Over the years my family has collected a lot of audiobooks. Now that we have moved out, it is hard to get access to books we own. After some searching I found a Github Repository, Audiobookshelf. It was a personal Audible, a personaudible, if you will.
I thought, I have an extra Raspberry Pi 4b lying arround, I can set Audiobookshelf on it and be done in no time.
I set it up in docker container running on my Raspberry Pi 4b. It worked well enough for one or two people listening to books at a time, but it became clear that it needed a bit more hardware power to get it to work for my family. I found a cheap old desktop computer that I could repurpose into a Ubuntu server where I could host my Library.
Since early in the Covid-19 pandemic, I became enamored by the game of chess. Like many people, I made a chess.com account and started solving puzzles and playing games. Puzzle solving was more fun to me because given enough time, I should be able to find the right move. There was thrill when I would win chess games and utter disappointment when I lost.
I started to improve and wanted to try my hand at chess in real life. I got a US Chess Federation membership and started playing in some small tournaments. Most small tournaments asked for a chess board and a chess clock to be brought a long to the events to keep costs down. Looking online at the chess clocks and seeing them go for around $60.00 each, I thought to myself how hard could it be to make my own. I found my old Arduino Uno that I had used for one of my Electrical Engineering classes and started trying to build a clock.
After finding a breadboard, small buttons, an LCD screen (bought off of eBay), resistors, and about a million jumper wires, I had all the hardware that I needed to start. Though my coding expertise is in primarily Python, I quickly recalled the basics of C++ and the little Arduino C that I had learned. With my C++ memory refreshed, I started the joy of troubleshooting with hardware sourced from not very reputable sellers. Troubleshooting my poor solder joints, less than neat code, or the hardware was a lot of work. When I finally had a half working clock, the LCD screen decided that it would only show the left half of the screen. Unfortunate. I have shelved this project until I can source a cheap but reliable replacement screen.