Lots of tinkering this week. I fixed the 3D printer (again), flashed new firmware on a pixel clock, printed a bunch of stuff, and squeezed in a trip to Monaco for some tennis. Most evenings ended with “just one more thing” and me going to bed way too late.
- 🎾 Went to Monaco for the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters, as I do every year. Saw Berrettini, Sinner, Alcaraz, Zverev and others. Great tennis all around. This time, instead of the usual day trip, I stayed overnight at the Hotel Olympia in Beausoleil. Nice place, one tip though: look up the public elevators and escalators to get there. I didn’t, and ended up climbing over 200 stairs. Here some picture:
- 🧑💻 Fixed my Bambulab A1, again. Turns out a couple of old filament spools kept snapping inside the PTFE tubes, so I threw them away and took apart the extruder to clean the whole thing. This video saved me a lot of guessing on how to disassemble it without breaking clips.
- 🧑💻 My new nozzles arrived (0.2, 0.4, 0.6, and 0.8mm) so of course the first thing I printed was Gridfinity storage boxes to organize them. Using a 3D printer to print its own accessories never gets old.
- 🧑💻 Also printed some shopping cart tokens, because I never have the right coin when I need a cart, and a mini funnel for refilling small bottles. Small useful things, my favorite kind of prints.
- 🧑💻 Flashed AWTRIX3 on my Ulanzi TC001 pixel clock. The installation was painful, I went through five USB cables before one actually worked (a Lightning 4 compatible cable, go figure). Worth the effort though, AWTRIX3 lets you run custom apps and push notifications to that tiny display, way more flexible than the stock firmware.
- 🧑💻 One thing AWTRIX3 doesn’t have: a way to schedule the display on/off at set times. The stock firmware did this natively, but with AWTRIX3 you have to hit the API. I set up Cronicle on my Qnap to run cron jobs that call the Ulanzi API on schedule. Classic homelab fix: solve a missing feature with another piece of software.
- 🧑💻 Now I’m thinking about connecting the Ulanzi to the app I’m writing for Claude Code usage metrics. A little pixel display on the desk showing token consumption in near-real time? That would be fun. Haven’t started yet, still just an idea bouncing around.
That’s the week. Mostly making and fixing things, with a tennis intermission. Until next time.