Bed of nails programming jig and tester coming along nicely. No actual programming or testing implemented yet, but the presence switch and LEDs are working 😀 The linear toggle clamp is so much better than the cheaper pivoting toggle clamps I've used before.

Bed of nails for an upcoming product... Loving these extra large pogo pins.

life pro tip: you can get free LLM API access by finding people crashing out in Claude Code issues, then looking at network requests from their vibe-coded websites!

Moments after the collision snapshot was uploaded to Tesla's servers, the local copy on the car was marked for deletion. Then, "someone at Tesla probably took 'affirmative action to delete' the copy of the data on the company’s central database" arstechnica.com/cars/2025/08...

IC swapped and we've got blinks! Ignore the slightly melted JST connector...

Oops, just realized I had the fab populate the wrong MCU on an initial small run of PCBAs for a new product... Same pinout, but half the flash and missing a peripheral I needed 🙃 I foresee hot air or a hot plate in my future...

as we all know every programmer's dream job is to never have to code again and instead just manage PRs with unreliable code and communicate with the unreliable entities who wrote it

🤦‍♂️ it was my soldering or my breadboard, causing voltage drop on the supply

Finally restocking some inventory for the Bezek Labs store. $111 import duties on $88 worth of goods. Yup, no choice but to raise prices at this point... 😕

Yellow line does not look like what you want to see on a CC boost output with a static load... 2v fluctuations at ~160Hz. This is on the Adafruit TPS61169 CC LED boost breakout board - more details on my issue here: forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.ph... I'm a boost converter noob - any ideas?

Ok this AI hype is out of hand. This is for a Qi charger 🤦‍♂️

Successfully modified my Ikea Tvärhand lamp to use a custom 24V "knot" filament bulb, with ESPHome integration. Next up is modifying the base to add a dimmer knob of some sort...

Adafruit's new TPS61169 board www.adafruit.com/product/6354 is literally perfect for a project I'm working on, but I hesitated ordering while I looked for other things to add to my cart and now they're sold out 😭. Not available from distributors like mouser or digikey either 😥

Anyone have experience writing bootloaders for ATtiny 1 series chips? I'd like to have an I2C setup that can: 1) enter bootloader mode from I2C command or via gpio on power up 2) read I2C address offset from jumpers 3) receive/ack program over I2C (or timeout) 4) restart into new program

There are many reasons why American plugs are poorly designed, but I love being able to "lock out" a plug using the holes when I'm working on the other end and want to avoid accidental plug-ins. Normally I use zip ties, but a twist tie is better than nothing to signal "don't plug this in!"

I'm going to continue the Molnart bulb teardown soon, but in the meantime I started modifying the TVÄRHAND lamp base. First up was removing the E26 socket (labeled E258238). Very tricky to release both clips simultaneously with no access to the sides, and limited clearance for tools.

Ikea has a bunch of cool filament decorative bulbs (Molnart) but they aren't dimmable, so I'm exploring converting them (and the lamp) to low voltage DC and controlling with esphome. Seems nicer than 120v triac dimming too. Anyone have tips/experience taking them apart without shattering the glass?

Randomly decided to run a Father's Day sale halfway through the day 😂 Get your DIY Split-Flap parts 10% off for the next ~12 hours: bezeklabs.etsy.com (And this is all pre-tariff inventory so this is likely the cheapest things will ever be again...)

I've seen weird "brand" names on Amazon before, but this was a new one!

A bit of a scary failure mode on this Whirlpool microwave - the main power relay got stuck on so it just runs the magnetron continually as long as the door is shut (listen to the buzz). When it failed it basically just kept running even after time was up - luckily we hadn't walked away.

Is there anything like cleco fasteners but for attaching probes to through-hole test points?

Parts with modeled threads can't just be mirrored and printed 🤦‍♂️ Realized my mistake about 10 seconds after the 4 hour print completed

It's been a while since I did some research and test rides, but is a Tern GSD still the solid choice e-bike for kid/grocery hauling? Have other long tails caught up to the GSD in terms of quality/convenience? Should I be looking at bucket bikes? (I disliked Urban Arrow test ride previously)

Great quote, and an extremely common story among small US hardware businesses - US manufacturers don't exist or laugh off small orders. And tariffs that change every 24 hours are not going to encourage the kinds of long term investments and stability needed for growing domestic manufacturing.

Am I imagining things or do California highways (or maybe just Bay Area highways?) have a ton of entrances with incorrect W4-1 Merge signs where MUTCD specifies W4-3 Added Lane should be used instead?

Fun fact: most of my store's product photos were taken on a shoebox next to a window

The Nvidia 5090 connector melting saga is pretty wild. Imagine an electrician setting up a 50 amp circuit in your home with 6 individual 16awg wires instead of a single 6awg conductor because it was easier, and then blaming the wire and receptacle manufacturers when your house burns down.

There's a rule of consumer SaaS apps: every notification mechanism with user controlled content eventually becomes a spam vector. My experience with this was at Dropbox - we had to build an abuse reporting mechanism shortly after shipping shared link notifications due to nsfw spammers.

Beware: new phishing attempts via GitHub issues! Be on the lookout for users opening issues on your repositories that are meant to mimic a GitHub security alert - they leverage the fact that GitHub sends notification emails to repo followers for legitimacy.

Any other hobbyists avoid working with RP2040/2350 chips because you don't have energy to deal with a bespoke toolchain? Refusing platformio integration basically killed my interest in the chips, as much as I'd love to tinker with PIO

These flaps have been selling like hotcakes so I'm collating another batch this weekend with the robot!

Truncated Icosahedron project rev. 2 is in progress, and I'm much happier with this version. It's less (but still somewhat) fiddly to assemble and has 3x the LEDs!

For those who haven’t seen this MASTERPIECE in person yet, it is meant to be viewed from 3 angles: From below: map of CTA network From side: picture of bus From front: picture of train

Fluorescent acrylic split-flap display anyone? Ordering matte black prototypes gets old after a while, so I figured I'd try something a little more colorful for this v2 build. github.com/scottbez1/sp...

The digits are from this video of the projection displays I filmed a few years back

Ugh, UPS falsely claims they delivered my package as "Met customer" (they did not) which also allows the driver not to take a delivery photo. Should've paid the extra $20 to ship DHL instead, they've been flawless in my experience (besides an incorrect tariff invoice that was quickly fixed)

Collating split-flap flaps again! Replaced the feed motor with a more appropriately spec'd stepper and added a small weight that rides the stack of flaps to prevent the stack lifting up during a feed motion and the frequent jams I saw last time have gone away!

The ship has long sailed on this, given the number of EVs that have already sold, but I wish lawmakers had thought ahead and imposed acceleration limits for cars to be street legal. There's zero need for the amount of torque available in most EVs; it only serves to kill more pedestrians.

If you order a Lux Lavalier Heart pendant now I can't promise it'll arrive by Valentine's Day, but I will upgrade it to priority shipping & try my best. Powered by #PixelBlaze by @bhencke.bsky.social, a small & mighty Wi-Fi LED controller with live-code patterns! ❤️💚💙 lectronz.com/products/lux...

God, I miss living in precedented times.

If the "de minimus" exemption is actually eliminated for imports from China, the entire US (and honestly, probably global) supply chain is going to grind to a halt. I don't see how CBP can possibly handle the sudden increase in enforcement work. COVID shortages x10 anyone?

I threw together a quick command-line tool for displaying USB-PD information about the power adapter connected to a MacBook. The output is much easier to read than the mess provided by ioreg. The tool & code: github.com/jasoncoon/ma... The output:

I finally tagged the Splitflap v2 stable release and updated documentation this weekend 🎉 github.com/scottbez1/sp... It's mostly quality of life improvements - nicer sensor PCB, 52 flaps for more symbols and color blocks, better motor orientation. Docs are in the repo: github.com/scottbez1/sp...

I'm getting sick of blatant scams on Amazon, like these "2 mil" bags that are actually only ~1 mil and rip when you open them. We'll see if Amazon allows my negative review with video evidence to post. Lately they've been rejecting negative reviews...

And a related mini project - home assistant unlockable magnetic drawer locks. I wanted to keep the changing table drawers locked, but I also need clean outfits readily available during diaper changes, so I added a magnet-on-a-servo.

Bought the super popular "Vmaisi" (🤔) magnetic child safety cabinet locks, but the brackets were too big to fit in most of my cabinets/drawers, so I designed a smaller bracket. The bracket isn't really designed to be swappable, but you can release it by pressing a tab under the adhesive tape

Finally got my collation robot working well enough to start a production run! 🎉 It's still not as robust as I need it to be - you can see it fail to feed a flap at the end of video. At least it detects the failure and pauses.

Ok looks like my next phone will be an iPhone, this is actually insane

Got my grandfather-in-law's Lionel train running again!

Want to build your own mechanical split-flap display? Get 10% off parts during my Flap Friday sale starting tomorrow, on orders over $200! Use code FLAPFRIDAY24 through Monday. bezeklabs.etsy.com?coupon=FLAPF...