bekopharm

joined 1 year ago
 

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/24694356

This video is how I gutted my already modified old Thrustmaster F-16 FLCS joystick of my ViperPit and made it work again with the help of an Arduino Pro Micro. This flight stick (and also the other peripherals) do belong in a museum but where’s the fun in that? I modified it and now it’s a generic USB joystick that works on any recent system. I focus mostly on the 5x5 button matrix since this is the hardest part to understand. In the end are a few minutes of playing X4 Foundations with it to give it a good test run. Now it just needs some oil for the creaking πŸ˜…

https://makertube.net/w/qrqqZLr2QvJFjCwyNzzAmp / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYiPFDpHwmc

[–] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What are your experience?

My last "real" Windows experience was with WinXP and every time I have to touch Windows at the PC of a customer, which happens sometimes when the stars align, I feel like the first human that ever walked the earth.

I have no idea how people get any work done on a system that is constantly nagging for attention, popups, restrictive Enterprise environment and non descriptive error messages. Nothing in this world seems to make sense or is presented in a unified way. Every dialogue or sub system seems to be it's own isle stemming from another decade of tech. The experience for someone who is simply not used to Windows any more due to missing exposure is horrible.

Heck a Mac feels alien to me too but in the end that's still a system I could deal with given some time.

Mebbe I'm spoiled by stuff like systemd, PipeWire, Wayland, btrfs and all that candy we get nowadays on a Linux desktop. I'm not even talking about privacy or FOSS principles at this point. Just the fact that the system doesn't get in my face with ads or AI or "very important reboots" seems to be a revelation in 2024.

[–] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

for some reason they wanted me to have slack

I get similar requirements from school and kindergarten nowadays. They want me to install weird apps for communications. Last school had an online portal on the web and mail. That was a no brainer but these apps?

Hello Waydroid.

Not gonna taint my own phone with this stuff. That includes WhatsApp.

[–] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 2 weeks ago

pvt NoPhone

Love this bit. Gonna steal it :D

Either this or there are defined "core hours" where everyone must be available.

We used to pipe all sorts of πŸ’© to /dev/dsp just to know how it would sound πŸ€“

[–] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Jul 91? Now I feel old.

[–] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 month ago

Thanks to GitHub this wonderful article, that made me opt for another domain for my recent project a year ago, is now… drumroll under an .io domain too: https://tamouse.github.io/blog/politics/2019/10/02/why-is-the-io-domain-problematic.html

Irony much.

[–] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 month ago

The situation is really bad for consumers. Even with a Pi-Hole and a dumb TV and something like a Fire TV stick (they tend to send lots of telemetry too and apps like Toggo will nag you to oblivion to consent to data mining - if an app asks at all that is).

I'm slowly building up a Jellyfin library and yeah I jumped the hoops to find a non-smart TV. Wrote about it at https://beko.famkos.net/2022/11/27/on-non-smart-tvs/ and settled with a https://www.homex.eu/u55nt1000.html that ticked all my boxes:

β˜‘ ~~cheap~~ affordable β˜‘ 4k (UHD) β˜‘ ~~dumb~~ non-Smart β˜‘ HDMI β˜‘ 55β€³

No idea about it's tuner though[1] alas it's not really any longer available in any market space today and I hope it will not die on us any time soon or the quest to find a new one starts again πŸ€“

[1] We've a decent external receiver that does all the work and HDMI juggling but even that thing is on the WiFi for software updates and in-house streaming but from what I can tell it behaves at least, which is probably just because it's old by now.

NΓΆ. Das war pervers teuer. Und das noch von nem Laden, der nur Zeug verkauft, was sonst keiner wollte xD

I'm not even sure why this was in one of my drawers at all. Stumbled over it randomly today and was confused by this initially because somehow "VR" is marked with "brand new shit" in my head. I should know better but kinda forgot all about it.

pew pew. pew pew pew. :D

 

Random trivia; VR is so 90s πŸ€ͺ - this is a photo of an offer for a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VFX1_Headgear for ~500USD in 1997. Apparently it was compatible with games like Mech Warrior 2 and did already feature stuff like head tracking for compatible games.

 

⚠️ grandpa gaming inbound

In 2020 I checked some old backup disks of mine and found to my utmost joy a copy of my former UT2003 installation. This is a Linux native 32bit build that is now over 20 years old. Well, LinuxGaming is hard because who can support 500 distributions, right? This worked just fine in 2020 on Fedora 31. Today I gave it another spin in 2024 on Fedora 38 on Wayland with PipeWire πŸ˜€

Hell yeah, the muscle memory is still there πŸ€˜πŸ€“πŸ€˜

(tbf the SDL1.2 compat lib rocks most of this but it's really all still there)

 

As an avid[1] X4 Foundations player I'm more than happy that I stumbled over @egosoft@mastodon.social today.

I couldn't find a cross referencing link from their website [yet] but I did check back on their Discord and got the confirmation by belgoray that this account is indeed official

[1] I'm really batshit crazy about this game - heck I even hacked it to sideload an UDP server to interface with my home cockpit πŸ€“

 

Wingman - An X-Wing Story | Star Wars Fan Film was released today. It's a Star Wars fan movie with 50 minutes length and plenty of pew pew.

 

What you see is a glorified DIY joystick controller with a LCD ('MFD') and plenty of RGB inspired by a VF-1 (Block 6) Valkyrie of the Macross franchise.

I use it mainly to play Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, X4: Foundations and plenty of other Space Pew Pew.

Three monitors form a wall around a box that embeds a fourth monitor, many buttons and switches in various colours are also implemented. Some LED display the status of a spaceship. The computer game that is played with this contraption is Elite Dangerous Odyssey

It's mobile and can be stashed easily because my battlestation is, unlike most gaming rigs, also my workstation and has to move a lot. It's also frequently occupied by my kids who also love clicky buttons and compete with me for stick time :D

Three monitors form a wall around a box that embeds a fourth monitor, many buttons and switches in various colours are also implemented. Some LED display the status of a spaceship. The computer game that is played with this contraption is Fly Dangerous

It's completely DIY and made on a budget (no really). It's also Work In Progress, like probably any home cockpit out there.

Picture of the building phase of the frame. One unpainted panel is already screwed to the wooden frame. Other panels do not exist yet or are still cardboard mockups

For the PC it's just a joystick and an additional display. The magic starts to happen when I manage to interface with the games to display live game data and adjust the blinken lights depending on the current ship telemetry.

Am I crazy? Yes, probably. It's a hobby and when Corona happened indoor hobbies became kinda a thing again πŸ€“

Edith says: Should have added this from the beginning: I do foster a project website that has additional details, pictures and videos: 🌐 https://SimPit.dev (yes it's slow - hold the line :P)

Videos are usually mirrored to πŸ“Ή https://tube.tchncs.de/a/bekopharm or πŸ“Ή https://www.youtube.com/@BekoPharm (pick your poison).

Additional content may be found on 🌐 https://beko.famkos.net/category/simpit/ or on ☠️ https://hackaday.io/bekopharm

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