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What programming/technical projects have you been working on?
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
I'm working on setting up an overly complex method of watching my 3D printer's progress through my media platform of choice (Emby).
The webcam stream from my 3D printer uses MJPG, which is great for viewing from a web browser, but not very friendly for many other video decoders, etc. Emby does not support MJPG for streaming purposes (Live TV, or even plugins like IPTV), so a direct stream is out.
There's a restreaming software called MediaMTX, but that also doesn't work (directly) with MJPG.
So what I've decided to do is use Neko, a VNC-esque software with broadcast capabilities, to show the Fluidd webpage from my 3D printer (which will also include current progress, temps, etc.) and convert it to an RTMP stream. I will then use MediaMTX to parse that stream into an Emby-compatible format (TBD), and access it via an M3U file published by MediaMTX. This will create a "Live TV" channel for my 3D printer!
If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm all ears, but this is the way I've come up with to show a webpage as a video stream.
i have been thinking about setting up a camera for my printer (it doesn't have one itself) manually using a usb webcam, a raspberry pi, and some software to turn the webcam into an video stream on my network, where i could view it through VLC or maybe some web interface
haven't done so yet, though. but i think it will be fairly simple and using my own camera and server means more control over the video
though it also means it's completely passive unless i do some fancy stuff with the rpi and the printer firmware and all that. but i don't really need that, just want a way to monitor from other rooms
yeah it's tough that your printer's camera forces that format which other things aren't playing well with... nice job working around the problem though!
Finally got copyparty set upon my Mac mini to use as a file server for my local network, and got a custom skin/theme working with it (Catppuccin).
It apparently has OPDS support so I was hoping I could also use it to serve books to my kobo via KoReader (instead of also running the Calibre OPDS content server), but I was getting errors when trying to download to my kobo (of course, the error message didn’t render properly on the Kobo so I’m not exactly sure what the issue was). Might spend some time debugging, or just get Calibre also running on the Mac mini.
Last Thursday I had a sudden spark of inspiration while at work, went home to realize I don’t have it in me to make an app from scratch, and decided to try out bolt.new’s AI tools to spin it up.
I’ve spent the better part of the last week working through issues but think I’ve got most of the kinks worked out. Admittedly, this is still largely a black box that I’m unsure how it functions exactly, but it’s only logging an email so I feel it’s low stakes.
So now for the idea: what if you could post a status that shows you’re available to socialize so that friends, families, groups, social circles in general could see that status and have less friction to reach out? Or maybe even post a block of time that you’ll be available in the next couple of weeks, so that others that may be available at the same time cools reach out and coordinate a group hang.
That’s the basic premise behind Sitch
Add friends, quickly post a status that automatically expires after a set time, and allow the connections to flow more naturally/passively.
Admittedly, it may never take off because who needs another social app? I truly just wish this functionality existed so I could utilize it myself.
I am also open to hearing a critique of the methods used to make this project, I’m certainly not pro AI generally, but it was interesting/cool to be able to take an idea and manifest something so quickly.
I greatly appreciate anyone willing to try it out, provide feedback, even share it with your circle of you find it valuable
Thank you
My text game journey continues. For those keeping track, I started learning ZIL, the Zork Implementation Language so I could build my own text game based off of one of my novels. Not to be outdone, I decided that just making a text game was not enough, I need a fun way to display it at my next author event. So it was time to make a cyberdeck.
One Nanuk 910 case later and a LOT of 3d printing failures, I now have a complete screen and keyboard deck in a bright red case. The whole thing runs off a FabGL board (LilyTTGO). It's basically an ESP32 that has VGA and PS2 (keyboard + mouse) with an SDcard running CP/M.
Yes. CP/M.
It's... old.
But the machine boots instantly and I have this great CP/M program for running Z-Code text games called Vezza (shout out to Shawn Sijnstra!) that runs all my games and the old Infocom standbys like Zork and Enchanter, etc.
I'm ready for my next author show with something decidedly different. Will it bring attention to the table? Who knows? Did I have fun making it? Yes.
I've also installed Word Star on it so worst case I can swivel it around and write.
Just Nerdy Author Things. :)
I've just pushed some small updates to my very hobbyist progressive web app Collider. Originally it was "Bat Signal", then "Kid Collider", now just "Collider".
My real life problem is this: I have a kid who wants to go to the park. They want friends to be there, too. I could spend 30 minutes texting various parents in the neighborhood to see if anyone is free and wants to come over, one at a time, wait for responses, haggling on details like arrival time or exact playground or whatever. Finally get something worked out, but now my kid is tired and ready to go home, etc.
What I really want: As i walk to playground I broadcast some signal to friends that "we are going to this park in 10 minutes" and then just go. If another parent is thinking they want to go to a park, too, they can look at this app and see "hey, someone else is going to this particular park, lets meet them there".
Wow, it’s kinda crazy how similar in premise this is to the project I posted. Great minds or something
Continuing on my convoluted journey of changing the layout of my smart TV remote. I went to my local hackrrspace and found the correct pads on the back that correspond to the buttons I want to change. I now need to work on soldering wires to these pads so I can then connect buttons to them. Unfortunately I don't have time for that this week as I'm traveling. In the meantime, I got some measurements for the existing buttons and case and now I just need to learn some basic 3D modeling to get a remote shell ready.