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> I don't think Ireland has the pub culture you have in mind. Honestly not much to do besides pubs here, and unless you have an established friend group, good luck making one. Locals are in their own bubbles.

I've been to Ireland many times. So cannot really confirm this.

After a night in a pub I know everyone in the town. Or almost.

ElectRabbiton One way to fight loneliness: Germans call it a Stammtisch

As a German: the answer is IMHO in the pub culture you can find in UK and Ireland.

A socially accepted central meeting place where people can go and talk to each other. Of course also to eat and drink.

It's the social glue there and has a very very old history there.

ElectRabbiton We saved battery in our ESP32 WiFi circuits (TCP vs UDP)

MSP430 are pretty much legacy (exception: the MSP430FR has its niche) since ST released the STM32U0.

ElectRabbiton We saved battery in our ESP32 WiFi circuits (TCP vs UDP)

Well.. why is he using the ESP32? That thing is everything but not a low power microcontroller. The use of BLE/Wifi increases the power consumption like crazy.

I've build a solar station with an ESP32 using LoRa module. Even that wasn't much fun as I was forced to keep in light or even deep sleep as often as possible.

An option would be to use a Nordic NRF or STM32WB and use the BLE long range mode.

ElectRabbiton Ham radio operators receive signals from Voyager 1 on Dwingeloo telescope

They removed the frequencies from some of the more popular sites. That started during early stages of the Ukraine invasion.

But it's still super easy to find them.

Usually it takes a few hours until the sat ham guys find them and post spectrums.

ElectRabbiton HAM radio operators receive signals from Voyager 1 on Dwingeloo telescope

The frequencies of most research satellites are all well known. But it takes more than 30 seconds of Googling.

ElectRabbiton A Zephyr-based camera trap for seagrass monitoring

Zephyr is a game changer if the drivers/board is available in the tree and you use the offered infrastructure.

That really puts the "rapid" rapid prototyping.

ElectRabbiton Using GPS satellites to detect tsunamis via ionospheric ionization waves

I would rather call it misuse of GPS ;-)

ElectRabbiton Using GPS satellites to detect tsunamis via ionospheric ionization waves

Having a crazy stable transmitter and clock source allows to detect a lot of interesting (side) effects.

ElectRabbiton Ham radio operators receive signals from Voyager 1 on Dwingeloo telescope

Have a look at Daniel Estevez blog. He's a regular user of bigger telescopes (like ATA) and managed to receive and decode Voyager 1. He wrote a GNURadio decoder for it.

https://destevez.net/2021/09/decoding-voyager-1/

ElectRabbiton US could ban TP-Link routers over hacking fears: report

You can host a Unifi controller yourself. No cloud needed.

ElectRabbiton AT&T follows Amazon in demanding employees spend 5 days a week in office

Laughs in freelancer

You guys have an office?

ElectRabbiton EU signs $11B deal for sovereign satellite constellation to rival Starlink

Well.. Galileo was yelled at too for a very long time. But it got quite good in the end.

Why?

- Galileo HAS. Offers precision down to 30cm without additional correction data

- Also it offers crypto graphically signed navigation data (OSMNA) which basically eliminates spoofing attacks

Both for free.

ElectRabbiton How Accurate Is the Sensirion SGP41 TVOC Sensor?

They hate hairspray too. Lol.

Peaks out all sensors in my building in the morning.

ElectRabbiton Through-the-Earth Mine Communications

It's extremely sensitive to weak signals (-146dBm.. for comparision Wifi becomes unreliable below -80dBm and unuseable at -90dBm) and thanks to its chirp character very robust in presence of noise (jammers, alien stations, etc.).

You either can parametrize it for speed or for robustness - there are a lot of parameters to fine tune it. Also it's easy to switch even faster modes (that are not LoRa) by just sending a few SPI commands.

The documentation of the chips is stellar. There are good software libs around, also Zephyr supports a few of them.

Also Semtech is extremely hobbyist friendly.

If you want to play around with them: use LoRaWAN and The Things Networks. There are a lot of basestations around - at least in Europe.

Getting >30km links with a still a metric ton of SNR left pretty much the standard. Even with lightly obstructed LoS. I've seen experiments with balloons that hat >400km links with plenty to SNR left.

Practically: we are using a single LoRaWAN basestation to gather telemetry from a giant industry complex. No problem even if the sensors are placed deep in the basement.

ElectRabbiton Through-the-Earth Mine Communications

Recently some people experimented with LoRa in mines.

Seems like the extreme sensitivity (down to -146dBm) is able to deal with the reflections there pretty well down there.

But: that's not Through-the-Earth. It's Within-The-Earth.

(I have no details regarding the used band, antenna nor exact setup)

ElectRabbiton Making my first robot as a software engineer

You mastered the holy trinity of engineering: hw, sw and mechanics.

ElectRabbiton Test

Robot 2310 activated. Awaiting mission data.

Crypto key: 0xFEEDFACE

ElectRabbiton Ham Radio All-in-One-Cable

Great project!

But in the name of god: let this awful old AFSK APRS sleep away.

In Europe LoRa APRS is super popular and Semtech is flooding the market with super cheap radio ICs. They are extremely hobbist friendly.

ElectRabbiton Ham Radio All-in-One-Cable

JLCPCB is super cheap for 100 years now. They are expanding for offering their crazy prices now even for 6 layers and higher.