The Wrew: Core Dump

I've been holding off switching to MeshCore mainly because of the poor experience I had with the available firmware for the T-Deck every time I tried it.

As a hacker I’m always looking for new things to learn and explore and tinker with - usually to see what I can do it them that weren’t exactly intended.

It's been a few years since Pop!

This week has been a good one for getting things I pre-ordered months ago - as well as some things I ordered more recently (soldering supplies - less exciting but no less valuable!)

We're at a point now in the development of the hackers.town pager where the light is visible at the end of the tunnel.

I some time the last few days working on tracking down and trying to fix various system crashes with VoidMantisOS.

One of the challenges of developing a device like the hackers.town pager is that conditions in my office / lab are not necessarily matched with conditions out in the real world.

I've been writing a LOT lately about Project Retro, mainly because it's the primary personal project I've been working on lately, but also because I'm super excited about where it's going and what it can do.

As the post title suggests, this post is going to be about mesh support in VoidMantisOS - specifically the work to add in support for MeshCore.

While working on the firmware for Project Retro, it was becoming pretty clear to us that it's becoming more than just a simple firmware... it's becoming a micro operating system.

One of the capabilities we wanted to have for the Hackers.Town pager is the ability to send WIFI DEAUTH frames, because what hacker device is complete that isn't able to act as a pwnagotchi?

The SF Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park have a really cool night lightscape display set up that features THOUSANDS (hundreds of thousands?

A lot has gone on over the last week and a half, so I thought I'd post a brief update for those few who read the blog.

It's been a busy couple of days working on the Project Retro (Hackers.Town Pager), with some hard won successes to celebrate.

The refactor of the UI code for The Hackers.Town Pager (Project Retro) has been finished, breaking out each individual "all" into it's own separate component keeps things a lot cleaner and allows for improved UI handling overall.

The screen on the hackers.town pager is not soldered onto the main PCB, but rather pressure fit against some spring loaded leads that drive the display.

I know this is a project a LOT of people are following and interested in - we've got over 30 orders (surpassing my "I think a few people would be interested" expectation by leaps and bounds) and a lot more people interested in where we take the project.

Last week I had the pleasure of traveling to Austin Texas for a work related event.

HACK THE PLANET!

I wrote an update a few days back about Project Retro, and how it kick started my electronics hobby.

It's been a while since I last posted an update on Pr0j3kt R3tr0.

I've been putting a lot of work into getting The Beverage Vault into a state where I felt it was ready to be released into the wild... and it finally hit that state.

I had a lot of time last night to work on things for The Beverage Vault, and made some good progress!

Databases.

It's been a busy week since I first stood up The Beverage Vault - loads of new features have been added and it's really starting to take shape and develop into a nice little app.

Development progress on The Beverage Vault continues at a reasonable rate, with a couple of releases happening this week that have added some new features and capabilities (some big, some small) - even one that was to handle a small request from a user!

A new code push has released new features for The Beverage Vault - marking our first post-launch update!

I recently started working on a new project I've named The Beverage Vault, or just The Vault, that allows for tracking of wines, whiskey's and beers that I've tried.

After banging my head against a wall repeatedly last night, trying to get a microcontroller to talk to a VOC sensor breakout board over a QWIIC (i2c) connection, I found a lot more success today on the hardware front.

For those who are unaware, Stigmerge is a cool little app that utilizes the Veilid network for secure, private, file sharing between friends.

My spouse has finally embraced the projects I've been working on as just something I need to do to keep my sanity - and has even started contributing ideas for some projects I can build.

I was able to finish up the work of porting Project Bookmark to the ESP 32 last night, but started thinking about the fact that the ESP32S3 boards I have from Adafruit have an integrated TFT display... and that wasn't being utilized... and it'd be a shame…

SUCCESS!!!!!!!

When I initially started this project, I thought it might be a simple lift and shift, where I could just update what libraries are being used and largely leave the code the same - but as with most projects it hasn't gone exactly to plan.

I love the Project Bookmark, a roaming digital library to give and take digital reading material - it’s a really cool concept that I adore.

As my infrastructure has gained a bit of sprawl and increased in surface area, it's become a little more important to have visibility into my endpoints and web exposed services.

I've been pretty critical of AI in general - I think it's being force fed to us and added to all kinds of products that absolutely get zero benefit from having it there.

A friend, The SlugNoodle, has a really cool project that he put together called Project Bookmark.

One of the things I used from Proton was ProtonVPN.

Today we're continuing on with my series on breaking up with Proton with part IV - how to handle migrating a custom domain.

A lot of my projects are fun, but sometimes they can bring a little levity and humor along for the ride.

Over the summer an idea was born for a project we’ve affectionately dubbed Pr0j3kt R3tr0 - a project that would require a combination of disciplines from electronics design, 3d printing, and software development.

I wrote the other day about breaking up with Proton and moving my mail and calendar to Tuta.

When I went to look for how to move from Proton to Tuta, I didn't seem to find any kind of official guide on how to do so.

Since it's inception, I've been a supporter of Proton (originally Proton Mail), and have been a visionary level supporter ever since that was a thing.

For those who have been following the FLIP card project I’ve embarked on, you know it hasn’t always gone swimmingly well.

I'm a one person show when it comes to MOST of the projects I work on.

Another project got a slight update today as I got around to firing up the KrakenSDR that's connected to and controlled by an RPi5 in my homelab.

I wrote not long ago about a DIY photo phrame using an RPi and a 7" display, along with some simple software (imv) to rotate through photos and display them on the screen.

I've got another pr0j3kt in the works that just got submitted for a quote for fabrication.