• Feeling isolated? You're not alone.

    Join 20,000+ people who understand exactly how your day went. Whether you're newly diagnosed, self-identified, or supporting someone you love – this is a space where you don't have to explain yourself.

    Join the Conversation → It's free, anonymous, and supportive.

    As a member, you'll get:

    • A community that actually gets it – no judgment, no explanations needed
    • Private forums for sensitive topics (hidden from search engines)
    • Real-time chat with others who share your experiences
    • Your own blog to document your journey

    You've found your people. Create your free account

I built a thing!

Misery

Amalga Heart
V.I.P Member
Look at this thing:

20250907_004045.webp


This thing came in like 5 billion pieces, putting it together was definitely an experience of all time. I managed to do it without breaking anything.

Though, now that it is done, I must begin a quest of vengeance against whoever designed that stupid clear strip underneath the circuit thingy. Just about went mad trying to get that part done.

A family member got me a subscription to this "Hack Pack" thing, because apparently I dont get enough mystery boxes in the mail each month. For all of my computer and tech knowledge, I'm not familiar with the more physical side of the whole thing. This is only the second thing I've really put together from scratch, with the first one being the Raspberry Pi box I put together a couple of years ago to use as a portable emulation archive. I'd had the idea to try something like this for awhile.

The other half of it is coding. It has basic functionality via that remote on the left, but there's another connector on the other side of the gizmo to connect that to a PC (or to my phone if I want to do the awkward connection of the Dex unit + keyboard and monitor), and then coding goes from there. Arduino. I have no idea what I'm doing.

That part can wait though until I no longer feel like my arms are going to fall off.

I have also realized the importance of doing this sort of thing in rooms with good lighting. The room I'm in was designed to mimic a movie theater... that's what the white on the wall there is, it's a huge screen. There's no ceiling lights on the screen side of the room, so I use a pair of very awkward desk & floor lamps. It's fine for my board games, but for something like this it is clearly not the right type of space for it. It was very hard to see the freaking tiny screws to get them in there.

And now to celebrate I'm going to go play Q*Bert or other arcade and/or Atari games. Simple stuff that wont get me all tense. Cant go wrong with the classics.
 
Looks like it launches "missiles" with pan/tilt control?
 
Cool! Looks like a lot of fun. A far cry from the Heathkit products I built in my youth. :cool:

 
Looks like it launches "missiles" with pan/tilt control?

Aye, that's exactly what it does.

The base can spin around 360 degrees too. Or at least it's supposed to... mine seems to be getting caught on something so it's super awkward right now. The whole thing was done in a way that makes it easy to understand so I *think* I know how to fix it. All those pieces, I was bound to leave a mistake in there somewhere.

The remote on the left controls it. The arrows to move, red button to fire. Other buttons dont do anything until I write some sort of function for them.

There's room to stick other gizmos in as well, so that's cool. A lot of overall room for experimenting.

Also those orange things fly out MUCH faster than I'd expected them to.

Cant mess with it while the dogs are in here though. The big one would just lose his freaking mind, flying tubes to chase/grab/swallow, chaos would ensue.


Do 'I spy' an ESP32? :D Or is that a knockoff Pico?

I have no idea what it is.

I've seen a Pico thing before, that's what's in my emulator box. I've never heard of the other one.
 
Everyone gathered around the whole thing, scratching their chins, not knowing what to do with all the things in the box. Then one day someone decided to put the whole thing together. Still, no one knew exactly what the thing does.
Finally, it was apparent it launched missiles. That was the thing's purpose.
Now it can, (maybe), be used to save the planet from...

thething.webp
:D
 
Long, long ago I won a kit for a "speech synthesizer." It was supposed to be able to make ten vowel sounds, but no consonants. It was an easy breadboard assembly that provided three pairs of spring clips. I was supposed to use a special circular slide rule they provided to choose capacitors for those clips to produce the desired sounds. I was impatient, and decided to try some at random. I only clipped one end, and held the others down with fingers. If a finger slipped, the sound changed. The first thing I heard was "ma." Seeing what had happened, I then got "mama." Machines like me.
 
I have no idea what it is.

I've seen a Pico thing before, that's what's in my emulator box. I've never heard of the other one.

Oh yeah, do you still use a Raspberry Pi for that? I just loaded up my Le Potato with Batocera again; my very 'budget' version of what you might have going on :D .

The Pico is pretty much just a basic microcontroller; no SD card or OS, typically handling logic-related tasks. Although on closer inspection, that could even be an STM32 :eek:
 

New Threads

Top Bottom