TommyTorty10

https://infosec.exchange/@TommyTorty10

they/them
20's
friend of eggbug
computer nerd
trumpet player

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npub1h5puejxg0kestx7r9z8a2hgukkyr37dknmxfccxcyw89gmpgpntqg7kk4q

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Last Notes

2026-03-17 05:42:14 GMT

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commenting to help myself to remember to pull out my laptop with win98 that has half life installed. I've got a lot to do lately, so it might be later this week

2025-12-27 04:48:34 GMT

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I think I saw that image 3 times before I read the text, cuz Im looking at it on a phone

2025-12-25 22:31:17 GMT

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TIL the Boehm GC exists, thanks for sharing!
Im curious, are there any other libraries or things that you think could help modernize C that youngins like me just haven't been introduced to? For context, I had several classes in university that used C, but none really went deep with it. The deepest we got was just its general use in Linux and spawning processes.

2025-10-25 06:52:34 GMT

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Having tried PIC and various RISC-V stuff this summer, I've really come to appreciate how consistent the arduino ecosystem is. I have plenty of gripes about it, but when it works it works. There's not many code things where someone can make a program, post it on instructables, and then have it still work for someone else with a much newer IDE 10 years later.
I think tomorrow, I'll give the other tools a short spin just so I can know more accurately what options exist beyond mplab. A part of me wonders how hard it would be to integrate a pic compiler with the Arduino ide, but that sounds like a larger project I dont want to bite off right now. There's probably reasons no one's done it before.

2025-10-25 05:49:28 GMT

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I'm gonna take a break, because I'm not sure what the path of least resistance is. I think I can choose from:
* Dig thru the ide settings and makefiles to find why it isn't including certain files anymore. I don't like this, cuz I already distrust this ide and don't wanna rely on it anymore.
* Make my own makefiles and use the xc8 compiler still, just without anything involving the mplab ide. I'll miss the automatic features of an ide, but if it works, it works.
* try sourceboost ide or gputils and see how bad that is. I have 0 idea how this would go. Sourceboost would require me to use my windows vm, and neither seems to have much community or examples I can quickly find.

2025-10-25 05:24:17 GMT

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Aaaaaaand there goes my patience again. I comment out a whole 2 function calls in the main function, and the compiler throws errors. I uncomment the 2 lines to make sure I'm sane. The compiler errors out saying that it doesn't know what the ADC and display files are. The mplab ide says there's updates available. I update everything. It's still throwing the same errors.

2025-10-25 02:25:28 GMT

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I found some patience for this again. I was having an issue where the program wasn't uploading to the microcontroller. I pulled a different ic out of the tube, and it works now, so I guess that first one was a dud.
Now I think the program is getting stuck somewhere. There's voltage on the capacitor and traffic on the serial line to the 7-seg display for a moment when I turn it on. Then everything hangs and nothing displays. On an oscilloscope, the capacitor's voltage looks level, but it should be changing a bit. Maybe I'll comment out the display code and see if I can just get the capacitor cycling.

2025-09-12 03:17:33 GMT

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Speaking as a queer person, I'll stick my neck out and say I stopped watching her channel after she posted a video claiming gender affirming care doesn't work whilst citing a paper in her video that clearly, objectively proved that it does. Im not a physicist, so if physicists say she knows her physics, I'll take them at their word, but her analysis of medical care is dangerous at best and gave me cause to be more skeptical of her analytical skills as a whole.
If she's changed her views on gender affirming care since I last saw her channel, Id be happy to hear it, just be mindful that I haven't watched her channel in years, because I don't want to debate medical science or spend time exposing myself to incredibly negligent analyses.

2025-08-08 05:50:24 GMT

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Realized, I haven't updated in awhile. I soldered the display to some wires which are soldered to the perfboard. I found a library written in C++ for the Arduino IDE for this display, and Ive decided to try to recycle it into pure C. So far, Im not sure Im really saving myself the time of writing it all myself, but now Im here, so I guess I'll finish it.
The MPLab IDE code configurator is really nice, and I like how the functions it generates are named. Place your bets now on whether my opinion will change as I delve into troubleshooting. The online docs for the code configurator don't seem to be fully up to date with the software, but they're close enough that I haven't gotten really lost or stuck yet.

2025-08-03 20:30:27 GMT

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I have a 12V wall wart that came with the dev board and I found another from an old, long-dead screwdriver rated for 2A. The old one doesn't have a ground prong which might actually be good so as to prevent a ground loop.

2025-08-03 20:19:27 GMT

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I forgot the pico-psu needs 12V input, so that doesn't help me lol. Time to keep digging thru the garage

2025-08-03 20:12:47 GMT

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The case came from a yard sale. Now im figuring out how to power everything. The monitor runs on 12V, and the dev board (a BPi-F3) also accepts 12V. I have an old Dell psu that would be overkill, but it takes quite a bit of space. It does fit beneath the monitor, but I'd like to save some room. I also have an early model of pico-psu which is way smaller, but Im not sure if it can provide enough current on 12V.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/966/648/356/947/021/original/e6a87f135db816d3.jpg
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/966/648/810/306/237/original/ba50697f3ef267f2.jpg

2025-08-03 20:07:39 GMT

Ive been thinking about building a cyberdeck out of a risc-v dev board Ive been playing with, but it wasn't a priority until yesterday when I found a great case to put it in! It fits a small crt monitor with room to spare
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/966/633/036/793/173/original/d7804a6e507fbb14.jpg

2025-07-06 21:08:12 GMT

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I also started writing some code for the 12F1840. I dont have my 7 segment displays on-hand, so things will be on pause for a week until I get them.

2025-07-06 21:06:24 GMT

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Soldered some stuff to a piece of perfboard. I used an ic socket that had broken in half and flipped it around, so I can plug in capacitors and swap resistors if I want.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/808/309/836/565/774/original/a4dd0f3804ef5de7.jpg
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/808/310/130/519/184/original/52b4deea019d8e30.jpg
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/808/310/478/513/361/original/952c9027066c1350.jpg

2025-07-04 07:23:06 GMT

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Gonna brainstorm some thoughts here for what I might try later.
I've got some 12F1840 PIC microcontrollers doing nothing, and I've hoping to have a project to learn more about them. I sorta like the idea of making the most bare-minimum capacitance meter I can with stuff that's already here. Each PIC has a 10-bit ADC that can use a built-in fixed voltage reference which can be configured to be 2048 or 4096 mV which seems just perfect! Hmm, it doesn't seem to have any hardware to multiply or divide which is something to bear in mind. I'm tempted to do something silly and add an OP-amp just as an external hardware multiply-divide co-ALU lol, but that would probably kill my precision. I'm genuinely curious how C compilers actually implement that division. I might have to mess around and find out. I can rearrange the math so I only have 1 division, 1 multiply, and 1 subtraction that the microcontroller would have to do and the other stuff could be hardcoded as constants.
I'm sure I can scrounge up some AA battery holder and run it forever off some rechargeables. I've got some serial, 4-digit, 7-segment displays somewhere, but I'm not sure where I put them. I could grab an analog voltmeter and drive it directly with the PIC for now. I think everything could live on a perfboard. If I feel fancy, I could make a little wooden box for it, but knowing me, I should reduce scope more. I don't think I have any banana-plug receptacles. I do have an abundance of IC sockets and the-like, so I could just use one of those to plug in capacitors, which I honestly like better for small capacitors anyway.
I think that covers the bare minimum to make things work.

2025-07-04 05:16:22 GMT

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If I were real smart, I'd replace the resistor with some kind of transistor and a resistor, so I could change the resistance to measure a wider range of capacitors, but I think Im gonna stop myself before that. Thinking is dangerous and leads to more work than I should be doing.

2025-07-04 05:08:15 GMT

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Changed things out for a 1mF cap that a store-bought meter measures as 0.9093 mF. My homemade setup measured 1.21, 1.02, and 0.842 mF! I am successfully doing an engineering!
So what will be the plan to make some actual measurement equipment? I'll place the capacitor in series with a resistor and charge it up to some voltage. I'll also have a microcontroller measure the voltage on both sides of the resistor. The microcontroller can use the voltage drop to calculate the current going in. Then it can calculate capacitance with C = (It) / Vcapacitor. I think this alone will probably be good enough for me.
Anyway, now I know that my supercapacitors are indeed lying and are probably only about 2.3F rather than the 3.3 advertised.

2025-07-04 04:19:36 GMT

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And suddenly, my data looks a lot better, yippee! I got 2.31, 2.35, and 2.29F.
It would be nice to have equipment that could actually measure this stuff directly, and I think I might be able to build off of this setup to make something, but first, I should verify my results with a smaller capacitor I can actually measure.

2025-07-04 04:03:28 GMT

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My data is just as unreliable but now lower lol. Going from 25mV to 126mV and taking measurements along the way gave 2.78F, 2.94F, and ~~2.38F~~ correction 2.97F, math is hard.
Measured the current over the same time frame, and it dropped from 8.3 to 7.7mA which still isn't 10, but closer. Gonna do some math and try to account for my non-constant current.

2025-07-04 03:45:53 GMT

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Messed with the clips and tried again. The only consistent thing I see is that my error gets larger, the longer I time things for. My shortest measument is the closest to spec at 3.38F after 44s, and my longest is 5.22F after 209s.
Maybe as the capacitor fills, it really resists more than I expect? That would account for the dropping current. I think I'll really drop the voltage and see what happens.

2025-07-04 03:28:02 GMT

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Now the voltage rise is visibly slower than before, so something has changed about the setup. Maybe some clip isn't making great contact?

2025-07-04 03:24:08 GMT

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I was expecting 10mA. The current started at 2.3mA and is dropping lol

2025-07-04 03:21:50 GMT

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Ok, so new plan is to verify that the current is constant by just measuring it right next to the capacitor

2025-07-04 03:13:32 GMT

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This time, I recorded the voltage at a few degrees different times, so I can try to judge if my measurement method and math are consistent. They arent lol. I got 4.0F, 6.87F, and 5.91F all from the same capacitor. At least I am within the specc'd order of magnitude lol

2025-07-04 03:06:22 GMT

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Each capacitor claims to be 3.3F rated for 2.7V. first capacitor measured 3.97F which seems like a lot until we remember that the error tolerance for large caps can be 20%. 120% of 3.3 is 3.96F, so between tolerance and error in my setup, it could be believable. Now trying a 2nd capacitor.

2025-07-04 03:02:37 GMT

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I measure the voltage before I start charging (because they still have some after sitting for a year) and then start my timer. I stop the timer at 0.6V cuz it's a convenient number.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/792/732/756/185/758/original/2e2c6df3fa195eca.jpg

2025-07-04 02:59:12 GMT

Ive been using some super capacitors to replace clock batteries in old computers, but Ive never quite believed that they are as capacitative as claimed. Today I decided to try to measure that. None of my capacitance meters can directly measure anything in full farads, so I timing how long it takes to charge from a constant current.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/792/720/649/929/884/original/635a622a129794a1.jpg

2025-06-15 16:52:40 GMT

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speaking as a trumpet player, go do it! No time better than the present