matthew-wegner

Some replies to this already, but quick notes:

* "Controller" isn't used much as a term, when you start looking around. You'll see things listed under "transmitter" or "radio"

* The majority of FPV transmitters use OpenTX or EdgeTX software (EdgeTX is newer and a fork of OpenTX). Both of these support plugging the transmitter in to a host computer over USB, where it can appear as a HID joystick

* ExpressLRS (ELRS) is an open source radio protocol, with 2.4ghz and 900mhz versions. 2.4ghz is a denser waveforms, so better latency, but less penetration (unless you are going loooooong range, default to 2.4ghz). If you buy a radio today, get one with ELRS built in

* ELRS transmitters include Bluetooth. They can act as a BLE controller to a host computer, for wireless gamepad use: https://oscarliang.com/expresslrs-bluetooth-joystick/

* And there is a 3rd option for more convenience, since both HID over USB and BLE wirelessly require a tiny bit of menu fiddling: A dedicated simulator dongle. This acts as a full ELRS receiver, so you would just turn on your radio within range and play the simulator: https://www.getfpv.com/squid-stick-wireless-usb-simulator-do...

And finally, on radios themselves:

* The big split is between smaller "gamepad" style transmitters and full-size box transmitters. The larger versions usually have more inputs than you would use, for other radio control hobbyists (wings/planes/etc)

* Radiomaster is a solid recommendation. Check out the Pocket as an intro radio ($65 USD), and then the Boxer as a step up ($140 USD base, or $260 with all-metal gimbals and upgrades)

* Unless you have a strong reason to, like someone is gifting you a pile of quadcopter hardware using a different protocol, go with ELRS 2.4ghz built in

Pentax cameras take a different approach with stabilization--rather than stabilize inside lens, which means every lens is shipping its own stabilization solution, they stabilize the sensor itself.

It limits stabilization to two axes, but now any lens is essentially stabilized. And it also lets them do some tricks, since it's so integrated. One is to do sub-pixel sensor shifts for higher res photos, and another is to do astrophotography tracking when GPS data is available.

Much more limited in scope than a full tracking gimbal, but not bad considering it's built into the camera (earlier bodies had a GPS attachment that slotted into the hot shoe connector): https://www.lonelyspeck.com/pentax-k-1-mark-ii-astrophotogra...

Replying to myself--it looks like they do have a new capture framework relying on much newer APIs (requires macOS 14.4). It just isn't rolled out to Loopback yet: https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2024/04/05/our-new-installer-...

I haven't experimented with lowering these numbers in maybe two years, but I use BlackHole to route 8 channels from Traktor to Ableton Live (all four decks in stereo as external outputs). I have one big aggregate device with my internal speakers for clock, the BlackHole bridge, and an original RME Babyface for the physical output.

Looks like I have Traktor set to 192 samples @ 44khz. It's showing "4.4 ms processing + 17.6ms output = 22.0 ms" in its UI.

Ableton is set to 128 samples, and showing "Input Latency 4.72 ms, Output Latency 6.05 ms, Overall Latency 10.8 ms".

So maybe 33.8 ms in the whole pipeline? Although I throw audio signal across the room via the Babyface's optical out to a cheap optical -> RCA box, so that's probably adding a little more to my physical environment.

I've had this same Traktor/Live setup going for a long, long time. At one point I even used a physical loopback with the Babyface's optical out/in carrying 8 channels between Traktor and Ableton. That was sadly better than any software available before BlackHole. It was solid, although a bit higher latency, and it's nice to be able to use the optical out for its intended purpose!

I used to get very occasional crackle this BlackHole setup, until I tried a random tip of using the built-in speakers as the clock source on an aggregate device. It's been rock solid since. I could probably lower sample buffers even further these days (M3 Max)...

It's worth noting you do have to downgrade security permissions for Loopback, but not for BlackHole: https://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=A...

I use Loopback and BlackHole both, although for different reasons/setups. I guess it's more an artifact of the surrounding macOS environment at the conception of each project. BlackHole's first commit was September 2019, while Loopback was released in 2016 (but also shares its capture engine with Audio Hijack, and its 1.0 release was 2002!)

> The big downer is that we can't charge and use this battery at the same time- so that "hotwiring" of a USB-C port really helps here.

This is the battery bank I carry on trips. It can power downstream devices while it's charging, but only at >50% battery capacity.

"xz/liblzma: Bash-stage Obfuscation Explained" covers it well

https://gynvael.coldwind.pl/?lang=en&id=782

I'm in game development, and I run ESXi for two reasons:

* Unmodified macOS guest VMs can run under ESXi (if you're reading this on macOS, you have an Apple-made VMXNet3 network adapter driver on your system--see /System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleVmxnet3Ethernet.kext )

* Accelerated 3D has reasonable guest support, even as pure software. You wouldn't want to work in one of those guest VMs, but for any sort of build agent it should be fine, including opening i.e. Unity editor itself in-VM to diagnose something

Does anyone know where either of these things stand with Proxmox today?

I imagine macOS VM under Proxmox is basically a hackintosh with i.e. OpenCore as bootloader?

> I wouldn't personally bother with an AMS until down the line when you're sure you need it.

If the parent comment plans to print a lot of large parts, AMS will be useful. You can load multiple spools of the same filament, and a Bambu printer will switch spools when it runs out and continue printing without any intervention needed...

How much did you read per day before your time was more limited? I am curious what that means for you!

> They aren’t even going to use the developed encrypted RCS protocol.

End-to-end RCS encryption is via proprietary Google extension and not even available to other Android RCS messaging apps.

I guess power draw on lights is pretty low, but one thing I do with my Home Assistant setup is aggressively turn off other rooms (and I'm on grid):

If office computer is used, and "home alone" mode is on, turn off all non-office rooms.

If I hit play on something on the main TV, or my laptop is used and its network MAC is the couch dock, turn off all rooms except living room, etc...

(I have a guest mode that disables these things, which is automatically enabled when my partner uses her door keycode)

How long do your battery-powered devices last?

AFAIK a big benefit of Zigbee is that it's designed to be low-power. I have motion sensors that last for 2-3 years on a coin battery, depending on location/traffic. Mains-powered devices like lightbulbs act as repeaters in a Zigbee network, so placement can be anywhere.

For some people, it's just more comfortable. I'm probably just as productive on a trip with my 16" MBP, but I still feel some sort of relief when I sit back down on my multi-monitor setup at home.

"I like it more" is a good-enough reason to do it!

Consider another example--I sleep alone on a king-size bed. If I swapped it for a queen bed, I bet it wouldn't even show up in any sort "measurably improved" metric: Time to fall asleep, total time slept, time to wake up, maybe trying to measure physical fitness numbers, etc.

But I still prefer the king bed. Maybe some people wouldn't care, and would rather save the space/money, and that's totally fine too.

It's hard to use a unicycle brake as a true panic brake. It's essentially an ejection seat if you abruptly press a brake too hard.

But they are useful as drag brakes! I run a disc brake on my mountain unicycle, and really it's to make super-steep downhill segments feasible (at least without requiring a tremendous amount of back pedal pressure). I choose a brake used for trials biking with a long throw range.

I have a rim brake on my 36" unicycle. In that case it is helpful to reduce stopping distance, in part because the crank-to-wheel ratio is bonkers, but it's still primarily used as a drag brake on long downhills.

But yeah, on a mountain/street unicycle, your feet aren't that far off the ground, and you can't really go faster than sprinting speed. The big risk is getting tangled up in a weird way on the mountain.

36" distance unicycles can go faster than sprinting speed. Bailing unexpectedly on a fast 36" results in a few galloping steps and hopefully not a trip and slide...

Fun little unicycling factoid: "UPD" stands for Unplanned Dismount, and really is what tends to happen more than actual crashes. You realize your balance envelope is blown and there's no hope of making the line you're trying to hit, so might as well just dismount gracefully while you still can.

There does seem to be an unusual number of nerdy/engineer types that also unicycle!

I've done two organized long distance unicycling trips before: Vietnam, with ~20 riders, and Kenya to Tanzania with ~10 unicyclists (and a few bikers filling in the slots). There were a lot of programmers, and also a few people that collected other "body as puzzle" skills--juggling, circus arts, etc.

I think the commonality is more that the kind of brain that can push past the challenge of learning to unicycle is the kind of brain that can learn a lot of technical computer skills by applying the same tenacity.

My own history with unicycling is pretty happenstance. When I was 14 I said I wanted one for a birthday present, because I liked the challenge of riding a bike around with no hands.

And I got one! So I learned to ride it on the street, but skill-wise I basically got a free mount and stopped.

Much later, in my 20s, a friend pasted a unicycling video and said he wanted to try it (think "skate video", but unicycling). I said I actually had one in a closet, so we pulled it out and just kept at it after that. After a few weeks we were out trying a flat trail.

I'm 43 now, and my riding comes and goes as I remind myself it's an enjoyable way to get some exercise. I'm also a B- tier rider, if that.

This is my favorite general unicycling video with one of the pioneers, Kris Holm. This really gets into the "but why?" part of it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nPc2phfMLU

I mountain unicycle[0]. My favorite replies to "you're missing a wheel" variants are:

* It was a half off sale (to hikers)

* I took off the training wheel (to bikers, if they seem smarmy)

These days most of my responses are very positive, almost universally. 15 years ago this wasn't the case, especially on the street--lots of people yelling "FALL!" out their window to scare you, etc. I think a big part of the long term change has been "extreme sports" becoming a very broad umbrella.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koWzoCUUIbE

From apps. That Apple is hosting, and providing testing and updating machinery for, along with many backend services, SDKs, etc. What is the fair price for that?

27% is absurdly high, for sure, but you seem to be arguing from a position that it should be free...?

The other large discussion thread has already been linked with more specifics. The very short version is that Apple has been arguing the fees are to run their services, and the commission has historically been a convenient way to collect them. This is them collecting those fees outside of their payment systems, because legally they have to allow such a thing.

So you could release an app for "free" on the app store, and require side channel payment to really use it. You're just going to have to pay for the quotation marks.

One note on the Twister is that it does have source code available. I've never looked into it too deeply (instead I ended up using the knobs in enc/dec mode on stock firmware to do full takeover): https://github.com/DJ-TechTools/Midi_Fighter_Twister_Open_So...

I would think you would want to capture what/how was built, as like:

* Repo started at this commit

* With this diff applied

* Build was run with this command

Capture that for a week. Now you have a cross section of real workloads, but you can repeat the builds on each hardware tier (and even new hardware down the road)

On [5]:

It's not that Mozilla named their UI "Chrome", but that "chrome" is a graphical user interface word. For a browser it refers to the stuff around the web page content, but it's more general than browser use (you could refer to Blender's chrome around the 3D viewports to refer to its toolbars, etc).

i.e. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Chrome

I understand. IR security cameras can see the beam. Most have a kinect-like dot pattern that isn't purely horizontal, but that's neither here nor there.

I still don't think it's worth much attention. "It's better at avoiding tangles because it sees the world in full 3D".

Sort of a strange question on a Valetudo thread, but have you used Valetudo on a lidar-enabled robot? You can easily clean specific rooms, and I've never seen a lidar robot get lost, and very rarely stuck (usually something like managing to close a bathroom door behind itself).

But anyway: I do think it's worth tripling down on your "average busy person with a cluttered house" pitch. 3D mapping is a huge distraction, although I get that it's unique and your team is proud of it. You're selling the features it enables!

If your site's first content was a time lapse video of Matic navigating a living room covered in toys and charging cords that would tangle most robots, though...

I've used three generations of vacuum robots, with the latter two being Valetudo-supported:

* Eufy RoboVac 11 (no lidar, the "stumble around triggering front bumper" locomotion)

* Dreame Z10 Pro (lidar, base station vacuum emptying, mop attachment)

* Dreame L10s Ultra (lidar/camera, base station vacuum emptying plus clean/waste water for integrated mopping)

I root a second a vacuum for my partner's place, but past that it's very hard to recommend a Valetudo setup to someone remote who doesn't have the technical skills to do the rooting and install procedure. So the Matic is potentially appealing to me, even if I never end up using one myself.

Looking at the Matic page: I think this is aimed at people with very cluttered houses, i.e. folks with young kids? The implicit pitch here seems to be, "it doesn't matter how cluttered your house is; this little robot can get in there to clean without tangling".

Except... that's never made explicit? It's just a lot of photos of very cluttered spaces. I'm left to connect the dots.

Customers aren't going to care about "Real-time 3D floor mapping" or "Cutting-edge vision software". They want "Won't trip over your (sometimes literal) shit".

Vacuum feature wise, it seems like table stakes and not much past that? I only just upgraded to the L10s Ultra, which has a larger base station that includes two water containers--one for clean water, and one for waste water. The robot returns to the base station to cycle water and clean the mop pads every X square meters (configurable). This does such a better job actually mopping, compared to the Z10 Pro's mop attachment. It lifts the mop pads when it crosses carpet, so it can even mop the other side of large area rugs that fill rooms. I suspect the Matic's mopping will be only marginally okay, especially with no mechanism to automatically clean the mop pad?

Rubber roller seems to be common on newer robots too.

Having a charger-only base station seems really limiting (versus emptying on-robot waste into a larger bag on the base station itself).

I picked up a second L10s Ultra for my partner's place for $630 during the black friday period, so price-wise it's going to be an uphill battle. Honestly, though, I don't think people willing to pay $1k for a cleaning device are all that price sensitive. I'm trading money for convenience, and I would absolutely trade more money for more convenience if I clearly understood the convenience on offer.

Lack of Home Assistant integration makes it a no-go for me personally, as a technical user, but I realize the average person isn't going to care (and probably you shouldn't either). If you did want to support Home Assistant, I think the shortest path would be MQTT support. You don't need to do a custom integration. It's fully discoverable and automatic if you adhere to their expected structure: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/vacuum.mqtt/

Anyway, no idea if any of that is useful, especially since "nerdy person who roots consumer hardware" isn't exactly your target market, but maybe something in that brain dump is useful info!

Also chiming in that wiring in directly is easy. There are two types of Dreame rooting:

* Connects to robot's serial port. You'll need a USB-to-TTL cable if you don't have one around to connect to your computer. Z10 Pro uses this method.

* Connects to robot's USB port (still via the debug header). You'll need three of the four wires from a USB cable. You can literally cut open a USB cable here, or get a breakout board. L10s Ultra uses this method.

Plus misc jumper wires to connect it all. The boot button is connecting a wire to boot select, a wire to ground, and touching these wires together (really, the PCB is all three of these things: boot button + serial + direct USB).

They exited the consumer market completely. They're still selling Skydio 2 hardware, but now via an enterprise package/pricing. It's a huge bummer: https://www.skydio.com/blog/skydio-to-sunset-consumer-drone-...

And yeah, that's at South Mountain in Phoenix!

Yeah, a faster top speed would be nice for sure! I mostly do mountain unicycling, which stays in the sweet spot easily (unicycling is pretty slow compared to i.e. biking).

The desert isn't a very challenging environment for obstacles, even still, this front-follow would be very hard to achieve with piloted FPV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koWzoCUUIbE

Alas, there will never be a consumer Skydio 3, and the Skydio 2 is now $5k via their enterprise pricing :(

Skydio 2's autonomy is still miles ahead of DJI's current generation. Have you used one in person?

Not the OS-included ones, afaik. Some Apple apps are through the AppStore normally, which can be updated independently (i.e. TestFlight, despite its deep hooks).

I live in a zip code that has had Waymo testing for years. The only reason these cars are able to integrate at all is because their sensor package makes them incredibly conspicuous. People give them a very wide berth.

If Waymo had a stealth vehicle with no outward indication it was autonomous, it would not do well. Probably you could just put a microphone in there and count angry-honks-per-mile to measure actual progress.