Procerand

#deer 🦌

I'm starting to believe good code architecture is bad because it lets you keep blowing up scope. If your code turns into spaghetti by the end of the month you have more incentive to make it releasable sooner

said this as a joke but honestly,,

An Ender 3. Or is it? It now uses linear rails instead of wheels, even the leadscrews have been ripped out and replaced with finer ones. The control board, once good enough was deemed insufficient and was replaced with a better one. The screen was replaced, and even the metal screen mount is no longer present. The print head is no more, having been deemed irrelevant in the pursuit of advancing science. Instead in its place is a 3D printed mount with a camera in it. From it extends a long 3D printed tube with a ring light attached to the end. beneath it is a 10x metallurgic microscope lens peering down at a tree core sample. In the back of the printer the power supply can be seen. unbeknown to it, it too will be replaced. Metal braces ensure that no movement, other than that which is permitted shall occur as the camera's watchful lens observes the wood.

At what point does an Ender 3 stop being an Ender 3? I've done so many upgrades/modifications that my 3D printer is no longer a 3D printer, with only a handful of the original parts remaining.

Anyways, I completed the first version of my automated microscope.

#3DPrinting #Ender3

Comic. [Person with ponytail pointing at diagram while speaking to three other people] PERSON: If the emergency stop is activated, any riders on the waterslide will be diverted into the beam dump, a large graphite block which will safely absorb their momentum. [caption] We regretted hiring an accelerator physicist to design our water park.

Beam Dump

xkcd.com/3168/

The "2" in the date "2021" on a US Penny.

A close up of the surface of a tree core sample.

A test pattern. Each division is 0.01mm after measuring the pattern I ended up with a dpi of 80,835

my DIY automated microscope. I wasn't actually intending on creating an automated microscope when I started this project.

Got the 112mm test extension tube printed, resulting in a dpi of 80,835. Technically this is now a DIY automated microscope. I wonder how good it's gonna be once I get the full length tube printed.

#microscopy #microscope #DIY

I haven't heard of Evan Monsma before. I'll have to check them out.

Eventually, I'll figure out a good workflow for focus stacking as it seems like it's going to be necessary going forward.

A test microscope objective lens setup. In it is a 10x Amscope Metallurgic microscope objective with a Raynox 150 lens. This is attached to a very short extension tube mounted on an Amscope MU500 camera. The camera is sitting in a 3D printed enclosure.

A macro shot of the date on a US Penny. It reads "2021"

Finally got the metallurgic objective and the lens I'll be using as a tube lens. Currently testing out 3D printed extension tubes. The current one is too short, but it worked for verifying the 3D print. While waiting for a longer one to print, I took this close up of the date on a penny.

The number of hot pixels in my camera has risen quite sharply in the past month or so which means it is probably going to be dead soon :( I'm hoping I can finish the camera related changes in Forge before the camera finally dies.

foreground: bench power supply. it's unremarkable. it's a cheap looking one, the kind you find on aliexpress or ebay or whatever. background: with the blissful expression only stock photo actors are able to pull off, here's a technican-looking guy, starring off into the mid distance. he's holding a laptop, which he's not looking at. the laptop has some panels removed, exposing its ram and whatever. our guy is *holding a medical stethoscope* against the body of the laptop. thankfully he is wearing safety glasses

dear lady who's holding a soldering iron by the tip, and soldering a motherboard with no solder. i have guy for you

large 20-foot tall concrete lined sewer tunnel. in the distance three people stand with head lamps on their hard hats, looking toward the camera as they stand in ankle-deep water.

if you can’t see the aurora borealis tonight, here is a sewer tunnel which is a wonder in itself.

I've never had such luxury.

And yes, now I understand why people in northern climates appreciate heated steering wheels. Still, it's a bit of a luxury.

It's like 4K monitors, you don't know what you're missing until you try it.

When I think of Ace, I first think of "Ace of Seafood" the silliest fish game I know of.

A map of the world with the aurora probability overlaid ontop. A pin is over Fairbanks Alaska with the text "6% chance of Aurora"

Decided to procrastinate on my game to develop a tool for determining if the Aurora is both overhead and visible. Right now, I have a 30 minute NOAA Aurora forecast visualization implemented, next up is bringing in the weather for determining visibility.

#Aurora #NorthernLights #Alaska

HTTP/1.1 200 Good Request 👍

I'm honestly surprised that subprotocol wasn't used by IoT coffee and tea devices.

More off the shelf liquids should have expiration dates since most things start to break down after a few years.

In my area, it's because there's no public transportation (at all) so the school district has its own fleet of buses exclusively for bringing children too and from school. It's not uncommon in the US for towns to have no public transportation.

I finally got the networking for multiplayer into a state that I'm happy with for my game. Now I have to actually integrate it. Downside of using my own game engine is that this will require rewriting a lot of the core logic. On the bright side, my game doesn't have that many features yet.

#gamedev

The game I'm working on is called, "Astral Skies" (previously Abound). It is a side scrolling 2D sandbox game oriented around space exploration. It is inspired by a game called Starbound.

Local camera stream via authentication data pulled from the cloud API

Output showing acquisition of TUTK codes for video streaming and the start of the test output of the MQTT data stream

Well, had another unexpected tangent... I reverse engineered Bambu Labs Cloud API so I can keep printers out of local mode while having full API access for MQTT data/commands, file uploads, video streaming, etc.

It's crazy how large your filament collection can get without you noticing

I'm also taking a 2-3 week long break on Forge to focus on working on my game for an upcoming game dev expo that I'll be showing it off at.

I've been planning out the upgrade path for Forge and got the software into a lab ready state for a research project the lab is doing right now. I'm also in the middle of upgrading the control board on mine, but have been procrastinating compiling marlin for it.

I always write down my ideas even if I think I'll remember them, because later on I'll want to do something, but won't be able to remember any of the good ideas I had.

I remember when that game launched and wanting to give it more time to improve before giving it a shot. I'm sad to see it ended up getting abandoned. It had some great potential.

Yeah, then you can use a program on your pc (and an app on your phone) to then programmatically take pictures at specific spots and stitch them together.

It really is. The entire setup cost me less than $650, but I'm working on making it compatible with any generic USB camera which will bring it under $500.

couldn't you hypothetically do really really nice document scanning with any old phone camera by incrementally adding detail from multiple photos over time? they do this in astronomy.

On the bright side, as long as I'm willing to ignore the "image stitching" requirement, I can technically throw anything that can fit in a 9"x9" area under it (or 15.75"x15.75" if I convert my large format printer)