Category Archives: Blog

My Streaming Setup and Electronics Tools Collection

Hello everyone!

As many of you ask about the tools I am using for twitch streams as well as what electronics related tools I am using. I decided it was time to put together a blog post for that. I will likely keep updating this specific post when my streaming setup evolves or I need to add more content. This blog post is derived and updated version of the Gist that I posted a while ago.

This post is currently reflecting the gear I am using in May 2020. If you think anything is missing from this list or it is not up to date any more. Feel free to ping me and I will do my best to update the list! 🙂

Computer

Currently I use a scratch built PC for streaming, here is the list of the major components:

  • AMD RYZEN 7 3700X 8-Core
  • Gigabyte X570 Motherboard
  • 64GB of RAM
  • Gigabyte Radeon RX 5600 XT GPU
  • EVGA SuperNova 650 G3 modular power supply
  • Noctua NH-U14S 140mm SSO2-Bearing CPU cooler
  • Fractal Design Meshify C Black Compact Mid Tower case
  • Two 1080p Dell monitors I had since years

For the complete build and the exact parts used you can find the NewEgg build here: https://newegg.io/a1664311

Cameras

Lighting

Capture Devices

Audio

Software

  • Main Streaming software: OBS
  • Linux Browser view used for overlays and plugins
  • Free Plugins/overlays from Streamlabs
  • AlertBox: Displays alerts of new followers, subscribers, bit donations and more
  • ChatBox: Displays the twitch chat messages as video overlay
  • Cloudbot: Provides commands like `!uptime` and automatically sends out an invite to the Discord server.
  • Key and Mouse visualizer: TrayKeys
  • Text Editor: Sublime Text
  • ToDo List Sublime Text Plugin: PlainTasks
  • PCB Design Software: KiCad
  • FPGA Tools:
  • Logic Analyzer framework/software: Sigrok/Pulseview

Other Gear

1BitSquared and other stuff

If you like what you see and would like to support the streams and development of new open source devices, but you already have all the 1BitSquared hardware you need, you can support me through Patreon and/or Twitch subscriptions.

You can reach me through twitter and on our 1BitSquared Discord server. I hope this list is useful.

Cheers,
Piotr

Ok … back again

It is really time that I write something here. It is nearly one year since I last posted something here. But I was doing some things in the mean time. ^^

First of all I finished my Diploma at the University of applied sciences in Rosenheim. Now I am working at the computer science chair of Prof. Radig. The name of the chair is “Image Understanding and Knowledge-Based Systems” it somehow sounds cool. ^^

But basicly I get payed for programming Common Lisp. My work now involves getting the high level systems running on the real Robot. Till now all the high level planning stuff was only running in simulation.

In my short free time I started the ELCO Project which should become a framework for developing Lisp based software for Embedded systems. But I have to write a more elaborate article on that topic.

And the last thing for today. I just released my first shot on the schematics of a really Open source Brushless Drive Controller. You can find the eagle schematic (yes I know eagle is not open but the open source alternatives just suck!) in a git repository on GitHub.

I also can only encourage you to subscribe me on identi.ca. I am posting bit more frequently there. ^^

Cheers everyone!

Bloggies awards

Web log awards candidates have been announced. Many very interesting blogs have been nominated. It is very interesting to browse through the categories. Perhaps you find something interesting?

No I have not been nominated. I would probably die of the shock if my blog or photoblog would be nominated for that prestigious award.

Perhaps you also want to vote for some of the blogs listed there. But the most interesting thing is probably to have a list of very good blogs in different categories on one sight. I found some interesting ones for sure. 😉

photoblogs.org

After another session tweaking around my site I finally added Creative Commons licensing notes to all pages (hopefully). The photoblog site is also pretty finished contentwise. The thing that still remains is matching the themes of the blog, gallery and the photoblog. That means a lot of work.

I also added Twisted view of Esden photoblog to photoblogs.org. If you like photoblogs go there and you will surely find tons of very nice blogs. I also would be very happy when you add me to your favorites there. 😉 You can see my list of favorites here.

Pixelpost

As you already know I have installed a photoblog on my site. I use Pixelpost for that. It is a pretty nice and simple system having nearly everything you need.

The problem is that this software is very crappy written. I installed it and tried to upload an image. Everything went ok only that the thumbnail has not been created for the image. I spent one hour debugging only to find out that it is failing because I have no jpeg support in gd2 php plugin. I do really not understand why people are not doing right error handling. At least the install script could have checked that! The calls to these functions are muted (not yelding anything on an error). I really could kill someone for that.

Spending another two hours on bugfixing the code I finally acheved that I do not get 20 error entries in my apache logs on a link click. I will try to collect all my fixes and post them to the pixelpost developers in the next days. But for that I have to spend another evening getting the code really clean because my fixes are pretty hacky for now. I really wanted that thing running.

I also added another WordPress plugin to integrate the latest and one random thumbnail image on my blog site. You find the plugin here. It worked without any hacks or tweaks. That is how I like a software to be. 😉

Photoblog

I added a Photoblog to my site. You can find it here. I hope you will like the images I will post there. Currently there is only one image that I already posted here in the blog. Tomorrow when I got some sleep I will add first really fresh image. Uwe outrun me with adding a photoblog just by a day. I started setting it up on friday but had some technical problems. More about them tomorrow.

Glowing Sparcle

I installed the wp gallery plugin, to integrate my gallery with the blog, today. I want to post some images I like in my blog entries little bit in the style of photoblogs.

Today and here is the first image I would like to share with you. I hope that it in some way proofs that also with a very cheep digicam one can make pretty nice shots that on one hand could be better but on other hand look very nice the way they are. Bit fuzzy and cloudy 😉

Vacation but no time

As you can see I do not write very often at the moment. Imagine why, yes, vacation.

As you know I am in Warsaw currently and because all my family lives here and I have friends here too I do not have much time.

Sure my granny or my parents would say directly the contrary, they would say that I spend all my time at my laptop doing “something”. Sure I spend some time at my machine but that is only because I am taking a lot of images and have to postedit and select them. Trying to stay up to date with e-mail and news too becomes very difficult then, as writing blog entries does.

But finally after getting many times on my father nerves we finally finished selecting and postediting the photos I made in the Gdynia week. The gallery is finally online here. I hope you enjoy the images.

I do also hope that I will get some Warsaw images online in the coming days. It still stays a challenge looking through imaginary, removing bad and crappy shots, cleaning some of them up, converting to the right format, uploading to my sever and adding to the gallery. It is a pretty long process and also time consuming so that the gallery does not get cluttered and looks like a dumpster. I will do my best. I hope that at least my family will like the imaginary. (if so please write me a comment 😉 I will really appreciate it as always)

Catching up

Since the morning today I am working on getting all the images I have online. I want to do it before I start reposting my blog entries that are on my laptop. It is really not so easy as it seems. The images I get from my camera are all way too big for web so I have to downsize them. Sadly iPhoto does not have (or I am blind) an easy batch option for resizing images. I got a program called Downsize for that. I really ask myself why all that useful little stuff has to cost money. 20$ here 20$ there … every little tool costs money. I am a poor student I do not have the money to pay every little tool I get and that nags suck badly and test time outs even more. I would prefer if the programs were free and there were donation buttons on their pages. I am really sure that the time I start working and have some pennies left I will donate money to every vendor of a useful program I use that is free and has a donation button. You may hit me on that later 😉

Ok I finish uploading the images and then I start to add all the blog posts that accumulated here on my disk 😉

Gallery and language change.

I have decided, that because there are some people, that expressed the wish to read my blog and do not understand German or at least it is a problem for them, to change the language of this blog to English. (That is a long sentence.)

I also added some Pictures to the gallery. I took this Pictures some time ago at Sinnlos. Sinnlos is a pub really near to here where we use to go in the evening after a busy day learning stuff. 😉

Have fun reading my crappy English. I know my German is not really better. 😉