3D printing

History Phone

Periodically I enjoy doing more artistic electronics projects. I wanted to capture more of the family stories I hear but aren’t recorded or written down. I had the idea to get an old rotary phone, remove the parts inside, and replace them with an ESP32. When this phone is dialed, it looks for a year that is close to the number dialed, and then plays the audio file from a family member telling a story of that year. Along with hearing the story, a companion tablet website would allow you to see photos and get more information about the story. As all my “quick projects” go, this has been going on for a while, partially because I grew the scope some, partially because getting recordings can take a while.

Along with everything below, here is the github repo that contains controller code, 3D models, scripts, and more information. I have had three hardware revisions; the first was a prototype, the second was the first phone that was overly complex, the third was a simple phone with an all in one ESP32 audio board. This project was a great way for me to play with the ESP32 using SD cards, audio, and even Wifi.

General Design

All the different versions of hardware have an ESP32, SD card reader, and an audio chip. The main inputs are on/off hook, and the rotary piece itself. Then for output we have the speaker in the handset. When the handset is picked up, we play a dial tone.

Historically I have used the Arduino IDE to develop embedded code, for this project I moved to PlatformIO. As a more advanced user its MUCH nicer. You can easily add libraries, and do all your development within VSCode.

Outside of the dialing a year, I wanted some fun features that also helped with discovery. Dialing 0 runs an Operator audio file. This file is generated by a python script that scans the SD card contents, then creates an audio file stating which years can be dialed. Dialing 9 plays a random file from the SD card, this helps with random story discovery. Dialing 8 gives the option to change the volume, this prompt is created via another python script.

The rest of the numbers will try to find a year with a fuzzy matching a decade up and down. If no audio is found, it plays a busy signal. If the user doesn’t enter a number within 10 seconds or so, it plays a busy signal.

A quick tangent: the way the rotary dials work on these old phones is interesting. There are two pairs of wires that come off the rotary. Code for it is here. The first opens once the dial moves at all, this pair goes from a closed circuit to open and remains there till it rests at the start again. That’s when you start tracking the rotary. Next the second pair will pulse every time it passes a digit. The flow for reading this is once the movement starts, clear a counter and start counting pulses. It’s shockingly and happily simple.

Pinout

Other than V1 which had all the buttons and front LEDs hooked up, the wiring is fairly simple. There is the SD Card, which is internal on the all the boards; I have done external SD cards before but I prefer to have my ESP32 boards have a SD card reader on them. Audio – headphone amp, internal on V2 board. Then the two wires mentioned for rotary, and 1 for hook on/off. That’s it!

Iterations

Prototype V0

This was my first test, I 3D Printed a holder for a rotary dial I got off eBay for about $10, and wired up all the parts I would need. For the hook I used a simple switch you could toggle on and off. I did not touch things like Wifi in this iteration, this was just to see if I could get the basics working. The rotary was around $10, then a $17 ESP32 with built in SD card reader, then a few extra dollars for a switch, audio amp, and speaker. Total cost was around $30. This was built in a weekend or so.

Phone V1

After I had the prototype working, I moved onto to getting a real phone, and trying to get everything working within that. I got this phone that had several lines, and I thought I would use those buttons for different functions. Over time this seemed like overkill and kept me from making more progress. I also needed more IO ports, and had to start using MUXes to do this, which further discouraged me. I wired up all the front buttons to have a LED behind them, and could read if they were open or closed. All I ended up doing was lighting up line 1 when the handset was picked up. The buttons do have a great tactile feel though.

I did do most of the development with this phone. I got the web interface working, and push many versions; which involved doing a static build, and then coping it to the SD card. I cut a hole in the side of this phone to allow me to externally mount the SD card. When the web pages need updated or I needed to load more content I need the SD card, and that is buried very deep in this version of the phone.

To get the hook signal, I connected to the old phones terminals that close when the phone is on the hook. This worked decently, except I added some code to take several readings and average them. I think the old contacts weren’t the cleanest leading to periodic bad readings.

I tried to do clean wiring on this one. With the ESP32 I used for this version, Freenove CAM Board, it came with headers. I used those below through this mounting plate that swiveled to connect to a MUX and audio amp, a MAX98357.

This version of the phone, was an actual phone… That cost $59 on eBay (ones with all the lines were extra), then same $17 ESP32. I installed a few LEDs, MUXes, and an audio amp. This version probably cost closer to $75, and I used this as my test bench for… Almost a year as I on and off worked on this.

Fancy Phone V2

After how complex (see wiring photos, scream in horror) V1 became, I wanted to go back to the start and make a simpler one with the core phone functions. I also found this board that included an SD card reader, and audio amp all for $20, meaning I could use a phone, and this card for everything.

At this point I am doing my normal eBay scouring, and come across this nice executive desk phone. It’s simple, and the seller accepted my low offer! (I think eBay sellers just want to get rid of these phones) I wired everything up and I had a difficult time recreating V1. The main reason is what several reviews on Amazon said about this board (EC Buying ESP32-Audio-Kit Audio Development Board, ESP32-A1S); it has basically no documentation. Luckily, one person mentioned a repo that had a ton of information on the pinout, and that worked for me.

I probably would use this board again, because now I know how to make it work; but it was not forgiving to get working. There appear to be a bunch of companies that have this same board with different names on Amazon. There are different revisions and you don’t really know which one with which pinout you will get till you get it. The company has a github repo that has SOME information, but not all.

For this phones hook signal, I had to remove the piece that would usually be triggered to fit in the ESP32. I modeled and then 3D printed a bracket that holds the ESP32 in the bottom, and at the same time it has spots for two switches that get contact when the handset is put down.

This version of the phone I got (all these prices are with shipping) for $35, its a nice solid unit. The new ESP32 board was $22. Then I added 2 switches because I needed the hook signal, and some terminals. This version of the phone was closer to $60, and I spent about a month here and there on it.

Hey a caulk gun is kind of like a clamp

File Structure

The SD Card has 2 main folders, content and web. Within content, there are some of the stock tones like a dial tone, then there are folders for each year. Within each year: photos, txt files, and mp3 files can live. The system will select at random an MP3 file if there is more than one. The files are supposed to be named starting at 1.mp3 and increment. The idea was you would have 1.mp3 and 1.txt, which would match up and have content matching with the audio. This wouldn’t be hard to make it not that way, but that’s how I was doing it. This is all documented more in the README, on the github page.

The web folder contains a Next.js React app that is built into a static site (a great Next.js feature!).

Web Interface

One feature that was an added on stretch goal was to have a companion website for the phone, allowing for photos and other media while stories were being told. The ESP32 can host a Wifi access point and web app, and I have been learning React, so this was a great place to keep learning! I used Next.js because I have used it before, and I know it can create a static HTML version of your site. I had to overcome some CORS and api issues, then it was smooth sailing. I used the next.config.mjs file to add redirects while doing development.

HistoryPhone web interface

Adding features like volume control on the web page, and currently playing was helpful to learn how to properly do POST requests with an ESP32. I also added the ability to click a audio file in the web app, and then that will queue up on the phone.

Conclusion

Having my family play with the end product has been fun. One of the hardest parts of the project has been getting audio, cutting it down, and finding accompanying photos.

I had a bunch more ideas for the project. Adding a Bluetooth audio output option, photos overlaid on AI-generated period artwork, family tree generator integration, on-device recording capability, support for phone buttons and indicator lights, and standardized metadata schema. I already have spent far longer than I thought on this project, so those ideas will wait for another day.

In the end this was a fun project that I learned a lot of about web servers and audio processing on an ESP32. These chips continue to amaze me in what they can do for under $20. I will probably use that same audio board again, the documentation is bad but now I know how to get it to work. Here is the repo with even more information, the supporting 3D models, and files. If anyone has questions or recreates this, please leave a comment!

Homelab Updates

I recently got some more space to do my homelab endeavors. I am enjoying setting up a proper work bench for soldering, and I got a few racks to put different projects in! I am trying to stay focused on projects and get them done, but there are so many to do!

I had our home internet coming in on a little cart and decided it was time to get a small 12U rack, and properly set everything up. The issue is over the years, I acquired switches and gear and not rack ears for them since I wouldn’t need them at the time. I spent the last few weeks working on a few different rack ears for different pieces of gear I have. I also printed this (Dell Micro 1U Rack Mount Remixed by noam_f – MakerWorld) model which allows you to mount Dell Micro computers in 1U. This is nice since my primary domain controller is running on one of those. Someone else made a model of a shelf to hold the power supply (Power Adapter Mount for Dell Micro 1U Rack Mount by Jfrorie | Download free STL model | Printables.com)!

Then it came to my old classics. I needed ears for the Mellanox SX6012 (https://thangs.com/designer/danberk/3d-model/Mellanox%20SX6012%20Ears%20and%20Back%20Support-1308405), and the Ruckus ICX7150-c12p (Ruckus ICX7150-c12p Rack Ears – 3D model by danberk on Thangs). With a little iteration and buying all the sizes of screws the internet has to offer, I got them nicely mounted.

I used metal 2U shelves for the systems I currently have running ESXi. That may be going away soon with all the changes to VMUG licenses. Ill post later more about the state of the racks and network as it progresses.

SX6012
SX6012 Rear

Solidworks Connected 2025 Failed to Install Troubleshooting

I use Solidworks Connected Makers edition to do a lot of my 3D Modeling. I had used Fusion 360 in the past, but they kept changing the license and what file types you could export, so I moved to Solidworks. As many posts from the community say, sometimes it’s like the company is trying to make you mad. Every year or so we get the next update, that you have to do because it’s a web-connected (for no reason) platform; and somehow the install breaks and won’t work. I spent a sometime trying to find all the different bits to delete to get it to install properly and wanted to document it. Once you get Solidworks in working order, it works well. It’s getting it there that is difficult.

I had a failed install, the Solidworks site thought the application was installed, but when I clicked run, I got “failed to launch application, not found”. I uninstalled anything related to Solidworks or Dassault Systemes. Then I found and deleted the following.

Files:

  • C:\Program Files\Dassault Systemes\SOLIDWORKS 3DEXPERIENCE
  • %appdata%\SOLIDWORKS
  • %appdata%\DassaultSystemes
  • C:\ProgramData\DassaultSystemes
  • C:\ProgramData\SOLIDWORKS

Registry:

  • Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData
    • Search for “Solidworks”, I found items like \S-1-5-18\Products\0911033B9E8C8E647ABE3D57D2083CB1\InstallProperties, where DisplayName was “Solidworks 2020”, delete anything related to Solidworks at the Products level.
  • Delete “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Dassault Systemes”
  • Delete “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SolidWorks”
  • Delete “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Dassault Systemes”
  • Delete “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\SolidWorks”

Even in the best conditions, on a fast machine it will take a LONG time to install, 3+ hours, looking like nothing is happening, I left it overnight. The x MB/y MB installed will not always progress for a while.

Logs in: C:\Program Files\Dassault Systemes\SOLIDWORKS 3DEXPERIENCE\InstallData\log

The install seems to install 4.5 billion MSI files, and then after each runs “.NET Optimization Service”; if your install is progressing, that service should periodically jump in CPU usage. My install halted at 76% 6122MB/14942MB installed for a long time; again, I left it overnight and it managed to finish.

I hope this helps someone. If others have issues or fixes, please leave a comment; maybe together we can get this program to work. In the end, mine worked after being left overnight, and now everything is functioning well with the 2025 release.

Update:

I went to reinstall and got the following errors:

Failed to get msi version for UpgradeCode [{B54313C8-7B46-297F-3AC1-85D9EFD5ECB7}].

Technical details:
The property is unrecognized
Error code: 1608
Invalid data in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\BE85C2B02A76B522062B1D99E055DD33
Action CheckInstalledMsiVersionAction from feature CODE\win_b64\SWXDesktopInsPreqWPT failed.
Action ID: SWXDesktopInsWPTInstalledAction

Failed to get msi version for UpgradeCode [{00F50064-7000-11D3-8CFE-1050048383C9}].

Technical details:
The property is unrecognized
Error code: 1608
Invalid data in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\E5A00A437891E38418011307471668D7
Action CheckInstalledMsiVersionAction from feature CODE\win_b64\SWXDesktopInsPreqVBA71 failed.
Action ID: SWXDesktopInsVBA71InstalledAction

I ended up searching for those hashes in the registry, “BE85C2B02A76B522062B1D99E055DD33“, and “E5A00A437891E38418011307471668D7“. Then deleting registry keys where a sub part mentioned Dassault Systems. After that I could progress with the install. Again, this seems to happen if you had Solidworks 2020 installed at any point.

Shadow Box

I enjoy working on projects that can mix a bit of art with tech/electronics. I was playing around with the idea of doing something with a shadow box which could go up on the wall. Something to do with lighting and an ESP32 came to mind. The eventual goal was to get the ESP32 onto the Wi-Fi, allowing you to control the lights and mode of a device from your phone and perhaps HomeKit. I got part of the way there, adding a button to change modes; but then I got off on another project as I am to do. I wanted to document my progress, and state for later; as well as put the code and designs up online before I go off and work on a more ambitious project. 

General Design

I started playing around with 3D designs, so that a light could shine through; the designs were really 2D, but I used SolidWorks to do all the modeling, then adjusted the heights until the light came through well. I glanced around online at artwork people had, as well as periodically looking at Dribbble.com. I came around to the idea of a skyline; a city at night where the different buildings could light up, and blink. Then the idea added on; the buildings could blink to music, adding a microphone onto the controller would allow the lights to reflect the volume of audio. 

I at first tried to print out individual, large, buildings and this proved to be too much and take a very long time. If you look at some of the below early renders, you can see how complex those buildings are.

I decided on the New York city skyline and started modeling the buildings. I needed a mix of decent sized windows, so the 3D print did not take forever; and small enough that the light effect came across well. I modeled several buildings, a few different ways, and did test prints. A few times I printed them taller than the printer could go, and that made me split the buildings in half. I did not like how putting them back together looked and decided to shrink the buildings a bit. I currently have a Creality Ender 3 Pro, making my bed size roughly 200mmx200mm.

Electronics

The plan was always to use an ESP32; I had not used them before and for a few dollars getting the capability to use the Arduino IDE along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth made me interested. I also had not done much with LED strips before either. I dabbled with both on my workbench, and decided for this purpose an LED grid would be easier than working with strips. Those can be had for a few dollars online. I also got a diffusion sheet, a thick sheet of plastic that softens the light from the LED. 

I worked on the Arduino code for a little while. I ended up writing a bit of code that averages the volume over time from the tiny microphone I hooked up to the ESP32, and then uses that to equate to a light level on the LED grid. The different columns in the grid matched different frequency ranges; this ended up giving a neat lighting effect with distinct types of music triggering different buildings. I need to calm it down a bit, but I didn’t put enough time into the code to get it exactly where I want it. Another code the box offers currently does a much much slower fade across the LED grid, but its sensitivity is too low, and the only way I got it to react was tapping the box; this can be seen in the video below.

I also used this as an opportunity to use KiCad for my wiring diagrams. The diagrams for this are not that complex, but I wanted to be able to quickly reference what went where. All these files are in the Github for the project. There is a button on the side of the box which cycles modes the system is in. There is an always on light, a mode to go to the music/audio in the room, slow light effects from audio (but not sensitive to the mic enough), and last was going to be a Wi-Fi mode (but I never got that working). I was going to mount an SD card for longer storage of assets for the Wi-Fi network; with the Wi-Fi not being implemented, this needed up not being needed, but a good learning experience.

Wiring diagram

There were small issues along the way, like how I wanted to make a power bus come in, and 3D printing little risers to hold everything off the back of the shadow box enough to get a good effect through the front window. Those were slowly overcome, mostly by trial and error, and I worked through the project. I fed the whole thing from a 5V wall plug. This would give power to the LED grid, and the ESP32. 

I ended up simplifying the building models to speed up prints, and it generally looked nicer. The bigger windows were easier to print, and the effect functioned better. I attempted to make a mount for the LED light grid, that would have a front snap onto it to lock in the grid. I at first made the mounts too small for this, then got lazy and used hot glue over pushing forward small snapping plastic pieces.

In the end, I think the project came out well. I thought I may make more of them, for different cities, and then have a wall of them; and get the controller to the point where you could Wi-Fi control it. Except I have another project idea that has taken me away. Perhaps I will one day return to this, until then here is a video of it running (actually 3 videos spliced together), and the files will be on Github. I don’t have a ton of photos from putting it together, but here are a few.

Github: https://github.com/daberkow/shadow-box

Parts Used (I am not including things like wire, or little common parts):

Button – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KX24WWS

Microphone – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092HWW4RS

Mat – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BN1XIR2

Diffusion film – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XGZP71S

Shadow Box (8×10) – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08V5RR6D5

LED Grid – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KB7WC75

ESP32 – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3JD1K1T

Homelab HCI Storage Adventures

I have written before about storage for my homelab. I have a NAS; and then for the VMware cluster, I had USB 3.0 attached 3.5″ hard drive bays. The hard drive bays shared a single USB 3.0 5 gbps connection. And being that storage has come down in price, these were SATA SSDs. Having (at the time) 4 SATA SSDs sharing a single USB 3.0 connection was not ideal; not only because of the single pipe, but because of the overhead of USB. When the vSAN these disks hit any more than idling IOPS number, latency would go through the roof. That was the main item I was attempting to correct.

Having used “disk shelves” before at work, I thought I would try to make a compact version for my homelab. I figured, all I need is an away to connect the SSDs over external SAS, an eSAS HBA, and some power. This project ended up going on for far too long and ending with a much simpler solution.

I started where any good project does, finding the general parts I will use for the project. I came across this adapter. It allows you to put 6, 2.5″ drives into a single 5.25″ DVD bay. Each drive gets its own SATA connection, and it even has fans on the back to cool them. I started designing the case around that. Then I found this little adapter to go from 2 internal SAS cables to external SAS. My thought was externally I would have eSAS into my “server”, and then convert that SAS to 4 SATA connections each.

Now I needed to start creating a case to 3D print. Every other eSAS enclosure I found online was HUGE, I wanted something small that could fit the power supply, and the connections I needed. This went through many… many… iterations.

Early revision
Mounted drive holder and SAS card on caddy
Backplane
Bad 3D printer stringing
Fit testing an early revision
This is close to the final case

Some of the prints didn’t come out great; I spent some time getting the printer dialed in.

This was a bad path I went down; I was hoping to cut down the plastic and thought I could have levels and it stand on columns, this turned into much more of a mess (and hard to get to stay in the right position) than waiting for the bit prints to just finish.

Next I had to figure out power. Each drive I had can pull up to 1.5 amps at 5 volts. This means I need 9 amps on 5 volts. That is a good amount of power on one rail. I thought I could use a standard PC power supply, with a cable to turn it on with a switch. These PSUs were big and made the design a bit bulkier. The next idea was to just use a wall power supply, a 5 volt one with enough amps. Also, I planned to only use the 4 drives per unit I had, so at least at first, I could cut the amp requirement down.

Now I ran into a new problem. The fans for the drive holder ran on the 12 volt line of the SATA cable. The SATA cable only needed 5 volts for the drives but needed 12 volts for the fans. I got a voltage converted and wired it in. I added a switch so the whole unit could be turned off and on.

Finally, it is time to add the HBA (not raid controller) to the Dell Optiplex and bring the drives up. This is where everything fell apart. The Optiplexs REALLY didn’t want to start with the HBA controllers. I ordered MANY off ebay to try. Older gen, newer gen, different chipsets… Sometimes they would see SOME of the drives on start-up, sometimes if I bounced the container, then it would see the drives, but there was no consistency. One of the HBAs wouldn’t allow the desktop to boot at all when the card was in. Someone online mentioned, if you put tape over one of the pins on the front of the PCI express connector, the PC won’t be able to read the bus ID it doesn’t understand, and this will allow it to boot. I couldn’t believe when that worked! It still had issues seeing the drives, but interesting none the less.

After all of this, I decided it was too much hassle and I wanted something more reliable for the system. I did what I should have done from the start… Used the ports the system already had in the systems… I went from 4 SATA SSDs to 3 SATA SSDS, and 2 NVMe drives. One in the onboard NVMe slot, and another in the PCIe x4 slot that I had. I tried a PCIe card that allows 4 NVMe drives by PCI bifurcation. This is a newer feature which only a few systems support, and these Optiplexs don’t. In either PCIe port. I also want to flag, even though the chipset in these says it supports 128GB of ram, and I can put in 32GB DIMMs and they work fine. The max on the Optiplex 5050 and 5060 is 64GB. I also added a small Noctua fan to the front of the case for additional airflow.

In the end, each of the VMWare nodes has 3 roughly 1TB SSDs, then 2 NVMe drives, one for vSAN cache, one for normal storage. I am booting the nodes off a USB drive in the back, not the most supported config, but has been working well for me. The machines have a dual 10gb nic in the x16 slot, then the secondary NVMe in the x4 slot.

Ender 3 Pro Safety PSA

I have had an Ender 3 Pro for over 3 years. A year and a half ago I replaced the main controller board with the v4.2.7 silent board. I was surprised how much that lowered the noise from the 3D printer. I have also added more parts like the auto leveling bed probe; doing this had me compiling my own firmware to make sure all the add-ons worked.

Everything was great until recently I smelled a bad smell from the printer. I have gotten an enclosure over the holidays and thought it may just be I wasn’t used to the smell so concentrated. After it went on a few more prints I started searching to see if anyone else had this happen. It was a much worse smell than the normal PLA smell. After searching the Ender 3 subreddits, I found posts talking about how the terminals can melt.

I opened up the controller compartment and was shocked to see how badly the terminals had been melting! Apparently, the wires are tinned and overtime with the movement of the printer and work their way out of the terminal. This leads to the power arcing and melting the plastic. The suggested fix is to replace the terminals (or the board), and then install “ferrules” on the ends of the cleaned cables.

I contacted Creality for support, which they redirected me to Amazon, and opened an email chain, which Amazon never responded to. The v4.2.7 board was $30, I bought a new one to not deal with all of that. When I installed the ferrules and the new board it came right back up. Then inserting my SD card, which still had the last firmware I made on it, brought the printer 100% back.

Briel Computers Replica 1 Plus

Kit

I recently ordered the Briel Computers Replica I Plus, a Apple I clone. Instead of the originals big board to do a lot of NTSC generation, it uses a more modern single chip. The shipment came in a small box, and with everything I needed. The creator of the kit did a great job including everything you need, down to including an anti-static strap! The project came with some solder, but not nearly enough for everything, I think it was thicker to go with the structural points. Briel Computers sells the kit through ReActiveMicro.com. At $135 it is one of the less expensive kits I have had, but also comes with just the board. If you want a case that needs to be 3D Printed (more on that later).

ReActiveMicro points you over to the Project Wiki for more information, there is a ton there and a link to someone putting the project together. I found this easier to follow along and do than reading the instructions.

The kit was fairly easy and straight forward; I ran into a few small issues around the PS/2 port since the solder points are close together. Getting the few connector ports in can be a bit difficult with a few tiny pins and getting them in the board. As long as you have patience, then you can get through it.

Some bad solder up top, but those are structural to hold plugs so…

I got it all together, and the board started the first try. I did have the same issue the person who made the video had; I was getting a lot of noise and characters added to the screen. I reflowed a lot of the sockets, and made sure all the socketed chips were fully seated. That cleared up the garbage at startup. The wiki also has some other notes on noise issues the board can show.

I also could not find a PS/2 keyboard in the house, and all the USB keyboards I had didn’t seem to like the USB->PS/2 Adapter. I am not very surprised by this because I didn’t have any very simple, older keyboards.

The USB port that is used for power is also a serial device for a PC/Mac. I plugged into that and got the serial driver working from SparkFun website, they produce the module. Then the output worked well, and I could enter BASIC on the board!

Case

I wanted to put the board in some sort of case, and after searching online I couldn’t find any. I thought I would throw something together quickly that I could put the board in. I took some measurements and threw together a V0 of the case. One small issue was I didn’t account for the RCA jack the video comes out of little let that sticks out. Instead of spending another 7 hours printing a new one, I used a little saw I have to cut a hole out.

Part of my thought of creating a case was to have something I could put the board in, then store it in a cabinet or shelf and not be worried that the board would get damaged. I also made a case that can go over the entire unit to protect it in storage.

Again, looking back small design things could have been changed, like flip the name of the project in the case, so looking at it in the protective cover, the text would be right right way. Getting the scaffolding out of the protective case was not the easiest of things. I designed the protective case with a rail that brings the edge of the mounting board into a locking position when you slide it in. I have to say, that was a nice aspect to the design. It took over 6 hours to print though.

Link to case: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4819716

The text looks good this way
Woops maybe I should of flipped the text

MisteRdeck MIDI Control Desk

I have been enjoying 3D printing projects recently. I saw a little control board for changing audio levels, and having hotkeys while playing games. The printing took a good long while, and I had to edit some of the parts to work with the parts I found currently on Amazon. I will post the parts list below. The soldering was straight forward, and the project came with a PDF that had good instructions. This also turned into a good opportunity for me to use the new Wiring Pencil, which worked surprisingly well.

  • Diode soldering jig
  • Diodes In!
  • Diodes Soldered!
  • Sliders In!
  • Messy Wires
  • All Over Wires!
  • Tie Wires Together!
  • Cleaner
  • Coming Together Clean
  • Together Without Knobs and Buttons
  • Toda!

For hardware, I am using a Teensy; the Teensy can be a USB keyboard or MIDI device or joystick or serial over the USB connection. The project comes with a premade Arduino file to run it as a MIDI controller. I had not worked before with MIDI input like this, but it seemed the best path forward compared to trying to emulate a keyboard and hitting odd key combinations. Or the alternative of writing something that output serial data then finding, or writing, a daemon for my PC to listen to that device.

For software, I looked at several pieces of software to use the keys and sliders with. I looked at software like VoiceMeeter. While overall that worked, it was very inflexible, and had a giant interface for things I didn’t want to use. Then I found Midi-Mixer, a passion project by a single dev and it is EXACTLY what I needed. The sliders can control single app volume, which is easy to select. And the buttons can be programmed for anything! And easily with a GUI instead of conf files like some other open source projects.

Overall I am enjoying the finished project. It sits next to my keyboard, and allows easy changing of levels while playing games. I added little rubber feet I had laying around so the plastic housing doesn’t slide around on the desk.

To fit the sliders, I needed to modify the knobs, here is the modified versions that work with the sliders I ordered below: MisteRdeck Knob Remix by danberk – Thingiverse.

Make: Makes of MisteRdeck – Arduino-based MIDI Stream Deck by danberk – Thingiverse

Example courtesy of midi-mixer.com

Parts

PartURLPrice
Teensy v3.2Teensy USB Development Board (pjrc.com)$19.80
Gateron Yellow SwitchesGateron Yellow Linear Switches | Kinetic Labs$16.10
Slidershttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079ZP3LS5/$11.99 x 2
Diodeshttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XB1R2NK/~$6
Key Capshttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M023NFK/$7.50 x 2

Mister Project Keyboard Case

Over the holidays I got parts to put together a Mister FPGA system (project home, sub-reddit). This is an open source project which allows to run classic game consoles and classic computers in hardware on the FPGA. Instead of normal emulation, where in software you pretend to be the CPU/GPU/Hardware of what the original code would run on, this projects has a Field Programable Gate Array that can change itself into being that hardware. By doing this, the system can get very very close to 100% accurate running of these old systems. Each system is created into a “core” which is applied to the FPGA to run software. The community around the Mister Project is growing, there are some projects to get systems like N64, and PSX working on this platform; but the Mister Project standardized a while ago on one FPGA, which may not be up to that task once the new cores are done because of their size and complexity.

There are many nice features that have been built out for the projects over the years. Standardizing around the DE10-Nano FPGA, there are many add-on boards you can get for it. From additional RAM, to VGA outputs. The FPGA has a ARM CPU that manages the base system, that supports Wi-Fi cards, Bluetooth, and has automatic updating features. With an IO board that most people who use the project get, you can click a button to reboot the system, or another to go back to the main menu and select the core you want to run. I have a standard IO board, USB Hub, and 256MB of RAM addon. The documentation for the open source project is actually good, with it all centering around the Github Wiki. There are automatic installers for the SD card you need to do the initial ARM side setup.

I was most interested in one of the completed cores, it is a 486DX (project home) with Sound Blaster, and everything you need to run Dos/Windows 3.1/Win 95. Having played many games as a child in that environment, having a 386SX, I was excited to give it a try.

Hardware

When I was thinking of getting the parts for the project, I looked on Thingiverse to see if anyone had put a case up; there are several. The one that caught my eye had an embedded keyboard in it (link, updated case), that one had a note on it that an update to the case was coming soon, and to hold off on printing. The estimate for printing the case was around 24 hours, and I didn’t want to do it twice, so I waited. I reached out to the creator who worked away over the holiday season to get the update out. Myself and another were chatting with him in the comments about printing it, and the creator graciously put up the design, before all the instructions were done so the two of us could start printing.

USB Board, with input against the case

This is the largest thing I have printed on the printer, with my print bed holding up to 220mm, and the case coming in at ~210mm. It printed great. I used PETG instead of PLA plastic to have added resistance to heat. After that, it was screwing parts together, and making a tiny circuit board to support the normal buttons on the top of the case. I ran into a small problem with the updated USB board I have, its input was blocked by the side of the case. The creator had a different revision of the USB board, and thus hadn’t tested with my version. I ordered some cables online and ended up checking the pinouts and making my own header to USB cable, after that it was smooth sailing.

I ordered a collection of M3 screws, to have different sizes. That is the size the case was built around. I also had some screws that do not have heads on them, I was able to use these internal screws to hold some of the boards in. I will put a full list of the parts I ordered below, including the headers for the Mister IO board, which took a bit of research to find.

The USB board, and the Mister FPGA itself need 5V power, the USB board came with a Y cable to breakout a single power brick into the 2 boards, but it was not designed for them to be this far apart. Usually the USB board stacks directly under the FPGA, with this case they sit several inches apart. I ended up getting a 1ft extension cable to be able to make up the difference. While that worked I then got a 2.1×5.5mm barrel connector and socket to put on the back of the case, now it has a nice flush place on the back of the case to plugin the power for the USB board. I am using a SD card right now for all my storage. The 128gb it gives me is fine to get started. I have seen people with setups that have a SATA SSD in the case with a USB adapter. This case supports in in the spot under the FPGA. If you load the system up with a ton of classic games and systems, that may be needed.

  • Circuit board
  • Internal, no head, screws
Mid construction photos

Setup and Software

Setup I used the Mister “Mr Fusion” Windows installer. Popped in a 128gb micro SD card, and a few minutes later it was ready to go. It takes about 10 minutes the first time it is setup and has internet access to download all the “updates” which is every core registered with the project. The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth dongles were automatically detected, I just had to enter Wi-Fi credentials.

I think the case came out nicely, and have been having fun installing things on it and playing with it. While the 2GB virtual hard drive I gave Windows 95 is on a SD card and gives decent read/write speeds there, the FGPA 486 at 90mhz still struggles a bit with Windows 95. People are working on getting the perf better. Improvements like recently added L2 caching can help. With the click of a button I can swap it over to Windows 3.1 on a different virtual drive and load up my DOS collection. One of the benefits of the Mister project as mentioned is the ARM management layer, I can add files to a ISO, then SCP it to the system. You can also use any size SD card for all your images, and when you want a new virtual hard drive, its a few clicks away. Then mounting those images is straight forward. Windows 3.1 and 95 are supposed to be able to open a null modem connection to the host and transfer files/browse the internet that way, I have yet to get this working.

Completed project photos

After all the posts I have done on here recently I couldn’t just play around with the 486. I also got the Mac Plus side of the house running. You can run with 512kb, 1mb, or 4mb of RAM. It has a 20MB HDD, and 2 floppy drives. There is also a Turbo mode, which we obviously need because turbo! And because classic Macs can be slow…

  • An example of one of the Core’s menus
Mac OS 6 running

All together it is a fun project I continue to play with. I like being able to play with classic systems like a Commodore 64 without it using up space in my small apartment. The ease of loading software also makes for a very enjoyable experience. If anyone has experience with this, or has questions feel free to comment below!

Parts List

I tend to get packs of things when working on a project like this. I can use them later and it gives be options with several sizes. I did not include the Mister Board and IO board since there are many sellers of those standard parts, I did include the USB and Bluetooth because they have been proven to work.

Wireless 802.11AC USBhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MY7PL10/
Bluetooth Adapterhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J5WFPXX/
Keyboardhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XGHP35N/
LEDs for breakouthttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G49PJLG/
Buttons for breakout boardhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071KX71SV/
Board for breakouthttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078W1F3PC/
USB 3.0 extensionhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B087BK3WRB/
USB 3.0 90 degree connectorhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0793NQRYZ/
Ethernet 90 degree connectorhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MSIE5HO/
USB Board Cable Headerhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DP13EDA/
USB Cable header to micro usbhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WLM7Q6Z/
1×5 pin IO board cablehttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072VM9HVC/
1×7 pin IO board cablehttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IZDBXF4/
Power port and cableshttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NBOP46E/
Power Extension Cablehttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M6C24XG/
Internal Screwshttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QFVRS77/

ESXi Migration & Lenovo ThinkCentre M710s

I have started a transition from Hyper-V and Storage Spaces Direct to VMWare vSphere and vSAN. I apologize that these blog posts order is all over the place. Part of the transition is upgrading the hardware on some of the hosts I have, including getting 250GB NVME drives for vSAN cache. I started the migration with one of the desktops that run in the cluster, a Lenovo ThinkCentre M710s. After finding the small slot the NVME drive goes in, I realized there is a manufacture piece of plastic you are supposed to get to install a NVME drive. Since I do not have that, and do not want to pay for it, I spent a good bit more than a hour the first day of the migration creating this bracket and 3D printing it. Then while that was printing, I realized one of the feet on the system had gone missing, so I made a small one of those.

This post is just a quick update and a preview of more to come.

NVME Drive Holder: Lenovo ThinkCentre M710s NVME Bracket by danberk – Thingiverse

Foot: Lenovo ThinkCentre M710s Foot by danberk – Thingiverse