#Electronics

After a week of testing and tweaking, my DIY solar shed upgrade is complete. And it seems to work pretty well!

Last week I bought a solar panel, inverter and some lead acid batteries and set up a solar system in my shed, with the intention of powering my servers. It seems to work pretty well and I have it all integrated into Home Assistant. I’m going to do a load of videos on it and Home Assistant in general.

I have a load of smart devices in my house that all have ESP8266 microcontrollers inside them. They all work with the Tuya SmartLife app on my phone, and the Tuya integration in HomeAssistant. They also all talk to China to do anything. I’d rather they didn’t. China doesn’t need to know I want to turn my lighting on.

I upgrade my Atari STFM to 4MB of RAM using a Marpet XTra RAM Deluxe board

Yesterday I recapped my ST’s PSU which went well, nothing exploded. However when trying to boot the machine it kept crashing, especially when it went to the desktop.

I wanted a mechanical keyboard with Windows keys. I have an IBM Model M keyboard, but its lack of Windows keys makes using Windows 10 more annoying than it should be. I don’t hunt and peck around the start menu, I’ve learnt to press the Windows key and just start typing the program I want to open.

Upgrading my BBC Micro to use a Gotek floppy emulator, 1770 disk controller and a Raspberry Pi co-processor.

Here is how I fixed the drift on my Nintendo Switch Joy-Con. It is properly fixed, not just putting cleaner into the thumbstick. I will also be showing how to swap the shell of the joy-con for a different style. You don’t have to do this if all you want is to do is repair your joy-con.

Turns out my £20 soldering station does indeed work, but its claims of ESD safety are lies. Let’s fix that!

I bought a soldering iron for £20 from Amazon. Is it any good? Does it even work?

It’s been a long time since I entered a game jam, the last ones being the One Game a Month jams back in 2014. This one was the GMTK Game Jam 2019