Is RISC-V the future of computing? I sure hope so. So I tracked down one of the cheapest Linux-capable SBCs that supports this architecture, the Milk-V Duo. For a retail price of $9, this little guy offers a RV64 Linux environment complete with busybox, Ethernet, and a wide assortment of IO rivaling some microcontrollers. Today I’m going to steup the board and start learning about RISC-V computing! Fundamentally, the RISC-V architecture is a document which describes the binary machine lanuage of a 32, 64, or 128 bit processor with integer and optional floating point support, but it’s also symbolic of the shift to open computing for the future, and as a computer engineer I’m excited to learn more about it.

In this part of the 3018 Desktop Router project, I setup a permanent home for CNCjs on a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client. I’m running CNCjs as the CNC control software and G-code sender (the CNC’s grbl controller is actually doing the motion control). I’m using mjpg-streamer to add a USB webcam to the CNCjs web UI, with nearly no load on the CPU to encode. And I’ve setup a script to launch ffmpeg to record the mjpeg stream when g-code is started and stopped (also using nearly no load on the CPU to transcode).

I’ve decided to start Twitch streaming my evening gaming sessions. I usually spend a small amount of my evening playing games anyway, so broadcasting it to the world isn’t a big change to my routine, and hopefully I can improve my content creation skills at the same time. I play almost exclusively single-player games, particularly first person shooter, puzzle, and simulation games. I’m slowly building up my streaming stup and it should help with video creation too, which is something I’m excited about.

As I recently posted about, I got my CR-10 MAX working and did some basic upgrades to it. After that, it was printing pretty well, so I decided it needed a camera so I could start trusting it with longer unattended prints. I still don’t have power control of the printer, so I won’t let it run when I’m not home, but now I feel comfortable leaving the basement knowing I can check to see if it’s making a mess of itself.

After buying some cheap USB boroscope cameras to use as an actual boroscope for home renovation projects, I decided to buy one with a flexible cable to mount near the nozzle of my Prusa i3 MK3s to get a time-lapse of the nozzle during the printing process. Watching the first layer closely during a print can show failures early, since most failures are due to bed adhesion or other first-layer problems.

Today I just published a project I’ve been working on for awhile - my 3D printer nozzle camera - and it’s the first project I’ve made a corresponding video for! I built this nozzle camera mount to carefully watch the first layer of 3D prints, since most failures happen early on due to poor first layer adhesion or related issues. Keeping the camera out of the print volume while still getting a good view of the nozzle and print was challenging, but I ended up with a cool solution that I’m really proud of, and the view is fantastic.

As I expand the reach of Home Assistant, I continuously try to build automations that make life generally easier for the users of the home. To me, automation isn’t about being able to control anything from my phone - in fact, the less I have to get my phone out, the better. I will still enjoy tracking history entries and status of nodes with both the web UI and app, but I shouldn’t have to, the house should just work.

Previosly, I built a home security camera system using ZoneMinder. Somewhat dissatisfied with the status quo of ZoneMinder, I set out to try a brand new security NVR - Frigate - and see if an NVR written specifically to integrate into Home Assistant could be used for more than just recording and viewing camera footage. The Old System I am using the same Dahua cameras I installed in the ZoneMinder System.

The quest for the best camera/angle for my 3D Printer My original plan was to use Octoprint with a USB camera (since that’s the cool thing to do, right?). I got a Logitech C270 USB webcam and was very underwhelmed by the image quality. I found that the field of view was just too narrow to get a good shot of the entire 3d print, especially if I was printing something big.

This project describes my process of building a home security camera system using Dahua PoE cameras and ZoneMinder. Overall the system is functional, but Zoneminder leaves a bit to be desired. I will revisit this project in the future. The Beginnings of a Camera System The real OG camera system was installed by my dad a decade ago using analog ‘960H’ cameras (which are grossly misleading in their advertising since they market the horizontal resolution instead of the usual vertical resolution, they are actually 480x960 at best).