Uses
What I use.
The tools, hardware and software behind the work. For the makers who always ask.
Desk
- MacBook Pro 14, M-series. The daily driver for software and the dashboards.
- A small Linux tower for the long builds, flashing rigs and anything that should not sleep.
- Two displays. One for the code, one for the logs that are always scrolling.
- Mechanical keyboard, tactile switches. A trackball when the wrist complains.
Build
- VS Code for the product work, Neovim in the terminal for quick edits and firmware.
- A tiling terminal, tmux, and far too many panes open at once.
- Node and React on the front, PostgreSQL underneath, Docker holding it together.
- ESP-IDF and PlatformIO for the firmware, with the serial monitor never far away.
Bench
- A temperature-controlled soldering iron and a fine tip for the small SMD work.
- Multimeter, USB logic analyzer and a cheap oscilloscope that earns its keep.
- A bench power supply with current limiting, for the boards I do not trust yet.
- A drawer of ESP32 and ESP8266 boards, LoRa modules, sensors and a tangle of jumper wire.
Home
- A UGREEN NASync DXP2800 holding the data that stays in the house, snapshotted and quietly mirrored.
- Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi as the brain, Zigbee2MQTT and an MQTT broker doing the talking.
- A self-hosted stack alongside it: dashboards, backups and the automations I do not rent from the cloud.
- Ubiquiti UniFi for the network, because the install is only as good as the Wi-Fi under it.