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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • I have some of those too. Problem is they’re nowhere near as efficient at cooling as ice cubes are and never cool my drink enough. It’s the melting (phase change) process that does the majority of the cooling with ice cubes, which you miss out on with these solid blocks.

    I forget the exact maths, but a quick googling reckons it takes something like 84kJ to change the temperature of 1kg of liquid water by 20K, but changing the temperature of the same amount of ice from 0K ice to 20K water takes nearly 420kJ, or roughly 5 times more energy, which is why they’re so much better at cooling drinks…



  • I have the Bluetooth + 2.4G one with hall effect sensors and paddles (with the 2.4G/Bluetooth switch on the back and included 2.4G receiver in the dock).

    I didn’t realise the dedicated 2.4G one received Bluetooth later, but the firmware was for the 2.4G receiver, not the controller, which I’d assume to be the same one regardless? That said, it’d only allow you to use “Switch Pro Mode” and “Xinput Mode” when connected via 2.4G to the receiver. Bluetooth mode behaviour will be unchanged… But given the choice I’m not sure why anyone on PC would use Bluetooth instead of the 2.4G anyway, unless they’re not using the dock with that particular computer…

    All that aside though, my initial comment was to indicate 8bitdo were actually quite helpful when I reached out to them, in contrast to the person I was replying to… To answer OPs actual questions:

    1. Bluetooth mode outputs as a Switch Pro controller by default, so a lot of games on PC won’t recognise it unless you use Steam Input or some other translation layer to convert to Xinput. There are numerous applications to do it, but Steam is probably easiest and most accessible. To set the paddles etc You can download the Ultimate Software on your Phone or the PC to set the back paddles and tweak settings.

    2. I’d recommend playing around with some first person shooters using the Gyro. Steam specifically has a Flick Stick-like mode that is a really fun way of using the Gyro in FPS games like DOOM. You angle the stick to the direction you want to face, and then use gyro to aim up/down and make fine corrections. E.g. to snap turn 180degrees, just flick the right analogue stick down. Works brilliantly when you (eventually) get the hang of it, it’s so much faster.




  • I’m still learning myself, but it’s potentially because the machines are already warmed up and the grinder is “dialled in” for the beans on offer. One very important aspect (among other things such as temperature, pressure etc) with espresso is the grind size, which will need adjusting between different bean types and roasts. Everything else being equal, a grind that’s too coarse will let the water through too quickly and give you an under-extracted “sour” tasting coffee, whereas too fine and the water moves too slowly and you end up overextracting (and/or choking the machine) and it gets very astringent and bitter tasting; not pleasant at all.

    Alternatively, they could be using a pressurised portafilter, which give much more consistent results, but do take away some control and limit the end result. If it’s a high end machine though it’s probably an unpressured filter basket.

    Edit: Also the roast makes a big difference to how difficult it is to pull a good tasting espresso. Many restaurants/ chains use fairly dark roasted beans which are generally a lot more forgiving than lighter roasts. At least that’s been my experience.




  • Coffee.

    I blame James Hoffman entirely.

    Within a year I went from:

    Drinking instant coffee at home, but really enjoying “proper coffee”

    To

    Buying a cafetiere (~£15) + preground coffee

    To

    Buying a Nespresso (~£60 on offer) + pods

    To

    Buying a budget espresso machine (~£120) + preground coffee

    To

    Wasting my money on a cheap manual coffee grinder (~£50) + beans

    To

    Immediately replacing it with an entry level Sage grinder (~£170)

    To

    Buying an entry Level “proper” espresso machine (~£700)

    It took me a good 2-3 weeks of practicing and dialling in before pulling a good shot of coffee that I’d actually want to drink, but by that point it was also about learning a new skill, learning how different aspects of the process affect the end result and learning how to make all sorts of different espresso-based drinks.

    My girlfriend thought I was nuts at first, but a year or so later even she agrees it was worth the investment. I still for the life of me can’t get the hang of latte art though.

    The problem is now though that I’m a waaaay more critical of coffee from coffee shops, because I spent a long time making bad coffee whilst learning!



  • Not sure I understand this point. Which resistor would you replace with a diode?

    Sorry, I think I was talking nonesense (doing this in my head and just woke up 😅).

    Not sure it’ll work with just a P-FET actually. You’ll likely need to control the PFET with a NFET, otherwise you still end up with too high a voltage on your control pin when the FET is off due to the gate pullup (unless you can use a fet with a very high Vgs Threshold and then drive it push/pull from the micro, but this isn’t really best practice).

    The above comment about diodes was to protect the microcontroller pin, but you end up not being able to control the FET doing it that way.

    I think either your existing Option 3 or PFET upstream of the divider, switched via an N-FET is the way to go.


  • Could you do similar to diagram 2, but instead of an N-FET use a P-FET between the battery and first resistor in the potential divider?

    Add a gate pull up resistor to source to ensure the FET is off by default, have the micro pull the gate down to take a measurement. You’ll probably need to add another resistor on the control pin to 0V to limit the voltage there also, but those two can be much much higher values to really limit current. Or use a zener/TVS diode instead of second resistor to clamp the voltage instead of dividing (more robust).

    Switch it with an NFET

    The micro will see 0V or divided/clamped battery voltage on the measurement pin.



  • To be fair, Elden Rings difficulty slider is the same as any other RPG… going off and doing other stuff for a bit until you’re OP for the part giving you trouble.

    Also summoning people (or even the seamless coop mod that allows coop all the time everywhere) that’s also an effective difficulty slider.