I’ve been bored with copy pasting parts of designs in KICAD so I’ve made my own library that was introduced in version 9.0.
My first block will be a USB C one as it’s almost the most essential part of any PCB. Also it will be a LDO but that it’s going to be next on the list.
Here are the things that my blocks should be:
I really love how it turned out!!
After getting rejected my ship I had uploaded my video to youtube instead of slack.
Buttoning up the code. But it’s still pretty messy.
And managed to implement MeshCore for it! 
BC I have copy pasted a lot of function blocks the chode is glued together with a duck tape 
So after getting the ptt -> STT -> TTS working I have though on how to implement the MC functionality. SO I’ve began with getting familiar with the meshcore library by running the included sample sketch which should send a message to the first contact. I ran that and didn’t see anything, after that I made sure that my other device was on top and it worked!
After that I’ve let ChatGPT to do implement a sample code that will let me communicate via the terminal. And it no workie, fixed it and it works great!
Then implemented to the main codebase with copilot. The prompt was the intended function along with a few more things like automatically playing tts file.
Allright so this log is about research and MVP (minimal viable product)
So I stared playing with onyx-om python library and there are also some examples for python. I’ve played with them a bit and it seems that whisper is the king for STT and as for TTS I’m going for piper.
I have modified the STT code from simpler and less acurate model for whisper which is way better and I don’t mind the lag.
And after that I’ve played with different things like other models and TTS.
After that I managed to get implemented this workflow. You press t it starts recording, after release it transcribes it, and with tts piper it converts back to speach. This is meant to prove me the thesis.
So the main core is mostly done, although the code is very messy.
After shipping yesterday I had today started working on riping
TwinkleTron out of my table, and overwriting it with the latest FW.
Then I began configuring it.
I have set up the LED strip channels as one can only do 800 LED’s
reliably. It was split in the middle by 576 pixels.
After I peeked into the matrix config set up the defined matrix size and
it didn’t look right. Went to readme to spot the mistake ant it was
because I’ve wrongly converted from mm to cm. OR so I thought. It was
the whole calculation that was wrong. 🤦♂️
MATHS
Boink I got an notification that my ship was rejected and needs changes.
(No images in readme and no BOM)
Back to the project, and after a few blank stares into the readme and
also the CAD file I’ve managed to at least hopefully correctly calculate
the needed LEDs. SO I had to redesign the power delivery section.
Updated the repo for requested changes and shipped it back out.
PS: I also managed to get the price down :yay
Allright I’m almost finished!!
So first thing I did today was cleaning up the repo and pushing the yesterdays changes.
Then I went on to do the drawing of the stand that will hold the LED matrix, I’ve tried to even show the LED strips in there but FreeCAD couldn’t handle it, so I sketched it up in draw.IO. with a kinda like a block diagram.
Wrote about the intended SW in the readme.
And then I’ve created the vision board so anybody can get the idea about the project, which is going to get shipped as a demo
The whole time I was thinking about how I’ll create a render in blender for it with cloud simulation, but it didn’t work yesterday. But I got inspiration from some YT video that mocked it up with photoshop. So I hopped into affinity and started designing after a tutorial which I couldn’t follow, so I’ve found an online texture export and inported it into affinity tweaked it and it worked.
But then I need some kind of backgroud for it, so I took akemi from the WLED effects website and blurred it out behind the cloud layer. Yeah it didn’t look right. And ChatGPT halucinated completly different thing. But after a bit of tweaking I managed to make it work.
And after all of that I have threw everything into the shipping baskets, wrote down the price. And going to ship soon …. Good luck
Today I had done the schematic.
It’s going to be a pretty interesting concept as the wiring is wild different to other matricies.
We need almost 120m of LED strips. And they are going to draw almost 2 000W. It’s going to be an electric kettle lol.
Because of that I have added two power cables to power the thing, as 220V is better for this. *laughs in geman.
I have started creating the schematic in DrawIO. First was the PSU along with the two heavy duty cables I’ve mentioned earlier. Then it’s going to WAGO connectors which will be our power distribution and then it’s going to be distributed to the LED power injection points.
Next I did a block diagram in it for the LED matrix, but it wasn’t really clear how to connect it up so I’ve hopped into tinkercad and did a small scale schematic with all of the right features.
Next up is:
So after that last pivot I’m super happy how this project is turning out. I hope that other people loves it as much as I do.
But firstly I wanted to move the repo as the original is getting cluttered and it’s a mess. so new repo it it. And it’s also getting a rebrand from generic MatrixShow it’s going to be called The Hack Club cloud, symbolizing the many great ideas of Hack Clubbers. Well this one isn’t going to be about me it’s about ya’lls creativity passion and perseverance. And this sounds so epic in my head!
So after a bit of philosophy. I went to look for suitable LED strips they were either super expensive or didn’t meet my criteria. And after a while I was able to find them, neat!
So everything else was based around them, like the rows spacing, read more about that in my repo.
https://github.com/Tomas-Kuchta-FPV/The_Hack-Club_cloud/blob/main/readme.md#constraints
Alright and then I done the 3D model for the matrix.
Which turned out OK, but it’s looking too much technical, but I can make drawing for it that we’ll use when building.
Peace out Thomas
So I need to pivot as it’s going to be super expensive!
It’s going to be like 300 bulbs, which is feasible but it needs to be a huge budget. It would be fun thought, as I was on planning to use American electrical material. BTW I love the flat cables!
So at first I’ve pivoted to making a addressable LED Christmass string light matrix. So basically drill out thousand of holes and plop them in an interval of about 15cm, but that wouldn’t have the right WOW effect.
So there was another pivot to cheaper LED strips, which is doable!!!
So I’ve decided to make a 4x8ft cloud wall!! It’s going to be addresable and it will be driven by my custom WLED LED controller called TwinkleTron.
I still need to CAD it and spec the PSU, but it’s going to be awesome!!!!!!!
So I’ve defined BOM, and made a sketch of the matrix.
A halve a year ago I had a light exposition in my hometown which turned out very good.
So I want to use the current tested setup, which are Smart sonoff lightbulbs. So I’ve made a BOM around it. And CADed it. But when in CAD I’ve noticed that it’s like 300 smart bulbs and it’s going to be super expensive.
So after finding out that this route isn’t good I’m going for a WS2811 addressable lights.
Allright so this almost 6hr session was me just staring into a datasheet lol. And I still doesn’t understand the STM chip all that much 
So I’ve reverted to theft I mean I took inspo from other implementations of this chip.
After that I’ve started thinking about the USB to UART convertor.
My first thought was the cheap ch340 IC but after finding that it isn’t that available online, I’ve went with the CP2102N which also has good driver support.
And also the converter is only going to be powered with just the USB to conserve powah.
Alright I’ve started researching available tools and started defining the code.
I won’t bore you with all the decisions, but because of modularity I’ve ended up with a wrapper library called Sherpa NX, which seems to do STT and TTS.
For the first prototype I will be using STT whisper tiny and for the TTS I’ll do piper
