u/needmorejoules

I have been helping fix some boards that were mismanufactured. These were the very last two. Simple 10k to 4.3k resistor swap. Just on a teeny tiny component.

Banana for scale. 😂😁✨

Hey everyone!

Today I released KnobLab, an open-source haptic force-feedback sandbox / playground for the T-Knob and T-Encoder-Pro used together.

https://github.com/jstockdale/KnobLab

KnobLab turns the T-Knob into a software-defined force-feedback dial, with the T-Encoder-Pro as its control screen. The two pair over ESP-NOW automatically – no AP, either boot order. The knob runs a 2 kHz haptic engine: tunable detents from 4 to 96 clicks, spring walls you can push against, drag that goes from spinning flywheel to cold honey with optional sandpaper texture, and a puppet mode where the encoder ring drives the knob's position – it physically chases the target in your hand.

There's a Python library too, so you can script feels from a laptop over USB. One of the examples cycles the knob through a new character every five seconds while you hold it.

A few findings for anyone with these boards, whether or not you run my code: the firmware auto-detects both T-Encoder-Pro screen revisions (CO5300/CST816 and SH8601/CHSC5816) in one binary, the T-Knob's buzzer lives on IO18 – confirmed from the schematic, then bench-measured – the LEDs are active-low, and encoder rings vary in counts-per-detent.

Please let me know if you have any feedback or comments. Feature requests and bug reports welcome!

Thanks,
John

Two episodes into HBO's The Man Will Burn and I finally figured out what's bugging me.

It's Burning Man from the top down. Founders, board, crisis, party. Look at this thing we created.

But the org's own talking point – for decades – was that Burning Man is a container. The org doesn't put on the event. It draws the boundaries of the canvas and gets out of the way. The org doesn't really do anything important. Except porta potties. (Hold that thought.)

The participants make Burning Man.

The burn is experienced hyper-local first. Your plot, pounding rebar. Your street – neighbors on the daily stroll to the porto bank, friends made during build breaks. The $5K art car your neighbors spent all year building with blood, sweat, and tears, rolling out at dusk.

Survive, then experience, then learn. It's the best sandbox on the planet for grabbing a couple friends and trying something silly, fun, interesting, beautiful. What you build is up to YOU. Plenty of first-timers have a life-changing week and barely interface with the org at all.

The renegade year is the proof – with an honest asterisk. "No org" was never quite true. The org still carried real costs that year with zero ticket revenue coming in – as I understand it, something like $1M for law enforcement, BLM support, and medical coverage: ambulances and a medevac helicopter staged on standby in case the worst happened. All of it inside a relationship with the county and the BLM the org spent thirty years building. Credit where due – that's the porta potty thought, and it's genuine stewardship.

And notice what the renegade proved. Strip the org down to its irreducible core and what remains is the substrate: safety, sanitation, land. Everything you'd actually recognize as Burning Man that year – the camps, the art cars, the city that assembled itself out of nothing – was built by participants. Unpaid, self-organized, magnificent. Because that's who builds it every year.

The contrast that same week couldn't have been sharper. The org burned its own Man at Fly Ranch – private property, small crew, live feed for everyone else. Out on the playa: a free city open to anyone with a tank of gas and a tent. Behind the ranch gate: the official Man, with the community invited to watch. Where's the Radical Inclusion in that? The burn is for everyone – not just the people with the most. Watching was never the point. Building is.

The doc didn't invent the top-down lens. It inherited it – one of its executive producers sits on the org's board, so the subject of this film was also, in part, its producer. Which is why the blind spot stings. DPW – the unsung heroes in the dirt raising the city's skeleton every year – barely get a mention. And it's not just DPW. It's truckers hauling containers up 447. Riggers, welders, electricians, kitchen leads, logistics nerds with spreadsheets. Thousands of small, unglamorous builds – a shade structure here, a dome there – that add up to a working metropolis in the middle of nowhere. Blue-collar Burning Man builds the city. The month-long build isn't framed at all. Black Rock City just materializes between interview setups.

The org's own leadership calls this a "70,000-person volunteer event." The right words. But the measure of believing them is where you point the camera – and this film points it at the boardroom. A story that took those words seriously would have started in the dirt with a tent and a Huffy and gone from there.

Two episodes left – genuinely hoping the back half finds the city.

Beautifully produced. Wrong protagonist.

Hi ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and non-binary folks near and far: I would love your thoughts and feedback.

I know finding an unlocked unit in new condition, downgrading the One Plus factory firmware, unlocking the bootloader, and flashing Ubuntu Touch is a barrier to entry for some folks.

I wanted to see if there might be demand for a pre-flashed Ubuntu Touch phone here in the United States (or anywhere I can reasonably ship from California, so Canada, Mexico, etc. count too).

I came across some new, factory unlocked, sealed-in-box Nord N10 5G units. These work great and recently got VoLTE support. That means they finally work great running Ubuntu Touch on US cellular networks.

Anyway, I’m considering adding a line of Ubuntu Touch devices (and possibly GrapheneOS as well) to my hardware store, Whitehat Hardware, based here in California.

I also am considering additional phone options that are more modern (like the Fairphone) and tablet options. But I try to only sell devices I personally have used for a while, and can stand behind. The Nord N10 5G model with Ubuntu Touch is capable all around, useable as a daily driver, mobile hotspot, mobile terminal, and more.

If you have a price range in mind let me know what you’d pay for a tested and well supported device you know will work. And if you have a specific device request you’d like, please let me know.

Thanks for any feedback! Hope y’all have an excellent weekend.

-John