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December Adventure
Community Project, 2024
I recently wrote a long post on Mastodon about the love I had for online community projects in the past; This qoute explains #decemberAdventure in short by Eli , its creator:
Pick a project, or projects and work on them a little bit every day in December.
As you do, feel free to log your progress. I like to use the fediverse and the hashtag, #DecemberAdventure.
31 –– Wrapping up and planing for the New Year
This #decemberAdventure was a good thing to join and keep an eye on. While it showed me how many creative little tools I already do and build. It also helped me to get more into blogging and writing again—also exposing how limited my writing skills are. During this Month I did work on:
- The Solenoid box, bridging my modular synthesizer to the physical space and Instruments (video)
- Improvements on this website, with a redesign and refresh of all Typography elements.
- A working prototype to create a small web app from a FFmpeg one-liner I want to share with others.
For the new Year I want to prepare a little musical set for the Solenoid Quartett. Something that’s nice to look and and listen too.
27 –– German language and further information
With the main code untouched, I worked on the UI a bit, translated the content to German, and added further information on how to get the most out of the little audio device and the USB storage.
I feel quite confident that this kind of tool is useful, but I wonder if I can really have people use it and not just overcomplicate the work for them.
16 –– wasm-ffmpeg saving the day
I still had this tiny side project on my list, a small (web) app that can convert any audio file to the right format to be played back by an “audio pen”, the kind for interactive books with DIY record functions.
I first had a friend of mine help me with getting ffmpeg run as wasm so there is no need for the server to handle things, and everything can stay on the users machine.
Things are jumping everywhere and the workflow is not perfect, but I’m happy to have more than a proof of concept at hand.
For anyone intersted in the (pretty basic) code behind the project, you can take a look at the github repository.
For the time I’ll also have a rough work in progress version online availabe here.
9 –– Shiny new (old) box
Basic MOSFET-box building is complete
The Solenoids now also have little 3.5mm jacks as it’s my most common cable.
Also plugged this in together with piezo pickus and it works as expected!
8 –– New tool!
Got a new (second hand) tool! And recycled an old telephone cable for wires.
7 –– Saying goodbye to Modular Mülheim
I used the chance to say goodbye and wish the two lovely humans behind the Shop all the best on their new endeavors and long-deserved rest.
6 –– Solenoids banging away
I’m still taking a good look at the AoC puzzles, learning and struggling a bit more every day.
The MOSFET-board is doing its job, and the solenoids are banging—much louder than expected. I did solder the input jacks to quite thick wires; somehow I did not consider that when cutting the wires. For a smaller enclosure, I will need to replace these. The Small 3.5V power supply was just enough to make sure everything works.
The video shows the setup running with a 9V wall-wart, but with not enough amps. When two solenoids are active at once, they can’t produce enough forte to fully move.
5 –– Slow code & first clicks from the Solenoid
During the evening hours, I had a few relaxing minutes putting together a very basic test with the MOSFET-board and solenoids.
In found a very nice and basic power source to test everything with, using my trusty USB powerbank and a USB to barrel plug cable. I hope that this little combo will be enough to check functionality, as well as polarity, before I connect everything to a 12V wall-wart.
The 3.5V has been enough to make the solenoid move. And while I haven’t soldered the jacks yet, I did already get blinking LEDs on the MOSFET-board! (Success!)
4 –– Code and Hardware
This time, the Advent of Code challenge was not that tricky for me as a concept. But I did run into issues, trying not to read data that is outside my 2D array. After I got that down, I solved part 1 in a breeze.
Later that day, my new tinker hardware arrived, which has already been put in an old cardboard box as an enclosure. The goal is to hook this up to my modular synth at one point.
3 –– Writing code on the tram
Solved Advent of Code Day 3 puzzle before work. The same morning I added a path like navigation to the website (on the empty tram to work). The are still some weird bugs with it, but that’s for another day.
2 –– Writing the log
I do not like writing, I feel clumsy in German as well as in English. Even though I use both languages on a daily basis. I’ll try to use this adventure as an opportunity to tinker on a few things, as well as get to write more.
While I’m still waiting for some parts for my little project (I’ll try to do some real world things!) I completed the second day of this year’s Advent of Code Puzzle, already collecting four stars. Last year, I was able to solve 19 of the 48 puzzles before Christmas.
1 –– Housekeeping to make this log possible
As I read more about the adventure, and it became clear that I wanted to join, some things needed to be brought in order first. I have long struggled with the Typography and readability of this website.
On the first day, I removed close to all CSS rules that modified the texts and fonts of this site. I now integrated typebase.css for a clearer design and better legibility. This has also made the mobile version much more usable.