Gareth Halfacree
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ghalfacree.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
Gareth Halfacree
@ghalfacree.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
#Technology, #science, and #computing #journalist and #photojournalist. #Author, #Microbit & #RaspberryPi User Guides. Custom PC columnist. Bylines Hackster.io […]

🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://mastodon.social/@ghalfacree, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact
And yes, unsurprisingly, all of that is also available on the #geminiprotocol at:

gemini://tilde.club/~ghalfacree

Yes, even the review. Enjoy!
December 15, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Finally, until those three other pieces pop off the stack, the news that Roomba maker iRobot is bankrupt - but has entered into a Chapter 11 agreement with a former rival, so it should be business as usual for the apps and cloud services. For now, at least […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 15, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Then a neat guide to building a standalone Wi-Fi signal strength meter, which works by pointing a needle on a dial - created with a hand-drawn dial and a piece of 3D-printing filament fused to a hobby servo […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 15, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Earlier in the month I wrote about Chen Liang's three-part breadboard power monitor. Well, now it's portable - thanks to some PCB modification to squeeze it into an upcycled mint box […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 15, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Then an LED matrix with a difference: it's built as a freestanding circuit sculpture. There's an ATtiny85 built in for standalone use, or you can disable that and hook it into an external microcontroller […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 15, 2025 at 4:14 PM
A lovely project from Bobricius next: a self-charging LED, which flashes when you press a button... by harvesting energy *through* the LED into a capacitor.

https://www.hackster.io/news/peter-bobricius-misenko-s-self-charging-led-necklace-is-the-ultimate-useless-gadget-8e2f6da62d49

#technology […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 15, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Then one from Friday that I didn't get around to posting (because I was up to my elbows in old Commodore hardware!): a nautilus shell lovingly (and reversibly) turned into a haptic speaker […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 15, 2025 at 4:12 PM
@andypiper The keyboard ain't so bad, thanks to the Gateron Pro White upgrade it's had - but the fact that I type quicker than the C64 can scan the keyboard matrix was... interesting. Had to correct a lot of instances of "Commodor" before submission!
December 15, 2025 at 10:14 AM
@Ryanteck And you get other benefits, too: emulated printer, RAM disk, you can overclock to 64MHz, FTP access to load disk/tape/cart images onto it hands-free, optional scanline generation, keyboard joystick emulation - oh, the keyboard's mechanical, too, feels a lot nicer than the original […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 15, 2025 at 10:06 AM
@Ryanteck Original C64 will set you back an easy £80 on the auction sites these days, you'll want a replacement PSU, it'll probably need recapping, if you want to hook it up to a modern TV or monitor you'll need a CVBS/SCART to HDMI adapter which'll introduce an annoying lag, then you'll need a […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 15, 2025 at 10:04 AM
My full review will be going up on #hackster later in the day, and it's a big 'un - written, because as I've said before I will always commit to the bit, on the Commodore 64 Ultimate itself, in Mini Office II. Got to admit, I haven't used that in a few years […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
December 15, 2025 at 9:51 AM
And... yeah, it works. The only thing that gave it even the slightest pause was the Sound Expander, and only because I had to manually disable the internal virtual "cartridge" to route the signals properly - a quick flip in the settings menu, no more than […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]
December 15, 2025 at 9:49 AM
And when I say "hands-on," I mean putting the thing through the wringer. You want to tell me it's "99% compatible" with existing hardware? Okay, let's try it...

#technology #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #commodore #fpga
December 15, 2025 at 9:44 AM
Right, article written. 2,610 words... all of which were written in Mini Office II on a Commodore 64.

Don't ever say I don't know how to commit to the bit.
December 13, 2025 at 6:07 PM
It's also available as a Creative Commons-licensed #ebook, distributed to Raspberry Pi Official Magazine subscribers (and non-magazine contributors) - and if it's not up on the Bookshelf app on Raspberry Pis themselves yet, it should be soon enough!
December 10, 2025 at 6:00 PM
And finally back to #science with a look at RoboCrop, a system to let fruit-picking robots better estimate their chances of success - leaving the hard-to-get fruit for human workers.

Any suggestion I picked this to write about purely for the pun in the name is... well, probably pretty accurate […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 10, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Then a new mobile app from @iFixit - which includes an #llm to talk you through diagnosis and repair.

What could possibly go wrong(!)

https://www.hackster.io/news/ifixit-launches-a-mobile-app-for-on-the-go-repair-work-37b15144a9f3

#technology #LLM #artificialintelligence #mobileapp #repair […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 10, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Huzzah: the review sample I've been waiting for is here! Can't say more until the embargo's up, but I *can* say I'm very much looking forward to seeing what it can do.
December 10, 2025 at 3:09 PM