Shacknews LoL

Ok, this is major... I mean major news (for people like me)!!!!!!! Sony is FINALLY releasing an accessibility controller for the PS5. Project Leonardo Accessibility Controller. No idea when its coming out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMD5Nq_4Il8

This made my night.

Real estate post. The paralegal that works for our real estate lawyer called us about 30 min ago saying they had the closing yesterday for the shop, without us being involved and that we just need to initial some paperwork today.

So I guess we own the building the shop is in. Apart from some minor paperwork. Yay! 🎉🎉

Would have been nice to be involved with the closing, but I guess the seller's attorneys called our lawyer yesterday and asked to do the closing last minute.

Crazy to think this time last year I owned no property. Now we have a house and a commercial property.

*Cries in property taxes*

Bone Lab tomorrow!!!

Had a guy come by the shop the other day asking to photo scan the inside of the shop for portfolio use and to use for Google maps. He offered to do it for free and I couldn't pass up a price that good. I ended up giving him $50 for doing it, which I practically had to force him to take, but it came out so good. He had a tripod with some crazy camera system on it, like seriously legit. He did catch himself in one shot when you're at the bottom of the stairs looking into the first floor, but it's only a partial view of his side.

For whatever reason the link starts upstairs in the waiting room, but you can "walk" around and finally see what this place I've been talking about all these years looks like.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/nYMFEBJLQvGmq4sX8

I do a lot of 3D printing and electronics work in my workroom:
https://imgur.com/a/eG4TaxU

Lately I've been doing a lot of soldering iron work for prototyping:
https://imgur.com/a/obL5VFM

Normally, my soldering is all reflow soldering of surface-mount components, so the board goes into a toaster oven and the whole thing is soldered in 60 seconds. By comparison, soldering that protoboard took me probably 8 hours of work with a soldering iron.

I do use an activated charcoal filter to suck the solder smoke fumes, but honestly it doesn't seem to work very well. After a couple hours of soldering, the air in my room is thick to breathe. I have my suspicions that it's not very good for me. Add to that I'm curious what kind of plastic particles come off the 3D printer while it's running (I suspect not many as I only print in PLA/PETG, but still).

After much humming & hawing, I went out and impulse purchased this device:
https://www.airthings.com/en-ca/view-plus

It cost $425 CDN. I sat in the car for THIRTY minutes trying to justify the purchase and I couldn't. I walked back in and returned it. The device:
- was crazy expensive
- fed sensor data to some random company I didn't know
- simplified down the measurements into simple "1-digit" measurements like "happy emoji" and "red LED"
- had no way to neatly export the sensor data into something I could examine and manipulate myself

I decided instead to build my own solution. I went to SparkFun and picked up:
- an Arduino Uno
- an ESP8266 wifi shield
- an SPS30 particulate sensor
- a BME688 multi-sensor
- a CCS811 air quality sensor

I spent a weekend assembling it and another weekend writing the Arduino sketch (firmware) to run on it:
https://imgur.com/a/qNNTq4A

The Arduino acts as a simple wifi-connected server that presents data points in text/plain format:
https://imgur.com/a/cwrGvkM

On my Synology NAS, I created 2 Docker container images:
- Prometheus (a scraper + datastore)
- Grafana (data visualization)

I configured Prometheus to scrape the Arduino output every 60 seconds. I then built Grafana dashboards to display the output:
https://imgur.com/a/4IWvWyx
https://imgur.com/a/x9HjERW

I'm very satisfied with the results! The total price ended up being about $190CDN and I have full control over the sourcing, storage and display of every piece of sensor data.

I would say the setup is fairly accurate, particularly for identifying trends. I took it outside and the results near-exactly matched the air quality readings of a local Environment Canada weather station. I'm still taking the individual data points with a grain of salt as the whole thing hasn't been professionally calibrated.

I've yet to do any soldering with the system running, so I'm excited to see those charts. So far printing PLA hasn't even moved the needle and printing PETG generated a bit of VOC's.

The big surprise is when I'm working in that room the amount of CO2 I generate and how long it takes to dissipate. It's quite easy to tell when I've been popping in and out based on spikes in the chart.

Anyways, project turned out cool and I wanted to share. :)

Finally got it. Colonel Mustard.

https://i.imgur.com/uNfdP2W.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/XVab9ss.jpg

I got the Lariat package. Overall I like it. It’s small but still feels like a truck. Averaged 41mpg going from the dealer to my dad’s house, then my house.

Shack

Thank you. You are ridiculous. I've never made this many wallets in a couple of days before, it was insane but also insanely awesome:

All ready to ship tomorrow.

https://i.imgur.com/qoCMDaA.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/JyDFFSr.jpg

Lookitzpancakes and …..Tenacious D?! Fuckin A!

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CeZeMu1lFrw/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

Happy Birthday sHugamom! Without you none of us would be on shacknews!

Woot! I can now add writer to my list of things I've done. I'm a man of many baseball hats. My two books went live on Amazon today, under the pen name, J.M. Buckley (my initials are MJB): https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09KBKSSC2

Most of you probably won't find it your cup of tea, but I wanted to share and say "I did a thing." If you know of someone that might be interested in them, feel free to share the links. If you're wondering why I wrote two contemporary romance novels, it's mostly because I've written a few sci-fi and a couple of fantasy books that I can't publish. I absolutely hate what I ended up writing. I read the two genres so much that I've become too picky and can't even read my own works. Someone suggested that I write in a genre I don't read and have no expectations.

Also, I put up a fancy pants website if you want to check it: https://www.jmbuckley.com/

Marc Rebillet concert tonight in New Orleans! We were walking down the street and what do you know, he was walking right next to us on the other side!

https://i.imgur.com/ethF4TD.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/6hzlFQ2.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/D3zud7R.jpg