I am trying to declutter and I've had a bunch of these ICs laying around for the past 15 years, are they worth keeping?

It wouldn't be the first time i got counterfeit components from ali (that's what ya get for buying cheap electronics stuff)

I'm almost certain the one on the right, wich came in a sealed reel, got sanded and lasered, but what is your opinion. And if they're fake is there a way to estimate the current capability.

I intended to use 5 of them in parallel to switch the output of a big liion bank i built, since the irfz44n I've used before became lightening very quickly.

I have absolutely no expertise in electronics, so this might be a dumb question. I bought a small USB rechargeable handheld fan recently, but the battery only lasts around 20-22 minutes on a full charge. I opened it up and found it uses a single 14500 3.7V rechargeable battery.

I tried replacing it with a regular AA battery just to test it, but the fan didn’t work at all. I wanted to know if there’s a safe way to modify this so:

* it can run using AA batteries instead (would that even be a better option?), *or*

* it can work directly from a DC/wall power source without depending on the internal battery.

Hey, 12 days ago I posted my 4-knob LED pattern controller here and the response was way bigger than I expected.

What changed since then:

- Designed my first PCB in KiCad (PCBway sponsored the manufacturing after seeing the original post — huge thanks)

- Swapped all 4 potentiometers for rotary encoders with push switches

- Cleaner case design to fit the new PCB and encoders

- All files on GitHub: schematics, PCB artwork (Gerber), 3D models for the case, firmware

I also built a website and just wrote the first post on it — a long build log looking back at the whole journey, in both English and Korean. Wrote it today while pausing to think about where this is heading.

GitHub: https://github.com/engmung/PatternFlow

Site + build log: https://patternflow.work/journal/v1-30-days

If it's useful to you, a star on the repo would mean a lot.

[removed]

My son picked this up from the street. Any ideas on how I can wire it up to make it flash. Not done much electronics since I was a kid.

Edit: possibly a BA15d socket? And 12V.

Hey!

Some of you might remember Patternflow — ESP32-S3, 128×64 LED matrix, 4 knobs, a device for generative patterns. 17 days ago I open-sourced it (the Open Source Hero badge still doesn't feel real, thank you). Here's where it's gone since then. A few things happened I didn't expect.

Someone actually made a pattern.

This is the part I keep going back to. A few days ago someone took the JS pattern template, wrote their own, and sent it to me. I helped port it to C++, and we posted it as a collab on our Instagram. Flashing someone else's code onto my hardware and watching it run was a weird feeling. Good weird. It's the whole reason I open-sourced this thing, and it happened faster than I thought it would.

The porting wasn't perfectly smooth, so I'm writing up the gotchas as a GitHub issue

The v2 build guide is real now.

The original docs were placeholder, honestly. The new one walks through four stages — parts, PCB, assembly, firmware — and there's a 3D preview on the site that updates per stage. It's here.

The cold-boot bug some of you helped debug (pull-up on GPIO0, for anyone else hitting it on AliExpress ESP32-S3) is fully fixed in v2.

Why AI is in this workflow.

The original section was unclear, so let me lay this out properly. AI shows up in two places:

1. JS for web preview. I sketch patterns in JS first so I can see them in the browser quickly. AI helps translate what I want into that JS.
2. JS → C++ port. Once a JS pattern looks good, AI helps convert it to C++ that runs on the ESP32.

The pushback focuses on #1. #2 is more accepted because it's well-defined code-to-code translation. But structurally, they're the same operation. #2 translates JS to C++. #1 translates an English description to JS. Same operation, different input format. If AI translating between two formal languages is fine, the case for AI translating from a looser source into a formal one rests on the same structure.

There are two reasons AI is here:

One: showing the device's range. The patterns I post daily on Instagram aren't curated artwork. They're mass-produced to demonstrate that this hardware can run a wide variety of generative styles, not just one aesthetic. AI lets me produce enough variations that the breadth becomes visible. Hand-writing every one would mean one pattern a month and nobody understanding what this thing can hold. (Side observation: audience reactions are wild. Ones I think are beautiful flop. Ones I'd discard go to 70k+ views. One did, this week. I clearly don't understand what people see.)

Two: keeping the door open to non-coders. My main goal with Patternflow being open source is that someone with no coding background can sit down and make their own pattern. The end artifact is still algorithmic code — noise, weighted random, modular arithmetic, reservoir sampling, exactly the techniques the top comment listed. AI is the bridge that gets a non-coder from "I want it to feel like X" to working code on the board.

There's a more general point underneath this. Most of us didn't get into coding because someone handed us a math textbook on day one. We got in because something small worked first — an LED blinked, a hello world printed, a sketch ran — and that "oh, this is mine" moment made the harder learning afterward feel worth doing. Interest came first. Discipline came after.

For someone with no coding background today, AI can be what produces that first "oh, this is mine" moment. It doesn't replace learning fundamentals — it gives them a working thing they care about, so that when they later open the code and want to know how it actually does what it does, the learning has something to anchor to. If a non-coder uses Patternflow with AI help, makes a pattern they love, and a month later starts reading the source out of curiosity — that's exactly the path I'm trying to build.

For what it's worth, I personally love the fundamentals. I plan to hand-write my own patterns eventually, and I think that's where the real art lives. The AI workflow exists so the system is open to people who don't have that background yet, not because I prefer it for myself.

The "gacha" framing in the original was about where #1 still falls short — current LLMs aren't reliable enough yet, maybe 1 in 10 outputs is interesting. So my next step is making that bridge more dependable: define the algorithmic primitives (noise type, color rule, knob mapping, motion function) as constrained options, let the LLM combine them, and always have a human tune the result. If anyone has better workflow ideas in that direction, I'd really like to hear them.

One question I want to ask you.

From the waitlist survey: about half of respondents said they want to make their own patterns rather than just run preset ones, and a handful asked about MIDI and OSC. I hadn't planned for performance use from the start, but the more I think about it, the more it fits.

If you have opinions — USB MIDI, network OSC, both, neither, something else — I'd really like to hear them. I'm at the stage where decisions stick.

More context

If you want the long, more personal version of all this, I wrote a blog post about it over the weekend — originally in Korean, translated to English. Fair warning, it's long.

https://patternflow.work/journal/me-and-patternflow

This subreddit has been a big part of why Patternflow kept going. Still is.

This is a board for a Monero-focused crypto wallet using an NXP SE050 secure element, STM32U5 MCU. Tomorrow I get the components. Hooray

Ps I am a know nothing wrench turner by trade so don’t redditor me if this is bad for whatever reason, I’m pretty stoked

Man, what an adventure! It's insane what we can do in the world today.

For the life of me I couldn't find a nice cozy evening light:

• Warm 1800K-ish light
• Full spectrum—no blue light
• No flickering
• Smart home controlled

...turns out you can just make this stuff yourself?

In the last few months, I got a 3D printer, learned PCB design, had JLCPCB assemble a custom board with an ESP32 (had an engineer there save my ass by flipping the TVS diode), flashed it with ESPHome and...boom. The thing I wanted.

My childhood's dream was to be an inventor. Looks like we're doing it.

Here's to the love for DIY electronics!

I am making a custom digital Dash for my 1992 Nissan Y60. These are the stock connectors (3 of them) which are plugged behind the stock cluster. I don't want to cut or de pin this connector and want these to be plugged on to my custom PCB.

As the stock had flex PCB and the connectors touch the PCB from the sides, what is the best way to get my PCB to receive these points ?

I have made the 3D socket design to get it printed and lock the connectors.

I have done only basic PCB designs for my Arduino and Pi projects, so I'm lacking ideas here.

The ideas I now have are to use spring loaded pogo pins, sandwich 2 PCB and then merge to one, etc but I believe there should be an better/easier way from people with experience.

Thanks a lot in advance!

I designed this protoboard so I could build circuits directly out of surface mount components, rather than needing a pile of adapters on a standard 100x100mil protoboard. This circuit has a H-bridge and oscillator to drive an LED chain where the LEDs are wired with alternate polarisation.

The idea of the board is that the circuit can be built up in separate modules vertically, then the modules connected together via the horizontal traces on the back side. The built-in horizontal traces means that we don't need to solder on jumper wires crossing left and right across the board, which makes it easier to work with.

This is a real photo. I took it on an angle then straightened it in the image editor.

Happy for feedback or any other comments on the design.