Bought an oven.....

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My first thought when I ordered my printed circuit boards was that I’d solder them by hand. I’ve since had a look at what this involves and changed my mind. And bought an oven. I managed to get the one above for around thirty pounds from AliExpress (search for 110/220V UYUE 946C), plus vat but with free postage. Lots of companies are now charging for delivery, which is rather annoying, but I managed to find this one, which does not. The device is mains powered and gets very hot, so I’ll give it a good checking over when it comes.

I should be able to pop some solder paste on the pcb, drop the components on top and then heat the whole board up to 200 degrees, at which point soldering magic happens. I’m quite looking forward to when it arrives. The delivery date was given as around September (such s the price of free shipping) but with a bit of luck it might be sooner than that.

Printed PCBs

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If you’ve ever thought about having printed circuit boards made for your projects: you should. I sent the designs off last Friday and and today I received five boards, beautifully made and packaged. Total cost of the whole thing - less than twenty pounds. I used a firm called NextPCB. I think I’ve taken advantage of some amazing introductory offer, but even so I’d be prepared to pay quite a bit more for service as good as this.

I wish I could say that the designs that I sent off were ones that I’d created but all the nice layout and sensible ground planes are down to the efforts of Brian. However, the quality and price of the work means that I’m even more determined to learn Kicad than before.

Meetup Fun

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We had a very good meetup tonight. Lots of technical talk and even some problem solving.

  • Richard showed off the box he had designed and laser cut at Hull MakerSpace.  You never know, you might see it on a train one day.

  • Brian had brought along a new M5Stack device that looks awesome. It has a lovely touch display and was running a little program that showed off all the internal sensors really well.

  • Karen had questions about Circuit Python vs Micro Python. General consensus was that they are both jolly good. Circuit Python is easier to get started with and has lots of lovely Adafruit libraries. But it doesn’t support interrupts so programs have to poll whenever they want input. Micro Python has a few more advanced features, but is a little harder to get to grips with. You can get started with Thonny really easily for both these platforms.

  • I was showing off PCBs just received from a company in China. Five large boards for less than twenty pounds. Yes please. Brian used Kicad to make a really nice layout for a PCB for the Pico MIDI Cheesebox and I was in charge of sending of the files to get them made up. All we need to do now is get the surface mount parts and solder them into place. We fired up Kicad, got the part descriptions and ordered all the bits. On my super-cheap laptop.

  • We all took a look at the PICO W. Very nice now running on a Pico Display. A very powerful combination.

  • We solved a problem with aerial connectors. Female to female doesn’t work…..

  • We discussed the creation of 3D printed jigs for holding surface mounted devices in place for hand soldering.

  • I showed off my Pure Data sound generator on my super cheap laptop. But I really need to bring a proper speaker so that everyone can hear it over the noise of the laser cutter.

  • And there was lots of non-technical chat too

The next in-person meetup is on the 3rd of August at the Makerspace. If you’ve got tech you want to talk about, come and find us.

Hardware Meetup on Wednesday

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Our next hardware meetup is in person, at Hull MakerSpace in Hull Library. It’s on Wednesday 6th, starting at around 5:30 pm and then going on until around 7:30 pm. We’ll be showing off what we have built and talking tech. If you want to see the new Raspberry Pi PICO W (which brings WiFi to the very popular controller) we’ll have some around too. Just turn up, we’d love to see you.

Cottingham Show

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Had some great fun at Cottingham Day today. The Pie Bakery (aka Hull Pie) were there so we grabbed some pies in the morning, had them for lunch and then went back out for strawberries, scones and cream. They had a bike show as well, which included this beauty. The weather forecast was fairly horrid, but the weather turned out really nice, and the huge crowds that turned out seemed to be having a whale of a time. As were we.

Got my PICO W

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My PICO W devices arrived today. They look really nice. I’ve soldered a bunch of pins onto one of them and plugged it into my PICO Display Pack with the intention of making a tiny wireless message board. Unfortunately the Pimoroni image with the drivers for the display on it doesn’t support WiFi just yet. I’ve tried using this library with the WiFi enabled Micro Python firmware but I can’t get it to work. With a bit of luck Pimoroni will catch up soon and I can make something that displays a message each time I make a new blog post….

Raspberry Pi PICO W brings Bluetooth and WiFi to the PICO

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The shiny box is the wireless antenna

The Raspberry Pi PICO is an awesome device. Super cheap, super easy to program and super easy to connect to stuff. The only thing about it that I didn’t like about it was the lack of any wireless connectivity. That’s changed now, with the launch of the PICO W. This adds a Infineon CYW43439 wireless chip to the PICO which brings Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. The new PICO W is physically compatible with the old one. The pins are pretty much the same, although three of them (ones you don’t use much) are now accessed slightly differently.

At the moment there are no drivers for Bluetooth and you can only use the WiFi from Micro Python programs (not C++ or Circuit Python). But I expect that to change pretty quickly once folks get to grip with the device.

There’s a really good description of the new PICO W plus sample code in this month’s MagPi magazine which you can find here.

Write the introduction first?

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I’m working on the introduction chapter for “Begin to code: Building Apps and Games with the Cloud”. It was suggested that I should write the introduction when I’ve finished the entire text. That way I’ll know exactly what ended up in it. I quite like this idea, but I think I’ll try and write the introduction first. I think it is better to have an idea where you are going before you start. And I can always revise it later…

Play Mantis

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Mantis is a nice little game. Except that it isn’t nice. And it isn’t little. There are loads of cards, each of which poses the question “Which of the three colours on the back is on the front?”. Gameplay involves either scoring “I’m going to user the colour on the other side to match with cards I have and score points” or stealing “I’m going to use the colour on the other side to match with cards I don’t have and steal them from someone else”.

Get ten scored cards and you win. And that’s it. There really isn’t much else to tell. The game is beautifully presented, with an entire back story that will tell you a lot more about shrimps that you thought there was to know. The rules are simple, but how you apply them and what you do is up to you and can get surprisingly deep. This is not a game that you will spend the entire evening playing, but it is a great way to get the party started.

Tag Jousts now in Hackspace Magazine

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I’ve got an article in Hackspace magazine this month. This is good news for readers, but also good news for me as I need to buy some new shoes…..

Anyhoo, this article is all about making a 3D printed game. It tells you how to run Python code inside the FreeCAD modelling tool and create game pieces programmatically. You find the magazine in shops and there is also a free pdf download here.

Connected Humber Meetup Dates

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We’ve set the dates for the next Connected Humber Hardware Meetups. We meet at Hull Makerspace in person on the first Wednesday of the month. Then, 15 days later on Thursday evening we meet online - link here. I look forward to seeing you if you fancy dropping in.

July Meetups:

Wednesday 6th July from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace

Thursday 21st July from 6:00 pm online

August Meetups:

Wednesday 3rd August from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace

Thursday 18th August from 6:00 pm online

September Meetups:

Wednesday 7th September from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace

Thursday 22nd August from 6:00 pm online

October Meetups:

Wednesday 5th October from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace

Thursday 20th of October from 6:00 pm online

November Meetups:

Wednesday 2nd November from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace

Thursday 17th of November from 6:00 pm online

December Meetups:

Wednesday 7th December from 5:30 pm in Hull Makerspace

Thursday 22nd of December from 6:00 pm online

Windows 11 on the cheapest computer I own

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Which one is running Windows 11?

When I bought my super-cheap laptop I noticed that xsonly had an even cheaper one that had a processor flagged as Windows 11 compatible. What the heck, it was only sixty quid. So I bought one. True to their word, Microsoft have now released an upgrade for the device and I installed it.

It works. Windows 11 runs perfectly. I’m not sure that I’d recommend the cheaper notebook though. I think it is cheaper for a reason - which is that it only has a dual core processor. The GeoBook 140 has a quad core device. The difference is noticeable when using the laptop, things are a bit more slow to arrive.

I rather like the Windows 11 experience though. Putting the task bar in the middle of the screen makes perfect sense after a while - you don’t have to move the mouse to the corner to do everything. Everything looks like it has had a spring clean and tidied up. Very nice.

If you want to run Windows 11 on a machine that is cheaper than a video game it is still available at the moment.

I hate buying train tickets

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I don’t have a very good record buying train tickets. The Trainline app that I use looks very easy to work with until you try and use it. And then the fun starts. It didn’t help that I was getting repeated “Only four tickets left at this price” messages all the way through the process. There was definitely pressure to complete the transaction as quickly and smoothly as possible. And the app did nothing to help this.

It turns out that if you forget to do something, back out of the action and then go back in the context is subtly changed. The first time this happened I nearly ended up buying tickets from the wrong place. The stupid application changed back to the previous transaction details when I popped back out of a new transaction to change the number of passengers. Then, having fixed that, I went back in to complete the purchase only to discover I’d only bought one seat rather than two. At no point did the application say “Hey! You’ve selected the couples discount but only bought one ticket”. So I had to frantically jump back into the app “Only three tickets left at this price” and buy everything again. And I missed out on my couples discount.

Number one son says I should just buy my tickets from somewhere else. I’m thinking he might be onto something. I just hope there will be trains on the day we want to travel.

and so to the dentist

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Going to the dentist is starting to remind me of piano lessons from years ago. Then I used to turn up nervously hoping that the teacher wouldn’t notice that I’d done no practice. With the dentist I turn up hoping she won’t notice I’ve done no flossing. As if.

I’m not sure why I worry about this so much. After all, the dentist gets paid whether I floss or not. In fact you could argue that me letting my teeth get into a mess just means more paid work for her. In which context the filling I need could be counted as a win.

I’m really going to start flossing more…