> Build logs from the bench. SDR, Meshtastic, LED panels, a homelab that keeps growing, and the occasional voided warranty.
// signal > trace > thought
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.
I had the AD5X for less than a week. I hadn't done a second print yet. And I was already on GitHub
Eight years with the Anet A8, from MOSFET mods and melting connectors to retirement. A look at what it took to keep a notorious fire hazard running, and why the Flashforge AD5X is a better way to spend a weekend.
