Pim de Groot

3D printing is the future!

(I just had to clean the buildplate of my printer with water and soap because my prints suddenly stopped sticking to it)

Happy Birthday!

Yes, I lifted traces and otherwise destroyed two boards trying to fix it. I’m happy it works now.

A module made out of printed circuit boards with a big label 555. Soldering stuff and a cable is laying around it.

I got the right potentiometers today, and I found the 555 timers I ordered years ago. I soldered two modules, tested them, and discovered that I connected a pin of the timer incorrectly.

Soldering two more modules with a cut trace and a bodge later and I have a working synthesizer module.

A bright led connected to a portable usb-c bench power supply

And the small pcb works!

A couple of black and white pcbs on a desk

Got my first pcbs in ages in. I designed a eurorack module, a pmod with shift registers and LEDs, and a small board with an smd LED for model railroad use.

My hackerspace is in an old office/warehouse filled with artist spaces and small creative companies. It’s not really downtown, but it’s a great location. The downside is that we might have to leave in 2028 if they want to demolish it and replace it with a too expensive apartment complex.

A single person walking on a train station platform, in a very wide view

A wide platform

Another experiment with using 35mm film in a medium format camera. I made my own 120 roll by taping film to a paper backing and rolling it up in an dark changing bag. And then putting it in a Fuji GSW690ii.

If you want high precision you use the Precision Time Protocol (PTP). If you want to be really precise you can also use CERN's White Rabbit

Or getting written about by a pc gaming website…

A wide view of a train platform with a single person walking on it. Made with a Fuji GSW690ii on 35mm Fomapan 200 taped onto a paper backing of 120 film

The corner of a concrete parking garage with a security camera attached to it. Leica M4 and Fomapan 200

A view of a street lined with cars and a large building at the end. Made with a Fuji GSW690ii on Fomapan 400

Two swans swimming in a canal in Delft, with typical old Dutch houses in the background. Made with a Fuji GSW690ii on Kodak Gold

I mostly use the three speeds of Fomapan for B&W, stand developed in HC110. in 35mm and 120, for about 6 euro per roll. Color is whatever expired stuff I still have. Kodak Gold if it has to be good, for about 13 euro per roll plus 8 for 1 hour development.

Happy Birthday!

A 10% tariff on several countries was just announced, increasing to 25% later this year, so I hope you're not going to miss stroopwafels.

A Raspberry Pi 4, with a 3d printed case that looks like a tompouce, a typical Dutch pastry

One of the Raspberry Pi’s at work got damaged. I managed to repair it, but it got retired from production use. And to prevent it from getting mixed up with the other pi’s I wanted a unique case.

So I made a Raspberry Pi tompouce

A Raspberry Pi 4, with a 3d printed case that looks like a tompouce, a typical Dutch pastry

One of the Raspberry Pi’s at work got damaged. I managed to repair it, but it got retired from production use. And to prevent it from getting mixed up with the other pi’s I wanted a unique case.

So I made a Raspberry Pi tompouce

A black and white wall painting, a portrait of a woman with the Gene Simmons facepaint from Kiss

And now, Kiss

I'm lucky to get it, and the castor and pollux module a couple of months before they shut down. And they are great modules.

I'm not selling mine. It took about a month to get them to this half broken state, and it will take at least 6 to turn them into a product. Which is too much.

A concern I have with LLMs is that it's very easy to vibe code something and send it without making sure it's correct. As you explain it you're not doing that, but I think it is important to show how the LLM is used as a tool in a process. One that is able to catch flaws and mistakes.

When I did structural engineering I used finite element calculations to check complex structures. And while it sped up engineering significantly, I had to make time to thoroughly check the assumptions and results. Because it was possible to make a fundamental mistake and get the wrong output

For me "I used an LLM" does raise the question of how did you ensure that the output was correct. You made test cases, but how sure are you that you got full coverage? What is the fallout if you missed something? Basically, was it engineered?

Yeah, I got to do an internship at an engineering company that has a culture of preparing projects really well, do thorough checks, and asking tough but fair questions. And I learned so much. I got a similar vibe from Oxide, and played with the idea of applying there as well

This is the part that bums me out as well about the Oxide situation. I expected a certain amount of rigor and craft in their engineering and development work, but apparently they don't care as much as I thought.

A green glowing stick in a black holder, about 20cm long. It has a ring on top with a black climbing carabiner about half the size of the thing

Glow

I designed a 3d printed holder for those cheap party glow sticks

And @thea.codes has written a couple of wonderful blog posts about how she designed the modules: blog.thea.codes/designing-bi... and blog.thea.codes/designing-ca...

The function is to generate gate signals at regular intervals. It has flaws, and I have no intention to make it releasable. But a lot of the schematic was inspired by Winterbloom modules: winterbloom.com . And the source for them can be found here: github.com/wntrblm

Four eurorack modules, solder, and snips on a wooden table

Fixed a couple of the CLK eurorack modules I designed. I made a fuckup where I shorted the output to ground in the socket via the jack detection. I had to desolder the sockets, snip the pin in the middle, and resolder them.

It's impressive how none of them make me even slightly interested in striving for a bespoke rolls. They are still boring. Like you have a gazillion dollars, why isn't there a Rolls-Royce turboshaft helicopter engine in the gamer one?

I liked it around 2011 when it was the best color film you could reliably get in 5 packs while the film market was collapsing.

But these days I either want something weird, or I'll use my digital camera which is so much better.

Sadly WiFi is based on a shared medium. You can try to stay ahead of your neighbors by getting stuff based on the latest standards. But at some point they are buying that as well, configure it in the worst way possible, and degrade your own network.

I truly wish I stay a mechanical engineer that happens to know how to program