A Quest for a Quest 2 example that will compile

(I make zero apologies for my dad puns). I tried various tricks to get one of the examples in the Quest 2 SDK examples directory to compile but failed. I only tried one, but it looks like the examples have all gone stale. Fortunately, people have put up minimal Hello World VR like examples on …

Setting up developer tools for Quest 2

Jump through the Facebook hoops outlined here.Enable developer mode on the Quest2 via the Phone App. In case you have forgotten about the Phone App, it's called Oculus, needs you to log into your FB account and to pair with the Quest 2 it needs to be on the same WiFi network and have location …

LEGO sets as investments

I was pretty skeptical of those who buy LEGO sets and never open them and keep them as an investment. For various reasons I was looking up some classic space LEGO sets on brickset and looked up the famous Galaxy Explorer (497). It was introduced in 1979 and retailed at $32. A new set in …

Counterfeit DS18B20s in action

I have mentioned earlier that for yet another hare brained project, I have manufactured a need for measuring temperatures using a microcontroller. I got hold of some DS18b20 sensors (very cool sensors) that fell off a lorry bought from shady dealers I found online. I've had some adventures with them which may have to do …

Is it my source, my solder or my silicon?

One smash my head against the wall fun aspect of micro controller projects is that when things blow up it's often not clear whether it is an issue with the platonic* and hermetic** world of software, or the open ended world of hardware. (* for some values of platonic, ** for some values of hermetic) …

ESP32 + DS18B20 = kapow!

For reasons too tangential to go into here I am looking to create a data logger that will sit in my basement and record temperatures, events and a few other parameters from a household device. My first thought was to use an Arduino, since I've programmed these before. 5 years before actually. Man, I can …

Livin’ in the future

We are often inundated with how bad the present is, but I always am thankful for the technological advances that have jumped out from some's brain and are making the world a much better place. The mRNA vaccines, of course, are an immediate example, as are the anti-viral pills for COVID which I suspect can …

Oil to Gas conversion (2022)

Our house has a forced hot water heating system (hydronic heat). A boiler heats up water and pumps circulate the water through baseboard radiators in the rooms (copper tubes with fins on them, aka fin-and-tube) that, in turn, heat up the air in the room via convection. Our boiler is oil fired and I decided …

Interface changes are very disruptive

I was sitting and cursing out the interface of this new fangled integrated development environment (IDE) I was supposed to use, when it hit me - this was karma. Life had come full circle. I had become what I had not understood. IDEs are code editors that are well integrated with other tools such as …

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Many academic theses are not as well studied as this little gem. It has physics lab, stats lab, hypotheses generation, and experiment design all in 13 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqSHeyFbpDw The rest of the videos on that channel are all gems in their own right.

LEGOinformatics

While writing some simple scripts to manage LEGO parts lists from different marketplaces, I had a flashback to my previous life in bioinformatics. tl;dr: the code is here https://github.com/kghose/bricks. I frequent two LEGO marketplaces (websites that list sellers of new and used LEGO parts): BrickOwl and BrickLink. BrickLink also maintains a spectacular LEGO CAD software …

BrickOwl, BrickLink and BrickLink Stud.io

Between the LEGO marketplaces and BrickLink Stud.io (an amazing LEGO CAD software) I've been in hobby heaven. The LEGO marketplaces, where you can buy LEGO parts a la carte has made me a kid in a candy store and I've had to carefully watch my spending. I looked into both BrickOwl and BrickLink, found the …

Virtual center of rotation

https://youtu.be/sxSHSZHh9wc I needed to tilt a plate about a particular axis, but there was no space to actually fit an axle along that axis. In addition the attachment points on the plate were offset from the desired axis of rotation. I designed a rigid linkage to tilt the plate about the desired center. On the …

LEGO swashplate: requirements

I hope that this will be first of a series of LEGO Technic builds that demonstrate mechanisms that I find ingenious. Background After looking over the current slate of LEGO Technic offerings and watching a bunch of build and review videos I came to the conclusion that what I really wanted was to build a …

Different LEGO X-wing mechanisms

"Lock S-foils in attack position" was one of the memorable phrases from the Star Wars movies and the X-wing was the iconic fighter from the trilogy. I got a LEGO X-wing this Christmas and got to wondering about the mechanism used to adjust the wings. The X-Wing has been released in many versions, some of …

DSLs via Feature Flagging a Language

I'm probably not the only one who has looked at yet another domain specific language (DSL) and gone "Oh God, no!" A typical DSL starts out simply and innocently enough, but through the horrors of actual use, they grow in macabre ways, until they split their carapace and emerge as a Turing complete abomination, constructed …

M.Zuiko ED 40-150mm f4.0-5.6 R

There are a lot of reviews of this lens and they are all pretty detailed and positive. What I want to add here is that subject isolation for an outdoor sport (soccer) is decent when the lens is used wide open. I wanted to photograph soccer games and the 42mm end of the kit lens …

Money for your Monet as income

I've seen the usual frothing at the mouth reports of how the ultra-rich pay less taxes than salaried Sam and how we should be raising taxes everywhere to pay for all the government spending we are doing and will be doing in the future. For the greater good of course. Leaving aside the question of …

Roomba i7

The Roomba i7 is a very clever robot. It reminds me of a enthusiastic puppy that cleans up messes instead of creating them. It vacuums very well and navigates very intelligently. I only wish they could come up with some adaptation to the frame to allow it to do the stairs. Then it would be …

Got rid of more social media

I went off facebook a few years ago and then I went off Twitter. No one harassed me, no one said mean things to me. It was just that it was all so depressing for me. There were very few posts that I actually found useful. For me, Twitter was full of strangers announcing job …