I'm not dead! Updates and teasers.

Radio breaking squelch Is this thing on? Oh good!
It's been a LONG time since the last update and that's my fault, apologies for the delays in posts but oh the things that have happened since the last one have been AWESOME.

New generation precision suntracker, printed variant

To start off, I have passed a year at the new job and it has been a whole freaking year of awesome times, some frustration with part of the program and then elation when finally it all worked together as intended. Developing a new high precision solar tracker from the ground up has been a massive challenge due to difficulties with getting the most critical part, the imaging Multi Object Tracking sensor that is also found in modern Wiimotes, working from just a datasheet and my admittedly terrible coding skills. Getting the driver working correctly really allowed the power and incredible value of a logic analyzer for debugging a system. On the plus side, once that was working the rest was not too much harder and I have obtained permission from PXI to open source my library once that is working so anyone can unlock the power of this wonderful sensor. Another happening here was my first field campaign with my system, destination Arizona State University to do final debugging and training of the team that will be taking it to the Amazon rain forest.

Upcoming appearance at DEFCON 25 in Vegas

You read that right, this year I'm going to be at the one and only DEFCON in Las Vegas!!!! Since this year I'd had a mutual friend of W1NST0N and I's offer some space in his penthouse suite, we ran budget estimates for flight and food, found it was well within reason and decided to go for it. I've been watching the DEFCON talks on YouTube for YEARS and have learned a TON from them, and now I can ask questions and talk to the presenters in addition to a wide range of hardware and software hackers. Another bonus is I'll be able to meet more of my readers and put faces to the handles of quite a few of the people that I've been interacting with over the years across various platforms. If you find me, I'll have the normal 3D printed rings and some swanky new business cards to give you. Over the course of the event I'll be regularly tweeting my whereabouts and meetup spots, so come say hi, I don't bite and am more than happy to answer any questions you have!

Remember: What I do release ends up under BeerWare licensing so this is a good opportunity to get those beers in! Cheers and see you in Vegas!

"THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42): Arsenio Dev wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return.

Prograde burn; I quit my day job to work at NASA

Yes you read that right, as of January 30th I am working at NASA Goddard as a student researcher in the earth sciences wing, specifically on the 4U Laser Hetrodyne Radiometer cubesat as a hardware/software engineering intern.

First official day on the job!

Holiday season 2016 general update and MAGFest panel announcement

Happy Hackerdays readers! Since the last update I've been absolutely slammed between life and projects which had a drastic balance change that took more time and energy away from the blog than I'd have liked but thanks to a few alterations it is looking like I'll be back on track to get updates out more frequently and have an increase in project progress.

Hackertree 2016, with even better gear and Wi-Fi LEDs!

Hackaday DC event recap

Giving a talk to the packed room

As some of you might have seen, I recently attended the Hackaday DC event and gave a talk on the rocket stabilization system while there in addition to explanations and demonstrations to quite a few people that came by my table. Surprisingly, the Amazon AWS crew that was there took quite an interest in my project and gave advice on code upgrades for the stabilization system, namely dynamic control movement ranges dependent on velocity.

A tour of Small Batch Assembly

Company logo on the orange walls

Recently I had met up with Bob Coggeshall at the inaugural National Maker Faire and he invited me to stop by the factory sometime in the future. I wasn't out in the general Reston area for a while until there was a conference over there. Sent him a tweet, and the following day drove over through the rather nice technology district.