Mark J. Koch

My #analytical brain, every time I touch something and get a #shock: "I've been sitting still for five minutes! Why am I loosing so many #electrons so quickly? Is there something I can do about it?" #zap

That #feeling you have when you do a #GIT commit before going to help a family member with something for almost six hours. My day is gone but ideas in my head are check-pointed. #codelife

World Traveller, Rick Steves, as a pickle! Support your local PBS station to keep getting more Rick.

This is a public service announcement for you to support your local PBS station! #PBS #RickSteves

KiVAD render of the MOS KIM-1000. A modern take on the KIM-1 CPU board from the 1970's. I really wanted one of the original KIM-1 boards as a kid but, being a kid, no money. However, when I reached college, my degree included theory and hands on with our very own Z-80 systems that we got to build using raw components and wire wrap! Worked the same as the KIM-1 and we even had to write our own operating program. The following semester we got to expand our Z-80s with the peripheral of our choice. I built a full robot that I'd already been working on since I was 14-ish. I programmed it to work like the "Big Track" toy. I handed all my original documentation, schematics and code to the professor to get my grade (should have made some photocopies at least). Never did get any of that back. This was a couple years before things like floppy disks and ease of and access to printers.

OK. Why not? SPOILER ALERT! ... Labeled as "Suggestive" to blur image for those who don't want to see it before it's a real thing.

Do I show the 3D render of the whole thing or do I make everyone wait for the final real system in a couple months?

Hey Johnson! You can always reach out to me for Arduino questions. Also, Adafruit website has many tutorials, products and code for doing the exactly kind of stuff you want to do.

My @oshpark.bsky.social PCBs arrived. They are part of my #kicad project to create a #KIM-1 #65c02 computer replica, with a twist. I started with the original schematic but broke it into SMT modules. Each module is a castellated #PCB "stamp" for a larger main board that I'm finishing up.

If they ever reboot "Back to the Future", they should use the #CyberTruck. Except, on this new set of movies, to activate time travel, you'd have to rear-end the CyberTruck using a different vehicle at 88MPH. It would help add one more metaphor to the "Back" part of the name in the title.

Break out PCB for a 1/8inch type TRS audio jack. KiCAD library symbol and footprint available via the Circuit Monkey KiCAD libraries. A corrected version of the F**d Up and wonky KiCAD default library for this part.

Fixed it!

github.com/CircuitMonke...

Get a breakout PCB. Just upload to @oshpark.bsky.social
github.com/CircuitMonke...

An illustrated comic of three humans garbed in bed sheets and crowns made from long feather-like leaves. Arms outstretched in offering to the crescent moon, devoured watermelon rinds also in the same crescent shape. They celebrate the middle of summer by enjoying fruit.

Midsummer is upon us. May we all find something sticky and delicious to adorn our skin with this week🍉
#summer

Me repeatedly asking my partner if they want to go to Sushi: "I don't know. Maybe next week."
Me asking my partner once about attending a ham radio meetup: "Yes! Let's go!"
Someday little nigiri, some day soon.

I am so screwed…

PCB showing the mounted TRS audio jack with a slight 2 degree turn. It turns out that the KiCAD supplied library footprint has multiple inaccurate dimensions.

Ughhh! That 2 degree twist on the audio jack. Thanks #kicad! And thus I kick off the official open source version of my custom "tuned" KiCAD library. I can't be that harsh since #EagleCAD included libraries were full of this kind of anomalous shenanigans that gave me trust issues. #PCB

A young woman assisting an older woman with a walker. Older woman: "Z is up" Young woman: "Sure grandma"

Engineers have opinions about coordinate spaces.

YouTube video by Mark Koch Matrix Flowers 1

Managed to finish this #STEAM project today. "Matrix Flowers 1", based on cheap #LED segment modules from #Amazon with an added custom @oshpark.bsky.social PCB using a #ATmega328p
GitHub: github.com/CircuitMonke... #electronics #flowers #LEDs #arduino #microcontroller

youtu.be/2mtg5pHPPw4?...

There's nothing like learning #kicad by Googling each and every thing you're trying to accomplish, waiting a month to start another board and then Googling all the same steps again. The UI is a hot mess compared to #EagleCAD.

Maybe I'm just a masochist?

#gamedev #indiedev #programming

Wrapping up my week by getting some good results from my current project. I got a #Adafruit Qualia #ESP32 dev board which is made for interfacing to the newer IPS LCD displays. It has a touch screen as well! Had to crash learn some #CircuitPython and was able to code a working GUI Widget set.

Me: <drinking a liter of water before heading to the phlebotomist> I wanna be juicy for my lady!

I can't wait to watch this! Something about Sinister terrified me when it was in the game room of the college I went to.

Steal software, win prizes.

Fry from Futurama riding a "Scootie-Puff Jr." on his way to save the day.

How it feels at the moment....

There's also a magazine that was called "Future S*x" (name censored for modesty) that was published for a few issues in the early 1990's when VR was the new buzz word.

I'm used to doing projects in #Java and a slick IDE but currently doing an embedded LCD project with #Mu and #CircuitPython and the workflow/debugging process is flooding my 1970s #BASIC nostalgia neurons while watching the screen paint line by line.

#Amazon sellers never cease to entertain. The idea of Tungsten Carbide blades by "Star Ribs" took me to a whole new place in my demented brain...

They had a zone clearly marked 80% off. Rung up as 40% off. We protested but the checkout clerk merely shook their head slowly, side to side and then shrugged. We had to walk, never to return.

I swear this must be how other folks see me! 😆
But this year, there is no turning back! 👀💦

I can't be the only one like this, right???
#gamedev #meme #dkgame

From random piles of resistors, capacitors, jumper wires, chips and other electronics prototyping components, I sorted the contents of two tackle boxes into this pile of things that have nice homes in my current sorting system. Now, when I need something specific, I can look in one place instead of many. I'll find some new use for the tackle boxes.

The sorted parts were previously jumbled up in these trays with no particular order to them. I left the larger tool items in there for now to show a smidge of the chaos I'd come across.

While my last post involved some nostalgic smut I'd come across in my junk pile, I spent the evening sorting another old relic in my lab space. My 40 year old kit of #electronics parts from college! Everything was jumbled into tackle boxes and I sorted them out. Almost everything is still usable!

December 1988 edition of Penthouse Forum, a Reader's Digest for horny people. A small sized magazine that was usually chock full of erotic stories and discussions, this particular edition covered the emerging use of "The Newest & Wildest Sex Underground", computers, internet and BBS to share ideas involving subjects of a sexual nature. There's even one article in here that covers the meaning of many online jargon words like "Compusex", "Emoticon", "On Line", "Lurker", "Handle", etc. Of all the old crap I'm throwing out, I'm keeping this one.

If you're a fan of, or researching #erotica from the early days of the #internet, then you owe it to yourself to track down this edition of Forum magazine which had multiple articles on the emerging use of online #BBS for the #horny folks. #Penthouse Forum December 1988, Vol. 18, Num. 4. #retro