Andrew Kohlsmith

@Snibbied @CooperZurad Oh jeez, I get that reference and wish I didn’t.

@CooperZurad Tub GRBL

Thinking about changing the name from Betta Wire to something more legible. Any ideas? It's a 4-axis, real time controlled, desktop WEDM machine that sits in an aquarium

hey #seattle I'll be visiting tomorrow with two teens and would like to have a great sit-down pizza experience. Suggestions in/around the space needle/museum of flight area?

@byte_thrasher One wire eeprom RC network that you use a timer input to read

ok, now that I've heard some good ideas, suggest regarded ways of achieving this with a single pin - *NO ADC*

@blind_via Eagle used to require the board and schematic to be open at the same time or they would become inconsistent. This was actually a useful feature once in a blue moon when you had to do something weird and didn’t want the program to freak out.

@blind_via Every now and again I’ll reannotate in Altium and the back annotation just refuses to “stick”. No idea why. However one thing I absolutely admire about Altium is that every component has a unique ID that is used internally and it’s never left the design inconsistent.

When you accidentally push the re-package button, and all you reference designators are now scrambled.

@howie_hua Ok, but when is your birthday?

Let's understand the Monty Hall problem

@blind_via As a Canadian, I find that some of my countrymen wrap a lot of themselves up in “being Canadian” and s as few take it even farther and make their identity all about “not American”. It’s silly and immature.

I'm so glad all of you down to earth PCB Canadians are interacting with me here. I had such a bad experience with a Canadian who I thought was my friend, and he seemed to actually hate me just because I was US. Left a bad taste in my mouth. Thank you for the better experience.

@i2cjak That’s not autism, that’s just stupidity and/or engagement farming. Probably both.

there are layers to autism

@mcuban @yacineMTB Exactly true. The only reason I am able to program is because mom bought a C64 and tape drive (an incredible family expense) which allowed me to write dumb little programs and learn with a LOT of reading and trail and error. Today the barrier to learning is almost zero.

I’m going to tell you how much worse it was at the start of the PC Revolution for white collar workers trying to adapt, vs today with AI Today, presumably every white collar worker has access to a smart phone and/or a PC/laptop. Back then, a PC cost $4,995 , an off brand was $3,995. 5k in 1984 is about $16k today. It was really expensive. The only reason I could learn how to code and support software is because my job let me take home a PC to learn. By reading the software manual. Literally. RTFM. Or pay to go to training. Classes that started at hundreds of dollars then. It was expensive. It absolutely limited who could get ahead. Today, ANYONE can go to their browser, to the AI LLM website of their choice, and type in the words “I’m a novice with zero computer background, teach me how to create an agent that reads my email and …” That concept applies to LEARNING ANYTHING Think about what this means. Any employee of any company can say “ I need to learn how to xyz for my job , which is to do the following: Tell me what more information do you need to help me be more efficient, productive and promotable”. Or “ what new skills can you teach me that will help me reduce my chances of getting laid off “. Or “what suggestions do you have for me to communicate to my boss, who I barely know, to help my chances of staying employed “ These aren’t great prompts. But they are a start that anyone can take. Think about how incredible that is. Back in the day was so much harder for white collar workers. It was harder for new grads because unless they took comp sci, they probably had never used a PC. Big Companies are going to cut jobs. No question about it. Small companies is are going to need more and more AI literate thinkers who can help them compete or get an edge What I tell every entrepreneur, and it’s more crucial today. “ when you run with the elephants there are the quick and the dead. Adopt tech quickly , you can out maneuver big companies. “

@TracketPacer Is this a CCA issue or the fact that your CCA wire isn’t plenum rated? I’m by no means an expert but it’s not the metal that’s the issue in your tests, it’s the insulation.

don’t use CCA cables

@EERandomness @SnazzyLabs lol in a few hours. If you had a working board to use as a reference, absolutely. Otherwise it’s a few hours of research to start, and potentially many more false starts.

@SnazzyLabs This looks like a perfect opportunity for an ESP32 and Claude Code. You could figure out the comms protocol and have an ESP32 with a touch oled drving that in a few hours.

Everything is built like crap and nothing can be fixed.

@SnazzyLabs @SonnyDickson There are some inductors (L12-L14) and it’s possible you blew one of those open but if you’re not great with soldering small components you’d have a tough time replacing or bypassing them, if they are the problem.

@SnazzyLabs @SonnyDickson Looking at the photos it really is heavily cost optimized. Looks like an STM32 microcontroller and it looks like there is zero transient protection on those connectors.

@BrandonButch Now if they completely ditch liquid glass I might upgrade. No, the workarounds to reduce it aren’t enough. What a terrible idea that was.

Apple has FINALLY fixed the iPhone keyboard bug! The release notes for iOS 26.4 say: “improved keyboard accuracy when typing quickly.”

@willreil I always tell my clients that my job is NOT to deliver a perfect prototype; my job is to make sure that the mistakes that made it through the design process are easy to fix.

So mistake number one was forgetting the V cuts, can’t wait to find mistake number two!

@willreil Grinding disc, hacksaw, etc. wear a mask. Fiberglass is incredibly difficult to cut and its dust is bad for you. I’ve had the exact same thing happen. Forgot to ship the milling layer, got back 10 12x12 panels, each with 8 different designs. 🤦‍♂️

The absolute worst thing possible happened. I ordered the boards with a v-score so I could snap them apart into 9 separate boards, they did not come with it. I don’t even know where to go from here, so incredibly bummed. I guess I will have to order some more boards.

@i2cjak @yacineMTB I disabled all six drivers. Not that big a deal, I can just take each one off, disconnect the via and it work, right? Almost. The inhibits didn’t have internal pulls and the part was an LCC, so it was a real pain in the ass to fix, but I did fix all ten prototypes.

@i2cjak @yacineMTB I love via in pad. I made a board with six motor drivers on it. Each motor driver had two enable pins I didn’t need so I just tied them to the correct plane by dropping a via in each pad. Turns out I misread the datasheet; they weren’t enables, they were inhibits.

lol, EEs scared of via-in-pad, we live in 2026, it's free now, just put the via in the pad

It’s important to gaslight yourself into thinking that everything will be super easy. You might be right, if you’re not then it gets you to take the first step without dooming.

@mike_maric @FlavioEvan @PierrePoilievre 🤡

@FlavioEvan @PierrePoilievre How much do you get paid to carry water for the Liberals? Look around you Flavio, we’re on the threshold of [economic] hell.

Prime Minister Carney promised Canada would be the fastest-growing economy among G7 countries, even faster than the U.S. But instead, he's delivered the only shrinking economy in the G7, and compared to our neighbours, we're falling further and further behind. Our Conservative plan to build a strong, sovereign, united Canada: ✅Remove all Liberal anti-development laws. ✅Scrap the Liberal carbon tax on fuel, steel, and fertilizer. ✅Greenlight major projects to get shovels in the ground.