Recent updates:

TLC5940, TLC59116, and IS31FL3218 LED drivers 1 hour ago
tl;dr: The TLC59116 is a pretty neat part Following up to the previous entry on the CAT4019/CAV4019 LED driver , I got three more intelligent controllers to play with. All three of these are external intelligent LED drivers, two from TI, one from Lumissil. I soldered the three of them to surface…

Three and a half new ways to deep sleep in ESPHome 3 weeks ago
I've been wanting to do some stuff with solar power and low energy and ESPHome. Thing is, either of those devices eats up quite a bit of current. Less than a Pi, but still enough power to matter if you are using solar power. Furthermore, I think that ESPHome's over-the-air software update system…

Step 3: In which I actually look through the example source bundle and refactor 1 month ago
Goal : Get more code working. I've been working on two different approaches to this problem, in parallel. On one side, there's the Feather M4 running CircuitPython. On the other, there's a ATmega328 running Arduino C++. In both cases, I've got buttons and the driver for an APA102 "DotStar" strand…

Wiring up Wilf Rigter's SIMD1 V3 1 month ago
tl;dr: A FQP30N06L will work as the MOSFET in a SIMD1 V3 circuit, although it's not a very bright solar engine with the parts I've used. In the 1990's, Mark Tilden cooked up the idea of BEAM robotics. Instead of using complicated digital electronics, he'd wire up simple biologically-inspired analog…

Step 6: Where I reach the limits of the breadboard 1 month ago
Goal : Make sure the board won't asplode when I plug it in. I managed to not break the board after not working with it since last August. I did a careful check, made sure the wires weren't plugged wrong, etc. After doing a bunch of checks, I plug it in, connect to the serial port, and it says…