1
00:00:04,560 --> 00:00:06,420
Welcome to The Bootloader. I'm Paul Cutler.

2
00:00:06,980 --> 00:00:13,760
And I'm Tod Kurt. The show works like this. In each episode, we bring three things we're excited to share, chatting about each one for about five minutes.

3
00:00:14,240 --> 00:00:17,500
For detailed show notes and transcripts, visit thebootloader.net.

4
00:00:18,200 --> 00:00:19,400
Paul, what's your first one for us?

5
00:00:19,900 --> 00:00:25,880
First up is RV Circuit Studio, which is a new CircuitPython IDE that just released its 1.0 version.

6
00:00:26,720 --> 00:00:29,980
I've been following development the last few months and haven't brought it up until now, because,

7
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,300
because it required you to be running Python in a virtual environment

8
00:00:33,920 --> 00:00:35,400
and then running and building it from there.

9
00:00:35,940 --> 00:00:37,240
But with the 1.0 release,

10
00:00:37,400 --> 00:00:40,160
there are install packages for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

11
00:00:41,180 --> 00:00:43,780
So it has everything you would expect in a modern IDE,

12
00:00:44,140 --> 00:00:45,120
and then even more.

13
00:00:46,020 --> 00:00:47,100
On the left side of the window,

14
00:00:47,220 --> 00:00:49,080
there's a window pane for the File Explorer

15
00:00:49,300 --> 00:00:50,700
to choose which file to edit.

16
00:00:51,400 --> 00:00:52,900
To the right of that filling the window

17
00:00:53,020 --> 00:00:54,620
is the code editor like you'd expect,

18
00:00:55,140 --> 00:00:57,180
and below that is a pane to choose from the REPL,

19
00:00:57,360 --> 00:00:58,920
a serial plotter, and a camera.

20
00:00:59,920 --> 00:01:03,580
Along the top are icons for open save, a debugger, and more.

21
00:01:04,280 --> 00:01:08,080
And the first thing I might recommend, though, is making the text size bigger in the code editor.

22
00:01:08,600 --> 00:01:12,260
It defaults to a 10-point font, which to my old eyes was kind of small.

23
00:01:12,920 --> 00:01:13,380
Yep, same.

24
00:01:14,960 --> 00:01:18,960
When you first plug a board in, it will prompt you to download the latest version of CircuitPython

25
00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:22,820
if your board is running an older version and take you to that board's download page,

26
00:01:23,020 --> 00:01:24,520
which is a really nice touch.

27
00:01:25,420 --> 00:01:26,960
It also has a library manager.

28
00:01:27,420 --> 00:01:29,840
You download the bundle once, and it's cached on your computer.

29
00:01:30,460 --> 00:01:35,540
RV Circuit Studio will show you which libraries you have installed, which have updates available,

30
00:01:35,960 --> 00:01:40,080
and also the ability to browse the bundle to install a specific library.

31
00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:44,940
I tried the debugger on my Mac Mini. It would pause for a good second or two when starting,

32
00:01:45,520 --> 00:01:48,200
but then it lets you step through your code line by line.

33
00:01:48,700 --> 00:01:54,140
There's a button to reformat your code in black, but it requires you to manually pip install black on your system first.

34
00:01:55,100 --> 00:01:59,680
The REPL on the bottom of the screen is just what you would expect, and you can interact with the REPL.

35
00:01:59,920 --> 00:02:03,240
The serial plotters included and works just like the one in Mo did.

36
00:02:03,460 --> 00:02:06,920
I hooked up a barometric sensor and was plotting the results in no time.

37
00:02:07,660 --> 00:02:10,000
The last tab on the bottom is a camera feature.

38
00:02:10,500 --> 00:02:13,400
I couldn't get it to work and now I'm curious what it does.

39
00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:18,340
It recognizes both my webcam and my iPhone but doesn't start when I try it.

40
00:02:18,820 --> 00:02:22,180
I'm hoping to have Armstrong on the CircuitPython show in the near future,

41
00:02:22,340 --> 00:02:26,540
the developer who created RV Circuit Studio, and I'll make sure to ask him about it.

42
00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:29,380
The last feature that I really like is on the left-hand side,

43
00:02:29,480 --> 00:02:33,460
there's a window pane under File Explorer that has a ton of code snippets.

44
00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:40,100
There are examples including debouncing, timers, neopixels, PWM, waveforms, and more.

45
00:02:40,740 --> 00:02:45,840
Another reason to be thankful to ATAFruit for licensing so much code under the MIT license

46
00:02:45,930 --> 00:02:48,100
so it can be included in a project like this.

47
00:02:48,580 --> 00:02:54,160
I think the snippets are great and help beginners with concrete examples that can compare against or even build off of.

48
00:02:55,100 --> 00:02:59,440
The only question I have is that due to AI, Armstrong Subero is not.

49
00:02:59,460 --> 00:03:04,260
taking pull requests. And I wonder if you can build a community around something like this without

50
00:03:04,850 --> 00:03:11,000
being 100% completely open. It could be possible, but it's challenging in today's day and age.

51
00:03:11,740 --> 00:03:16,780
Lastly, I also think it's pretty cool to see that RV Circuit Studio is written in Python. I'd like to see

52
00:03:16,880 --> 00:03:22,280
more desktop apps in Python. You know, congrats to Armstrong on the 1.0 launch. And if you're looking

53
00:03:22,420 --> 00:03:27,040
for a moor replacement, check this out. It's a pretty full feature just kind of coming out of the gate.

54
00:03:27,420 --> 00:03:35,260
But because it is written in Python, it doesn't hook into the standard file, like the file edit view window menu items that you might expect.

55
00:03:35,740 --> 00:03:38,720
It's got its own little icons inside of the window.

56
00:03:38,980 --> 00:03:40,260
Just something to be aware of.

57
00:03:40,260 --> 00:03:41,740
I really like the circuit snippets.

58
00:03:41,860 --> 00:03:53,040
If you've been a fan of my CircuitPython tricks page, which is basically that, this is like another way of doing the similar thing where you can just like click a single button and get a key Bouncer or how to read an i2c device.

59
00:03:53,380 --> 00:03:54,700
And so it's super great for that.

60
00:03:55,260 --> 00:03:56,320
And it's like already a syntax check.

61
00:03:56,460 --> 00:04:00,340
So you don't have to worry about copy and paste problems by copying off of my web page or whatever.

62
00:04:01,340 --> 00:04:02,600
But yeah, it seems pretty great.

63
00:04:02,760 --> 00:04:03,940
I like the fact that it's got a plotter.

64
00:04:04,020 --> 00:04:05,120
The plotter seems pretty good.

65
00:04:05,420 --> 00:04:11,740
I might be able to not even update my serial plotster program that I wrote that we talked about a couple episodes ago.

66
00:04:12,980 --> 00:04:14,580
Shortest lifespan for an app yet.

67
00:04:15,240 --> 00:04:16,000
Yeah, well, you know.

68
00:04:18,579 --> 00:04:19,900
What's your first one for us?

69
00:04:20,840 --> 00:04:21,040
All right.

70
00:04:21,140 --> 00:04:26,420
So I'm going to talk about the curse of being a production maker with Tindie and Lectronz.

71
00:04:26,440 --> 00:04:28,060
and now small run.net.

72
00:04:28,620 --> 00:04:31,120
So I have a little Tindie store that sells fun PCBs

73
00:04:31,220 --> 00:04:33,360
for learning cap touch sensors, playing with MIDI,

74
00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:35,600
or even make your own synthesizers.

75
00:04:36,280 --> 00:04:37,020
I loved Tindie.

76
00:04:37,260 --> 00:04:39,060
It was owned by Hackaday and run by people

77
00:04:39,080 --> 00:04:41,240
who understood the needs of the small production maker.

78
00:04:41,960 --> 00:04:44,400
Etsy for Lectronzics is how I described it

79
00:04:44,440 --> 00:04:45,680
to my more normy friends.

80
00:04:46,560 --> 00:04:46,980
It was great.

81
00:04:47,460 --> 00:04:49,120
But over the years, it languished.

82
00:04:49,420 --> 00:04:50,420
And then suddenly last April,

83
00:04:50,540 --> 00:04:52,220
it just went offline for several weeks

84
00:04:52,780 --> 00:04:53,800
with no communication.

85
00:04:54,300 --> 00:04:54,960
When it came back,

86
00:04:54,980 --> 00:04:56,320
we learned that it was sold to an,

87
00:04:56,420 --> 00:04:59,340
unknown entity and disbursement payouts were disabled.

88
00:05:00,780 --> 00:05:03,640
There are two other markets for makers out there.

89
00:05:03,800 --> 00:05:08,160
One's called Lectronzs with a Z.com and now smallrun.net.

90
00:05:08,700 --> 00:05:11,780
Over the last couple of days, I've been chatting with Aaron, the person running smallrun.

91
00:05:11,900 --> 00:05:13,600
Dot net, and I must say it's looking pretty great.

92
00:05:14,300 --> 00:05:17,000
The Tindie outage in sale was a real wake-up call for a lot of us.

93
00:05:17,100 --> 00:05:20,660
Many larger makers ran their entire operation from Tendi.

94
00:05:21,660 --> 00:05:23,700
The outage cost them thousands of dollars in business.

95
00:05:24,120 --> 00:05:26,300
No payouts meant they had maybe tens of thousands of dollars.

96
00:05:26,460 --> 00:05:31,760
locked up as unusable, maybe never retrievable. Tendi now apparently has a manual disbursement

97
00:05:31,900 --> 00:05:37,040
if you email them, but I've still got several hundred dollars locked up in Tendi and in the vein

98
00:05:37,160 --> 00:05:41,140
hope that things will return to normal. But, you know, it's been a couple of months now. I'm not that

99
00:05:41,960 --> 00:05:46,400
hopeful. I'm not sure Tendi can recover the lost trust or even if they want to, you know,

100
00:05:46,880 --> 00:05:50,940
maybe it's sort of this sort of a grab and go sort of thing. So like a month or so ago,

101
00:05:50,940 --> 00:05:56,200
I did start moving some of my stuff to Lectronzs, but it's a site run from some unknown entity in Greece,

102
00:05:56,420 --> 00:05:57,480
and it caters to EU customers.

103
00:05:57,720 --> 00:05:59,080
It seems like it's a well-run site.

104
00:05:59,520 --> 00:06:00,620
It's been around for several years,

105
00:06:01,380 --> 00:06:02,820
but after Tendi, I wasn't all that jazz

106
00:06:02,900 --> 00:06:04,400
to put in a lot of effort into it.

107
00:06:04,500 --> 00:06:05,800
So things are there,

108
00:06:06,080 --> 00:06:07,200
but no one's ordered from it yet,

109
00:06:08,120 --> 00:06:09,420
and I've not advertised it at all.

110
00:06:10,100 --> 00:06:12,940
And then I learned about Small Run from you, Paul.

111
00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:14,960
This is like maybe a week ago.

112
00:06:15,060 --> 00:06:16,300
I poked around, made an account.

113
00:06:17,140 --> 00:06:18,660
An interesting aspect of Small Run

114
00:06:18,780 --> 00:06:21,620
is its build blog pages that you can create

115
00:06:21,720 --> 00:06:22,820
and link to your products.

116
00:06:23,340 --> 00:06:24,780
It's a sort of built-in blogging system,

117
00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:26,160
sort of like Hackaday I.O.

118
00:06:26,300 --> 00:06:29,040
but more product focus because you can like feature your products.

119
00:06:29,840 --> 00:06:33,720
This could be a great way to talk about updates or new releases that you might have

120
00:06:33,920 --> 00:06:37,280
and then have them featured on the Small Run homepage where all the build logs are shown.

121
00:06:38,360 --> 00:06:43,560
But one of the most interesting differences to me with Small Run is that it has hooks into a shipping label generator.

122
00:06:44,260 --> 00:06:48,860
So it will generate real time shipping quotes for customers and then labels for you.

123
00:06:49,400 --> 00:06:54,840
So you don't have to make shipping profiles for every product in every country hoping that you get it right.

124
00:06:55,560 --> 00:06:59,740
I suspect many sellers lose money on shipping because they get their shipping profiles wrong.

125
00:06:59,790 --> 00:07:06,720
I know I've done that a little bit because I made my shipping profiles like three or four years ago and things have gotten more expensive.

126
00:07:07,260 --> 00:07:11,360
And so I'm losing like 50 cents or so I think on every shipment I do.

127
00:07:11,800 --> 00:07:23,080
And so what's funny is that I'd made this account and then a few days after that I was contacted by Small Run on Blue Sky saying, hey, you want to like check out this thing called Small Run?

128
00:07:24,880 --> 00:07:29,640
And from that, I chatted with the owner, Aaron, and we chatted for a good long while.

129
00:07:29,720 --> 00:07:31,039
I mentioned already had an account.

130
00:07:32,440 --> 00:07:34,980
I then joined the Smarron Discord, which is pretty good.

131
00:07:35,200 --> 00:07:38,780
In the Seller channel, there are other sellers discussing the various ins and outs of selling

132
00:07:39,240 --> 00:07:44,320
and, like, maybe some new features that they wanted, but no real issues with Smarron itself, which was nice.

133
00:07:44,820 --> 00:07:48,980
I did mention to Aaron that there's a few small changes that I would like to see as a seller,

134
00:07:49,180 --> 00:07:51,720
and he added them as site-wide features within a day.

135
00:07:51,720 --> 00:07:52,920
It was just, it's like, what?

136
00:07:53,980 --> 00:08:01,000
Those features, like one of those features was the ability to change your story URL because I had messed up when I was setting up my site.

137
00:08:02,680 --> 00:08:09,860
And then another was to add a small handling charge to shipping quotes to cover the cost of boxes, labels, tape, things like that.

138
00:08:10,220 --> 00:08:16,500
Because the real-time shipping quote is just what UPS will charge, not like what it costs you to put it in a box.

139
00:08:17,420 --> 00:08:20,080
So I've been starting to move my products over to just a small run.

140
00:08:20,800 --> 00:08:23,660
I think in earnest this week and then next week, hopefully I'll have that.

141
00:08:23,680 --> 00:08:27,800
them all there. It has a Tindie importer, which is nice. It doesn't get all the info from Tendi,

142
00:08:28,180 --> 00:08:32,680
like say product dimensions, I noticed, but it's a great start. So look for all the links to my

143
00:08:33,039 --> 00:08:38,820
products to change to Small Run links in the near future. Nice. And if you're a seller on Tendi,

144
00:08:39,360 --> 00:08:44,340
give Small Run to try. It's easy to put a few products in as a test. It hooks up to Stripe or

145
00:08:44,600 --> 00:08:48,020
PayPal for payouts. And the cool thing about the way they've got it hooked up with Stripe,

146
00:08:48,220 --> 00:08:52,420
and maybe for PayPal, I don't know, but for Stripe, you get the money immediately because

147
00:08:52,660 --> 00:08:58,640
it like they're just acting as a sort of pipe through from the buyer to you.

148
00:08:58,940 --> 00:09:02,340
It doesn't sit in a disbursement pool the way it does with Tindie.

149
00:09:02,560 --> 00:09:04,280
So there's no like, am I going to get my money?

150
00:09:04,900 --> 00:09:07,840
Your money happens as soon as the as soon as the customer buys the product.

151
00:09:08,160 --> 00:09:10,660
Yeah, it's too bad that Tindie ended the way that it did.

152
00:09:10,950 --> 00:09:13,160
It was something, it was sketchy all the way around.

153
00:09:13,450 --> 00:09:16,080
They should have just, they should have announced that it was being sold.

154
00:09:16,430 --> 00:09:21,440
And I understand they don't want to create a panic among all the sellers and everyone pull their funds out.

155
00:09:21,640 --> 00:09:24,060
So they're damned if they do, damned if they don't.

156
00:09:24,160 --> 00:09:27,940
But I think it's awesome that Aaron at Small Run reached out to you.

157
00:09:28,240 --> 00:09:31,680
You made a couple suggestions and bam, they were in a day later.

158
00:09:31,880 --> 00:09:33,080
That is just mind-blowing.

159
00:09:33,660 --> 00:09:33,900
Yeah, yeah.

160
00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:38,300
And he's been doing that for some of the other comments on the Discord.

161
00:09:38,980 --> 00:09:40,420
And people are like, hey, can it do this?

162
00:09:40,580 --> 00:09:43,100
And as I've been looking back and reading the past Discord.

163
00:09:43,780 --> 00:09:48,340
And so I think he launched it at the end of May and it's the beginning of July.

164
00:09:49,060 --> 00:09:50,820
So he's only been around for about a month and a half or so.

165
00:09:51,240 --> 00:09:55,140
But he's already added a bunch of features just in that time from the launch time.

166
00:09:55,890 --> 00:09:56,420
So way to go, Aaron.

167
00:09:56,500 --> 00:09:56,860
This is great.

168
00:09:58,080 --> 00:09:59,680
So, Paul, what's your next one for this time?

169
00:10:00,280 --> 00:10:04,020
You know, it's no secret that both you and I are fans of Bamboo Labs printers.

170
00:10:04,480 --> 00:10:08,700
I covered them in one of our first episodes, and Tod bought a printer earlier this year.

171
00:10:09,480 --> 00:10:13,340
As great as their hardware is, they're closed source, and they've been building their

172
00:10:13,480 --> 00:10:17,480
walled garden even higher, which doesn't make everyone super happy.

173
00:10:18,500 --> 00:10:20,120
That's where BamBuddy comes in.

174
00:10:20,420 --> 00:10:24,460
It's a self-hosted software solution for managing your bamboo printer on your own,

175
00:10:24,920 --> 00:10:27,520
totally bypassing Bamboo Labs cloud control.

176
00:10:28,380 --> 00:10:32,460
You can install it locally on Windows, and Docker is recommended for MacOS or Linux.

177
00:10:33,240 --> 00:10:36,600
You can also run it headless on a Raspberry Pi or a Synology NAS,

178
00:10:36,680 --> 00:10:38,900
which is how I'm planning to install it in the near future.

179
00:10:39,840 --> 00:10:42,300
You can run it headless because it all happens in your browser.

180
00:10:42,600 --> 00:10:44,580
There's no app and not even a slicer needed.

181
00:10:44,650 --> 00:10:45,800
It has that built in.

182
00:10:46,500 --> 00:10:48,240
The list of features it has is impressive.

183
00:10:48,980 --> 00:10:49,660
Just a few.

184
00:10:50,500 --> 00:10:52,180
It has tail scale built in.

185
00:10:52,360 --> 00:10:55,240
If you haven't heard of tail scale, it's a VPN-like solution

186
00:10:55,900 --> 00:10:58,600
that makes it super easy to connect to your computers from anywhere.

187
00:10:59,340 --> 00:11:02,940
By using tail scale, Bambuddy can do a virtual printer proxy mode

188
00:11:03,100 --> 00:11:04,440
allowing you to print from anywhere

189
00:11:04,940 --> 00:11:06,660
without having to set up port forwarding.

190
00:11:07,400 --> 00:11:09,380
It has an integrated slicer like I just mentioned.

191
00:11:09,640 --> 00:11:13,300
You can still use Orca Slicer or Bamboo Slicer, but you don't have to.

192
00:11:13,820 --> 00:11:15,900
It has a one-click slice button built in.

193
00:11:16,680 --> 00:11:18,440
And then there are the print management features,

194
00:11:18,700 --> 00:11:19,740
of which there are a ton.

195
00:11:19,860 --> 00:11:25,140
There's automatic archiving, duplicate detection, add a photo to document the print results

196
00:11:25,140 --> 00:11:26,460
or failures with notes.

197
00:11:27,380 --> 00:11:32,420
There's 3D visualization tools that use 3.js to let you inspect the models before

198
00:11:32,620 --> 00:11:33,980
sending it to your printer.

199
00:11:34,660 --> 00:11:38,980
And there's real-time monitoring using WebSockets, so you don't even have to refresh the page

200
00:11:39,080 --> 00:11:40,860
to see error messages or notifications.

201
00:11:41,760 --> 00:11:45,380
The real-time monitoring also includes a ton of stats about your printer, such as the

202
00:11:45,640 --> 00:11:48,500
nozzleware, filament consumption, and cost-eastern.

203
00:11:48,560 --> 00:11:52,920
analysis, a multi-printer dashboard for print farms, and a bunch more features.

204
00:11:53,760 --> 00:11:57,000
You can schedule prints, manage the queue, or even stagger a batch start.

205
00:11:57,640 --> 00:12:02,080
And then lastly, you can stay informed about your prints and receive notifications via

206
00:12:02,620 --> 00:12:06,600
WhatsApp, telegram, email, Discord, home assistant, and more.

207
00:12:07,300 --> 00:12:10,060
The list of features is crazy and it all runs in your browser.

208
00:12:10,720 --> 00:12:15,080
I know Docker can be a little intimidating when you first start using it, but I think I'm

209
00:12:15,140 --> 00:12:18,460
going to give this a try and install it in a Docker container on my Synology Now.

210
00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:20,060
check out their website.

211
00:12:20,240 --> 00:12:21,880
It's got a ton of info to get you started.

212
00:12:22,420 --> 00:12:24,760
Great docs, a demo, and even more.

213
00:12:25,600 --> 00:12:26,780
Yeah, this looks pretty great.

214
00:12:27,380 --> 00:12:31,680
Like, one thing to know is I think you do have to put your printer into developer mode,

215
00:12:32,220 --> 00:12:38,920
which means I think it takes it out of the ability to use bamboo handy and like the normal sort of tools that bamboo uses.

216
00:12:39,860 --> 00:12:43,060
But it sounds like this thing incorporates and you can use it from your phone,

217
00:12:43,260 --> 00:12:48,120
all the features of bamboo handy plus more so you could do all the stuff that you normally want to do.

218
00:12:48,760 --> 00:12:49,380
and like yeah

219
00:12:49,540 --> 00:12:50,340
Docker is pretty easy

220
00:12:50,580 --> 00:12:51,240
you know it's much easier

221
00:12:51,340 --> 00:12:53,200
than the normal way of like

222
00:12:53,320 --> 00:12:54,440
oh install all these

223
00:12:55,140 --> 00:12:56,460
prerequisites on your Linux computer

224
00:12:56,580 --> 00:12:57,620
with APT or whatever

225
00:12:59,980 --> 00:13:00,640
yeah I should have mentioned

226
00:13:00,650 --> 00:13:01,580
the developer mode thing

227
00:13:01,640 --> 00:13:02,300
you're absolutely right

228
00:13:02,360 --> 00:13:03,180
that's a good call out

229
00:13:03,840 --> 00:13:05,220
I'm so glad to see stuff like this

230
00:13:05,400 --> 00:13:07,020
just because yeah

231
00:13:07,360 --> 00:13:09,040
I'm currently in sort of the love affair

232
00:13:09,200 --> 00:13:11,000
of like oh I can use bamboo handy

233
00:13:11,100 --> 00:13:11,860
and just go click click click

234
00:13:11,950 --> 00:13:13,160
and I can print something from my phone

235
00:13:14,240 --> 00:13:15,880
you know so like at some point

236
00:13:15,940 --> 00:13:16,940
that's gonna wear out

237
00:13:17,040 --> 00:13:17,460
I'm gonna be like

238
00:13:17,480 --> 00:13:18,800
I'm so frustrated. I'm locked in.

239
00:13:19,620 --> 00:13:21,340
I give him myself in like another month, maybe.

240
00:13:22,360 --> 00:13:23,760
And now you have options, which is pretty awesome.

241
00:13:23,780 --> 00:13:24,560
I have options.

242
00:13:26,260 --> 00:13:27,360
What's your next one for us?

243
00:13:28,280 --> 00:13:31,160
Do you remember the Space Cadet pinball game on Windows 95?

244
00:13:31,680 --> 00:13:32,020
Oh, yeah.

245
00:13:32,660 --> 00:13:34,700
It was the best part of Windows 95 to me.

246
00:13:36,879 --> 00:13:43,620
YouTuber CNC Dan is creating a physical version of the Space Cadet pinball game in a series of videos.

247
00:13:43,800 --> 00:13:47,220
And he's doing it all with 3D printed parts and easily acquired standard hardware.

248
00:13:47,240 --> 00:13:49,640
and he's making the plans available to everyone.

249
00:13:50,240 --> 00:13:51,920
No special pinball-only parts,

250
00:13:52,080 --> 00:13:55,300
just regular solenoids, transistors, optosensors, neopixels,

251
00:13:55,920 --> 00:13:56,920
the standard maker parts.

252
00:13:57,840 --> 00:14:01,260
But because Space Cadet Pinball was designed as a video game first,

253
00:14:01,760 --> 00:14:03,580
he's having some interesting engineering challenges

254
00:14:03,780 --> 00:14:05,060
mapping the table to reality.

255
00:14:05,780 --> 00:14:07,640
For instance, on the left side of the game,

256
00:14:07,640 --> 00:14:10,420
if you recall, there's this raised section with mini pop bumpers.

257
00:14:10,960 --> 00:14:12,320
But mini pop bumpers don't exist.

258
00:14:12,960 --> 00:14:15,220
So he's having to design those from scratch.

259
00:14:15,780 --> 00:14:20,800
and because that thing on the left side kind of like is above where the ball also travels underneath,

260
00:14:21,500 --> 00:14:24,800
he's having to figure out how to make these mini popmuppers very thin.

261
00:14:25,380 --> 00:14:27,200
So there's space for the ball underneath.

262
00:14:27,740 --> 00:14:34,000
But he's also designing 3D printable versions of the other common pinball mechanisms like flippers, spinners, knockdown targets, you know, so on.

263
00:14:34,520 --> 00:14:43,880
For a penball nut like me, seeing these mechanisms work is a lot of fun, like seeing them actual as things that he's printed and built on little test jigs.

264
00:14:44,320 --> 00:14:47,860
But it's also neat seeing how they have to be modified for both 3D printing,

265
00:14:48,680 --> 00:14:52,860
because there's design challenges of making a 3D print work like a metal piece or whatever.

266
00:14:53,560 --> 00:14:57,600
And also to fit the not quite real constraints of the SpaceCadet pinball table.

267
00:14:57,940 --> 00:15:00,540
Like I think he's building it at some slightly smaller scale

268
00:15:00,680 --> 00:15:08,320
and using a slightly smaller steel ball instead of a normal size like a 75 millimeter or whatever the standard size of a pinball is.

269
00:15:09,080 --> 00:15:11,820
As someone who struggled to do anything useful with solenoids,

270
00:15:12,540 --> 00:15:14,180
seeing these old pinball style making is,

271
00:15:14,240 --> 00:15:17,860
is adapted and re-engineered for modern use with 3D printed and it's got me interested in

272
00:15:18,100 --> 00:15:19,080
doing solenoid stuff again.

273
00:15:20,600 --> 00:15:23,280
So you might see a solenoid project in the future for me.

274
00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:27,460
So far, he's uploaded two 18-minute videos showing his progress.

275
00:15:27,640 --> 00:15:28,460
Each one is a lot of fun.

276
00:15:28,960 --> 00:15:32,260
He's not just showing the successes, but also when things don't quite work.

277
00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:34,260
It's looking like it's going to be a great build.

278
00:15:34,580 --> 00:15:41,759
There are links in the show notes for the two videos, but there's also links to a simulator

279
00:15:41,780 --> 00:15:44,180
if you want to play SpaceCredit pinball in your browser.

280
00:15:45,580 --> 00:15:48,220
And if you're really interested in SpaceCat at Pinball,

281
00:15:48,740 --> 00:15:52,540
there is a GitHub that has a decompilation of the source code,

282
00:15:52,620 --> 00:15:53,440
the original source code,

283
00:15:53,840 --> 00:15:57,840
from which there are many, many simulators for other platforms that have been made.

284
00:15:57,940 --> 00:16:01,500
So if you want to play SpaceCat at Pinball on your N64 or something, I think you can.

285
00:16:02,060 --> 00:16:02,380
Nice.

286
00:16:03,880 --> 00:16:07,040
I think it's great when makers share a video and show what went wrong,

287
00:16:07,560 --> 00:16:08,960
along with what went right.

288
00:16:09,760 --> 00:16:11,700
It just reinforces.

289
00:16:11,840 --> 00:16:14,700
to normal makers that this is part of the process.

290
00:16:14,920 --> 00:16:17,740
You're not going to get it right the first time every time.

291
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:20,180
So I just love that about the videos.

292
00:16:21,100 --> 00:16:21,460
Yep.

293
00:16:21,760 --> 00:16:21,880
All right.

294
00:16:21,980 --> 00:16:22,640
So what's your last one?

295
00:16:23,340 --> 00:16:26,660
After covering paracord and accordion in the last couple episodes,

296
00:16:27,040 --> 00:16:30,300
I've been wanting to capture all of my music listening to ListenBrainz now.

297
00:16:31,020 --> 00:16:35,120
I just think it's neat having a record of what I've listened to throughout the day

298
00:16:35,540 --> 00:16:37,900
and might play with some visualization with it down the road.

299
00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:40,760
But for now, I just need to capture my vinyl record listens.

300
00:16:41,540 --> 00:16:47,620
I updated my song matrix project that has a mic plugged into a Raspberry Pi and listens to background music and submits that to ListenBrainz.

301
00:16:48,160 --> 00:16:56,960
But I actually came across a better solution called Listening Post for MacOS, which coincidentally just launched a few weeks ago as I was getting into all this.

302
00:16:57,580 --> 00:17:03,820
It's a MacOS app that sits in your menu bar and once a minute takes a short sample with your Mac's mic and submits it to Shazam.

303
00:17:04,319 --> 00:17:09,879
Once the song is identified, it uploads it to ListenBrainz or Last FM or a couple different other providers.

304
00:17:10,620 --> 00:17:13,579
It's just under $20 US and it works flawlessly.

305
00:17:14,220 --> 00:17:17,500
If you're listening to music in the background, I definitely recommend this one.

306
00:17:18,459 --> 00:17:20,560
I then also created a couple of my own apps.

307
00:17:20,760 --> 00:17:25,420
First up, I made a small widget that sits in an eye frame that you can embed on any website.

308
00:17:26,079 --> 00:17:29,520
It just shows the last song you played, whom it was by, and the artwork.

309
00:17:30,120 --> 00:17:33,340
It's all hosted on GitHub pages so you don't even have to host it on a server.

310
00:17:34,220 --> 00:17:35,380
I also made an auto poster.

311
00:17:35,740 --> 00:17:40,160
After some trial and error and realizing that Listen to Brains only does a data dump twice a month,

312
00:17:40,820 --> 00:17:42,720
this aggregates your listens for the month

313
00:17:42,870 --> 00:17:45,240
and shows your top five artists that you listen to.

314
00:17:46,460 --> 00:17:49,020
And lastly, just because I like to overshare,

315
00:17:49,340 --> 00:17:50,320
if you use Blue Sky,

316
00:17:51,460 --> 00:17:53,960
I have an app that's self-hosted

317
00:17:54,040 --> 00:17:56,360
that automatically updates your Blue Sky profile

318
00:17:56,660 --> 00:17:58,160
with the last song you've listened to.

319
00:18:00,260 --> 00:18:02,600
So it's been real fun playing around with ListenBrainz.

320
00:18:02,900 --> 00:18:03,520
And don't worry,

321
00:18:03,620 --> 00:18:06,160
I don't think you will have to listen to me talking about this

322
00:18:06,240 --> 00:18:07,360
for at least a little while.

323
00:18:09,600 --> 00:18:12,920
I love that you're cranking out these ListenBrainz apps.

324
00:18:13,040 --> 00:18:13,520
That's awesome.

325
00:18:15,720 --> 00:18:16,760
Inspiration struck.

326
00:18:17,750 --> 00:18:21,260
And they all just live on GitHub.io.

327
00:18:21,260 --> 00:18:23,140
They don't need any special installation or whatever.

328
00:18:23,400 --> 00:18:23,540
Yep.

329
00:18:24,040 --> 00:18:24,660
That was the goal.

330
00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:27,940
What's your last one for us?

331
00:18:28,880 --> 00:18:29,200
All right.

332
00:18:29,380 --> 00:18:31,360
So are you feeling bummed like I am?

333
00:18:31,460 --> 00:18:35,120
You can't build a gaming PC because of stupid component price spikes.

334
00:18:35,840 --> 00:18:37,340
Frustrated by the Steam Valvement.

335
00:18:37,380 --> 00:18:39,460
machine console has also increased in price.

336
00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:43,700
Want to finally get something useful out of the cryptocurrency fat a few years ago?

337
00:18:44,960 --> 00:18:50,540
If you don't mind doing some work, you can turn a $200 chunk of crypto e-waste into a respectable

338
00:18:50,780 --> 00:18:53,459
steam machine thanks to the BC250.

339
00:18:54,320 --> 00:19:05,440
Chris Persen, writing on the Aftermath.site is essentially a

340
00:19:05,560 --> 00:19:06,740
cut-down PS5.

341
00:19:07,340 --> 00:19:08,460
in a server card format.

342
00:19:08,980 --> 00:19:09,980
They were used to mine Bitcoin

343
00:19:10,220 --> 00:19:11,840
but are now no longer useful for that.

344
00:19:12,580 --> 00:19:15,200
Like the PS5, they are full of fast GPUs,

345
00:19:15,380 --> 00:19:18,660
and more importantly, they have 16 gigabytes of fast RAM

346
00:19:18,820 --> 00:19:22,040
soldered down in a way that makes it not easy to salvage.

347
00:19:23,220 --> 00:19:25,240
Thus, you can find them on eBay for about 100 bucks

348
00:19:25,780 --> 00:19:27,780
or around 200 bucks with an attached SSD.

349
00:19:28,800 --> 00:19:30,260
Chris's article goes into good detail

350
00:19:30,560 --> 00:19:32,700
about the difficulties of turning a server card

351
00:19:32,820 --> 00:19:33,700
into a desktop computer.

352
00:19:34,360 --> 00:19:36,560
There's challenges of cooling it and powering it,

353
00:19:37,120 --> 00:19:38,040
and getting Linux on it.

354
00:19:38,580 --> 00:19:40,200
Thankfully, there's a vibrant community of hackers

355
00:19:40,620 --> 00:19:41,680
with the power supply info,

356
00:19:41,960 --> 00:19:44,080
cooler designs, 3D printable cases,

357
00:19:44,520 --> 00:19:46,640
and detailed Linux instructions to help you out.

358
00:19:47,740 --> 00:19:50,440
The BC250 is well supported in Fedora and Bazite,

359
00:19:50,900 --> 00:19:54,180
that gaming-focused Linux distro we've mentioned on a previous episode.

360
00:19:55,120 --> 00:19:55,960
And it runs Steam great.

361
00:19:56,680 --> 00:19:57,780
And what about gaming performance?

362
00:19:58,140 --> 00:20:02,440
Hey, it's on par or better with the Steam machine at 1080P for most games.

363
00:20:03,480 --> 00:20:06,580
And then, then you realize that BC250

364
00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:10,080
only has 24 GPU cores compared to the 36 and the PS5.

365
00:20:10,780 --> 00:20:13,700
But wait, actually it has 40 GPU cores on the board,

366
00:20:14,200 --> 00:20:16,280
but those unused cores are turned off and locked.

367
00:20:17,020 --> 00:20:20,540
This is usually done for many purposes so potentially failed chips can still be used.

368
00:20:21,500 --> 00:20:23,940
But the community has found out how to unlock these cores,

369
00:20:24,460 --> 00:20:28,200
qualify them to see if they're still good, and if they are, let you use them.

370
00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:33,200
You can easily get a 25% performance improvement just by writing a shell script.

371
00:20:34,080 --> 00:20:34,820
That's insane.

372
00:20:36,160 --> 00:20:39,540
Some people get lucky and get all 40 GPU cores qualified and usable.

373
00:20:40,120 --> 00:20:43,560
And this is before overclocking, which the BC250 is good on,

374
00:20:43,880 --> 00:20:47,760
going above its standard 1,500 megahertz to up to 2,300 megahertz.

375
00:20:49,060 --> 00:20:50,540
So I'm very tempted by the BC250.

376
00:20:51,820 --> 00:20:53,420
I'm also in the queue for a steam machine,

377
00:20:54,040 --> 00:20:56,980
and it's going to be a tough call when I finally have to put down money for it.

378
00:20:57,600 --> 00:21:00,560
I might end up going the BC250 e-waste machine instead.

379
00:21:02,040 --> 00:21:04,900
So is there anything else you have to add to it other than an SSD?

380
00:21:05,640 --> 00:21:09,280
Is that the full cost all in is 200 bucks?

381
00:21:09,880 --> 00:21:10,460
Pretty much.

382
00:21:10,860 --> 00:21:13,260
You have to buy the power supply and some fans.

383
00:21:13,700 --> 00:21:16,800
And so like, you know, maybe an extra $100 for all those things.

384
00:21:17,220 --> 00:21:21,220
I think for some ease of use, sorry, Chris's article goes into this.

385
00:21:21,240 --> 00:21:24,820
There's a little PCB to make like powering it on and off easier.

386
00:21:25,160 --> 00:21:26,700
Like it gives you a power button or something.

387
00:21:27,300 --> 00:21:32,040
But yeah, it seems like it's a pretty dang useful, useful little gadget.

388
00:21:33,160 --> 00:21:34,420
And no one wants it anymore.

389
00:21:34,980 --> 00:21:39,400
And I'll fight anyone who says that 1080P isn't good enough that you need 1440.

390
00:21:39,900 --> 00:21:46,600
Trust me, when you're running 60 frames a second, you can't tell the difference between 1080P, 1440, or 1920.

391
00:21:48,160 --> 00:21:49,620
You really can't.

392
00:21:50,100 --> 00:21:53,560
So for that, the cost for performance is right on with this thing.

393
00:21:54,040 --> 00:21:55,200
Yeah, no, it's so good.

394
00:21:55,860 --> 00:21:58,320
And I just love that it's like crypto e-waste.

395
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:00,980
It's like, oh, finally we're getting something out of these stupid people.

396
00:22:04,090 --> 00:22:04,200
Yes.

397
00:22:05,400 --> 00:22:06,340
Well, that's our show.

398
00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:08,800
For detailed show notes and transcripts,

399
00:22:09,040 --> 00:22:10,560
or if you want to order a free sticker,

400
00:22:11,220 --> 00:22:13,480
or want to follow us on Blue Sky or Mastodon,

401
00:22:13,780 --> 00:22:15,160
visit the bootloader.net.

402
00:22:15,660 --> 00:22:17,540
Until next time, stay positive.