MARK YOUR CALENDAR! This Month's Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, November 13th, 2025 Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

Pushing this for one of my favorite small-press publishers; bcubedpress.wordpress.com

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So after a few days of utter failure, I ordered a little +10dBi whip antenna and threw the whole #meshtastic node up on the roof. Immediately, 40+ miles range out of the thing! Gain and elevation count!! Now, time to build it into a more permanent form. :-)

Way too far for me to ship this thing. Any vintage computer collectors in Virginia(USA)? Auction lot: "Radio Shack Trs-80 Model 4 Computer With Accessories" ctbids.com/estate-sale/...

Floundering around trying to get this Meshtastic stuff to work.

Got my flag for Saturday. :-)

Harvested a cool display this morning that should be fun to get going. :-) 40X2 VFD, 8.5"X1"

Phoenix Metro folks... The Technology Education Collaborative is hosting a free Rayhunter Workshop Wed Oct 15 @ 6pm. A senior staff for the EFF will virtually make a presentation about the technology, and how to set up your own Stingray detector. Get full details here: techedcollab.org/home/

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, November 13th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

T O D A Y ! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour 7-9 pm Thursday, October 9th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

DON'T FORGET! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour This Thursday, October 9th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

New toys in the mail! Now, let's figure out this #meshtastic thing. :-)

So, do you bid on a 200 pound lot of boat anchors just to get the HP counter/timer with Nixie tubes??

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, October 9th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

Huh. TIL that facebook marketplace has a ton of old 3D printers in the $30-$70 range. Granted, older models that likely need repair, but not a bad way for someone to dip their toes into that water. Further, ~$40 is a steal just for the parts for a DIYer!!

It was very interesting to learn, last night at Hardware Happy Hour, that the most common 1990s credit card terminals ran on a complete, embedded Z80 system, including an RTC and a 1200-baud modem. I need to snag a couple of these. :-)

T O N I G H T ! ! ! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, September 11th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

DON'T FORGET! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour This Thursday, September 11th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

Half an inch of rain overnight, cool low 80s morning, perfect for a hive check. Lisa does the checking part. I do the lift the heavy as hell boxes part. :-) (honey weighs a LOT!)

My favorite display has been the TIL-311 for ages. Any excuse to stick a couple on a breadboard and I'll take it. <grin> (I just learned these obsolete displays are going for ~$8 to $30US each!!! Yikes! )

TIL: If your M2716 EPROM requires a 25V programming voltage, and your cheap assed Amazon programmer can only go up to 18V, if you hit "Program" a half dozen or more times, it will eventually get done. :-)

We made homemade Chili Crisp! Jalapenos, chili peppers, garlic, and I'itoi onions all from the garden. Spices, dried mushrooms, MSG, and peanut oil in the pantry. Made 24 oz of excellent GLUTEN FREE Chili Crisp for a tiny fraction of the $18/6oz of the 'good' commercial stuff.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! NEW LOCATION!! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, September 11th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

T O N I G H T! NEW LOCATION!! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, August 14th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

Hey @ruenahcmohr.bsky.social , I think I cracked the converter. <grin> Breadboard time.

Clocking out "Slaughterhouse Five" in ASCII at one character per second, no CPU/MPU/Computer. :-)

T O M O R R O W! NEW LOCATION!! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, August 14th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

Firing up Alan Parsons Project radio (Pandora) to get some soldering done.

THIS THURSDAY! NEW LOCATION!! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, August 14th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

Downloaded the text, converted to all-caps, deleted all of the punctuation, symbols, and double spaces, finally a tiny bit of manual editing and I was able to fit the entire novel into a single 27C2001 E-PROM. 🙂

4MHz clock and a configurable 24-bit divider to get 1Hz using only 80's era parts pulled from scrap from behind my shop for a silly contest entry. 🙂 (555 and XOR on red board just a monostable to make the 250nS pulse visible)

My Saturday Morning.

So, how's YOUR Monday going? Luckily, it appears that there's no roof damage. But it's 104°F now and heading to 113°F, so I'm waiting until the sun goes down to get up there and start sawing it away.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! NEW LOCATION!! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, August 14th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

T O M O R R O W ! NEW LOCATION!! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, July 10th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

THIS THURSDAY! NEW LOCATION!! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, July 10th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

TIL that the entire text of Orwell's 1984 will fit into three 27C256 UV EPROMs. <grin> #OneHertzChallenge hackaday.io/contest/2032...

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! NEW LOCATION!! Phoenix Hardware Happy Hour Thursday, July 10th, 2025 Meeting at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College, 40th St and Washington in Phoenix. Find full details at: www.meetup.com/hardware-hap...

After 25 years of constant flawless duty, my home automation system that controls the street-side lighting out front failed, and I had to replace every single control component. <smirk> (yeah, I find a lot of home automation projects kind of silly). :-)

NO Kings, Apache Junction, AZ. #ProtestDate 🙂 #NoKingsDay

Late bloomers. The cacti are usually done by now. Nice way to start the week.

A little late, but got our flag up this weekend.

So this "emergency alert system" was one of the $5 rack units from the last auction. I figured it'd probably have some sort of receiver, maybe a speaker, maybe an audio and/or video output, maybe a relay . I just took the cover off. Holy shit! I have absolutely no idea. lol

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The text limit here REALLY annoys me, so my longer-winded posts only appear on Mastodon. mastodon.social/@JohnS_AZ/11...

There are times when an "I'll try anything once" attitude really doesn't pay off. :-)

Looks like it was another good night for the Elon Musk Fireworks Co. LOL

I was cleaning out an old storage cabinet I haven't opened in ages and found a tub with 50 1-line X 16-character LCD modules. I have absolutely no idea when I bought them. Or from whom. Or why.