Green Empower

I ordered maybe like $300 at end of stuff from aliexpress and I think saved like $60. Almost bought this great deal on a battery system.

got some solar cells, Oneodio headset, netac ssd, tried buying some metals like titanium rods as a store of value, 1515 aluminum set, some LoRa/4G antennas for experimenting with mesh.

a few other bits

I made two orders and the second one finished like 30 seconds before midnight, it was crazy waiting for Honey to go through all the codes to get a really good discount.

I was preoccupied with shopping for like a week, that was pretty stressful and with other factors in my life.

I'm putting together a shopping list on LCSC rn. So to understand what I should stock atm I will try to index some of my short/mid term projects. Also it's good to write and keep track.

1. Immediately I am designing a new LED matrix toy. I have prob around 2k 0603 green SMD LEDs that I got as a gift from a friend years ago... And I have a small assortment of Padauk microcontrollers, but only about 2 each for a given form factor/model and spec. I have cutout a breakout PCB for it, but have not expanded on that. I don't see a programmable variant of my PMS134 so maybe I need to try using an external flash or something... I don't have the proper resistors for this which would be 0-1k ohm and sub 0603. Voltage should also be dropped to like 2.2V but I seem to only have CR 2450s... These things use more power than a lot of coin cell applications.

2. I've been planning to make a board for fabrication machines like specifically very cheap 3D printers... I'm inspired by the Teacup firmware and RepRap project. It should only need a simple M0 or RISC-V with DMA and serial buses. Maybe a ESP32-C3. Or there are many simple ARM solutions instead or as coprocessors for special functions maybe including locomotion control... Also consider some type of DAC system. Additionally this project could be accompanied by a special power supply unit.

3. So also I want to make a high range mesh networking unit... So specifically I should find RF components for that.

4. Future matrices. Future matrices will tend to use smaller LEDs (0403) and RGB LEDs. I found some small RGB LEDs (closer to 0603 but square) and I don't have any 0403. I also prefer use smaller/cheaper micros with these with some buffered shift registers on the outputs. I'm interested in the Shenzhen Fuman Elec 74HC164D. Also future matrices will have larger LED counts and so they may need more extended memory, smaller components and more efficient components.

5. I'd like to make a special PCIe card with lots of accelerators and IO. Or it could do anything but it'd be cool to make a PCIe card. And I have programmable logics sitting around.

6. An SBC. An SBC possibly with a purpose in a product such as a handheld. Would be great experience to hook up an Allwinner or something on my own board if that is something I can do.

7. I am still waiting on specific parts for my workstation. Would like to do more work on GEM OS on that system.

8. I have a ton of stuff to do around the property. Need to put up a barrier and do landscaping and stuff and prepare for the planting season next year....

9. Need to work on website stuff. I haven't touched my servers in a while but I did switch off of Cloudflare CDN. I should maybe put up a lemmy and work on the git, IPFS, email and some other stuff.

10. Should try to learn some softwares like Blender and FreeCAD. Maybe I'll try to learn some chemistry. And I've tried to study some languages. Also I've been reading history like California wikipedia but don't have much better than wikipedia.

11. Should clean up and develop my room some more. Need to develop the desk system and my shelving, make more room for the workstation cabinet. And get some better lighting and plants and scenery.

12. I'm considering prepping more and more. If I can farm decently enough maybe I can stash stuff and should order certain things while I can. I'm slowly running out of money and I need to consider things such as mining monero... I still want to make a stash in the mountains or something. And I can't reasonably afford some transport like a motorcycle.

I'll think of more stuff rn and I have more research and shopping to do. I'm going to go deep sea fishing with my bro, dad and his boss soon.

So as I've said I am making myself a workstation. I ordered this mobo from aliexpress. It's a dual socket LGA 2011-3 thing named ZX-DU99D4X8_V1.1 . It supports the Intel E5 2600 v4 line of processors. It also happens to have a cuttoff QR code sticker on it.

So far I have 2x 2650 v4 processors and 6x 16GB 2400Hz + 2x 8GB 2133Hz = 112GB of DDR4 for it.

This guy wrote some stuff about the mobo and he says the bottom x16 PCIe is actually x8.

Rn I only have a R5 340X "Rebranded R7 250" for it but I want to get one of these cheap $80 NV K80's eventually.

I only have 3 or so Dell 2007FPb monitors sitting around. But I hear that LCD and SSD prices should fall some before the end of this year, also GPUs may crash a bit.

Thinking I want to get one of these cheap used/open box LG 32GN63T-B gaming monitors that are going on ebay for well below $200.

All my watercooling parts are stuck in customs but for now the CPUs prob don't need it.

I don't want to get too into the weeds with this rn. I'm posting now that I've prepared all the measurements and a good photo of my mobo.

mobo

measurements

calibration

So I need a working case. https://lemmygrad.ml/post/366303

updates

Mocking up my aliexpress workstation enclosure case.

Think I will buy my SSD from Netac on aliexpress... (NV3000). And I will get the graphics card (MI25) from unixsurplusnet (on ebay), and cheap hard drive from them too.

I needed this to take my 8K flat picture of the mobo I got for my workstation for aliexpress. Mobo is obscure so I want to take the best pic on the internet prob.

I took a big enough cardboard box sitting around outside. I took an old unused roll of RGB LEDs sitting around from a project 7 years ago. I tested out the $70 2KW ex-mining power supply I got from ebay for my workstation. It's working, could power my fans. But 12V wasn't enough for the blue LEDs and it's likely not bright enough.

I taped the strip all around the box with scotch tape. So I took an old 24V power supply I had in my closet. (The LED strip is 24V.) Wired it up.

Works. Took more than 3 hours.

So I've been working on my Xeon workstation. The watercooling parts are stuck in customs. So I'll need to get a couple fan radiators or something for now.

But now I've discovered there aren't really any cases (my dad got one for me) that I can see which will fit my zx-du99d4x8 motherboard.

So I'll need to find some old cabinet system to retrofit and make a mid sized server cabinet out of. I'm getting kinda desperate to start using my workstation.

I'll make a big threat on my workstation here when it's done.

I went to the thrift store. They have a sign out front saying they don't take all sorts of good stuff like furniture, printers, PVC, tanks, canisters, building materials, appliances, etc. They refer you to all the different local disposals. I tried to prepare my picture but too much identifying stuff.

So maybe I need to go to one of those places or a landfill to look around. Btw I'm looking around for a broken or so printer to dissect for all the open source printer/Printer OS people.

I have had this in my mind for a little while. I'm Californian and I feel we should make a push break this state from the US of Amerikkka.

The new state can form with Mexico, South America, China...

This thing I'm pretty sure wouldn't be majority white. So it would be inherently anti Amerikkkan. I would emphasize race mixing.

I know this isn't super realistic on paper since USA would violently try to destroy this movement. I actually expect it to be a pretty grossly thing. But I'm ready to put on the heat. Any other Californians ready to reject your Amerikkkan allegiances and to organize and do other stately things on that basis?

I'm going to develop this idea more and prepare more material on it.

This is a stub. But basically this is a project I've been meaning to prototype for a while. It should be a 3D printer that works more like a conventional paper printer in terms of affordability and usability and speed and reliability.

1. The printer head should probably be specially engineered. Maybe it should be designed to deposit packets of PLA plastic rather than a continuous line. Maybe later the head should support mixing dyes in with the plastic. The heads action is repetitive so it should be optimized for maximum speed and reliability.
2. The gantry system needs to also support maximum speed and reliability. Maybe this can be an arm system like in a mechanical hard drive with a spinning base plate. Maybe even multiple heads could be programmed to not collide with each other. Maybe even a laser can be used to ensure better adhesion among deposits.
3. Would prefer to use sub 20mm aluminum extrusions for the frame if possible so that it is smaller and easier to handle but not necessarily cheaper depending on the market. The frame should likely be enclosed and reinforced on this smaller prototype where it is easier and possibly more beneficial for the instruments to do so.
4. Before I was intent on using small PM stepper motors with special gearing for the locomotion before considering a more drastic drift from conventional FDM designs. Now I will do some more research.
5. Unsure on how to prevent warping. Maybe on the head there should be a cool in place mechanism or graceful cool down mechanism if that would do anything. Maybe a special mechanical system to manage strain or add constraint. Or maybe the material itself has to be engineered.
6. Considering sharp vertical angles I think it would help to add a pivot to the head... Still some floating structures can't be printed without supports... Annoying.

I'm going to do more research on microfluidics, disk drives, printers, parts, machining and a lot more. Maybe there is a better design idea than this. I will update with more research and some parts lists. Once it's more developed I will investigate probably printing a PCB and getting some visualizations made.

A while back I saved about 20 tadpoles from a drying up fountain in our garden. I have been supporting them in an aquarium by feeding them spinach and cycling the water and now several of them have turned to little frogs and I've moved them to this little habitat I'm making.

I've got lots of pictures and stuff. I'll update this thread with more stuff.

Not much built up yet but I've been working on this server and modpack for a while. It should be stable now.

Modpack: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/modpacks/marxists-crafters (You should be able to import it into Atlauncher, or just ask and I'll upload a zip with all the mods.)

Server: mc.greenempower.org

Uptime: https://minecraftlist.com/servers/mc.greenempower.org

From reddit:

General Language and VM Spec

Within the GEM subsystem (currently called GEMx) there should be a common base human-machine interface in the form of a simple virtualized meta-language which is easily modded, extended and contextualized.

I think a good point to start off with this is by taking from Lua and XML.

This technology could be key for the rest of the higher-order software implemented in GEMx.

Code Name: GELANG

I think there should be new 'VM' product... Not unlike Java's model. Something including an application framework, containers, interfaces, utilities such as a display server, etc and with easy centralized management of the system. Providing a solid platform to target...