I'm an EE by trade focusing on embedded devices, but most of my work is in relatively low-power STM32 applications. When I stopped following developments in hobby kits, it was mostly Arduino Unos slowly driving I2C OLED displays.

Now suddenly, there are embedded Raspberry Pis and ESP32s doing realtime facial recognition and video feeds.

Is there a good place to look to catch up on what's now possible with these embedded devices?

Also, while I enjoy the ease of the hobby kits, I'm also interested in more mass-production-focused solutions.

Do guns wear out? Do they end up in landfill? You always hear about guns being sold, but never about what happens to them at the end of their useful life.

I'm working on implementing the PID compensator on the top of page 20 here. I've already got a circuit working, but it oscillates a ton, and I was hoping to tune it with a better strategy than just guess and check.

The datasheet doesn't go into a lot of detail on how it's supposed to work, but I found a whitepaper that covers single-stage PID compensators in more detail here.

I've got this compensator working, I've modeled it in spice and the poles and zeroes show up where they should, but I have no idea how to actually tune it to my system.

My understanding is that I need to fit the equation (3) on the second link to the form kp + kds + ki/s, but it's an algebraic nightmare.

What I'm hoping for is some derivation of the PID constants in terms of the components in my system. Then I can work on one of the many tuning methods. The datasheet even assigns names to components implying that they're responsible for setting one of the constants (Cd and Rd for derivative term for example), but I'm fairly certain they can't be completely isolated like that.

Also, if the answer is just that I need to re-learn how to do partial fractions, I'm okay with that.

So I need to move my server closet out of the guest room closet and into the basement so the closet can be used as a closet again.

I’ve got like 15 shielded cat6 with insulated risers patched into the back of a rack mount patch panel.

My goal is to end up with all of the existing cable extended 15’ or so to the new patch panel location, with maybe some kind of small door in the wall of the original closet so I can access the splices if anything goes wrong.

I invested in shielded cat6 when networking the house to future proof everything, and I have solid home runs to every location. I’m currently only running gigabit speeds, but I’d like to preserve the integrity of the original cables as much as possible.

With that in mind, what’s the best method for this extension? I’ve seen shielded punchdown junction boxes as well as female/female inline couplers. Keep in mind that there will be a bunch of them, so any advice on keeping things organized is appreciated.

I picked up a low pressure sodium lamp and am working on a Halloween demonstration. I’m hoping to make a display that appears one way under normal light, but looks totally different under the monochromatic 589nm sodium vapor light.

So basically, I’m looking to generate a color wheel where I pick a shade of gray and get a list of colors that would look that gray under sodium vapor light.

…I feel like there must be a Python library for thing or something…

Update: thanks all for the very helpful advice! I think it’s really special that not one of you dunked on my DM. You all seem very supportive of a broad range of play styles and that’s a sign of a very healthy community.

I reached out to one of the more experienced players in our party, and I’ll be pinging our DM at some point over the next week. I’ll see if we can switch gears or if not leave peaceably. Thanks again.

Recently got into DND. Watched two seasons of Dimension 20 and loved them. A friend of mine offered to try DMing for our friend group. We meet every two weeks for 3-4 hours. We're playing Pathfinder using the Foundry online interface so we can play remotely.

Apologize if I mess up any terminology, I'm new.

I am two hours into this week's game right now (in another tab), and I'm so fucking bored. We're in some underground tunnel system, and just getting bombarded by completely arbitrary enemies.

Last round we spent three hours fighting a mimic and a gelatinous cube, and there was no explanation for why they were even in the cave in the first place. We haven't had a conversation with an NPC in three sessions. End of the round we come across some weird tunnel system with giant moths on one side and giant larvae on the other. No explanation for why they're there. We start coming up with a plan on how to kill them so we can get the loot they're guarding, but it was the end of the session.

This week, right when we start and try to do something about the moths, we get attacked by morlocks that came up the tunnel behind us, fight them for an hour and a half, and the remaining ones just run off. So now we're finally dealing with the moths.

Anyway, we're doing this on a giant map in Foundry. Nothing is theater of the mind. It's all very literal, and it feels like I'm playing an incredibly slow PC game just sliding my token down tunnels. Nobody is really roleplaying. We rarely get any details during our battles beyond "they look really hurt."

I don't expect anybody I know to be at the level of Brennan or whatever at DMing, but there is just no entertainment value for what we're doing here, we're constantly in combat, none of my skills are useful (because we're just fighting mindless monsters), and it's like a solid 10 minutes between my turns.

Like end of last round, I floated the idea of trying to mount and tame one of the moths (I'm a halfling, and they're big), and my DM just said "I mean, that's pretty dangerous. If you're ok rolling a new character, you can try it." Like geez, sorry for trying to make it interesting. At least give me an in-game reason for why I shouldn't do it.

I really want to quit. Any advice?

In the original Sims, I was 11, and didn’t realize skills improvement would get your sims better jobs.

My sims were all top ranked in the military because that was the best job that required no skills.

Here’s what I have so far:

https://youtu.be/_u6Tt3PqIfQ?si=D8SimyX2Q8kgntNU https://youtu.be/K477N9scQEw?si=VzU4lhE-JHaCX7Sh https://youtu.be/QNwCojCJ3-Q?si=dijpvnVFo8PCeW8q https://youtu.be/SPZWfXLTDuo?si=RdoFjz1Gho3EQ2JI https://youtu.be/wbfu39l0kxg?si=Rp3JK5aNCNgZojEF https://youtu.be/H4dGpz6cnHo?si=fONrK8o2Z_YhClRa

Everyone knows the tale of Brand X getting bought out by some faceless global conglomerate and going to shit, but does the opposite ever happen?

The main gag is that she finds it somewhere he claims he already looked (typical), but he interprets her “magically” finding it as witchcraft.

4 panels. She looks very annoyed in the last panel.

I saw it originally on Reddit, but I can’t find it anywhere now.

I've got a 2018 Model 3 that I've upgraded with the new charge port ECU to support CCS. The adapter works fine in EA, but I recently tried it on a Chargepoint station and while the station recognized the car, it wouldn't start charging. Said there was some kind of problem.

Station worked fine with the CHAdeMO cable and adapter though.

Is there a thing with Chargepoint and the CCS adapter? Or could there be something with my ECU upgrade?

Recently started using a LightPhone II when out of the house, and I found the article captured my current experience pretty well. It’s not so bad to be bored sometimes.