Patrick Van Oosterwijck

Robot claw with a ManT1S board to locally control the wrist rotation and tilt, and the claw opening and closing. Just a single twisted pair runs down the arm to power and control this part.

Working on more #demo #hardware for the ManT1S #campaign #video! This is supposed to highlight the advantage of taking a #modular approach. (Locally extendable with more sensors, still to come!) Just one twisted pair running down the arm for #power and […]

[Original post on noc.social]

I wish I "understood" #homeassistant better. It all seems very nebulous and opaque. "Magic is happening" kind of stuff with various terms that seem to have very specific meanings in the context of HA.
Is there some good #introduction #video or article someone can recommend?
#homeautomation

Person making murder cars says society will be okay with cars murdering people. Just imagine being someone making this kind of money and being like "yeah, I know my product is going to kill people, but people will be fine with it". #waymo […]

ManT1S controller for three servos strapped to the side of a robot arm with plastic tie straps.

Is building something with tie straps "proper" enough for a CrowdSupply campaign #video or is it too hokey? 😳😅
#maker #lowtech #demo #wired #networking
https://www.crowdsupply.com/silicognition/mant1s

@futurebird After reading this post, I've decided to flesh out the ideas a little. And I think I may have conceptualised the future of vibe coding!

First, the problem of inconsistencies about how AIs respond to prompts.

We need better predictability!

So let's create a standard syntax for […]

wESP32-Prog connected to the ManT1S board from the bottom for programming. Not soldered, just temporarily pushed in.

BTW the wESP32-Prog was just there because I was loading #software. As you can see, one nice advantage of having a single line of pins for the #programmer is that you can connect it from the top or the bottom of the board.

And if you use the wESP32-Prog-C, you […]

[Original post on noc.social]

Putting a ManT1S into the bowels of an existing 12V floodlight. The existing waterproofed power cable connects to the T1S networking/power pads.

Working on #campaign #video demos for the ManT1S! Turning this dumb floodlight into a #smart #networked one. Do you think T1S Single Pair #Ethernet will work over that fat repurposed #power cable? Stay tuned! 😉😁
#IoT #homeautomation
https://www.crowdsupply.com/silicognition/mant1s

In other news, since I just worked on it for the ManT1S, so I remembered how to do it 😅, I finally updated the @arduino support for the wESP32. RTL8201 PHY is now default, you can select flash size 4MB (rev 5-) / 16MB (rev 7+) with appropriate partitions! #esp32 #embedded […]

Meshtastic iOS app breaks EU law with sending lots of telemetry (logs, usage) to DataDog in US wthout user consent and without any kind of notification of the app doing so.

I reported this as issue and it got immediately closed without any explanation […]

VMware Certification Is Surging in a Shifting IT Landscape VMware certification is surging as IT teams face hybrid infra, cloud complexity, & rising risks. See how VMUG Advantage helps practitioners & enterprises turn certification into stronger security & measurable value. [...]

What a waste of a sponsored post absolutely nobody believes to be true. Everyone is *fleeing*.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/vmware-certification-is-surging-in-a-shifting-it-landscape/

I just got an alert that Nvidia’s market cap crossed $4.5T. I know I am mixing elephants and telephone poles here, but it seems weird that the manufacturer of IT components has a market cap that is almost 15% of the GDP of the US for 2025 🤔

@jerry Well they did invest billions in their customer OpenAI, so OpenAI will have the cash to buy more Nvidia chips so they should get plenty of sales...
Wait a minute... 🤔

LAN867x support required to program the ManT1S with @esphome was merged upstream! 🥳🎉
Now you will be able to very simply use ManT1S for @homeassistant nodes when connected to your #network with a ManT1S-Bridge!
https://github.com/esphome/esphome/pull/10874 […]

ManT1S board test setup with a bench supply powering the ManT1S with 75V, and the ManT1S controlling an LED floodlight. The supply shows it's providing 20.85W.

Checking ManT1S at 75V... yep just fine! 💪⚡️
So even if you're not interested in T1S networking, you might want to check it out just to have an #ESP32 #microcontroller board that can handle high voltage! 😋
https://www.crowdsupply.com/silicognition/mant1s

[14:34:41.819][I][app:185]: ESPHome version 2025.10.0-dev compiled on Sep 16 2025, 14:34:23 ... [14:34:41.841][C][psram:016]: PSRAM: [14:34:41.842][C][psram:019]: Available: YES [14:34:41.847][C][psram:021]: Size: 2048 KB ... [14:34:41.863][C][ethernet:380]: Ethernet: [14:34:41.864][C][ethernet:636]: IP Address: 192.168.1.190 [14:34:41.869][C][ethernet:636]: Hostname: 'mant1s-project' ... [14:34:41.886][C][ethernet:657]: Is Full Duplex: NO [14:34:41.886][C][ethernet:657]: Link Speed: 10 [14:34:41.887][C][ethernet:405]: CLK Pin: 0 [14:34:41.891][C][ethernet:405]: MDC Pin: 8 [14:34:41.892][C][ethernet:405]: MDIO Pin: 7 [14:34:41.892][C][ethernet:405]: PHY addr: 0 [14:34:41.897][C][ethernet:412]: Type: LAN8670 ... [14:34:41.919][C][mdns:213]: mDNS: [14:34:41.920][C][mdns:213]: Hostname: mant1s-project [14:35:40.314][I][safe_mode:042]: Boot seems successful; resetting boot loop counter

Also #progress on ManT1S @esphome support! First successful #compile and #boot. Took quite a bit of fiddling with the YAML to overrule the pin validator and add the LAN867x component. Weird to have to alter source code, but pull the library in in the project YAML […]

[Original post on noc.social]

Progress on the #software #support side: LAN867x and ManT1S #board support were just added to the #ESP32 #Arduino core! 🥳
https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/pull/11843
https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/pull/11848
Should be included in the next release.
Props to the ESP32 Arduino […]

How many dogs does it take to change a lightbulb? • Golden Retriever: The sun is shining, the day is young, we've got our whole lives ahead of us, and you're inside worrying about a stupid burned out bulb? • Border Collie: Just one. And then I'll replace any wiring that's not up to code. • Dachshund: You know l can't reach that stupid lamp! • Rottweiler: Make me. • Boxer: Who cares? I can still play with my squeaky toys in the dark. • Lab: Oh, me, me!!!!! Pleeeeeeeeeze let me change the light bulb! Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Can I? Pleeeeeeze, please, please, please! • German Shepherd: I'l change it as soon as I've led these people from the dark, check to make sure I haven't missed any, and make just one more perimeter patrol to see that no one has tried • Cocker Spaniel: Why change it? | can still pee on the carpet in the dark. • Pointer: I see it, there it is, there it is, right there... • Greyhound: It isn't moving. Who cares? • Australian Shepherd: First, I'll put all the light bulbs in a little circle... • Poodle: I'll just blow in the Border Collie's ear and he'll do it. By the time he finishes rewiring the house, my nails will be dry. • Jack Russell Terrier: I'll just pop it in while I'm bouncing off the walls and furniture.

As an owner of two #Greyhounds I can confirm that this is 100% accurate.

#dogs

Waking up from a #dream where you're being chased by a Grizzly Bear is not exactly an ideal start of the day. 😬

Meet the ManT1S: Computing, Comms, and Power Over Single Pair Ethernet I’m always impressed by engineers who possess the ability to identify a market need and then create a tailored solution that elegantly addresses the situation. I’m not that sort of engineer (it’s a wise man who knows his own limitations). In my case, I have the almost uncanny ability to misidentify a market need (to identify a non-need if you will) and to then create an overengineered solution to address my nonexistent problem. Although I don’t like to boast, I think it’s fair to say that overengineering things is one of the things I do best. A couple of examples of “the right sort of engineer” spring to mind. First is Mike Pelkey (RIP), a serial inventor and holder of numerous patents. In addition to being the grandfather of BASE jumping (he was the first person to jump off El Capitan in California in 1966), Mike was the founder of LogiSwitch, a purveyor of switch debouncing solutions to the engineering aristocracy (full disclosure: one of the hats I wear says “CTO of LogiSwitch”). As an aside, Mike’s great-uncle, Edward L. Cayo (“Uncle Ed”), was the inventor of the Pencil Pointer. Long before mechanical pencils with disposable leads took over, every serious draftsman, engineer, and architect had a Pencil Pointer on their desk. According to the family recollection, Ed retired on his Pencil Pointer royalties (oh, that we could all be so lucky). The Pencil Pointer and its Tru-Point descendants had their golden age from the 1950s through the 1970s, and many artists, calligraphers, and illustrators still use them to this day to achieve the long, delicate points that are difficult to obtain with modern hand sharpeners. As another aside, I heartily recommend the book _How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants_ by David Rees. As John Hodgman says, “You may think that sharpening a pencil is easy, but David Rees makes it look hard, and that makes all the difference.” And as the writer Elizabeth Gilbert notes, “Could I sharpen my own pencils? Sure, I could! I could also perform my own dentistry, cobble my own shoes, and smith my own tin—but why not leave such matters to real artisans, instead? I trust my bespoke pencils only to David Rees.” High praise indeed, but we digress… Another example of “the right sort of engineer” is my friend Bob Zeidman, who is president of Zeidman Consulting (a premier contract research and development firm in Silicon Valley) and also president of Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering Corporation (a leading provider of software intellectual property analysis tools). It was Bob who showed that Microsoft’s DOS source code was not copied from Digital Research’s CP/M source code (you can read about his analysis here). Also, it was Bob who won $5 million (although he has yet to collect it) when he proved Mike Lindell was wrong in Mike’s “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge (see also my _Bob Zeidman 1, Mike Lindell 0_ Cool Beans Blog). Yet one more example is provided by another of my friends, whom we will call Patrick Van Oosterwijck (because that’s his name). Patrick is the founder and principal engineer at the consulting and embedded design firm Silicognition. In addition to his regular embedded system design services, Patrick pioneers, prototypes, programs, perfects, produces, and purveys a selection of standard products that can simplify your own electronic designs or help with your prototyping needs. Many of these projects began as crowd-funded campaigns, which ultimately proved to be commercially successful, remaining in production and available via Mouser to this day. Before we consider Patrick’s forthcoming offering, a few examples of his previous products are as follows. **LiFePO4wered/Pi+****:** LiFePO4 (LFP) based UPS/power manager for the Raspberry Pi with many features such as a clean shutdown on power failure, sleep, auto wake, and solar charging up to 24V. Launched on Crowd Supply in 2018, still in production, and available through Mouser. _Bottom view of LiFePO4wered/Pi+ (Source: Silicognition)_ **wESP32****:** The first fully isolated ESP32-based Ethernet board on the market with PoE up to 13W @ 12V. Optional wESP32-Prog programming module with micro-B USB released simultaneously. Later, the wEPS32-Prog-C was released with USB Type-C and Power Delivery, optionally delivering the same 13W @ 12V over USB PD if PoE is unavailable. Launched on Crowd Supply in 2018, still in production, and available through Mouser. _Top view of wESP32 (Source: Silicognition)_ **PoE FeatherWing****:** A drop-in replacement for the Adafruit Ethernet FeatherWing, adding 4W of fully isolated PoE power and a globally unique MAC. Launched on Crowd Supply in 2020, still in production, and—you guessed it—available through Mouser. _Top view of PoE FeatherWing (Source: Silicognition)_ All of which leads us to Patrick’s forthcoming ManT1S board. This bodacious beauty is an ESP32 board with 10BASE-T1S Single Pair Ethernet networking built in. It’s designed to allow daisy-chaining of multiple boards (officially up to 8) together using just pairs of wires to form a network, and they can all communicate with each other using standard networking protocols. This little scamp is going to be very tasty for creating modularized devices and machines featuring distributed smart (intelligent) nodes. _Top view of PoE ManT1S (Source: Silicognition)_ The ManT1S boasts a castellated footprint that can be surface-mounted to a carrier board, or through-hole-mounted to a carrier board or a solderless breadboard (see also my column on Solderless Breadboards). Observe the green screw block connector in the upper-right corner of the image. One pair of terminals is used to bring Ethernet in over a twisted-wire pair. The other pair is used to daisy-chain to the next board in the network. Now observe the Qwiic connector in the lower-left corner of the image. This is a 4-pin JST-style interface that enables effortless, solderless I2C expansion with sensors, modules, or other compatible peripherals, thereby opening up a whole world of expansion and extensibility possibilities. When Patrick first described the ManT1S to me, after providing a brief overview of its high-level capabilities, he continued enthusiastically as follows: > _On top of that, the same two wires can also supply power to the nodes (up to 42W when using 60V)!_ > > On top of that, there’s also the ManT1S-Bridge companion device, which transparently bridges the T1S network to a normal Ethernet network, so all the T1S devices suddenly show up on your network, accessible from your laptop. > > On top of that, this ManT1S-Bridge is also PoE+ compatible and requests up to 30W of power at 48V for the T1S network nodes when connected to a PoE+ switch! > > On top of that, with the preloaded MicroPython runtime and their WebREPL tool, you can load your programs and files and get command line access to all these devices from your laptop over the network, without having physical access to the devices! > > _On top of that…_ You can tell that Patrick is excited and enthused by all of this. FYI, the ManT1S-Bridge of which he speaks is an optional companion device that transparently bridges a standard Ethernet RJ45 to a T1S multi-drop mixing segment. _Top view of PoE ManT1S-Bridge (Source: Silicognition)_ Now, this is where we need your help. I selfishly want Patrick’s Crowd Supply project to (a) become active and (b) succeed because I want to play with networks of ManT1S devices myself. But, before the project goes active, we need to demonstrate that there’s sufficient interest. If you visit the ManT1S pre-launch page on Crowd Supply, near the top, you’ll find a “Subscribe” field and associated button. All you need to do is add your email to this field and click the “Subscribe” button to be notified about updates associated with this project (I just entered my own email). Also, it would be great if you could share this column with any colleagues and friends who may be interested in this technology. Patrick tells me he has great faith in the power of my prose. He’s a smooth talker, and no mistake, but I must admit that it would be “Cool Beans” if he were to receive a flood of subscriptions based on this column. As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on anything you’ve read here. * * * * * ### _Related_

ManT1S is on the front page of EE Journal! 🤯

Thank you Max Maxfield for the great column!
Check it out 👇!
#electronic #engineering #magazine #frontpage

https://www.eejournal.com/article/meet-the-mant1s-computing-comms-and-power-over-single-pair-ethernet/

ManT1S rendering without screw terminal block.

It just occurred to me that ManT1S may actually be a good fit for #wearable #electronics / #cosplay #costume applications. I don't know much about this, but just wiring your power to the nodes and getting comms between them for free seems nice, right? 🤔

Maybe I […]

[Original post on noc.social]

Two terminals side by side, one running the ESP-IDF `iperf -u -s -i 3` and the other `iperf -u -c 192.168.1.190 -t 30 -i 3`, showing a 30s average of 9.12 Mbits/sec on the server (receiving) side.

#Performance is a bit #overrated when it comes to passing messages between #embedded nodes. I mean, most get by just fine with #serial ports talking at 115.2 kpbs or something like that.

But since people are curious about the #bandwidth of the T1S channel […]

[Original post on noc.social]

Did you know your MacBook has a sensor that knows the exact angle of the screen hinge?

It’s not exposed as a public API, but I figured out a way to read it and make it sound like an old wooden door.

Source code and a downloadable app to try it yourself […]

[Original post on hachyderm.io]

A screenshot of a code editor. The line numbers are in the lefthand column, running from 121 to 125. There is a comment that says "Verify packages were created and check sizes" Then line 123 says echo Verifying Lambda packages were created... and Line 124 says echo checkmark emoji colon All Lambda packages verified successfully. There is no line in here that actually did anything.

One of the ways that LLM-authored code improves productivity is by merely SAYING it does things. It's way faster than the whole time-consuming process of actually doing things. This is real code someone sent to me for review.

ManT1S-Bridge from two angles.

Once you add the ManT1S-Bridge, everything changes. You can just use standard networking tools to test your APIs. You can work with the nodes of a #distributed system without continuously switching serial console connections. Distributed becomes as easy as […]

[Original post on noc.social]

It's hard to overstate just how much the ManT1S-Bridge improves the T1S #developer #experience. When I started working with the first ManT1S #prototypes, it was hard. Here were these devices providing #web APIs, but the only way I could test them was with another T1S device! It felt like working […]

How much #bandwidth can be expected from the ManT1S? T1S is 10Mbit/s, the bandwidth is shared by devices on the wire. Some quick tests show about 1.7 Mbps when loading a static file served from a MicroPython web server over a ManT1S-Bridge!
https://crowdsupply.com/silicognition/mant1s
#embedded […]

If you'd like to see @esphome support for the ManT1S, the first hurdle is that the ESP32-PICO-V3-02 module on the ManT1S has flash connected to different pins compared to most other ESP32 modules. Which clashes with the ESPHome pin validator. It doesn't allow the use of GPIO7 and 8 because they […]

Followup on the active firefighters ICE kidnapped: They were in the country legally as contract firefighters, with work visa.

ICE's solution to getting caught? They teminated the contracts, kicking 44 firefighters (all US citizens or with work visas) off the line, for a fire that's only 13% […]

When your code works but no idea how