1 00:00:05,100 --> 00:00:06,940 Welcome to The Bootloader. I'm Paul Cutler. 2 00:00:07,700 --> 00:00:14,780 And I'm Tod Kurt. The show works like this. In each episode, we each bring three things we're excited to share, chatting about each one for about five minutes. 3 00:00:15,260 --> 00:00:20,280 For detailed show notes and transcripts, visit the bootloader.net. Paul, what's your first one for us? 4 00:00:20,740 --> 00:00:28,200 First up is openboardsguide.com, a new website dedicated to news reviews and project highlights for embedded boards and microcontrollers. 5 00:00:28,520 --> 00:00:34,780 And when I say new, it's brand new having just launched last month and only has three stories so far. 6 00:00:35,280 --> 00:00:39,040 But if you want to get in on the ground floor and see something grow, now is the time to check it out. 7 00:00:39,800 --> 00:00:45,080 Open Board Guides is founded by David Groom, aka I ShotJR on social media. 8 00:00:45,460 --> 00:00:50,220 David is or was the community editor at Make Magazine, so this is a subject I'm guessing he knows well. 9 00:00:50,920 --> 00:00:54,540 The first two reviews are focused around two very different Arduino boards. 10 00:00:55,100 --> 00:00:58,240 The first review is for the Arduino Ventuno, which means 21 and. 11 00:00:58,280 --> 00:01:01,060 in Italian and is a nod to Arduino's birthday this year. 12 00:01:01,640 --> 00:01:05,680 It's a $300 dev board with tons of storage, networking, 13 00:01:05,880 --> 00:01:08,200 and the ability to hook up a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. 14 00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:11,180 The article calls it a real kitchen sink dev board 15 00:01:11,640 --> 00:01:12,920 with all the connections at sports, 16 00:01:13,140 --> 00:01:15,380 including a 40-pin Raspberry Pi-like header. 17 00:01:16,300 --> 00:01:19,120 The second review focused on the Arduino Nesso N1, 18 00:01:19,720 --> 00:01:21,200 which is by M5 Stack, 19 00:01:21,740 --> 00:01:24,360 who makes what I think are really neat and innovative boards. 20 00:01:25,100 --> 00:01:28,220 David shared in the article that M5 launches a new board 21 00:01:28,240 --> 00:01:31,520 week and has a wall to keep track of them all, which is really neat. 22 00:01:32,600 --> 00:01:39,820 That NSON1 is a tiny solution that features an ESP32C6 with a 1.14-inch iPS touchscreen. 23 00:01:40,560 --> 00:01:45,680 It has everything you need in a board, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 low energy, infrared, 24 00:01:46,140 --> 00:01:49,600 expander ports, and thread and Zigby support for your home automation projects. 25 00:01:50,300 --> 00:01:55,020 And it has a Lora radio and a spot to hold the antenna built in all for 50 bucks. 26 00:01:56,040 --> 00:01:58,200 And lastly, just so you don't think they're all doing a lot. 27 00:01:58,220 --> 00:02:02,320 boards is a review of the Pimoroni badgeware Tufty running MicroPython. 28 00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:08,800 The Tufty is the high end of three badgeware offerings from Pimoroni and features an RP 2350 29 00:02:09,399 --> 00:02:12,720 with 16 megs of flash, Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth 5.2. 30 00:02:13,480 --> 00:02:21,240 It also features a LIPO battery with integrated charging that can keep a charge going up to 12 hours with 100 days of standby and a real-time clock. 31 00:02:22,040 --> 00:02:28,180 What's different about this one from the other two badges Pomerone offers is the 2.8-inch TFT IPS. 32 00:02:28,200 --> 00:02:31,780 LCD screen with a 320 by 240 resolution. 33 00:02:32,660 --> 00:02:34,640 This all comes in a package for about $55, 34 00:02:35,090 --> 00:02:38,700 and you can even buy an add-on STEM kit for more projects with the Tufty. 35 00:02:39,500 --> 00:02:42,860 The only question I have is for this particular review is who wrote it. 36 00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:47,280 I came across a blue sky post from Straithe, who mentions they're an editor at the site, 37 00:02:47,780 --> 00:02:49,500 and the Tufty review is their first submission. 38 00:02:50,240 --> 00:02:54,400 But the byline at the top is David, so it might just be a quirk of their publishing platform. 39 00:02:55,120 --> 00:02:56,100 Overall, I like the site. 40 00:02:56,280 --> 00:02:57,760 The reviews are hands-on and thoughtful, 41 00:02:58,060 --> 00:03:02,740 and I like at the end of each review that it concludes with a what I'd love and room for improvement section. 42 00:03:03,440 --> 00:03:08,740 I'm always looking for neutral, trustworthy review sites, and there aren't a lot of folks out there doing board and microcontroller reviews. 43 00:03:09,300 --> 00:03:10,580 So maybe go check this one out. 44 00:03:10,960 --> 00:03:11,540 Yeah, this is great. 45 00:03:12,060 --> 00:03:20,940 I like all the stuff that I shot J.R. has posted on various socials, his various publishes on making all that kind of stuff. 46 00:03:21,340 --> 00:03:27,580 And I used to always get the make board guide back when the number of boards was like kind of tractable. 47 00:03:27,680 --> 00:03:29,420 Now there's like an infinite number of boards. 48 00:03:29,920 --> 00:03:32,380 But the board guide was always really handy to be like, 49 00:03:32,460 --> 00:03:34,540 okay, this is a great way of kind of thumbing through 50 00:03:34,540 --> 00:03:38,360 and see what's the kind of cool boards in the different spaces 51 00:03:38,600 --> 00:03:40,980 because there's all these different ways you can use these 52 00:03:40,980 --> 00:03:41,820 or do we don't kind of boards. 53 00:03:42,460 --> 00:03:47,640 And I didn't even know about this Nesso N1, this M5 stack thing. 54 00:03:48,260 --> 00:03:51,800 It's totally positioned to me as a great thing to use for mesh-tastic 55 00:03:51,980 --> 00:03:55,540 because it's got a display and a Lora radio and a couple of buttons. 56 00:03:55,740 --> 00:03:57,280 And so it could run a messtastic. 57 00:03:58,459 --> 00:04:03,940 interface and it's like a nicely real device. It's not some kit yet put together. 58 00:04:04,360 --> 00:04:07,940 Right. I mean, the way they've got the antenna built in and then the screen makes it a really 59 00:04:08,120 --> 00:04:13,740 nice little device for 50 bucks. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I'm curious to see what the meshtastic folk 60 00:04:13,860 --> 00:04:18,880 have, if they've seen this and like, I think porting to a new board is pretty, pretty easy. 61 00:04:19,079 --> 00:04:23,840 So maybe we'll see mesh task pretty soon on it. Which case, I might get one in playing with 62 00:04:23,840 --> 00:04:26,900 it because I'm always looking for a way to actually, to actually use meshastic. 63 00:04:27,160 --> 00:04:27,360 Right. 64 00:04:27,620 --> 00:04:28,760 As opposed to just goof it around with it. 65 00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:29,920 I know. 66 00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:32,260 I keep telling myself, the next time I make an Adafruit order, 67 00:04:32,420 --> 00:04:33,580 I'm going to order a Lora board, 68 00:04:33,820 --> 00:04:35,480 and I just haven't got around to it yet. 69 00:04:36,040 --> 00:04:36,160 Totally. 70 00:04:36,900 --> 00:04:38,460 But yeah, so I'm here. 71 00:04:38,760 --> 00:04:40,320 I'm hoping that open boards guide, 72 00:04:42,120 --> 00:04:44,740 openboardsguide.com becomes a big thing 73 00:04:44,960 --> 00:04:46,380 because we need something like this. 74 00:04:46,800 --> 00:04:47,140 I agree. 75 00:04:47,360 --> 00:04:48,440 What's your first one for us? 76 00:04:49,340 --> 00:04:51,980 My first one for this week is bump mesh.com. 77 00:04:52,940 --> 00:04:54,880 So bump mesh is a web-based tool 78 00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:56,780 to let you add arbitrary textures. 79 00:04:57,040 --> 00:04:58,380 to your 3D printable models. 80 00:04:58,920 --> 00:05:01,540 Just import an STL, pick a texture or upload your own, 81 00:05:01,980 --> 00:05:03,200 adjust the texture settings, 82 00:05:03,800 --> 00:05:05,320 and export your modified STL. 83 00:05:05,420 --> 00:05:05,900 It's free. 84 00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:07,300 It runs in your browser. 85 00:05:07,580 --> 00:05:10,160 There's no service, no login, no privacy issues. 86 00:05:10,700 --> 00:05:13,060 I think you can even like just download it locally 87 00:05:13,520 --> 00:05:14,800 and run it entirely that way if you wanted to. 88 00:05:15,280 --> 00:05:18,460 If you ever use the fuzzy texture option in your slicer 89 00:05:18,540 --> 00:05:21,980 when printing a 3D model to get a more interesting surface on your prints, 90 00:05:22,540 --> 00:05:23,660 you'll definitely want to try this out. 91 00:05:23,760 --> 00:05:24,640 It's really cool. 92 00:05:25,220 --> 00:05:26,800 So ButtMesh was created by Stefan. 93 00:05:26,820 --> 00:05:28,480 from the YouTube channel, C&C Kitchen. 94 00:05:28,800 --> 00:05:30,640 If you watch 3D printer or stuff at all, 95 00:05:30,780 --> 00:05:32,600 you'll have probably come across this channel. 96 00:05:33,200 --> 00:05:35,380 He wanted something more interesting than just the fuzzy skin. 97 00:05:35,660 --> 00:05:37,480 He recognized that in 3D computer graphics, 98 00:05:38,240 --> 00:05:40,680 there are these displacement maps or bump maps 99 00:05:40,820 --> 00:05:43,120 that simulate the bumps and wrinkles of a surface, 100 00:05:43,680 --> 00:05:45,080 and these are just black and white images, 101 00:05:45,620 --> 00:05:47,920 where the pixel brightness corresponds to the height 102 00:05:48,360 --> 00:05:49,880 above the normal level of the surface. 103 00:05:50,720 --> 00:05:52,440 And those bump maps that exist 104 00:05:52,560 --> 00:05:55,620 could actually perturb the surface of a 3D model 105 00:05:55,640 --> 00:05:58,100 if you had some clever algorithm to do it, which he figured out. 106 00:05:58,370 --> 00:06:02,140 And so he turned the simulated bumps and creases into actual ones. 107 00:06:02,640 --> 00:06:06,820 And there are tons of existing bump map textures of out there available to try out. 108 00:06:07,400 --> 00:06:13,000 But also, since the bump map is just a black and white image, or a grayscale image, I should say, you can make your own. 109 00:06:13,050 --> 00:06:15,960 You can just draw something and have that be your texture. 110 00:06:16,430 --> 00:06:17,820 It's pretty cool. 111 00:06:18,220 --> 00:06:23,200 So in bump mesh, the web app, when you're actually using it, once you pick a texture map, you can adjust the many parameters of it. 112 00:06:23,260 --> 00:06:25,600 So it wraps around your model in the way that makes sense. 113 00:06:25,620 --> 00:06:30,160 sense, like if you're making a, like if you have a brick texture for the sides of the, 114 00:06:30,280 --> 00:06:33,420 of your model, you might not want to have the top be a brick texture, for instance. 115 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:38,700 You can also adjust the various scaling and how it joins at the edges. 116 00:06:39,220 --> 00:06:43,060 So the, like the bricks line up at the edges, if it's a sort of a right angle or something. 117 00:06:43,600 --> 00:06:47,540 There's a built-in 3D visualizer, so you can see all these changes in real time. 118 00:06:47,920 --> 00:06:52,060 And it's doing, like, using the bump maps as 3D graphics originally intended them to be. 119 00:06:52,440 --> 00:06:55,540 But there's also a mode to show you what the 3D printable. 120 00:06:55,960 --> 00:06:57,860 like deformed STL would look like as well. 121 00:06:58,620 --> 00:06:59,860 And then you just click export. 122 00:07:00,320 --> 00:07:00,960 It's a lot of fun. 123 00:07:01,360 --> 00:07:02,440 You can try out different textures. 124 00:07:02,640 --> 00:07:04,840 There's a bunch of textures like sort of built into the app, 125 00:07:04,940 --> 00:07:06,460 but you can add your own really, 126 00:07:06,480 --> 00:07:07,020 be really easy. 127 00:07:07,240 --> 00:07:09,480 And even just for simple shapes like spheres and cubes, 128 00:07:09,600 --> 00:07:10,700 you can make them look totally different 129 00:07:10,820 --> 00:07:13,380 by making them look all weird and, you know, 130 00:07:13,460 --> 00:07:15,560 made of rock or made of wood or something. 131 00:07:16,100 --> 00:07:18,680 So this is highly recommended a great way of adding detail 132 00:07:18,880 --> 00:07:22,460 to your 3D models without having to model that detail in the CAD program. 133 00:07:23,100 --> 00:07:24,000 That's really neat. 134 00:07:24,720 --> 00:07:24,860 Yeah. 135 00:07:26,040 --> 00:07:30,500 When you say the word bump maps, it takes me back to the early days of OpenGL and Direct 3D 136 00:07:31,080 --> 00:07:33,460 when 3D video cards were just becoming a thing. 137 00:07:34,080 --> 00:07:38,620 But it's so neat to see, you know, 30 years later to see the similar technology being employed 138 00:07:38,640 --> 00:07:39,800 in such a novel way. 139 00:07:40,300 --> 00:07:45,120 Just even having thought this thing up and then actually create the algorithm that does 140 00:07:45,180 --> 00:07:46,160 it as just ingenious. 141 00:07:46,840 --> 00:07:49,540 Yeah, I think it's like, I think it's pretty easy. 142 00:07:49,660 --> 00:07:54,240 I mean, the fact that we can render 3D models with bump maps and shading and all this 143 00:07:54,200 --> 00:07:59,640 stuff just in your browser is kind of bonkers. And so I think it's like a pretty well-hewn 144 00:08:00,720 --> 00:08:08,580 path for him to be able to like modify the STL. But yeah, it's a so cool. So what's your next 145 00:08:08,660 --> 00:08:13,440 one for the for this time? As listeners know, I'm a big music fan. And in addition to my record 146 00:08:13,560 --> 00:08:17,920 collection, I have a large collection of CDs I've ripped and imported into Apple Music. Plus 147 00:08:18,020 --> 00:08:23,520 everything I've ever bought there as well. But the music app on macOS does not bring me joy. And I'm 148 00:08:23,540 --> 00:08:24,780 always looking for an alternative. 149 00:08:25,860 --> 00:08:27,060 Parachord is one alternative. 150 00:08:27,480 --> 00:08:29,240 It's an electron app that runs on Windows, 151 00:08:29,400 --> 00:08:31,720 Mac, and Linux and connects multiple music services 152 00:08:31,920 --> 00:08:33,140 into one user experience. 153 00:08:33,940 --> 00:08:35,460 You can connect and sync your Apple Music 154 00:08:35,760 --> 00:08:37,180 and or Spotify accounts, 155 00:08:37,659 --> 00:08:39,320 so everything that was available for streaming 156 00:08:39,500 --> 00:08:41,200 can be streamed by Parachord as well, 157 00:08:41,860 --> 00:08:43,539 and you can point it at a local library, 158 00:08:43,979 --> 00:08:45,440 and you can also link your band camp 159 00:08:45,780 --> 00:08:46,780 and YouTube accounts. 160 00:08:47,640 --> 00:08:49,540 I don't know about Spotify, but be warned, 161 00:08:49,860 --> 00:08:51,540 sinking my large Apple music collection 162 00:08:51,660 --> 00:08:53,260 of about 34,000 songs, 163 00:08:53,380 --> 00:08:59,820 took a while. I should have timed it, but I feel like it was at least 15 minutes. The UI itself is a little 164 00:08:59,940 --> 00:09:05,680 bit sluggish. It is an electron app after all, but from clicking playlist to my collection, for example, 165 00:09:05,840 --> 00:09:10,920 can take a good three to five seconds, which feels like forever. I don't know if it's the size of my 166 00:09:11,100 --> 00:09:15,820 collection or if it's because it's an electron app, but I'm running this on an M4 Mac Mini, 167 00:09:16,040 --> 00:09:21,940 so it's not like it's an old machine. Overall, though, I do like the user experience. It's exactly what 168 00:09:21,960 --> 00:09:26,140 you would expect a music library app to be, and it makes easy to switch between albums, 169 00:09:26,460 --> 00:09:30,840 artists, and playlists. When you're looking at your library, it will have an icon for where you 170 00:09:30,920 --> 00:09:36,100 can stream it, Apple Music, BandCamp, or YouTube, for example. But BandCamp and YouTube actually 171 00:09:36,300 --> 00:09:40,240 punch you out to a browser for streaming. They're not integrated in the app like Apple Music 172 00:09:40,420 --> 00:09:45,960 and Spotify are, or like using your local library. It's got a neat Discover feature with a few 173 00:09:46,160 --> 00:09:51,260 different categories such as fresh drops, new songs by artists in your collection, or recommendations, 174 00:09:51,740 --> 00:09:54,080 which if you use Last FM or Listen Brains, 175 00:09:54,440 --> 00:09:56,300 it will learn what you like from what you listen to. 176 00:09:57,240 --> 00:09:59,800 And lastly, you will either love this or hate it, 177 00:09:59,940 --> 00:10:02,200 but it does have some AI features built in. 178 00:10:02,760 --> 00:10:05,480 It looks like Claude assisted in writing the code as well. 179 00:10:06,280 --> 00:10:08,660 The AI features include an MCP server. 180 00:10:08,870 --> 00:10:11,120 I used my Cloud API key to test it out, 181 00:10:11,260 --> 00:10:15,140 and you can interact with your collection right from Claude on the desktop. 182 00:10:15,380 --> 00:10:17,860 For example, I asked it, how many songs by prints do I have? 183 00:10:17,920 --> 00:10:19,940 And it came back and didn't hallucinate. 184 00:10:19,940 --> 00:10:20,980 It actually had it right. 185 00:10:22,220 --> 00:10:26,460 It uses AI as a chatbot to play music, manage the queue, or discover new music. 186 00:10:27,040 --> 00:10:34,560 When you do open the chat bot, you'll notice the Share My Data is defaulted to off, which is a nice touch, but you can opt into telemetry if you want. 187 00:10:35,300 --> 00:10:41,340 You can also use Olamma locally as a model or any of the other three big AI companies if you have an API key. 188 00:10:42,060 --> 00:10:49,060 It features a plug-in architecture allowing add-ons like connecting to bands in town or songkick to see what concerts will be coming to your town. 189 00:10:49,940 --> 00:10:53,800 Overall, I really like it, though it can be a bit sluggish, like I mentioned at times. 190 00:10:54,380 --> 00:10:58,100 If you're looking for an alternative to the Apple Music or Spotify default experience, 191 00:10:58,579 --> 00:10:59,860 Parachord is worth checking out. 192 00:11:00,420 --> 00:11:00,880 This is cool. 193 00:11:02,160 --> 00:11:06,240 I've been so frustrated of the years because I've been using Apple music since it was called iTunes 194 00:11:06,800 --> 00:11:08,680 back in the early 2000s or whatever. 195 00:11:08,760 --> 00:11:12,820 And it used to be the best way of organizing your music, at least to me, 196 00:11:13,140 --> 00:11:16,700 because back when it was just like you had your directory full of MP3s or whatever. 197 00:11:17,200 --> 00:11:17,340 Right. 198 00:11:18,540 --> 00:11:21,860 It seemed to be like a very straightforward way of categories and stuff and let you, 199 00:11:22,490 --> 00:11:24,580 let you reorganize things in a pretty seamless way. 200 00:11:24,960 --> 00:11:30,740 But man, it's just gotten weirder because they've added a bunch of services on top of it that I'm just not interested in. 201 00:11:31,280 --> 00:11:32,820 And so it's nice to have an alternative. 202 00:11:33,060 --> 00:11:37,740 I think the sluggishness might just be they have not optimized it yet for large libraries. 203 00:11:38,540 --> 00:11:42,920 And so maybe they'll figure out a way to do that because that just sounds like a large data problem. 204 00:11:43,540 --> 00:11:44,600 Yeah, it very well could be. 205 00:11:44,700 --> 00:11:47,820 And I do have a large library, so it wouldn't surprise me one bit. 206 00:11:48,020 --> 00:11:48,260 Totally. 207 00:11:49,860 --> 00:11:50,980 What's your next one for us? 208 00:11:51,500 --> 00:11:51,720 All right. 209 00:11:51,900 --> 00:11:53,460 Speaking of cross-platform apps, 210 00:11:53,540 --> 00:11:55,820 I got a little bit of shameless self-promotion. 211 00:11:56,420 --> 00:11:59,760 I wrote a cross-platform app for Mac, Windows, and Linux, 212 00:11:59,960 --> 00:12:00,880 called Serial Plotster. 213 00:12:01,500 --> 00:12:04,740 If you can hear the scare quotes around Plotster, 214 00:12:04,860 --> 00:12:05,620 I'll describe that later. 215 00:12:06,380 --> 00:12:09,460 It's a data graphing app for use with Arduino, MicroPython, 216 00:12:09,720 --> 00:12:11,340 CircuitPython, similar boards. 217 00:12:12,120 --> 00:12:15,100 If your project spits out data, this app can graph it. 218 00:12:15,620 --> 00:12:17,640 And it's a very tiny download at 10 megabytes. 219 00:12:17,780 --> 00:12:18,840 and it launches really fast. 220 00:12:19,820 --> 00:12:21,360 These are aspects that are very important to me. 221 00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:25,620 So back in 2015, one of the best additions to the Arduino IDE 222 00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:27,860 that was added was the serial plotter. 223 00:12:28,420 --> 00:12:30,600 Just print a value in your Arduino sketch, 224 00:12:30,700 --> 00:12:31,980 and you can see a cool plot of it. 225 00:12:32,400 --> 00:12:33,620 Add more values with commas, 226 00:12:33,740 --> 00:12:37,320 and now you've got a multi-series real-time plot of those values against each other. 227 00:12:38,060 --> 00:12:39,400 The obvious use is data logging, 228 00:12:39,960 --> 00:12:41,620 but I find it really helpful for debugging. 229 00:12:42,320 --> 00:12:44,720 Being able to see how a value changes graphically 230 00:12:44,880 --> 00:12:46,980 just hits different than watching scrolling numbers. 231 00:12:47,600 --> 00:12:56,520 it's also much easier to catch when you've got a glitch and a value that should be set at a certain value or smoothly moving, suddenly jumps to like a max or a man. 232 00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:01,820 But as I started working more in CircuitPython and MicroPython, I lost the plotter. 233 00:13:01,860 --> 00:13:08,960 I tried using the Arduino plotter, but it's very helpful in grabbing the serial port, making connecting back to the REPL really frustrating. 234 00:13:09,840 --> 00:13:16,860 On the Mu editor, it's got a nice plotter, but it's also pretty port grabby because it expects you that you're just living in the Mu editor editing your, 235 00:13:16,980 --> 00:13:20,160 CircuitPython and the repel and graphing, all that kind of stuff. 236 00:13:20,800 --> 00:13:25,940 Thonny editor got a plotter in 2019 inspired by Mu, but I've never liked Thonny for much. 237 00:13:26,400 --> 00:13:27,540 I've never really inspected why. 238 00:13:27,640 --> 00:13:31,240 I don't like it, but I'm not a big, big Thonny fan. 239 00:13:31,600 --> 00:13:33,420 So clearly plotters are a useful thing. 240 00:13:33,900 --> 00:13:37,160 All these I dees have them, but I want to use my own editor. 241 00:13:37,520 --> 00:13:40,760 I don't really want a huge IDE that may or may not have a plotter extension. 242 00:13:41,500 --> 00:13:43,980 So every once in a while, I'd go looking for plotter apps. 243 00:13:44,540 --> 00:13:46,440 There are a few, but they're the weird, 244 00:13:47,280 --> 00:13:49,220 or abandoned now or they're web-based, 245 00:13:49,940 --> 00:13:51,300 which means they have to use Chromium, 246 00:13:51,760 --> 00:13:52,720 and I'm not a Chrome user. 247 00:13:52,900 --> 00:13:54,280 I use Firefox and Safari. 248 00:13:55,180 --> 00:13:57,160 But one really great web-based one 249 00:13:57,560 --> 00:13:59,240 is called Web Serial Plotter 250 00:13:59,460 --> 00:14:01,300 by Atomic 14 on GitHub. 251 00:14:02,140 --> 00:14:03,420 If you run a chromium-based browser 252 00:14:03,520 --> 00:14:04,380 that supports WebSereal 253 00:14:04,680 --> 00:14:06,880 and if you like web apps, 254 00:14:07,240 --> 00:14:07,980 it's a great solution, 255 00:14:08,160 --> 00:14:08,900 no need to look further. 256 00:14:09,420 --> 00:14:11,440 But I wanted an actual application 257 00:14:11,700 --> 00:14:13,440 on my desktops for both Mac and Linux. 258 00:14:14,100 --> 00:14:15,220 I've built many of these in the past, 259 00:14:15,620 --> 00:14:21,540 My normal tool of choice is Electron because, as you know, it lets you write JavaScript to make a desktop app. 260 00:14:21,660 --> 00:14:22,880 It's really easy to get going. 261 00:14:23,880 --> 00:14:30,200 This is great, but it means the app ends up being over 200 megabytes in size just for like a hello world 262 00:14:31,180 --> 00:14:36,560 because you're shipping a whole chromium browser that's just wearing your applications close. 263 00:14:37,260 --> 00:14:40,040 It's also slowed up at launch, as you might expect, and it takes up a lot of RAM. 264 00:14:40,740 --> 00:14:42,500 So I always feel a little bit gross writing electron. 265 00:14:43,440 --> 00:14:44,680 It just feels inefficient. 266 00:14:44,940 --> 00:14:49,220 If I write three or four little handy tools for myself using electron, 267 00:14:49,840 --> 00:14:52,480 suddenly I'm using up all the RAM and CPU of my computer. 268 00:14:53,700 --> 00:14:58,300 But there's an alternative I've been playing with lately called Tori, Tauri, T-A-U-R-I, 269 00:14:59,160 --> 00:15:03,380 which is the same ideas as Electron, but it uses Rust for the OS-specific stuff, 270 00:15:03,800 --> 00:15:07,760 and the OS's built-in web renderer for your apps GUI. 271 00:15:08,100 --> 00:15:09,780 So if you're experienced with making web apps, 272 00:15:10,240 --> 00:15:13,240 90% of your skills and processes stay the same. 273 00:15:13,920 --> 00:15:15,980 But if you can figure out that last 10% that's Rust, 274 00:15:16,440 --> 00:15:19,480 you're rewarded with an app that's literally 20 times smaller 275 00:15:20,260 --> 00:15:22,420 and has a tiny RAM and CPU usage footprint. 276 00:15:23,480 --> 00:15:24,220 But I don't know Rust. 277 00:15:25,780 --> 00:15:28,180 I know just enough to know I don't know anything about Rust. 278 00:15:28,720 --> 00:15:33,060 I banged on adapting the concepts of the Web Serial Plotter Project to Towery 279 00:15:33,110 --> 00:15:34,800 and got it sort of working, 280 00:15:35,360 --> 00:15:36,880 but was ruining up against my lack of knowledge 281 00:15:37,080 --> 00:15:38,880 and my lack of modern web development skills. 282 00:15:39,360 --> 00:15:43,720 So I brought in cloud code like everyone does now and asked it to figure out what I was doing wrong. 283 00:15:43,960 --> 00:15:44,760 And it was quite helpful. 284 00:15:45,220 --> 00:15:52,600 It rewrote huge swaths of my Rust code and cleaned up a lot of how I was using React objects in the GUI. 285 00:15:53,120 --> 00:15:56,260 Turns out, I don't know React nearly as well as I thought I did. 286 00:15:56,820 --> 00:16:02,320 And then, most importantly, it helped me write a barrage of tests for the data parser in Rust. 287 00:16:02,960 --> 00:16:09,320 Because parsing all this data is because it can support many different formats of data, the parser is a little bit complicated. 288 00:16:09,360 --> 00:16:13,160 and so having a set of tests for that is great. 289 00:16:13,720 --> 00:16:15,700 Now that I can have tests written for me, 290 00:16:16,100 --> 00:16:18,280 I've been much more of a fan of projects having test suite. 291 00:16:20,160 --> 00:16:21,180 Everything should have tests now 292 00:16:21,340 --> 00:16:23,960 because you can just ask an AI to write the test for us. 293 00:16:24,520 --> 00:16:25,780 So anyway, there's this app now. 294 00:16:26,240 --> 00:16:28,080 Thanks Atomic 14 for the web serial plotter. 295 00:16:28,200 --> 00:16:31,500 It was the basis for what I made with Serial Plotster. 296 00:16:32,160 --> 00:16:35,480 It looks like that he also used Cloud Code to help write it 297 00:16:35,620 --> 00:16:37,320 and released it all under the GPL3. 298 00:16:37,560 --> 00:16:44,840 So Serial Plotster is also GPL3, and you can download pre-built and signed binaries for MacOS, Linux, and Windows. 299 00:16:45,900 --> 00:16:46,680 And if you like it, let me know. 300 00:16:46,900 --> 00:16:48,040 If you use it, let me know. 301 00:16:49,100 --> 00:16:50,100 This is kind of a niche tool. 302 00:16:50,560 --> 00:16:54,840 If you have any suggestions for improvements or fixes, also please let me know. 303 00:16:54,960 --> 00:16:55,500 Well done. 304 00:16:55,500 --> 00:17:01,560 And if you want to see it in action, check out the April 30th, JPs workshop on the Adafruit YouTube channel. 305 00:17:01,680 --> 00:17:05,839 He demoed Serial Plotster on his show as well, so you can actually see it. 306 00:17:06,120 --> 00:17:12,839 The thing that you don't mention is you kind of complained about how some of the other apps you would grab the serial port. 307 00:17:13,060 --> 00:17:16,199 How is Serial Plotster a little different in that regard? 308 00:17:17,100 --> 00:17:24,040 So the sort of normal way that I'm used to dealing with things that access serial ports is you've got a connect button and a disconnect button. 309 00:17:24,560 --> 00:17:31,580 And you have to explicitly press the connect button and you use the serial port and then you press the disconnect button when you're done to use a serial port. 310 00:17:32,400 --> 00:17:35,760 But in Arduino and stuff, it's more like you just set which. 311 00:17:35,860 --> 00:17:41,040 port you want to use and it tries to use the port all the time. And it's really hard to get it 312 00:17:41,350 --> 00:17:46,420 for you to say no. There's no explicit disconnect button because the assumption is like, oh, 313 00:17:46,500 --> 00:17:50,800 once you've hooked up a board, you're going to be interacting with that board entirely with 314 00:17:51,480 --> 00:17:57,380 Arduino or with Moo or something. And so it doesn't really have the concept of multi-application 315 00:17:57,620 --> 00:18:03,640 use of the serial port. So that's all. It's a more friendly way of doing stuff with serial port-based 316 00:18:03,800 --> 00:18:08,360 projects, but it also makes it hard for things when I do things like me, where I like have 317 00:18:08,740 --> 00:18:14,140 my terminal program, looks at the REPL, and then my serial plotter looks at the, looks at the 318 00:18:15,470 --> 00:18:15,580 serial port. 319 00:18:15,900 --> 00:18:16,280 So I am. 320 00:18:16,640 --> 00:18:19,260 So Paul, what's your, your third one for this week? 321 00:18:19,960 --> 00:18:23,740 When my kids were younger, I was always introducing them to my hobbies and interests with 322 00:18:24,100 --> 00:18:24,880 limited success. 323 00:18:25,880 --> 00:18:29,660 I didn't become a maker until they were almost fully grown, but if I had younger kids, 324 00:18:30,160 --> 00:18:32,820 I definitely introduced them to picoCAD 2. 325 00:18:33,780 --> 00:18:39,700 PicoCAD 2 is an app, I won't call it a game that's sold on Steam and Itchio for just under $15. 326 00:18:40,820 --> 00:18:44,560 PicoCad 2 is available on Mac or Windows and it just came out over a month ago. 327 00:18:45,440 --> 00:18:51,040 It describes itself as focused on the bare essentials of 3D modeling, blending simplicity with creativity, 328 00:18:51,840 --> 00:18:55,020 allowing you to make low-poly 3D models with just a few clicks. 329 00:18:55,920 --> 00:18:59,420 I've included a link to a two-minute feature video on YouTube that shows it in action. 330 00:19:00,120 --> 00:19:02,860 Picoad 2 features a CAD tool set you'd expect where you can. 331 00:19:02,880 --> 00:19:06,780 can draw lines to create shapes and then fill them in with textures and colors. 332 00:19:07,580 --> 00:19:11,940 The homepage and video highlights a big reg truck and trailer with a spinning GameCube 333 00:19:12,560 --> 00:19:13,440 animation as well. 334 00:19:14,580 --> 00:19:18,620 picoCAD 2 has three main modes, modeling, texturing, and animating. 335 00:19:19,220 --> 00:19:23,260 You start with modeling, add the textures, and then you can animate the final model, 336 00:19:23,700 --> 00:19:27,960 and you can even make it a spinning GIF in PicoCad 2 to show off your new model and share it. 337 00:19:28,740 --> 00:19:32,840 I've also included links to its manual and a five-minute YouTube video that gets you up and 338 00:19:32,860 --> 00:19:33,660 running pretty quickly. 339 00:19:34,580 --> 00:19:40,600 One of the neatest features, I think, is the ability to export your models in GLTG or OBJ 340 00:19:40,780 --> 00:19:45,260 slash MTL and ping sprite sheets so it can be imported into popular game engines. 341 00:19:45,900 --> 00:19:48,620 So many kids out there are always wanting to build their own games. 342 00:19:48,660 --> 00:19:53,260 Well, here's a nice little first step of building blocks to getting game assets. 343 00:19:54,320 --> 00:19:58,460 For only $15, I wish my kids were still young enough or interested in something like 344 00:19:58,660 --> 00:19:59,280 picoCAD 2. 345 00:19:59,540 --> 00:19:59,980 Check it out. 346 00:20:00,580 --> 00:20:01,360 Yeah, this is really neat. 347 00:20:02,080 --> 00:20:05,820 I've seen a lot of kids who love to like make, build stuff in Minecraft, 348 00:20:07,020 --> 00:20:09,000 but Minecraft is sort of its own little thing. 349 00:20:09,100 --> 00:20:12,600 And also its way of doing stuff is voxels based where you're not, 350 00:20:13,860 --> 00:20:13,960 you're not doing normal modeling. 351 00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:15,580 You're doing these like, you know, 352 00:20:15,640 --> 00:20:18,240 let's stack a bunch of Lego bricks on top of each other essentially, 353 00:20:18,740 --> 00:20:19,180 which is cool. 354 00:20:20,520 --> 00:20:22,000 But it's not how most video games are done. 355 00:20:22,100 --> 00:20:23,380 It's not how like Cat has done. 356 00:20:23,760 --> 00:20:24,080 This is, 357 00:20:24,500 --> 00:20:27,340 this looks almost more like my first blender. 358 00:20:27,920 --> 00:20:30,600 Because it's got a lot of the same workflow as blender where you're, 359 00:20:30,820 --> 00:20:31,140 you're, 360 00:20:31,180 --> 00:20:34,800 creating these shapes and you're putting the textures on them and you're animating them. 361 00:20:35,280 --> 00:20:38,060 I'd almost call it more blender than CAD because, like to me, 362 00:20:38,180 --> 00:20:45,700 CAD implies a sort of parametricness and dependency tree aspect, which I've not yet seen in 363 00:20:45,780 --> 00:20:48,740 PicoCAD, but this is really, really fascinating. 364 00:20:48,920 --> 00:20:54,980 Yeah, the fact that it can be used, the output can be used in actual game engines. 365 00:20:56,080 --> 00:20:56,920 It's pretty cool. 366 00:20:57,420 --> 00:20:57,500 Yeah. 367 00:20:57,900 --> 00:20:59,620 It's just really neat building blocks. 368 00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:02,060 And like you said, it reminds you a blender. 369 00:21:02,390 --> 00:21:04,240 You could start with this, get good with it, 370 00:21:04,620 --> 00:21:06,400 and then graduate to something like a blender, 371 00:21:06,540 --> 00:21:09,580 or maybe even a Fusion 360 if you wanted to get into the CAD part more. 372 00:21:09,860 --> 00:21:10,080 Totally. 373 00:21:10,150 --> 00:21:11,300 Yeah, this is really great. 374 00:21:11,840 --> 00:21:13,120 All right, what's your last one for us? 375 00:21:13,640 --> 00:21:17,240 Okay, so there's some new research in 3D printer model slicing 376 00:21:18,740 --> 00:21:20,900 that I just learned about called wave overhangs. 377 00:21:21,740 --> 00:21:24,600 It lets you print steep overhangs without supports. 378 00:21:25,360 --> 00:21:28,400 The 3D printer tool pass that it creates are generated recursively 379 00:21:28,840 --> 00:21:30,640 using wave propagation theory 380 00:21:31,240 --> 00:21:33,500 instead of the standard layer stacking technique used today. 381 00:21:34,080 --> 00:21:36,300 This is a big change to how we normally think of 3D printing. 382 00:21:37,300 --> 00:21:38,440 And if it ends up actually being useful, 383 00:21:38,780 --> 00:21:41,060 could cause 30 printers to be designed differently. 384 00:21:41,980 --> 00:21:42,740 You can try right now. 385 00:21:43,020 --> 00:21:45,300 There's a custom fork of orca slicer you can download 386 00:21:45,460 --> 00:21:47,620 that has the wave overhangs stuff built into it. 387 00:21:48,420 --> 00:21:50,000 So as a little bit of refresher, 388 00:21:50,440 --> 00:21:53,480 process of turning a 3D model into instructions for a 3D printer 389 00:21:53,540 --> 00:21:55,940 is called slicing because traditionally the process 390 00:21:56,120 --> 00:21:58,240 divides the model into a series of horizontal layers, 391 00:21:59,060 --> 00:22:01,140 and the 3D printers prints out those layers, 392 00:22:01,320 --> 00:22:02,560 stacking them up on top of each other. 393 00:22:03,800 --> 00:22:05,260 Now, Steve Overhangs present a problem 394 00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:07,380 because there's a part of a layer 395 00:22:07,500 --> 00:22:08,700 that's just floating in space 396 00:22:08,840 --> 00:22:09,800 without anything holding it up. 397 00:22:10,440 --> 00:22:11,240 If you try to print this, 398 00:22:11,320 --> 00:22:12,260 you'll get a messed up print 399 00:22:12,460 --> 00:22:14,060 because the plastic will just fall to the ground. 400 00:22:14,740 --> 00:22:16,240 So Slicer software will typically 401 00:22:16,760 --> 00:22:19,260 give you the option to print these disposable supports 402 00:22:19,600 --> 00:22:20,760 to hold up these parts. 403 00:22:21,460 --> 00:22:22,920 And getting the supports off can be tricky 404 00:22:23,040 --> 00:22:24,120 because it's just plastic also, 405 00:22:24,240 --> 00:22:24,880 so it'll stick together. 406 00:22:25,660 --> 00:22:26,860 And generally the surface finish 407 00:22:26,880 --> 00:22:28,660 of those overhang areas 408 00:22:28,940 --> 00:22:30,860 are worse than the 409 00:22:31,020 --> 00:22:31,800 other parts of the print. 410 00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:34,760 So this 3D object 411 00:22:34,920 --> 00:22:36,800 to 2D layer stack process has made that almost 412 00:22:36,920 --> 00:22:38,980 all printers have been designed to be fast 413 00:22:39,020 --> 00:22:40,360 in the X, Y part of the printer, 414 00:22:40,840 --> 00:22:42,800 and slow in the Z dimension, as that 415 00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:44,660 is the part that just moves to the next layer. 416 00:22:45,980 --> 00:22:46,940 But the wave overhangs 417 00:22:47,260 --> 00:22:48,760 process makes slicing a truly 418 00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:50,760 3D operation. The exterior 419 00:22:50,880 --> 00:22:52,600 of the model becomes sort of a wavefront 420 00:22:52,720 --> 00:22:54,300 that ripples into the model 421 00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:56,840 until it meets another wavefront to fill a 422 00:22:57,020 --> 00:23:00,280 recursive wavefront spawn from the cusp or two waves meet. 423 00:23:00,600 --> 00:23:05,320 And these waves kind of become the tool paths of how the plastic is laid down. 424 00:23:06,120 --> 00:23:10,940 It's extremely clever, but this means your 3D printer Z axis is going to be working as hard as the X, Y axis, 425 00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:11,620 potentially. 426 00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:16,140 The task of laying down plastic is no longer just putting down stacks of layers, 427 00:23:16,340 --> 00:23:19,720 but these complicated blooms of moves in three dimensions. 428 00:23:20,780 --> 00:23:25,400 The plastic sort of blossoms out to create the overhang, so there's never any fully unsupported 429 00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:30,640 plastic. I've not tried this out yet with an actual 3D printer as I just discovered this, 430 00:23:30,720 --> 00:23:35,280 but I have downloaded the Wave Overhangs fork of Orca Slicer and I sliced a few simple 431 00:23:35,460 --> 00:23:40,220 models with it, and it's really cool to look at the resulting tool paths. It's just, in fact, 432 00:23:40,300 --> 00:23:46,260 some of the, some of the G-code renders can't quite display it because it's expecting layer-based 433 00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:52,020 kind of ideas. So I had to, like, I had to like export it to G-code and load it into the 434 00:23:52,050 --> 00:23:55,380 the Prusa G-G-code slicer because it actually could render it soMuhat. I, I had to, I had to, 435 00:23:55,400 --> 00:24:01,120 I think it might be a really interesting addition in sliders going forward as we see a bunch of, 436 00:24:01,600 --> 00:24:04,760 and we'll see people start to redesign how things are made. 437 00:24:04,820 --> 00:24:09,520 Because right now there's this huge preference to not do overhangs on 3D printed objects 438 00:24:09,800 --> 00:24:13,960 because you'll have to add supports and supports takes time and make sure the part look kind of crappy. 439 00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:18,340 But one of the challenges I think of this technique is that it could cause warping because 440 00:24:18,860 --> 00:24:25,360 because of the way that these overhangs work, it creates these lines of filament that sort of wrap around 441 00:24:25,380 --> 00:24:28,460 help support from above the overhang. 442 00:24:29,580 --> 00:24:33,300 And when plastic cools, it cools along the extrusion length. 443 00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:39,360 And so with these wrapping around, it'll sort of like pull up the overhung part and kind of 444 00:24:39,950 --> 00:24:44,060 make them, instead of being like, if it's a right angle out, it might pull them up a little bit. 445 00:24:44,740 --> 00:24:48,920 I think, I think there's a way to fix this, but it'll be, it'll be interesting to see how they fix it. 446 00:24:49,100 --> 00:24:53,820 If you go to the waveoverhangs.com in there's a gallery section, you can see some of the 447 00:24:53,800 --> 00:24:55,900 warping happen, but I'm sure they'll fix it. 448 00:24:57,340 --> 00:25:00,880 It feels like just yesterday we got tree supports, which were a major evolution in 449 00:25:01,060 --> 00:25:04,620 supports, and now we actually have it evolving even more where we might not even have to 450 00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:07,320 have supports, which is just great. 451 00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:08,280 Yeah. 452 00:25:08,360 --> 00:25:09,960 But this is hot off the press. 453 00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:13,800 I mean, this article just came out or the projects. 454 00:25:14,560 --> 00:25:14,920 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 455 00:25:15,460 --> 00:25:19,440 It's from a thesis research project that's like maybe from a month ago. 456 00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:22,720 So it's definitely we're checking out. 457 00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:24,400 I want to get my hands on orcas slicer as well. 458 00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:27,820 I didn't realize that there was a new version of orcus slicer that supported that. 459 00:25:28,500 --> 00:25:28,960 Oh, no, yeah. 460 00:25:29,060 --> 00:25:31,800 This is a custom fork of an orchestra. 461 00:25:31,980 --> 00:25:32,800 It's not the real one. 462 00:25:33,180 --> 00:25:33,440 Got it. 463 00:25:33,460 --> 00:25:37,820 So, yeah, you're going to have to like, yeah, run two different versions if you already use orcisler. 464 00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:42,320 There's a nice Hackaday article about it as well, but there are also the Wave Overhanging site. 465 00:25:42,700 --> 00:25:43,960 It goes into a lot of good detail about it. 466 00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:46,820 And, of course, you could read the research paper if you wanted to. 467 00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:52,680 That's our show for detailed show notes and transcripts, 468 00:25:52,780 --> 00:25:54,120 visit the bootloader.net. 469 00:25:54,540 --> 00:25:56,460 Until next time, stay positive.