know, kind of crapping it all up.

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And also a big Prusa convert who promised 100% open source forever and their recent

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printers have been just going less and less open source.

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And so it's just like, I'm just kind of sighing and shrugging with the Bambu.

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It's like, well, you know, it's still a really good printer.

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I was on the verge of buying one before the beginning of the year wildfires happened in

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here.

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And I would probably still recommend them.

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To me, a lot of this is overblown.

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Yes, it's a step backwards in some ways, but it could be a step forwards in others.

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From a user experience, the average user, if you're using the Bambu slicer, you're

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not going to notice anything different.

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Nothing changes.

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It's only for those advanced users, probably the vocal minority, who are doing things with

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things like OrcaSlicer or with other firmware.

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So to the average person, this isn't going to affect the way that they're 3D printing

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at all.

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all for them being fully closed down, but I want to be able to use the printer on my

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LAN without having to go to the internet.

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Using a slicer that I can run on my own.

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It's like I don't want to be beholden to their slicer and I don't want to be beholden to

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some cloud service that might get turned off in the future.

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Because that way the product becomes evergreen.

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We can always use the slicer with it.

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I can always talk to it on my local internet.

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Sorry, on my local net.

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But yeah, if it's tied to something else like, you know, a service or a piece of software

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that's not controllable by any of us, then yeah, I'm not there for it.

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And I should have mentioned that they will have a LAN only mode they've promised.

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So we'll see if they follow through on that.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I think we just got to keep pushing them to make sure that they register that it's an

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important aspect.

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Yeah.

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And a couple of users out there have already hacked one of their apps to get the security

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settings out to show them that they're not the most secure company.

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of trying to add this might not be the smartest thing in the world.

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So we'll have to see what happens.

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Yeah, that was that was one of the other other readings I heard was that like, they rolled

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out the main Bambu Studio app that's basically I think, like an electron web app that has

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like the slicer executables hidden there somewhere.

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And it was just sort of all clumped together with security not really thought about.

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Then they're like, Oh, wait, we should probably secure this up a little bit and did it in

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of like 1.0 sophomore CS level of way of doing it.

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Yeah, there's no question they could have handled that a little bit better as well.

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No kidding.

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What's your first one for us this episode?

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All right, so I would like to talk about oscilloscope music.

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So two things there.

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What the heck is an oscilloscope?

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If you're unaware, oscilloscopes are tools that we electrical engineers use.

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They look sort of like a piece of graph paper on a screen.

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They're used to graph a signal over time.

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And so like the X axis is time,

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the Y axis is the value of that signal over time.

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And we normally use them to plot repeating signals,

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you know, like sine waves

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or the output of your little waveform generator

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or something.

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Most oscilloscopes are at least two channel.

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So you can have two different signals you can plot

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to compare each other over time.

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But these oscilloscopes can also be put into XY mode,

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where instead of the two channels being graphed over time,

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One channel is like the X position of the dot on the screen

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and the other channel is the Y position

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on the dot on the screen.

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And then as you change those signals,

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you can draw anything on the screen.

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It's like, it's almost like a, like an Etch-A-Sketch.

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This is also called a vectorscope mode.

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You might've seen these round green screens

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that sort of draw curvy spirograph like shapes.

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That's sort of a stereotypical vectorscope sort of look.

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And that's what was the inspiration

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for the 2023 Hackaday Supercon badge,

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which was a little RP2040 Pico driving around LCD.

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And it made it look like an old-timey green oscilloscope.

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It was really cool.

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So you can use this X, Y mode to draw pictures.

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And one of the earliest video games, in fact,

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was a 1958 Tennis for Two

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that used an oscilloscope in vectorscope mode,

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but using an analog computer,

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'cause they didn't really have digital computers yet.

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And so this is fascinating.

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I've got a link to the Wikipedia article about that

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if you've never heard of this.

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It's really great reading.

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To keep drawing the picture on the screen,

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you can't just draw it once

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because the way the oscilloscopes work

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is the signal kind of fades.

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So you have to keep drawing the signal

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over and over and over again.

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And that kind of gives you the sense

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of like maybe a frame rate or an animation.

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But then if you're repeating the signal over and over again,

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well, why don't you just pipe the output

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of those two signals to speakers

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and hear what it sounds like?

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And it turns out people have done this

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and you can make music.

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You have one signal, one pair of signals,

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like a left and a right, that's doing both

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creating an image but also making sound

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just by virtue of how it works.

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And so that's what oscilloscope music is.

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Been around for quite a while,

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and there's a website called oscilloscopemusic.com

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that is a composition of many of these pieces.

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From their website, oscilloscope music

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is audiovisual music where the visuals

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are drawn with the sound.

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In order to get the closest possible correlation

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between image and sound, the exact same signal

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connected to the left and right speakers is also connected to an analog oscilloscopes X&Y inputs

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producing complex LisaJu images. And there's a link in the notes all about this. There's also

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some tutorials if you want to make some of this stuff yourself. You don't have to use an analog

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oscilloscope. You can use kind of any little scale oscilloscope you have. You can even use

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oscilloscope-like programs on your computer. But on this oscilloscope.com website, they've created

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in an album called InSpheres that is just crazy.

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They're able to draw these evolving, recognizable shapes and images that are also kind of like

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glitchy dance music.

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It's really fascinating.

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So go check that out.

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I found it a lot of fun.

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Also a bonus video.

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I've been really into Justice's song Never Ender and their official lyric video is a

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XY mode oscilloscope set of visuals that kind of play the lyrics along with the song

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So I've included a link to that in the show notes as well. So for the oscilloscope music, what does it sound like?

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Some of it sounds like

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Kind of like early 80s synth pop like, you know kind of glitchy

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Sort of synthetic drum sounds with like little weird

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siren II bits on top

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But it's it's got a lot of I say it's got a lot of glitchiness to it because of how

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It eventually has to kind of like reset to redraw the next part of the screen or something

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So it's a little hard to listen to over time because it just there's a lot of high frequency kind of

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Going on but it's really fascinating. Sometimes it's really aesthetic and beautiful. Sometimes it's kind of harsh and

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And hard to listen to but but interesting all in all cases

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Hey Paul, so what's your second thing for this week?

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I have a nice palate cleanser after all the drama and 3d printing land. Let me take you back to the 90s

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Do you remember Tamagotchi's which were these small handheld electronic digital pets?

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You do I can tell you're laughing

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There were 90 million sold since the mid 90s and this next item reminded me of them

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This brings me to the micro critter which is spelled with a you the micro symbol crit air a IR

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Ah, air, like a--

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Which will make sense in a minute.

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The MicroCritter is a small handheld device

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that's both a game and an air quality sensor.

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Its primary purpose is as an air quality sensor,

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and it includes USB-C charging, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,

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a microSD card for data logging, a battery, a speaker,

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and both an e-ink and touchscreen LCD screen.

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The e-ink display is meant to be used, for example,

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sitting on your desk monitoring the air quality,

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and the LCD screen is for gaming.

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The game is a virtual pet called the microcritter,

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who is healthiest when the air quality around you

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is the best.

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The microcritter continuously samples

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the air quality around and gives your microcritter animal

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in the game, the simulated experience of the air

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you are personally breathing.

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Yeah, it's a little crazy.

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It also includes-

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- That's really adorable.

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- It also includes some fast-paced arcade games

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earn coins that you can spend in the vending machine.

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You can then purchase upgrades for your microcritter from the vending machine with things like

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baseballs, furniture, and more.

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What's really interesting is that it's open source certified with Oshawa, and the firmware

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and hardware is open source and available on GitHub.

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It looks to be built on top of Zephyr, but they haven't shared the price yet and it's

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not available for purchase.

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And even more interesting is they're local to me, headquartered here in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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Oh neat. Yeah, this is really, really, as someone who has fully fallen down the rabbit hole of air sensors because of the fires,

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I've got like four different ones now and have been comparing their numbers to make sure that they kind of correlate to each other.

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But they're all very boring and they just sit on a shelf. This is much more entertaining.

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Yeah, and I think that's the goal. So, pretty cool project. I like that it's all open source.

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Plus, I mean, it looks kind of like a little Game Boy.

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So it's like, even if you're not, and it's all open source,

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means you could just like write games for it, or somebody might

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have written games for it, so you just play it also in addition

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to switching it back over to micro critter error mode.

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Micro crit error.

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It's hard to say that because it's mu capital C R I T capital A I R.

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Mu crit error.

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Micro critter.

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That's all you need to remember.

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Micro critter.

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What's your next one for us, Tod?

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All right.

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To continue on the synth thing, although I mean, I guess not the synth thing, but the

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music thing.

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Over the last weekend on January 25th, there was this event called Buchla and Friends.

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It was a synth get together.

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It was held during the NAMM conference, N-A-M-M, which is the big CES for music conference

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that happens every year.

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And that conference is crazy.

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It's as large as CES, it seems, but it's like for people who sell guitars and drums and

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PA systems and laser displays for your concert venue and also synthesizers.

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And so it's just too much.

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I've been a couple times and it's just way too much.

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Stimulus overload.

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And in comparison, Buchel and Friends was at this interesting little studio in Echo

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Park.

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was two stories. Both stories were filled with synth people. And the cool thing is,

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is that all the synth company, like some of the synth companies that were there were also

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at NAMM. So they're the big international companies. But some of them are these little

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small best spoke companies of like, there's this really adorable three person company

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from Iceland that made a synthesizer that had in cheeks that were made with Icelandic

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volcanic rock. I mean, and the synth sounded great. And, and like, and there's this one

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One guy that's making this thing called the Qord, which is this little, I don't know,

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foot-long synthesizer thing that is just a drone synth.

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There's no keys on it.

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It just continuously makes noise and has knobs and sliders to let you sculpt that noise.

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Both John Park and I went, because it was just like 20 minutes from where either of

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us live, and had a great afternoon.

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It was interesting to see some of these really cutting-edge new synthesizer things that are

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coming out, but also seeing some new versions of stuff that has been around since the 80s.

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And so it's like this evolution of some of the synth ideas that had happened way back

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when are still happening and evolving, but still recognizable from that time.

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Did you get a chance to play with any of the synths, or are they just there for display?

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Oh no, no.

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It's all playable.

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And one of the nice things about this unlike NAMM is that this was a headphone only event

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So, you know picture this large large room full of all these people and synthesizers and you don't hear any

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Cacophony of the synthesizers. It's all just people chatting and so you can actually have a conversation and if you want to actually play something

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There's like a huge amount of headphones on the tables

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You just picked a set of headphones up and start playing around and you could still then talk to the person

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About their device about their their their cool instrument and that was that was really cool

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Because one of the really bad things about these conferences you go to them and they're just like so noisy

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You can't hear what's interesting about this new instrument. So yeah, you could play with it all. It was great

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There's a link in the show notes of me and JP. They're playing synthesizers

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And some other links about like other people who have done walkthroughs of the event and the preview of this cord

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Thing that I was talking about very cool. All right, Paul. What's your next one?

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the last one for us this episode is

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Inventory management for makers. I don't know about you, but I have parts for all my projects in different places

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I've got three bins behind me in a closet full of parts that aren't sorted or organized in any way shape or form

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00:19:17,920 --> 00:19:20,760
I found a project on github just called inventory

336
00:19:21,260 --> 00:19:24,299
It's an open source project for managing small parts inventory

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It had its 1.0 release just a few weeks ago in January with the best release name.

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It's finally 1.0 after five years.

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It describes itself as a flexible parts database which keeps all relevant information,

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as well as data sheets, prices, and a visual representation of where you stored the parts.

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The idea is that the system may tell you in which compartment of which box,

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in what area of your workshop you have to search for to find the part you currently need.

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It's been optimized to store information for electronics parts and other small hardware

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like screws, nuts, and bolts.

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It's a Python app, written using the Django framework, and uses poetry for dependency

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management and Postgres as the database.

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It has installation instructions to walk you through all of that.

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You'll probably need a little Python knowledge, but it also has a standalone Docker container

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which might be easier to stand up for some.

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You can change the currency, add and manage multiple users, and then start adding your

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parts.

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One of the neat things is that it has what it calls a box view that is a container full

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of parts.

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You customize each box for the number of compartments, number of items, and how it's laid out all

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in the admin backend.

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From there, you can add a part and add tags to help manage them as well as which distributor

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from where you got the parts from, the price, links to it, when you last ordered it, and

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then you can also attach a data sheet for storing it as well.

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Check out the GitHub repo in the show notes for installation instructions and screenshots

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of its features to see if it's something that you might want to use.

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00:20:52,320 --> 00:20:55,880
I think for makers who are building projects for resale, this could be a handy tool.

362
00:20:56,420 --> 00:20:58,140
Yeah, this is this is really, really interesting.

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00:20:58,220 --> 00:21:02,820
I've I've had to store all my stuff in clear plastic totes

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because, you know, when they were in opaque things, I could never find anything.

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00:21:06,260 --> 00:21:10,800
And even still, I know that I have this real voltage regulator somewhere.

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Where is it?

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00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:17,680
Because because one of the problems of someone who sells occasionally on Tindy

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is that I've got the parts storage for this run of a product,

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and then I've got my general parts storage

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for doing development and stuff.

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And sometimes those overlap, and sometimes they don't,

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so it's really hard to know what's going on.

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I really like this box view idea,

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because with electronic things,

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you often have many different parts

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that are disparate in one container.

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So having something that understands that,

378
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I used to try to keep track of this in an Excel spreadsheet,

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And it just was like way too, just did not work.

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I can't imagine building projects for resale like that and having to have all those parts on hand and not having a system to kind of manage that.

381
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So this might be that tool.

382
00:22:00,760 --> 00:22:00,860
Totally.

383
00:22:01,020 --> 00:22:01,160
Yeah.

384
00:22:01,520 --> 00:22:03,820
And Hey, it's a, it's a real Python project.

385
00:22:03,940 --> 00:22:06,240
You're using like a real database and that kind of stuff.

386
00:22:06,300 --> 00:22:07,600
So that's a, that's interesting.

387
00:22:07,680 --> 00:22:13,720
I've, uh, as someone who has done a lot of circuit Python, but not real Python, this might be a fun thing to kind of crib from.

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00:22:15,160 --> 00:22:15,940
Well, that's our show.

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Visit our show notes to follow us on Mastodon or Blue Sky or to sign up for our newsletter.

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00:22:21,760 --> 00:22:23,680
And until next time, stay positive.

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(bright music)