> Build logs from the bench. SDR, Meshtastic, LED panels, a homelab that keeps growing, and the occasional voided warranty.
// signal > trace > thought
Identities, announces, flashing an RNode, configuring LoRa interfaces, running a NomadNet site off a Ghost blog, and why my off-grid node still leans on the internet to work.
This blog now has a second address on Reticulum, a NomadNet node called Thinkleet.net Off-Grid. Here's what Reticulum is, what it isn't, and how to connect to it from scratch.
POCSAG is still alive. Your county EMS is still broadcasting dispatches in plaintext over frequencies anyone can receive. I built a scanner that listens to all of it.
The ESP32-C6 WiFi Dojo, a pocket-sized WiFi practice range on the Nano ESP32-C6 v1.0. Three modes: WPA2/WPA3 practice AP, beacon flood with SSID cloning, and captive portal. Around $13 in parts, runs off any USB power bank.
An RTL-SDR running on a Pi4 decodes live POCSAG pager traffic and publishes it over MQTT. A $15 ESP32 touchscreen display subscribes and shows pages in a retro green-on-black UI. Full build guide including the CYD display config that took way too long to find.
I bought a 16x16 LED matrix for no reason, left it in a drawer for a year, then turned it into a ten-game arcade driven by a controller Google abandoned. Here is how it came together, including the bug that cost me an evening.
How a Christmas gift, a seven-year gap, and a very confusing mount path problem convinced me to containerize everything — and why I'll never go back to bare metal.
A tour of balor — the server in my closet running 32 Docker containers, a MergerFS storage pool, and an Intel Arc A380 that handles media transcoding so the CPU doesn't have to.
A custom ESP32 build that subscribes to Meshtastic's encrypted MQTT topic, decrypts packets on the fly, and scrolls messages across a WS2812B 8x32 LED panel. Full build guide: parts, wiring, PlatformIO flashing from scratch, and MQTT setup.
