Attie Grande

computer booper / electronics wizard.
things are never as simple as they first appear.
ally 🌈🦕🦄

Last Notes

2026-10-14 23:34:22 GMT

I sort of can't believe I've never done this before...
When I was a youngling and my only persistent storage was scavanged from the school waste pile, I had to be super frugal. I remember ripping CDs to 64 kbit/s WMA files and going "it sounds fine!" (😱)
I've always had a large appreciation for music, and I'm lucky enough to have grown into really caring about sound stuff - working as a technician and sound engineer all my way through school and uni, since about 10 years old. It's easily one of the things I miss most, and that "fork in the road" decision that I sorta-kinda regret.
Anyway. Instagram just shoved a pretty decent sounding song at me, but oh boy the quality was shite.
Here is a spectogram of the Instagram audio vs the 24-bit 48 kHz audio from Tidal. No points for guessing correctly, and a stern look for guessing incorrectly.
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/117/441/869/858/080/736/original/cf582b72460d8119.png
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/117/441/870/032/803/600/original/9af1627dc7dee9d9.png

2026-09-30 08:55:01 GMT

There are some things that I really appreciate, and this is one of them.
> To get that throughput, I had to bit-bang all 16 lines with wur.gpio_out (8 lines per core). No room left for a clock or strobe. A CPU-driven async bus at ~100 MHz is a recipe for disaster, so the FPGA feeds the ESP its 40 MHz reference. It then follows the firmware's exact instruction timings and samples between pin transitions, with the sampling phase calibrated for the wiring.
https://www.reddit.com/r/esp32/comments/1wq37xz/got_raw_iq_streaming_out_of_an_esp32s3_at_80_mss/

2026-09-09 10:18:19 GMT

A customer has just handed me a ~12k line diff across two projects (and that's with exclusions and easy wins removed)... any guesses where it came from?
I need a copy of this sign...
I'm starting to notice that the comments produced by Claude (Opus 5 in this case) are not very helpful.
I'll try to add more nuance as I wade through this, but human comments are generally not-great (e.g: often stale), while AI comments seem to be one of:
1. overly verbose waffle, difficult to parse and understand
2. lacking context and detail, expecting you to "just know" the code base inside out
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/117/240/547/142/421/408/original/a4742457a050a980.png

2026-08-30 22:15:02 GMT

I'd appreciate input on this.
I'm looking for an LED panel, to be suspended from the ceiling... approx 600x600mm, ~3000K, High-CRI, Lots of lumens. This will be form my study - lots of staring at monitors, big and small work (e.g: both electronics and mechanical).
The High-CRI factor appears to be a problem (80% is readily available), and the "random product I might not be able to buy again" factor is also a concern (in case a replacement is required in the future).
I've found Thorn Lighting that make an actual product, but I'm not sure I want to see their pricing.
https://www.thornlighting.co.uk/en-gb/p/96634489
https://www.thornlighting.co.uk/en-gb/p/96635035
There are a few other UK suppliers who seem to provide products with varying levels of technical details. Perhaps my search hasn't been extensive enough yet...

2026-08-03 12:22:41 GMT

I can't accurately convey the rollercoaster ride of feelings you'll experience when running a fairly long & comprehensive test suite against 30x new prototype PCBAs for a customer... and the pass rate is ~36% 😬

2026-07-30 18:24:54 GMT

Any suggestions for where to get high-purity IPA (~99%) in the US? ... Pharmacy (CVS) apparently has 71% and 90% options, but I want more!

2026-07-13 21:49:09 GMT

If I drank tea, I think I would have just spat it out!
I was just quoted for a 305m drum of CAT6 F/UTP... £705 + shipping.
😵

2026-06-15 09:31:28 GMT

- reply

@nprofile…mv7s @nprofile…3tsk can you share for the first too, out of curiosity?
Aside from the launch, this was going to be my main point.
edit: found https://ioc.exchange/@azonenberg/116753334777659891

2026-04-09 16:37:17 GMT

It seems the JST website (they make connectors) might be somewhat vulnerable to SQL injection...
How did I find this out? ... I typed in a full MPN into the search box, with brackets in it.
BM08B-SURS-TF(LF)(SN)

2026-03-31 16:06:58 GMT

A customer wants to use a particular SOM, and in particular the QSPI interface.
I said that the QSPI interface is busy with onboard NAND, and can't be used via the main connectors.
They replied with a ChatGPT screenshot saying "yes, we can use it, we just need to do ${pinmux}".
They replied ~1 hr later saying that they don't want to use the specific module anymore.
I took a brief look at the ChatGPT screenshot and the SOM docs, and unsurprisingly the pins ChatGPT nominated are mostly LVDS, but also a hard GND pin.
Yay, winning.

2026-03-09 20:07:02 GMT

Out of all the incredibly loud things I've experienced in my life, I'd rank the top two as:
1. Looking up the bum of a Vulcan bomber giving it full send for a short takeoff at Farnborough Airshow. Holy shit. It tickled the insides of my ears.
2. A 4 week old baby. Any earlier and they've not fully got the pipes working yet - a distinctly softer timbre. This also appears to be about when they start becoming inconsolably angry about unknowable things - the limbs start flailing and joining in with the crying too... and you have to hold them close which only compounds the loudness issue.
... in related news, Thing 2 made an appearance in our household around 4 weeks ago.

2026-02-02 12:29:06 GMT

What is your favourite way to protect an ADC input? Things like STM32 have no real protection on pins in analog mode, which makes a basic potential divider approach paired with over-voltage a concerning situation.
Consider measuring battery voltage, where the battery is much higher than the ADC's max (e.g: +12v vs +3.3v).
Zeners start to have non-trivial leakage current near their working voltage - when you protect the ADC properly, the signal distorts at higher voltages.