While apparently profitable, custom keyboard controllers are more of a hobby/interest for Christoph than how he makes his living, and he generously offered to help me get started final-assembling them here in the USA. I ordered the board from China to his specs, where they attach surface-mount components on one side.2

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The other side’s thru-hole components, however, are more difficult to get China-assembled at relatively low volumes. Those bits are therefore soldered (literally) in-house, or in-garage to be specific. Assembling one or two of these devices with ad hoc holding setups (e.g. my solder squid) would be possible, but doing more requires a more efficient solution.

Besides preventing frustration, if I’m selling something, I want the assembly to be consistent. Randomly angled connectors is a literal and figurative bad look. So I did what I’ve been trained to do as a mechanical engineer and built a jig — i.e. a custom tool that helps with a specific job, or class of jobs, often holding something in place.

Notably, Christoph, the board’s originator, also made his own jig out of LEGO bricks. Apparently this worked well enough for him, though I believe he was attaching fewer components than I am.

Why 3D-printed jigs?

With all due respect to LEGO bricks, modern CAD tools + 3D-printing make building a customized assembly jig WAY easier than it was just a few years ago.

In this case, I exported the electrical board design as a STEP file (via KiCad), then imported it into Autodesk Fusion for the mechanical portion of the design.3 I then used the actual location of features on the 3D model to implement nooks and crannies on the jig where parts are held semi-securely while I solder them on.4

Less frustrating assembly, better results, what’s not to love? Well, there are a few caveats.

Tradeoffs for 3D-printed jigs

The position of jig cavities is dictated by the 3D model, and robotically produced by my 3D-printer, so placement will likely be correct (unless you make a careless error). Even so, there are some caveats to using 3D-printed jigs.

First, unless you’re using a rather exotic metal 3D printer, you’re limited to fairly soft, low-melting point materials. I’m using PETG, which withstands higher temperatures than standard PLA, but a soldering iron can still easily melt it. This was a problem with a metal blade component that sticks down and conducts a lot of heat during the soldering process. I had to leave more room here to avoid melting, and designed in surfaces that allow me to pry the board loose after processing.

Secondly, modification is more difficult. While taking off a bit of material in traditionally-machined metal jigs might mean throwing it on a milling machine or grinder, a plastic 3D-printed thing is more or less a what-you-see-is-what-you-get affair. If it’s not correct, toss it and reprint. Thus I’m on revision 55 of my jig, and each device was printed from scratch.

Finally, these jigs aren’t going to last forever. If you’re in a production environment where you’re going to make 100,000 of something, metal is probably the way to go. OTOH, with 3D-printing, a new one is just a matter of pressing a few buttons. You could rapid prototype a new jig idea via a 3D printer and then go with metal when you’re sure it’s correct, giving you the best of both worlds.

In this case, I’m not making 100,000 keyboard controllers. That’s a whole different game.

Another jig example

As originally outlined here, I made around 200 of my JC Pro Macro 2 devices to fulfill a Kickstarter campaign. I used the same sort of modeling techniques, and made several changes before settling on something that I thought was correct. I also used metal dowel pins on three corners to hold the board in place. It definitely made the assembly process much easier.

Of course, there’s some volume level where making a jig isn’t worth it. And if I just had to make one or two of either of these, manually fighting through might be the way to go. However, with the advent of 3D-printing and excellent design tools, the volume at which jigs make sense is much lower than it was just a few years ago.

A good project? A profitable project?

Considering expenses and startup costs, if I’ve make any money of this device, it hasn’t been much. However, it’s been a fun project, and as orders continue to ramp up, I hope this will become a steady, if moderate, source of income. You can buy them at ClickyKeyboards.com, which sells not just these controllers, but also the keyboards themselves and other accessories.

Besides a bit of techno-collaboration fun, it’s been a good learning experience. It’s also good material for Techadjacent.io! -JC

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2

Surface-mount components (AKA SMDs, surface-mount devices), don’t have any wires dangling off of them, and are (relatively) easy for a machine to assemble. The boards get selectively coated with solder paste, the components are placed… in place, and the whole board gets heated up for solder attachment.

Thru-hole devices (THD) have wires that have to be stuck through holes on circuit boards. THD leads shown below on the left, SMD on the right. Imagine how much harder THD would be for a robot. AFAIK, this is generally done by hand.

By the time we noticed it, another boat was already hooked up to the beached craft with a rope, ready to pull it out by a cleat attached to the bow. Our small party stayed clear, the rescue boat pulled at a slight angle, and — to our surprise — the stuck was successfully pulled out to sea.

Incidentally, the formerly-stuck boat had carelessly left itself anchored in the water offshore… Or was this careless? It may have actually been ingenious.

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I didn’t take pictures, but to put things visually, here’s the rough setup:

If the rescue boat (BoatR) was directly tied to the stuck boat (BoatS) and it pulled straight out, the total pulling force on BoatS would be equal to whatever force BoatR directly generated. However, if BoatR was instead tied to the anchor line looped through the cleat, the total force on BoatS could potentially be much greater. In fact, this pullout force could be nearly double what BoatR was outputting if the angle between the anchor and the boat line was near zero.

This is, in fact, a simple pulley system, as shown below👇

Looking a this another way, and simplified, BoatS would be represented by F2, while the anchor would be represented by the fixed F3, and BoatR by F1. F2 = F3 + F1, and since F3 = F1, F2 = 2 x F1.

Caveats

Of course, there is no free lunch. In order to increase force, the distance BoatS travels is cut ~in half as compared to BoatR when the force is doubled. Since work = force x distance, this preserves a sort of balance in nature, and no fissure in time-space is created. But distance isn’t really important here, since it should only take a few feet to get BoatS free.

More practically, there’s also the chance that the anchor would come loose, the cleat breaks, or the rope snaps. Also, the hull can certainly get scraped on the bottom, even if the boat is freed. so the real solution here is to not get your boat stuck in the first place. Also, it appeared that BoatR pulled at an angle, which may have helped torque and rotate the boat just a little bit to get it in motion.

It’s also very possible that BoatR just pulled it out, and that the anchor was not implemented as an ad hoc pulley. Either way, BoatS was freed, and everyone was presumably happy.

Don’t get stuck

What’s the lesson here? Well, first, don’t get stuck.2 Secondly, pulleys are awesome. This rabbit hole goes much deeper if you care to examine this further. Third, welcome to Florida. Perhaps this is a well-known technique among boaters, or perhaps there’s some reason its frowned upon. Either way, this is the first time I’ve seen it.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Finally, a big thanks to Techadjacent’s first sponsor, Seeed Studio. I’ve successfully used their products in the past, and have been happy with the results. If YOU would like to sponsor this publication, get in touch via one of the methods below! -JC

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Addendum/Footnotes:

2

Not that our party was entirely immune to this. As we returned to our pontoon boat under threat of an impending rain, the offshore anchor had released, and the shore anchor/current was torquing this boat in such a way that it was itself lightly beached. ~Five of us pushed the boat free. I ran and grabbed the anchor, dipped it in the water to get the bulk of the sand off, and scurried up the bow ladder as the boat was backing out. A little adventure/team building activity to finish our trip/birthday celebration.

Minutes later, we encountered another, much larger, boat in the water, but fairly near the shore. As we continued on our way, I noticed that way more of the hull was visible than it should have been, with unnatural gaps between the water and the sides. It appears they were badly beached. There was no way we were pulling them out.

Likely they were going to be stuck until the tide came in many hours later. We did observe a Sea Tow boat take off in that direction on our way in. Maybe they have some way to deal with that, but it seems unlikely.

Earlier this month, Fender sent cease-and-desist letters to other guitar builders, telling them to stop production of any Strat-shaped guitars and to recall and destroy such instruments. The targets range from a boutique builder in California to well-known brands including PRS.

First off, I don’t begrudge any person or company the right to defend its intellectual property. Whether you do so or not needs to be balanced with many factors. If you decide to go that route, you have my blessing1 to pursue your case promptly and effectively.

Fender already tried legal action on this front in the USA… and failed. Now the details are different, and I suspect they will largely fail again. Even if they were to be successful this time, I question whether it’s even worth defending from a monetary standpoint. More details to follow…

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The legal question

First off, I am not a lawyer, and I obviously don’t know everything about this case. That said, I’ll give my opinion anyway:

If you want to protect an industrial design, in the US you can do so via a Design Patent. Which lasts 15 years. The Stratocaster has been produced since 1954, so — for round numbers — let’s just say such a patent on the Stratocaster could have lasted until 1970. There was, in fact, a patent filed in 1954 on the guitar’s tremolo device (AKA whammy bar), though I was not able to find an actual patent on the functional, artistic body style. The older Telecaster was patented in 1951.

So neither patent would apply. Though, to be fair, I don’t think they’re concerned about the Telecaster. One might (somehow) argue for trademark protection, which could be in effect today, but since it’s been in use by a wide range of manufacturers with little legal pushback for decades, that would be a bit of a stretch…

However, stretch they did (already), and in 2009 Fender tried to claim trademark protection for the Stratocaster. Thankfully, and logically at that late (even then) date, this attempt was rejected. Now, 17 years later (per the same WSJ article):

earlier this year, the Regional Court of Düsseldorf in Germany ruled in favor of Fender in its copyright case against a Chinese musical instruments company, which never responded in court. The court issued a default judgment and said the Stratocaster was a copyrightable work of art.

So they’ve decided to use this as a basis to harass US-based makers of Stratocaster-clone guitars.2 Presumably, their end goal is to to sell more genuine Stratocasters and related merchandise, ultimately making more money for the company.

Knockoffs are actually GOOD for business?

When I first read the WSJ article, it saddened me a bit. Then I considered that I only play knockoff Telecasters. My purchases mean the joke is on them... Or is it? I then looked over toward my inexpensive kit Telecaster and realized that no, the joke is not on them whatsoever.

Next to my guitar is a genuine Fender Mustang LT25 amp that I purchased ~6 months ago for $168.99. Also, I replaced the cheapo pickups that came with the guitar with… Fender Tex-Mex pickups for $75.59 (nearly the price of the original kit). Fender has financially benefitted from my cheap entry into playing guitar ~2.5 years ago.

My purchases are only going to keep the lights on at Fender for a few seconds. However, multiply those by the thousands of guitar players who have spent way more money with Fender than I — and that got into the hobby via a cheap knockoff — and you have a significant amount of money. Knockoffs are big business for Fender, even if they don’t actually sell them.3

An illogical pursuit

Fender is spending money to pursue what seem to me to be rather frivolous legal avenues. AND they’re creating significant ill will among people who buy, use, and love (loved?) their products.

This means something to me because I play guitar. However, it should also mean something to anyone who designs and/or sells products. There’s nothing wrong with keeping a design proprietary and defending it when it makes sense. There’s also nothing wrong with making your designs open source.

However, at some point you can’t stuff the genie back into the bottle. If you try to do this too late or in an otherwise inappropriate manner, you get the worst of both worlds. I think it’s time for Fender to do a bit of introspection.

Whether you sell guitars, dev boards, 3D printers, or anything else, consider things from all angles before you pursue legal options. Again, I am not a lawyer… though if I was I suppose I would have a vested interest in promoting the legal route. -JC

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Addendum/Footnotes:

If you’re into electronics, you’ve probably seen some variation of the image below. And if not, you need to:

Electronics deals with the flow of electrons, and the unit of electron flow (current) is the ampere, or amp for short. Electrical potential, measured in volts, pushes electrons through a conductor (e.g. a wire), while resistance, measured in ohms, restricts this movement.

The equation regulating electron flow is V = IR, voltage = current x resistance. Rearranged: current = voltage / resistance. Increase voltage and you get more current, increase resistance and you get less current. This is arguably the most fundamental concept in electrical engineering.2

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Resistance is implemented purposely in the form of resistors (the blue-ish things shown below) placed in a circuit to increase this value. The conductive medium also has a bit of built-in resistance for each unit of length that the electrons must travel.3

Fluid flow as an analogy for electronics

And since you’re still reading, you may have heard water used as an analogy for how electronics work. Here I’m going to turn that on its head and use that EE illustration to show a bit about how pneumatics works:

Ironically enough, even though my education is in Mechanical Engineering (not Electrical) I had to look this one up. The Hagen–Poiseuille equation (below) dictates flow in a circular pipe for an incompressible fluid. It’s a bit more complicated than the EE equivalent, but the basic concepts are there.

All things being equal, as pressure p increases, volumetric flow rate Q also increases. As the R or A terms increase (reducing resistance to flow), Q increases. My drawing is directionally correct, if imprecise.

As for why this is more complicated, it would seem to me that the flow equation is tackling things on a more granular level.4 Consider that electrical resistance is just R. For the incompressible fluid, the R equivalent factors in L, µ, and R/A, taking into account the actual shape of the transmission medium.

This assumes incompressible flow, which wouldn’t always be correct, but is probably close enough in many applications. It’s been a while since I took Fluid Dynamics. And while I did take a tech elective called Compressible Flow, the title of the class is about all I remember of that course.5

What about capacitance (& other)?

Capacitance, in electronics, is the ability to store a charge, and if you need capacitance in your circuit you add… one of more capacitors. They work really well for a number of jobs, including evening out the current input to microchips and allowing them to run better. So if your power supply varies a bit, your chip isn’t affected that much if things are designed correctly.

Similarly, if you have a machine that needs air power to run, you can put a small air tank on the machine itself, evening out air flow during times of high demand. You can also just coil up extra line to allow air to be stored there, sort of like how electrical wiring has a bit of capacitance itself.

You could probably push this thinking even further with inductors or other components somehow, but I don’t have a good example off the top of my head. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any ideas.

Engineering… it’s all the same?

If you’re familiar with my work from other publications, you might think that I’m an electrical engineer, or perhaps even a computer science person. In fact, my degree is in Mechanical Engineering, and besides a “Betty Crocker” EE course6 that I took in college, I don’t have that much formal education in the field.

That said, I’ve used relatively little of the nitty gritty details of what I learned in college as a Mechanical Engineering student. However, being able to think as an engineer, and the knowledge that I’ve faced some really, really hard mental challenges, means that I’m fairly confident tackling new and unknown technical things.

That might mean taking on something that an EE might have more background in. Or it could mean working on other pursuits that I have no idea how to do… yet. I know that I can do it. It’s just a matter of study and/or practice.7 -JC

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5

There was some extra credit question in that class that asked why ships often have a bump below the waterline on the bow. The answer I gave is that it changes the mach number of the water flowing over it somehow and makes ships more efficient. IIRC I only got partial credit, so I’m not sure that was entirely true. Here’s some more info if you’d like to research yourself.

And the plants are available for free after you eat the pineapple itself. Sort of like the adult version of the toy that used to come in your sugar-based cereal. Just chop the top off, let it dry for a bit, then plug it into the ground. If it actually produces more fruit, that’s just a bonus.

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Pineapple growth problems

The problem is that local deer like to test the young pineapples by yanking them out of the ground and/or the lawn workers blow them out via leaf blowers. Or maybe they wack them as if they were weeds, I’m not certain. What I needed was some sort of structure to protect the baby pineapples until they are firmly rooted in the ground.

And, yes, you might point toward chicken wire or other more traditional fencing. But that wouldn’t be much of a Techadjacent Novel Use Case (NUC) article.

I considered modeling something myself, but in this case a quick search of Printables yielded this Anti Pest Plant Cage. As designed, it’s much too small for my purposes, but scaling it up by a factor of 363.64 yielded a structure that would just barely fit on my Prusa Core One printer and is big enough to enclose a small pineapple.

I also scaled the stakes in a similar manner, but restricted the height to 150%. This gives them sufficient width, but also allows them to stick in the ground sufficiently.2 The cages do take a while to print, but it’s not like you have to watch the process. At this point, I have several protecting my pineapples. None of which have been destroyed or ejected from the ground.

Hexagonal trellis

I also found these 3D-printable modular trellis… ises, which are meant to stick together with some little connector pieces. While they seem to do the job, and look nice, I honestly wish I’d printed them a bit thicker as I’m not sure how well they will withstand the elements.

Some stakes would also be a welcome addition. All that said, the author was nice enough to make the Fusion 360 model file available, and used a rather permissive license for it (whether it matters or not, it’s still a nice gesture).

So it would be quite easy to change things around if I was so inclined. I gave the model a 5 star rating.3

Bonus: 1.5 gallon jug

I’ve been feeding my air condenser condensate water (as explained here) into a jug as of late so I can water other plants. However, I wanted a jug larger than a gallon, but it seems you usually have to pay for such a device. So instead of paying $5 or whatever, I ordered ~$18 worth of translucent filament and spent an hour or two modeling one that would fit my purposes. What a bargain!

Here are the files if you want one yourself.

3D-printing opens up unforeseen possibilities

While a 3D printer isn’t always the appropriate tool, if you need something simple and plastic, there’s a very good chance this device can produce it for you. And at this point it doesn’t even have to be that small. My Prusa Core One — with its 250×220×270mm build area — isn’t even a huge printer by today’s standards, but it’s still able to print something that looks like a medium-sized basket.

Granted, the pineapple enclosures take around 10 hours (the jug is similar, hexagons less), but that’s better than waiting on Amazon, or — gasp! — driving to the store. Since there were appropriate models available to download (and possibly scale) for the first two items, I didn’t even have to model it. And yes, 3D printers can also make toys and such, which I do use it for occaisionally. Mostly for my kids.

3D printing for gardening & more!

Ultimately, we’ll see what kind of pineapple and/or pepper yields I get in the upcoming seasons. If nothing else, pineapples are infinitely cost-effective. The peppers weren’t exactly expensive either -JC

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Addendum/Footnotes:

At least that is the case for for me personally.

In other words, I seem to have gone from a semi-predictable business income, to what seems to be more of a monetary drought and tsunami cycle.

Or, to put it visually:

More details to follow, along with ideas about how to deal with this natural self employment/small business pattern. TL;DR: keep selling yourself!

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End of 2025 / start of 2026: A good year in store! (???)

At the end of 2025, business was looking good. I’d completed a decently profitable year,1 and had semi-regular business arrangements with three customers, plus another that I was hoping would soon commit. Together these jobs would generate roughly enough income to sustain my current frugal-ish, family-of-five lifestyle.

I was also counting on intermittent work that I would find/do throughout the year so that I could afford luxuries like a functioning air conditioner (and free water?), eating out at places that tolerate children, and minivan repairs.

I wasn’t selling my services heavily. I was busy with actual work. That turned out to be a mistake.

Early-Mid 2026: Scrambling for Business

Fast-forward to a month or two into the year. Things had been average invoicing-wise, but by this time I generally expect customers to be coming out of their Christmas/holidays slump and for my business to be in full swing. For various reasons, 3/4 of the customers I was planning to work with dropped out of the picture early on.2 Interestingly, the one I wasn’t sure about committed during this period, so I wasn’t entirely unemployed.

Oh, and to top it all off, the platform hosting my JC Devices electronics store went down for quite a while. It’s not a huge chunk of my income, and they’re back up now, but it was a bit like adding insult to income injury to put it in mostly alliterative terms.

But you’re never actually unemployed as a small business owner. I had instead swapped roles from writer/engineer to head salesman. My first instinct was to contact my normal customers and other people that sometimes exchange money for my services. This is a good first step, but it also limits you somewhat as:

1. I only know so many people, and

2. I can only really keep track of so many people in my head

So, pushed to my normal limit, my twofold expanded plan of attack was:

• As I poked around on the Internet/Twitter/LinkedIn/et al, I noted interesting contacts and businesses on a spreadsheet, and added existing contacts there as well. I added columns with notes as well as the date of my last contact, auto-highlighting it to yellow to show that I should reach out after it had been X number of days.

• I contacted not only people that I knew, but sent out emails, messages, and even cold-called people that seemed like they might have some potential business. LinkedIn, which I’ve generally eschewed in times past, seems especially good for messaging businesspeople. Cold-calling is terrifying for me, but once I’m on the line I’m not too bad.3

• If there was a potential opportunity, I tried to take the chance to video chat with people. Whether new or old contacts, it’s a good way to remind clients that you’re human — and maybe come up with some new ideas on how you can work together.

While it took some work, things seem to be turning around. I can see potentially being very busy in the near future:

Mid 2026: potential payoff - tsunami inbound?

This morning, April 24th, I sent out two quotes, fulfilled an order for a set of keyboard controllers,4 and… turned down another job that just wasn’t a good fit. Ultimately, business success comes when the money hits your bank account, but this was still represented a rather encouraging set of milestones.

Interestingly, one big (potential) success came from me contacting someone I’d met and talked about working with years ago. While working together didn’t really… work out at the time, it just so happened that reaching out more recently opened some doors. Pretty neat.

Selling yourself/your business is a numbers game in some sense, but it’s not like playing the lottery. People are in all sorts of different states business-wise at any one time and you just have to catch the right person at the right time — and, ideally have built up a relationship and/or reputation to capitalize on this. Contact 100 people and you might catch 6 people at the right time. 4 might be a good fit for your business, and 2 might actually work out.

Of course, you then have to be able to do the work, in addition to the selling work that you just did. “What you do,” one might say.

Mitigating drought/tsunami cycle

While I can always do “what I do” (experiment, build, and create content around technology), if no one is paying me for it,5 am I actually doing any work? It’s a bit like asking if a tree falling in the forrest makes a sound if no one is around. I’d say the answer in both cases is yes, even if arguably matters less.

So as small business owners,6 we should always be selling. Even when it seems that we have enough business or even more business than you can handle by yourself. And if it comes to the point where you are constantly cash/work tsunami’d — first, congratulations — then perhaps it’s time to consider taking on contractors or employees to help with… whatever it is you do here.

Alternatively, you might consider paying someone to do marketing for you. At this point I have little to no experience hiring people or paying contractors. I will cross that bridge if I ever arrive at it.

Treat marketing work, reaching out, etc. not as slacking off or not working, but as legitimate part of your process. To this end, I’ve started keeping track of time I spend marketing — as I do with my paid projects — to help me justify that I have indeed done something productive if I’m reaching out (even if I’m not directly getting paid for it).

It’s an important attitude shift that I certainly need to work on. Maybe you do too.

$$$ tsunami/drought final thoughts

To finish out the article, a tsnumami of work/money is great. I think every businessperson’s goal should be to do work that is so excellent and valuable that clients are eager to throw money at you.7 Just make sure you’re charging enough —though that’s a whole different conversation.

Who knows what the future holds for Jeremy Cook Consulting LLC, but hopefully it will be closer to tsunami than drought most of the time going forward. I hope the same for you!

Now I just need to remember to keep selling even in the good times. -JC

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Addendum/Footnotes:

4

There is a bit of a story here, which I hope to post about in the future. The keyboard controllers were listed on that site here and here, and the initial batch quickly sold out. I’m making more for that customer currently.

You can also cut threads in 3D-printed parts. However, in this case there’s an even easier way to generate this feature: model it in your CAD software and let the printer make threads for you!

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Yes, you can just model and 3D print working threads on your part. I was skeptical, but for a recent project I modeled threaded holes in CAD (via Autodesk Fusion 360’s hole tool), then printed them on a Prusa Core One printer. They turned out great in my test of 1/8 and 1/4 inch pipe threads, along with M3 threads for — you guessed it — a metric 3mm diameter bolt:

This foray into printed threads was for the low (i.e. no) pressure drip irrigation setup,1 where I successfully printed 1/4 inch pipe threads for water distribution. It seemed to me that 1/8 inch pipe threads, much less the tiny threads of an M3 bolt would be too small to produce reliably. However, in this limited test — using PETG material — my printer just took care of this feature with no complaints.

Other 3DP threading options to consider

This post encourages setting aside, not throwing away, inserts, embedded nuts, and other techniques. Recognize that they aren’t the only option, but they can certainly be useful in many situations.

For example, you can use heat-set inserts with 3D-printed things for smooth, reliable threads. You can also integrate regular nuts into your print by leaving an opening in the side into which they can slide, or by pausing the print process so you can put it in place before being covered up by plastic.

And there are several other options which I could go over, and perhaps even test, but I would be far from the first to do so (and probably not the best either). My mission here is to tell YOU about 3D-printed threads, AND note that, after trying it myself, I’m ready to add it to my repertoire of techniques.

For a more thorough 3DP thread treatment, Thomas Sanladerer’s video below is a good resource, despite the rather clickbaity title/thumbnail:

To be clear, to generate 3DP threads I just generated normal tapped holes in Fusion 360 with the hole tool, then let my Core One go to work. Make sure to check Modeled,2 in Fusion, otherwise the threads won’t actually show up on your STL. Sanladerer’s self-forming lobed technique (shown in the video above) could be useful, especially if your printer is finicky, but it takes more time and/or finesse to model.

Limited data, limited applications?

I’ve only done used this technique so much, so at this point I wouldn’t trust it for anything particularly critical and/or subject to significant force. Most, if not all, available insert options would likely be smoother, stronger, and/or more reliable than printing threads in your thing.

But often printed threads are good enough. Engineering is all about tradeoffs. Consider where this would work well.3 Use as appropriate.

Thanks for reading. -JC

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Addendum/Footnotes:

3

Knowing is half the battle, as GI Joe said. Or, to put it in Mortal Kombat terms, there is no knowledge that is not power. It seems that in 80s and early 90s, such forms of entertainment had to justify their existence somehow. This apparently meant short educational blurbs interspersed among hours of violence.

Good times. FINISH HIM! 🥋👊

In this post, I’ll outline this multi-zone clock project, and how I was able to rescue it from unused purgatory (*sort of, see end). In a planned followup, I’ll outline my more general thoughts on what it’s like to work with AI for programming hardware projects. So, you know, subscribe not to miss it.

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The (Defunct) Project

Some years ago, I had the idea to make a clock with several faces on it, allowing me to keep track of what time it was for friends and business associates around the world. It’s not a new idea — you’ve probably seen some version of this on a movie or TV show, depicting a command center of some sort with clocks set to different regions — but mine would be an all-in-one temporal monitoring solution that I never had to worry about.

What I came up with used an ESP32 chip to connect to the local WiFi network and then auto-magically set the time via NTP (Network Time Protocol). It then displayed the time using a series of addressable LEDs (SK6812) on a printed circuit board (PCB), arranged to imitate four old-school 7-segment displays — like what you might remember from the Back to the Future era (maybe in that actual movie, I’m not sure).

After quite a bit of experimentation, I was able to diffuse the LEDs through the top of another PCB, along with a 3D-printed light separator grid thing to keep the photons in their respective areas.

The problem (It sort of worked)

Long story short, the hardware could nominally display three times. I took it to a Maker Faire, and people thought it was neat. At least one person said he’d buy something like it.

However, it was far from perfect, most notably, it couldn’t automatically handle time changes. And the LED matrix below the digits was largely an afterthought. It just showed random lights that looked pretty but didn’t mean anything. Perhaps I’d get back to this project eventually… but a year or two later and it was still turned off after missing its designated time change.

Just ask Claude… to program firmware?

Today (or maybe a month ago, things are changing so fast) vibe coding has/had something of a bad name. And if code it made for the pure informational space (e.g. generate a webpage, modify a database) was questionable, how could it handle/understand how my physical circuit board interacts with a multitude of LEDs arranged in a rather complicated pattern?

Add to that the more complicated challenge of interacting with a WiFi network, and one would have to assume that it couldn’t effectively code hardware in the real world without a lot of virtual handholding.

Nonetheless, in our conversation, John assured me that it could indeed do this sort of thing, and that when he asked it to help him with a robot project that he hadn’t touched in some time, it fixed a persistent motion problem for him. I was skeptical, but the clock was an excellent test case, and I went ahead and asked Claude to help me out.

It did indeed solve my time change problem, and much more (again, see my note at the end). Here’s a short clip of it in action👇

Claude fixed the critical time change issue. It also helped me add the below features and more:

• 9x3 Matrix display (lower-left) shows hours left in the day in each zone in colors corresponding to the time of day in an 8x3 (24 hour format). Includes an animation where when the hours change, the no-longer-needed pixel/hour appears to shoot to the right, then up and off the screen.

• Optional “Breathing” separators between the hours and minutes on each face. (Though this seems to induce some intermittent bugginess)

• OTA (over-the-air) update functionality: while before I had to physically connect to this device to program it, I can now update the code via WiFi.

• Update script: I had Claude make a script with various update options that I can run in my MacOS terminal. I just specify characteristics from a list of options (change brightness, separator breathing, etc).

Of course, even with THE POWER OF AI, there were a few features that I ultimately decided to leave off. Plus a few bugs:

• Fourth clock face: I had a fourth board in a not-quite-working state, but when I fixed it and added it on, things were somewhat buggy. Also, I’m not comfortable with the amount of power four faces draw together (at 85 LEDs/face).
  
  From a usability standpoint, three faces seems like a nice straightforward configuration. As of now, faces for the US West Coast on the left, US East Coast (my location) in the middle, and China (all of it) on the right seems like just the right number.

• I wanted to generate a local web page where I could modify settings via a browser window. Unfortunately, browsers tend to be quite finicky about accessing sites without https://. Through no real fault of Claude, I eventually concluded this was more trouble than it was worth.

• The LEDs flicker, and sometimes the time gets a few minutes off. Today, as I was writing this, I had to unplug it and plug it back in. Frustratingly, this is all rather intermittent, and I wonder if it’s a hardware problem.

The ultimate programming knowledge/intelligence tool?

Note that I was initially using Claude’s free Sonnet 4.6 model via the web interface. There is a better model and ways to use it, but that seemed good enough to at least try things out.

I plan to go over some additional thoughts in a followup post, but the obvious question becomes: Is AI good for everything? Is knowledge work dead? Is the era of thinking over? Are we even going to be able to think critically in the future? Should I just turn my work and this newsletter over to AI?

To answer that last question, no, I don’t plan to use AI to write this publication, for reasons elaborated upon in the footnotes2

Bottom line: it helped me here

In this case, for someone who is only OK at writing firmware, being able to just ask something (i.e. Claude) to take care of a task is an awesome capability. My clock is now showing me three time zones after a bit of (i.e. significant) back-and-forth, while it was basically a decorative doo-dad on my wall a few weeks ago.

To wrap this post up, AI allowed me to improve on something in a manner that is way beyond my current programming abilities. If you’re stuck on a project and want an easy button, Claude may just be that appliance. That said, there are some BIG caveats to this paradigm that I’ll outline in an upcoming post. Subscribe👇 to get it sent straight to your inbox!

Pre-publication update 4/28/2026

I originally wrote this post a few weeks ago and things looked good-ish (I saved it to publish later as I tend to do). Between writing and publication, it seems the clock still has some intermittent errors as noted above, most notably that I can’t be sure it’s displaying the correct time, which is obviously a big deal.

It also seems like Claude wants to let me pick its programming brain less and less for free. So, for now, it’s disconnected/off. Thought I should go ahead and put that out there, even if the the clock is much cooler in some ways.

Not a great endorsement. Anyway, stay tuned for my full followup! -JC

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Another post for your edification:

Addendum/Footnotes:

Not entirely coincidentally, I got a new air conditioner. Like the old air conditioner, it drips quite a bit of water out of a pipe on the side of our house, formed as heat and moisture is extracted from the air.1 While this water normally goes to waste, it doesn’t have to. Thirsty plants would be grateful for this house-comfort byproduct.

Thus was born my unconventional — and free — irrigation setup. Below I outline four AC-irrigation options, from extremely simple, to a bit more complicated, to… someone else’s idea that involves an electrical condensate pump.

This is PART 1 of a 2-part series about free irrigation water. Subscribe to get PART TWO/DEUX/DOS in your inbox👇

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And/or subscribe if you’re generally into offbeat engineering, real-world builds, practical tech thinking, or just want to support my work.

(0) The simple AC watering solution

Typically, condensed AC water is simply released onto the ground, creating a significant damp spot. In fact, with the cloth pots first seen here2, you could theoretically just place them in the line’s mini-drain field. Or you could position the outlet over the plants for drip irrigation as seen above.

The down sides here are that: A) You’re eventually going to swamp your plant, and B) you have to take the plants to the water, not the other way around.

(1) The (over?) engineered solution

Of course I can’t leave this sort of thing alone. I threaded a quick-disconnect fitting to a 3/4 inch PVC elbow and attached it as shown above, allowing flexible tubing to direct water to nearby plants. Specific details/parts are found here 👉3 if you want to learn more/try this yourself.

Initially, the elbow sometimes fills up and spills, rather than draining directly down the tube. I suspect this has something to do with getting air bubbles out of the tubing, but this behavior eventually seems to stop.

Note that it’s supposedly bad if you accidentally have a setup like what’s shown above, so make sure things drain properly. The extra holes in the 3D-printed fixture below are meant to alleviate such a double-air-lock situation, though it’s just about impossible to see inside.

(2) 3D-printed watering solution

As an alternative, I designed this little fixture to slide onto 3/4-inch tubing and pass water along via a 1/4 inch NPT airline adapter.

It’s designed so that water can build up more here than in an elbow, theoretically providing a bit more pressure to push water into the tubing. It includes a lip feature for water to drip off of, concealing vent holes that help mitigate any potential backup if the normal tubing path isn’t flowing well.

(3) Condensate Pump Solution [Not Mine]

As I considered publishing this, I started to wonder if this was a new concept, or if I was reinventing the proverbial wheel and did a quick search around the Internet. My 3D-printed doodad does appear to be new, but I’m not the first person to design his own AC condenser water irrigation setup.

Instructables user askjerry posted his auto-garden over 15 years ago, which uses a pump that allows condensate to build up, which is then pumped onto his plants. While this adds some complication, it gives you lots more options for water distribution versus my gravity-fed method.

He conservatively estimates that his air conditioner puts off in the ballpark of 350 gallons of water each year. That’s a lot of water, and there’s a very good chance mine — and perhaps yours — puts out even more!

Potential drawbacks and risks

First off, like ~all NUC [Novel Use Case] posts, this is a new idea that hasn’t been tested to any significant extent. There may be a reason/s why other people don’t do it this way.

One obvious problem is that AC drain lines often get clogged with biological gunk and/or filter material. You and/or an AC technician may decide to pour chemicals (e.g. vinegar) down the drain line to cleanse such elements. While I suspect biological gunk wouldn’t generally be a problem for plants, vinegar et al might be problematic after application. Also, don’t form a second water lock as illustrated earlier.

It also might be best to avoid watering edible plants. Though given askjerry’s experience, and the state of industrial farming/pesticides, I suspect it is fairly safe.

Clogging is a good argument for the elbow design, as it gives good visibility + an alternative exit path for contaminants + it’s easy to remove for cleaning, perhaps using my 3D-printable vacuum adapter).

Combat drought and dying plants with FREE WATER

Interestingly, the day that I set this up I received an EMERGENCY LEVEL 7 DROUGHT ALERT from the county water czar telling me that, among other things, you were only supposed to run your fountain for four hours a day, and that you shouldn’t wash your car unless it is your watering day. Being on top of things, I preemptively allowed my fountain to dry out months ago.4

My car does need a bath though. Maybe I’ll save up my AC condensate and argue the point to the water judge. -JC

You’ve just read part 1. In part 2 I’ll discuss:

• ANOTHER free water option

• How to water multiple areas

• My preliminary growing results.

Part 3 should get even wilder. If you can believe that.

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Addendum/Footnotes:

I also now list some of my products on Lectronz if you prefer

>UPDATES AT END OF ARTICLE — TINDIE IS BACK!<

April 15, 8:08 AM, online sales platform Tindie was down. I emailed support there to let them know that their site — where I make a small, but meaningful, portion of my income — was down. And it remains down as of this writing on April 17th, 9:32 AM.

What’s frustrating here is that I really like this platform, and have been involved in it in one way or another for around a decade. I even wrote for their blog for several years before learning PCB design and having things to sell, and have sold hundreds of items there at this point.

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Tindie outage or not, I don’t want to leave this platform, but if they are simply non-functional then I at least have to find an alternative. Website performance was a bit of an issue even before this, and the community aspect of people selling, designing, and collaborating to make cool stuff seems to have dampened in the last few years.

To their credit, Tindie paid out my balance soon before this debacle, purportedly because it had reached a certain threshold. The timing is a bit strange though, and I have to wonder if it was in anticipation of whatever is going on now. If so, the did the right thing, but adding a warning to sellers would have been even better.

I was told by support that the site would be back as they were updating things, but that was a few days ago. I sincerely hope they come back better than ever.

Acquisitions and changes

Circa 2015 Tindie was acquired by Supplyframe — which appeared to be good for the platform. Then Supplyframe was acquired by Siemens in 2021. While I can’t say for sure whether this is the inflection point which eventually led to their current problems, it seems that somewhere along the line things stagnated.

Own your platform — or at least have a backup

The general lesson here is that if there is something critical to your business or personal life, don’t wait until things shut down/break to consider alternative solutions. In this case at least, I did a few things correctly:

What I did well:

• I recently put my current best-selling product on another electronics seller site called Lectronz. They have a fairly easy export-from-Tindie setup, but I assume it doesn’t work when Tindie is non-functional.

• The address jcdevices.com was pointed to my Tindie store, which I share in various places. This was easy enough to point to my Lectronz store, so that at least takes someone to an active page.

• While in this case Tindie did it automatically, I made regular withdraws from my account there. Don’t keep too much $$$ in various accounts if you can avoid it.

What I could have improved:

• I don’t have nearly the seller reputation on Lectronz (or any reputation really) as I do/did on Tindie. I probably should have started there some time ago, but you have to start somewhere.

• Sell on my own site and avoid some fees. I.e. own the platform.

• Preemptively exported other products.

Will Tindie be back? [I hope so]

As noted earlier, I hope Tindie will be back1 from this outage and better than ever. Perhaps it will again become the electronics platform that we have came to know and love.

Whatever happens, I hope to keep selling electronics one way or another, and if that means building up my reputation on another platform, that could be beneficial in the end. If you need something from me — i.e. JC Devices — that’s not currently listed, shoot me an email: hi@jeremyscook.com - I am happy to manually take payment and fulfill orders!

Updates:

April 15, 2026 (8:08 AM ET): Tindie is down

April 17th, 2026: Just as I was about to hit publish, Tindie support sent out an update via email. I don’t think anything here is privileged, and it appears to be fairly generic, so here’s an excerpt:

We know how important Tindie is to your work and we sincerely apologize for any disruption this downtime might be causing. Please know that this is maintenance that will benefit our sellers and buyers alike, and we're working incredibly hard to get Tindie back online as quickly as possible.

Think of this as a significant "spring cleaning" and a bit of a glow-up for Tindie! We're laying the groundwork for some really exciting improvements and enhancements that we believe will make your experience even better, more efficient, and more enjoyable in the long run.

So that is encouraging, and probably needed. However, it would have been MUCH better to get such an email a few days ago before anything happened. Fingers crossed that Tindie will emerge as an awesome platform again.

April 18th, 2026 (9:10 AM ET): Still down, same message.

April 19th, 2026 (12:50 PM ET): Still down, same message.

April 20th, 2026 (12:24 PM ET): Saw this message/thread from a day or two ago:

April 20th, 2026 (12:26 PM ET): Still down, same message 5+ days now 🙁

April 20th, 2026 (2:21 PM ET): Saw below from earlier today. Apparently most of the work is complete and they’ll test it and put it live 🤞

April 21st, 2026 (8:02 AM ET): Still down, same message

April 22nd, 2026 (8:33 AM ET): Still down, same message

April 22nd, 2026 (4:21 PM ET): Received another email from Tindie support

We sincerely apologize for the ongoing downtime. Tindie is currently undergoing a more complex-than-expected technical migration. The migration is now largely complete, and the team is working through final testing to bring the site back online in a stable way as soon as possible.
Thank you for your patience and support.

April 23rd, 2026 (7:47 AM ET): Still down, same message

April 23rd, 2026 (8:21 PM ET): Still down, but a semi-official update. Tindie has been sold:

# Announcement

After much back and forth with the community and the team internally, we can reveal a bit more of what’s happening. Tindie transitioned to new ownership on April 14. Due to circumstances beyond the control of the new owners, the site was immediately put into maintenance mode.

Since then, the process of transitioning the site to new infrastructure and upgrading the aging codebase has been ongoing. The intention was, as I originally thought, to do this seamlessly with no downtime. However, once the site was put into maintenance mode and the transition happened. it was decided to take the time to work on the site and get things up to modern standards.

The new owners are genuinely excited about Tindie and what the platform can be. After a year or so on cruise control, we’re finally going to make substantial investments in the platform and community -- something which in my humble opinion is long overdue.

# Timeframe

Again, I still don’t have an exact timeframe for the completion of this work. I know that is what the community wants to know more than anything, and it’s very frustrating that I can’t satisfy your answers about that.

I know that the new tech team is working hard with the Supplyframe team to complete all the transition steps and ensure things are done properly.

# Who Am I?

I figured many of you already know me, but my name is Alexander Rowsell. I’m the editor of the Tindie Blog and the social media manager. I’ve been with Tindie for a few years, and I’ll be around for the foreseeable future. I do embedded development work, but I also really enjoy writing about what the community is up to. It’s always a blast to go through the newest listings on Tindie to see what people are creating!

I’ll be honest with you, I was worried about Tindie over the last few months. I could see that the site needed attention from a professional dev team and was worried the site would break totally before that happened. Well, there has been downtime, but the upside is that the site will be refreshed and ready for the long term. Short-term pain for long-term stability -- that’s where we’re at.

I wanted to write a longer statement, and seeing as how the Tindie Blog itself is down I figured this was the next best thing. To verify this statement is actually from me, I’ve signed it with my GPG key - B5CFBEB4EE9FE813. You can verify this signature by getting the raw text of this post, and verifying the signature using GPG.

April 24th, 2026 (8:02 AM ET): Still down, same message. A whole week 🙁

April 24th, 2026 (9:35 PM ET): Tindie is back! Yay!

April 25th, 2026 (3:11 PM ET): Tindie still up. Quite a bit of discussion on Reddit.

April 28th, 2026 (8:06 AM ET): Tindie still up, and I got an order which I fulfilled with no issue. HOWEVER, when I went to disburse funds it said that was currently unavailable. I hope they figure this out soon.

April 28th, 2026 (8:25 AM ET): Tindie put an official statement about being up on Twitter/their blog.

April 29th, 2026 (8:16 AM ET): Tindie still up. Disbursements still unavailable. Tindie sent out an email about new ownership and the transition. It says, in part:

Dear Tindie Community,

My name is Gongyu Su, and I am writing on behalf of the new Tindie ownership team.

First, we sincerely apologize for the recent downtime and the disruption it caused. We understand that many buyers and community members were left without clear information during the transition, and that this created frustration and concern.

Tindie is now owned by EETree LLC, a Washington State company. Our team took over Tindie because we believe it remains an important platform for makers, hardware creators, engineers, and independent sellers around the world.

So that’s a bit more information. Hopefully things will keep improving.

May 6th, 2026 (9:12 PM ET): Tindie put out more on the transition here. While they reportedly got things working with PayPal, it’s not letting me disburse funds as of now.

May 7th, 2026 (8:08 AM ET): Disbursement still not working.

May 8th, 2026 (8:11 AM ET): Disbursement still not working.

May 12th, 2026 (8:03 AM ET): Disbursement still not working. Shipped an order received yesterday.

May 13th, 2026 (7:54 AM ET): Disbursement still officially down. However, I emailed support yesterday, and they said they would process payments in the order they were received. 🤞

May 14th, 2026 (8:02 AM ET): Disbursement still officially down. They did pay me the money requested to PayPal (actually just a little bit more) and my Tindie account is at zero.

May 22nd, 2026 (2:27 PM ET): Disbursement still officially down.

May 26th, 2026 (10:39 AM ET): Disbursement still officially down.

Thoughts? Insight into the situation? Please let me know in the comments.

If you’re wondering what to do while Tindie is down, you could [still] always read👇

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Addendum/Footnotes:

I usually don’t cover news per se, but I’ve seen very little about this. I may update this page over time, but wanted to get it out ASAP. Please forgive any typos, or better yet, let me know via email/comments/etc.

1

So I hope:

In all of these cases, I was/am able to bring a high degree of technical competence to the table via my engineering education and experience. However, in the age of generative AI, Internet writing as a profession has changed significantly.

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As it just so happens, AI can summarize other people’s work really well. AND it can write an SEO-optimized article that is an amalgamation of primary sources much faster — and less expensively — than I can. So why use a technical expert/writer, or even a generalist writer, when AI can do the job sufficiently well?

There are still good reasons to use a real, human technical writer. But not necessarily the same reasons as five years ago.

BE the SOURCE of truth for AI

Consider a recent chat of mine with Claude, where I was trying to get information on a temperature logging sensor. The source of its information looked very familiar:

Yes, some percentage of the facts that Claude spouted back to me were actually written by ME a few years prior. And upon further inquisition of Claude, I decided that the BMP180 temperature/pressure sensors that I HAD ALREADY ordered on Amazon was inferior to an MCP9808 device that it informed me about.

I immediately got a refund on my original selection, and added the new (more expensive) device to my cart. This sort of purchasing behavior influence seems like something that could, perhaps even should, be monetized.

However, neither Claude, nor my publisher, or even myself, got credit for this sale in the traditional page view/cookie sense.2 But it DEFINITELY led to a change in my buying habits. Getting some fee and/or commission advertising and ultimately driving sales is arguably the way the idea of the Internet has been funded through the years. The question is how do you, as a writer or marketer (technical or otherwise), get paid for it?

Authority marketing & published expertise for non-humans

In a (future?) world where AI “search” dominates people’s buying decisions, the way to market your thing X is to get AI to recognize that X is indeed a good fit for use-case Y, Z, and Q.

And how do you do that? By publishing informational, authoritative articles on respected websites. Similar to what was happening with SEO before, but now the goal can’t (just) be for people to actually see your product X on various sites, but for AI to be taught that X is, again, a good fit for Y, Z, and Q via your writing.

One problem with this is that it is (seemingly) much more difficult to directly gauge what kind of effect you’re having via metrics like impressions or click-through rates. OTOH, a company, literally called Gauge, attempts to do just this. It seems there are others, though this is a bit of a new concept to me, and I haven’t looked into such services extensively.

Marketing in this new world will have to be something of a longer-term play, cementing a product’s authority in the AI zeitgeist. In my mind, this means companies with fairly deep pockets to spend on marketing, and a bit of patience. Jeremy Cook, and his Techadjacent newsletter, are excellent resources for high-value technical writing and effective AI optimization (AIO).3

Non-sequiturious plug aside, if you’re on a bit of a shoestring budget, and your product doesn’t have a lot of competition, you can always self-assert your authority and point to your own device. As seen below, Claude does know about my rather niche Arduino Opta I2C adapter, apparently based based largely on things that I’ve written.

AIO + SEO ≥ SEO

Given what I do, I’m in a bit of unique position to AIO my own wares. And in all seriousness, if you do need someone to help give your technical thing an authority boost, I am happy to talk (hi@jeremyscook.com). Whether you need my services or not, this shift is something to consider.

I say if you have unique expertise in something — technical or not — lean into that. Also lean into your personality/personal experience. At the very least, you’re an expert on your own life.

And no, I don’t consider myself to be an expert in AIO, GEO, or even SEO. This article is based on my observations, a tiny bit of research, and small snippets of conversations with two other people much more knowledgeable in the area than I.4

-JC

Techadjacent is where I share engineering ideas, builds, and practical tech analysis. Subscribe to get the next post in your inbox — published weekly👇

[I’ve got another AI post scheduled about programing an ESP32-based device with Claude, so don’t miss that]

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Addendum/Footnotes:

1

Such projects include:

• Things I sell on Tindie

• This off-grid cellular water level monitor

• This 3D-printed guitar that was a hit at the Autodesk University 2025 trade show

The short answer is likely NO if you’re not counting your time, and DEFINITELY NO if you pay yourself Florida’s $14/hr minimum wage. Per a quick search on Amazon, Ping-Pong tables are around $400, or a bit more at sporting goods chain Dick’s. If you can find a used table — or even a broken one to repair — all bets are off. Just buy it and have fun playing.

BUT, buying means you won’t have the fun of seeing the table come to life in your garage! There is, however, an elephant 🐘 in the room that we need to address. Likely the reason we don’t see similar builds more often:

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The geometric (9x5) challenge

The official top dimensions of a Ping-Pong table are 9 x 5 ft. Plywood is generally sold in sheets of 8 x 4 ft, and good luck getting anything bigger than that home in the car. This is a problem.

The solution: Get the two sheets cut as show below-left at your local wood repository; then arrange the pieces as shown below-right.

This sort of assembly does leave you with two seams, six inches from either side of the net. However, the frequency of the ball hitting there is fairly low, and you can smooth things out with paint, filler, and glue. However, you can’t fold the table up for storage or practice. Still, I’d list these as acceptable tradeoffs.

2x4 and 3D-printed frame

The frame that supports the plywood is made out of 2x4s, arranged so that the two longer top members are 8’ lengths — no cuts, since they come that way from the store. The cross members are 4’, or half that — so one cut. Angled wood supports were added later, and adding these helped immensely with stability. The lower horizontal supports are… purely theoretical a this point.

The green pieces are 3D-printed helpers that…. help with frame assembly, and are designed in such a way that you can stable through them into the top plywood. This allowed me to assemble everything upside down without disturbing the play surface. Once flipped into place, I painted the surface green with a roller, and added lines around the edges and center. This really sets things off nicely.

While the build was nominally successful — and looks great — there were a few things that I would do differently if were to build one again.

The good… and the bad

First, what makes this awesome:

• Paint/playfield color looks great, and the spray-paint lines add a nice effect

• Net support tabs lead to some scoring ambiguity, but keep the posts out of the way - net positive IMO.

• Angular wooden supports make it much stronger.

• Building the frame/surface upside-down on the ground (shown in video) with weight on top facilitated a square assembly.

What I might do differently:

• I used OSB, instead of traditional plywood, which was the wrong choice. While I did save some money using it, plywood would have provided a more even surface that would stay together better.

• Consider using fewer 3D-printed supports, assembling only the supporting frame upside down to make that square. I could then flip it and apply the surface plywood right-side-up with glue (and weights on top).

• If I DID staple/flip again, I would get more help.

• The cover keeps off rain, but if water stays there for a while, it ends up soaking through. Need a better solution for this.

Supports for any table

During this process, I used a leftover 3 x 3’ section of OSB for a nice mini table/prototype. This allowed me to test the screw-in-place corner supports on a smaller scale.

While not everyone needs a ping pong table,1 many people would like a way to make a simple coffee table, card table, or even dinner table with inexpensive wood. This was inspired by the 2x4 Basics legs that I’ve used in the past, which are apparently no longer available on Amazon. It appears they are, however, available on 2x4basics.com.

Was this worth it?

On a purely money/time basis, the answer was certainly no. I maybe saved $100, and put in at least 20 hours of work. However, it’s fun to use, and I take some satisfaction in the fact that I made it when I see it on my porch with its custom base coloring and spray-painted lines.

If I were to reframe it as… a functional piece of art, the answer becomes “yes, definitely worth it.” Also, I get to write about it here.

Of course, one has to also consider the next best alternative. If I didn’t make this, would I otherwise spend my time watching TV? If so, that’s a vote for DIY. If you have an opportunity to do something more productive and/or enjoyable, then just buy a table. Being self-employed, my opportunities for monetary profit vary greatly on a day-to-day basis. It’s nice to have something that I can work on as I have time.

Video & Build Specifics

If you’re considering building your own and/or want to see the results, check out the video. A bill of materials is below that, and the cutting diagram for Lowe’s/Home Depot/etc was shown earlier in the article.

Bill of materials:

• (2) 4x8 sheets of OSB cut to diagram (recommend better wood if possible)

• (7) 8’ 2x4s

• 1-1/4 inch wood screws

• 2-1/2 inch wood screws

• 2x6s (optional - handle/storage)

• Paint

• 3D-printed table assembly helpers

• 3D-printed net spacers

• Net/Paddle kit [Amazon]

• Ping Pong table cover [Amazon]

Enjoy! -JC

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I didn’t see it when it was originally broadcast, but, as shown below, it starts out with a nice shout-out of my work. Then it takes on a more ominous tone:

This might seem unnecessarily harsh — from a network known for children’s and/or nonsensical/child-inappropriate content after a certain time at night — but keep in mind that this was early 2021, and the world was still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. People, and even cartoon networks, were still a little on edge.

Reactions varied from concerned, to impressed, to indifferent when I proudly shared this accomplishment. However, neither SpideyAtLaw, nor any Cartoon Network legal henchmen ever got in touch with me.

Perhaps the statue of limitations will run out soon. Or…

…would have if I hadn’t just posted a picture of Ignignokt, beautifully spray-painted on top of my office whiteboard. My contact info is at the end of this post if you’re with Cartoon Network and just haven’t gotten around to figuring out how to get in touch.

Also, 2007 Boston Mooninite Panic

While I meant no difficulties, perhaps it’s also relevant, or at least interesting, that this isn’t the first time that Ignignokt and/or Err (the other Mooninite character) were involved in legal hot water. Per Wikipedia:

On the morning of January 31, 2007, the Boston Police Department and the Boston Fire Department mistakenly identified battery-powered LED placards depicting the Mooninites, characters from the Adult Swim animated television series Aqua Teen Hunger Force, as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), leading to a massive panic. Placed throughout Boston, Massachusetts, and the surrounding cities of Cambridge and Somerville by Peter “Zebbler” Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, these devices were part of a nationwide guerrilla marketing advertising campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters.

Yes, people thought that these LED signs were some sort of explosive devices. And yes, the title of the movie was Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters.

Given Mr. ‘Nokt’s rude gesture, and the black tube on the bottom, one can perhaps sympathize with the reaction. Per Wikipedia, Turner Broadcasting (i.e. then-owner of The Cartoon Network) and marketing organization Interference had to pay a total of $2 million dollars to compensate the Boston Police Department and the Department of Homeland Security for their efforts.

That’s a lot of money, especially considering the movie’s budget was $750,000. Film costs included paying for some rather impressive voice talent, like Tina Fey, Fred Armisen, and H. Jon Benjamin2. I actually did see it in the theater, though IIRC we mostly had the showing to ourselves.

Why this story?

#1 — It’s April fool’s day… and even though it is true that my work was featured/threatened on Adult Swim, the whole thing is a bit farcical and entertaining. I’m 99% sure they never intended to sue me. I’m only 60% sure SpideyAtLaw is an actual lawyer, and that entity’s tweets are now obscured from public view.

#2 — Sometimes it crosses my mind how cool it was that my work was seen on Adult Swim, but then I have a hard time finding it on Twitter/X. This should make it easier for me to say, “Hey there it is.”

#3 — If you’re impressed with someone who had his work… featured/threatened on cable TV, I’d encourage you to subscribe to this newsletter👇 Or subscribe even harder, share, or even leave a comment if you’re already receiving the Tech Adjacent e-rag.

Thanks for reading. We will return to your regularly scheduled Tech Adjacent programming next week. -JC

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My promised contact info: hi@jeremyscook.com, (813) 421-0852, or reply back to this email.

2025 April Fool’s post:

Possible meanings:

• At this point AI slop will be indistinguishable from human work. Admittedly, humans write a lot of slop too. Pre-2028 at least you can plausibly prove that a human made some piece of content/code/etc.

• In 2028, OpenAI plans to pay $$$ Internet creators for all of our hard work on which it trained its AI. Or stole, if you’re feeling spicy. I won’t hold my breath, but one can always hope.

• OpenAI sees this as the date when artificial general intelligence, or AGI, becomes sentient and makes all knowledge work done before this antiquated.2 I’m not sure why this would make previous work valuable. There’s lots of old stuff that I don’t want, and it’s not like humans won’t be able to write/think anymore (hopefully). Or…

• By 2028, we’ll be so coddled by AI that we’re no longer capable of making good knowledge things. And after the war between the machines and mankind it will be hard to find written textbooks and literature as the OpenTerminators actively eliminated them a la Fahrenheit 451.

• Paul Graham just made this quote up.

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Whatever, if anything, this supposed quote means, one thing is for certain: If you create content online and want people to respect you—or merely acknowledge your humanity—the time to establish yourself is now. Or 10 years ago would be even better, but per our current understanding of spacetime, that would be impossible.

The currency of humanity and work in the real world

If you have established, or manage to establish, yourself as a human expert—or even just a semi-coherent human—you have earned something valuable: people’s trust. Perhaps that’s what we should take away from this. Whether the ALLSLOP FUTURE comes in 2028 or 2030 (or even if it never comes) establishing trust from your readers/audience is important, and will likely get harder and harder.

If you establish online trust, never, ever break it. It will be hard or impossible to get back. I touch on this in my previous should use AI art in blog posts article. As great a tool as AI art can be, the tradeoff in reader trust just isn’t worth it.

Welcome to the real world

In 2025, I wrote the verbosely titled: Will AI Eliminate Art and Creativity Like Robots Automated Mundane Physical Tasks? I wish I had better news, but from my current 2026 vantage point, I don’t see this trend reversing. Perhaps creative and business activities rooted closer to/in the real world that still takes some intelligence will be the path to success in the future. I’m guessing that plumbers, surgeons, painters, and electricians will still be in demand over the next few decades, even as their tools continue to evolve.

And lest you think this ALLSLOP FUTURE is limited to those of us who type on a screen, the AI Eliminate post features a video of AI Will Smith eating spaghetti and then a hamburger. I was extremely impressed, even if the clip wasn’t quite perfect. In related news, Val Kilmer is slated to play a role in the upcoming movie: As Deep as the Grave. From beyond the grave. As an AI actor. One might argue this is creepy, or even that it’s been done before (e.g. CG Princess Leia). But on a practical level, likely it will represent a level of AI video quality that is difficult to distinguish from… THE REAL WORLD.

In a strange way, I feel like the Internet is eating itself, especially as a means of self-expression. If you put yourself on screen, no one will know if it’s you, or if the representation is even an actual human. If type, AI can do the same thing much faster.

But if you can somehow establish your humanity (ideally now), what you have to say would have more value. Perhaps we’ll see a return to paper magazines and mix tapes for authenticity. Or maybe people will accept their new AI overlords and entertainers. After all, with the right prompt and enough training/computing power, the perfect movie/piece of content is just a prompt away 😀😬😥

People definitely seem to enjoy records these days. I don’t listen to them, but maybe there is hope for humanity. Also, if you believe I’m human and aren’t yet a subscriber, please subscribe to this newsletter 👇 At least you’ll know one actual person online post 2028. -JC

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The short answer might appear to be “no” on the surface. Maybe even an emphatic explicative + no. The real answer, however, is more complicated.

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Design < Buy in Pure $$$ Terms

Consider my portfolio of 3D-printed thingies, found here on Thingiverse. If the equivalent of any of these things was available and I were to buy them, I’d expect the average price would be in the $5 ballpark. Correspondingly, I’ve spent in the ballpark of five hours on each printed design. So at Florida’s current minimum wage of $14/hour I’ve spent $70 on the design + (ballpark) $1 on filament and power.1

So $71, or 14.2 Biggie Bags, based on their now-obsolete $5 standard. Or, coincidentally, 14.2 times as much as just buying something if I minimally valued my time. Not great.

3D-Share > Not 3D-Share

I have 61 models available as of this writing. 61 models x $70 = $4270 of my time that I spent on these, a rather bad deal if the equivalent purchased price works out to $305. However, consider that my models have been downloaded 2,263 times, and if we assume that every one of those models is printed, my time cost per print drops to $1.88.

Of course, I am seriously undervaluing my time in this example, and I get no direct monetary benefit for my individual design time. However, as a whole, the 3D-printing community (including me) does get a huge amount of benefit from designs being available.

Consider that while I may use my design once, I also print quite a few things that someone else designed. I also use open source software a lot (e.g. KiCad, LibreOffice). This isn’t exactly the same thing, but it certainly counts as part of the information sharing/design economy.

You and I don’t have to contribute, but it seems like a good thing to do.

Exactly What You Want for Increased Productivity

Indirectly — and more nebulously, one might say — stuff I design for my office and workspace helps be do things better and faster, thus allowing me to make more money. Have these pursuits increased my productivity by $4270 over time? Actually, I think it might if you take everything into account. Though again, that’s grossly undervaluing my time.

Alternatively, could off-the-shelf solutions get me, say, $3000 of the way there? Maybe, but there’s also some joy involved in optimizing something to do exactly what you want. I could also argue that making such designs sharpens my engineering skills and makes me better at jobs that do directly pay.

Advertising, Direct Sales, sponsorship for actual $$$ Profit

Personal use, and possibly giving some designs away, is where 3D-printed pursuits stop for most people. However, in addition to increasing your productivity, there are ways to make this more directly profitable than by solely improving your life/what comes around goes around. A few ideas, some of which I pursue:

• Advertise Your Web Presence - If a lot of people go to site X to download your designs, if there’s a link to your other content… a newsletter, for instance, they might check it out. It’s certainly a low percentage, but this probably helps with SEO as well.

• Sell your stuff directly - I maintain a store on Tindie, where I mostly sell electronic thingies that I’ve designed. I also have these 3D-printed avocado seed floats for sale, though I’ve only had one order so far. YRMV.

• License Your Design - Hopefully I can talk about this in more depth later, but I recently licensed one of my designs for another company’s use. In theory, this is great, since you don’t have to worry about warehousing etc.

• Sponsorship on Printables et al - You can set up your Printables profile to allow people to support you, if you have obtained a level 18 status or greater and have at least 150 followers. You can also ask for an exception if you think you deserve it for some reason.
  -I supported Mikolas Zuza for a short time in order to build a Hackstercaster derivative that I was getting paid for.2
  -You can also earn “free” filament on Printables. This is nice, but hardly worth the effort required.
  -FWIW, I’m at level 20, but have only 15 followers!

Need help? Don’t want to model things yourself?

I’ve made some rather conflicting arguments here about whether or not you should make your own 3D-printed designs. At the end of the day, if you enjoy it you can probably justify the pursuit if you share designs and/or make a direct profit. If you’re not a 3D-modeling person and still want to contribute to the world of free engineering stuff, there are lots of other open-source outlets that might be more appropriate for your skills and interests (again, e.g., KiCad, LibreOffice).

IF you need something made, and either don’t have sufficient CAD skills to get it done, or if you just don’t want to bother with it, well I know a guy. That’s right, I’m the guy. And yes, we can negotiate my rate in Biggie Bagz👇 Though they’re $6 now. Or maybe $4. Also I do a lot of technical writing. Like what you see here, but generally a bit more serious in tone. Get in touch if I can help you with anything: hi@jeremyscook.com, leave a comment, or just reply back to this email if that’s how you’re reading this. -JC

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The killer application for pneumatics is that very fast and powerful linear actuators can be had in the low-two-figure range if you poke around online, or likely a bit more from well-known industrial suppliers. The big tradeoff is that you need an air compressor — something that isn’t exactly standard, but that many DIY types have, including myself. For experimentation per an upcoming class that I’m giving, I decided to spend the ~$50 required for a simple pneumatic actuator setup.1

What do you need to pneumatically actuate?

As noted, most fundamentally you need an air compressor. I had one for a few years from Harbor freight that was ~$30 IIRC, which eventually broke. It was also extremely loud. The Makita compressor that I have now cost something like ~10x as much money, but is much quieter and… still works. I guess you get what you pay for.

Once that is sorted, my relatively simple pneumatics components bill of materials (BOM) is as follows:

• 5-Way Solenoid Valve

• Air Hose Fitting

• 6mm Tubing Kit

• 20mm Bore 100mm Stroke Air Cylinder

• Flow-control valves (optional)

With these parts in-hand, I connected the air lines as (mostly) shown in the image above, then hooked the solenoid valve’s wires up to an Arduino OPTA PLC’s built-in relay. The PLC was programmed with an extremely simple “relay blink” sketch. I.e. the relay simply cycles on or off every second.

As shown in the video below, the results are quite impressive, at a rather low cost. It can push with a force of the piston’s surface area x the applied air pressure. So here it would be 3.14 x 10mm^2 x 100 PSI. Doing the math/conversions yields 48.7 pounds on the outbound stroke.2 So about 50 pounds for $50. Not bad at all!

Of course, that doesn’t include the cost of the air compressor, which was already purchased, and has been extremely useful for so many reasons. I highly recommend this type of tool, even if you start with a cheapie.

While I think making a cylinder actuate is fun in and of itself, I do have a few pneumatics project ideas.

Why/what comes next?

If nothing else, this video and/or experimentation will be a nice bit for a class I’m going to give.3 It’s also a good demo of the Arduino OPTA, and perhaps something that will drive sales of my I2C/serial/MIDI breakout.

Perhaps the most obvious other idea I have for this tech is constructing a robotic drummer. While one might correctly say that this has been done before, I’ve yet to put my own spin on it. I think I could do a good job, though it would be hard to beat Kolja Kugler’s One Love Machine Band:

Of course, there are about a million things one can do with pneumatics, it always seems like my project list needs to contract, not expand. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Be sure to subscribe below for further updates… air-powered or not! -JC

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This summer, however, they both joined organized basketball teams and asked me to coach. While #1 might still apply, I did play for my (very small) high school, then recreationally in college and beyond. So the #2 excuse was out the window. I agreed to be an assistant coach on both their teams. I have some thoughts.1

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So what is coaching kids like?

Short answer: it’s a lot of fun. Imagine being that parent on the sideline that’s always yelling at his kid, other kids, and the referees. That guy (and usually it’s a guy) is being obnoxious and needs to calm down. But some part of you wants to be that guy, and as a coach you’re actually supposed to be that guy.

Think the ref made a bad call? Let him have it! Did Jimmy miss the rebound because he was out of position or didn’t get his hands up? Let him know! Loudly, because how else will he hear you? CAVEAT: any feedback should be offered with respect and sans personal insults both to kids and referees. At the end of the day everyone is (should be) there to learn and have fun (and/or make a little money as a ref).

It’s also incredibly rewarding. Kids that are newer to the sport can make gains in ability in a very short time in part because of your guidance. You set the tone for the team and how they play. In my role as an assistant coach, I didn’t dictate plays or overall strategy, but largely focused on individual tactics to make sure kids were in the right position for rebounds, defense, and shooting.

So while I’m still grateful to my kids’ coaches for the time they put in, I now realize that it’s not actually a sacrifice for most of them. I suspect they’re having a great time. So does someone “give up” X hours/week to coach? It depends on the next best alternative. It it’s watching TV, probably not. If there’s something more productive and/or enjoyable on the table, then possibly.

What do I focus on as a coach-engineer?

There are a few things I focus on while coaching that I think are analogous to my former and current work as an engineer. My thoughts:

• High percentage strategy (individual shots don’t matter): At this level the kids will take (and miss) a lot of shots. I try to get the kids taking the right shots, getting rebound for a second shot, and doing other things that may or may not pay off in an individual situation, but that over the long term will win games and seasons.
  
  Sure that extra rebound by the kid that shoots 20% might not produce points, but 10 of these actions over a season can be the difference between wins and losses.
  -At the same time, I suspect top-class competitors like Michael Jordan, Caitlin Clark, or LeBron James would disagree somewhat. That buzzer beater in game XYZ does mean a lot, and appears to be the focus of great players. However, the overall team strategy got their teams and them into a position to hit the game-winning shot.
  
  As an engineer (in manufacturing automation) you have to deal with emergencies in a hands-on manner (game-winners, so to speak). But the bigger issue is how you deal with systemic issues, making sure that preventive maintenance get done, spares are on-hand, and other unseen details are sorted out that help things run well most of the time and eke out a few extra percentage points of production. Sort of like that extra rebound, or perhaps even points, that Jimmy gets because of your advice.

  

• Develop weaker players: On the 11-year-old’s team, there were a few excellent players, other players that were competent, and some that were new to the sport. The exciting thing as a coach is that the n00bs can literally become twice as good as they were before in a season, eventually making a small, but real, contribution to the team. That aspect was really fun.
  
  This was perhaps slightly less evident an the 8-year-old’s team, but the general concept would apply.
  
  This is similar, but not quite the same as Pareto analysis where 80 percent of your results (or problems) come from 20 percent of your inputs. One can reverse this and see that your best 2/10 players will likely make most of your points. Unlike the n00bs, your coaching isn’t going to make them much better individually in a month or two, though you might be able to help them play better with a team.

Other Interesting Aspects of Coaching

• These electronic “whiteboards” are pretty cool

• As someone who works from home by himself the vast majority of the time, it’s cool to be in a group striving for the same goal. There’s a real sense of camaraderie, even if you’ll ultimately all go your separate ways after a month or two.

• Parents generally appreciate you. So that’s neat.

At the end of the day, both my kids teams did quite well, winning more games than they lost. Unfortunately, the older kids lost in the first round of the playoffs per a combination of them not playing well, and the other team playing well plus hitting some rather unlikely shots. While I doubt it would have changed the game’s ultimate outcome, my son had to sit out that game per a jammed finger. The younger kids made a good effort at the end, though they didn’t ultimately win the tournament either.2

Get out there!

Maybe you weren’t a high school athlete. Maybe you didn’t play your kids’ particular sport. If they’re young enough, it doesn’t really matter. With a bit of research you can be competent enough to coach a kids’ team. It will likely be a lot of fun for you, and certainly meaningful to them. -JC

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2

Some months later, my daughter’s soccer team won third place (out of four teams) in their league’s end-of-season soccer tournament. The scene looked like👇 Being a kid isn’t always fun… but sometimes it is.

The resulting guitar is shown above, with build details available on Hackster.io (which commissioned this project) and any future mods to be published on Printables. You can even (in theory) mix-and-match parts from the original and my design for something truly unique.

The question is who owns my new design? Is it me? Hackster? Original author Mikolas Zuza? Anyone? Does it even matter? Am I being overly legalistic even worrying about this? I have thoughts.

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What is the point of open-source designs?

First, I don’t think you have any moral obligation to release your designs as open source. However, I’ve benefitted greatly from open-source projects like KiCad, LibreOffice, and a wealth of other software and hardware designs — way too many to name if I even knew the name of all of them. So it seems like a good thing to “pay it forward” and advance the ecosystem.

There are several good reasons to put your design out there for free, including:

• Let others make your thing and enjoy it

  • Chances are your new device… let’s just call it a butter-opener fork won’t get enough commercial traction to make it worthwhile (though maybe you can sell in multiples). And if you design and make something for just yourself, it likely won’t be worth your time.

  • However, if you put it out there for those 100 people who would like a butter-opener fork, and who can print it themselves, you’ve made the world just a tiny bit better while enhancing your reputation… just a tiny bit.2

• Let others build on your design & even give you feedback

  • Maybe the butter-opener fork would benefit from a spoon on the handle. As an open-source design, someone (lets say Jill) can just add that in and post it as a “remix” of your design.
    -I’ve done this myself, in the form of split Harbor Freight bin (my most popular design on Printables).

  • Someone may suggest a change to your code and/or CAD model that you can directly integrate into your own design. A win for everyone.

The problem — for (overly?) honest people

So what happens if someone (Jack) takes the butter-opener fork/spoon made by Jill and tweaks it to the point where it can be a commercial success? If you put it out via a non-commercial license, Jack (apparently) can’t use the design, even if he was to give you a cut of the profits… unless he also negotiates with Jill, who perhaps can’t be contacted for whatever reason.

No one can then profit from Jack’s design, and people can’t get the improved butter-opener fork/spoon that they so need and deserve, except for those that are willing to print it themselves. Or, someone less scrupulous(?) might just make the butter-opener fork/spoon and sell it, daring you, Jill, and/or Jack to sue him.

Which you won’t, because it’s really not worth the hassle… and is it enforceable/legally binding anyway?3 In theory, if your design is artistic, it could be subject to copyright, but something that is purely functional is not. Defending your presumed rights to such a design, even in the case of large guitar companies that have real money to loose, is fraught with difficulty and expense.

What is commercial use?

At it’s most obvious, commercial use of a design is making something (often 3D-printing it) and selling it — even if the author says this is a no-no. But what does “commercial” include?

When I made my new guitar, it was for a giveaway, and the product was mostly the video and media having to do with it. Here I would lean toward the “it is commercial” stance, because I was effectively selling it to someone. But what about the many YouTube channels that take an open-source design, make it on camera, credit the author, then profit via the video? I doubt all of them have an agreement with the original author.

What about if you have a commercial shop and need somewhere to, say, store batteries?👆 You see a design online, print it out, and use it as intended. You’re making profit off of this indirectly, but aren’t selling it per se. I don’t think this is what’s meant by “commercial use,” though you could certainly make the argument that it is.

I certainly wouldn’t sue, or probably even complain, if a company were to use a few of my designs to help with their processes. Besides, how would I know? There are bigger problems in the world. The general idea of non-commercial use seems to be that you shouldn’t churn out thousands of someone’s design for direct sales, while the original author sees none of the profits (even if it may be legally permissible).

My invention - sold by others without permission (it’s OK)

Years ago, I designed this dust extractor for my CNC router, which became rather popular at the time. I was told that the printed version was for sale elsewhere — without my permission. It kind of made me cranky, but besides a possible email or two there was little I could do about it. Plus, I think I just put it out there without any sort of license originally, so my legal and/or moral rights were tenuous at best.

I wasn’t personally selling it, and it seems that others were there to fill the gap in demand. Perhaps I should have jumped on this opportunity and started turning them out and/or sold the design. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

Example: paracord tensioner — an array of “violations”

As a weird example of how this all gets rather convoluted, consider “my” paracord tensioner design, found here on Printables. As I put it in the description:

Modeled this version from scratch, based on the STL found here. Which is apparently based on something called a Loop Alien. Or probably a knockoff Loop Alien, which was then adapted as a 3D-printed device. Wild how things develop. This is released as public domain with CAD files. Enjoy.

In other words, my model is 4-5 iterations removed from the original idea. So it only seemed right to release my design as public domain that anyone can use, and I suspect it doesn’t matter anyway. You can also just buy knockoffs of Amazon, along with the actual paracord. Those tensioners are inexpensive, and certainly way stronger per their aluminum construction.

Does the license actually matter?

Since functional things aren’t generally subject to copyright (even if the files used to make them could be) and you (likely) don’t have a patent on the design, bringing a lawsuit for perceived licensing violations would be fraught with difficulty. One could argue that a functional thing, made from open-source materials, aren’t subject to any sort or restrictions legally speaking, unless there is a contract involved.

Mostly confirming my thoughts, Perplexity’s opinion reads, in part:

• The non‑commercial license on a 3D design file is generally legally binding as a matter of copyright licensing. The problem is that copyright does not cover everything the physical object does or is.

• If the main value of your design is functional, and you genuinely want to control commercial manufacturing of the physical objects, you need to think in terms of patents, trade secrets, or contractual arrangements, not just a NC label.

• If you mostly care about people not commercially exploiting your models or artistic prints (e.g., miniatures, logos, decorative objects), a non‑commercial Creative Commons license can be meaningful and enforceable, especially against obvious commercial re‑use of your exact files and designs.

Of course, this doesn’t mean all uses are morally right, but some entities will respect your non-commercial licensing/wishes. Some likely will not.

While there are reasons that you might want to use such a license and/or state other restrictions, you could also consider simply putting your thing out there as public domain so people can use/modify/integrate your work without worry. Or add a watermark if you really want credit.4

This is my opinion, IANAL

In summary, “owning” a functional design is not as simple as stating your license terms. And unless you’re making cutting-edge chip manufacturing machinery, whatever you made is likely pretty easy to reverse engineer with a good pair of calipers and/or inexpensive test equipment anyway.

As for the guitar, I suppose I own my new modifications in some sense, but not the guitar design as a whole. One might also argue that my mods are more functional than artistic, while Mikolas Zuza’s portion is more easily classified as art. So could he technically produce my design commercially without permission, but not the other way around? I’m not certain. At the end of the day, it’s a bit of a conundrum that wouldn’t be worth litigating. Perhaps the right attitude is: treat designs and each other with respect, but don’t get too hung up on the details.

Please take this article as food for thought. It’s mostly based on my opinions/observations. I have some some limited research for the piece, but not nearly enough to make me an expert in the field! I am not a lawyer, I’m just a guy who likes to make things.

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Addendum/Footnotes:

BUT YOU’RE STILL READING, so you’re at least curious as to how to make things semi-organized in that no-man’s land. Even if you don’t use an Apple TV for streaming as outlined here, I hope the general principles will be useful!

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Quick TL:DR/stuff used - I mounted an Apple TV to the back of my… TV & organized the wiring with zip-ties:

• Apple TV (Ethernet) - a bit cheaper at Costco

• 3D-printed Apple TV mount

• Velcro stick-on strips

• Reusable Zip-ties (yes, you can zip them off, which is awesome)

• In-wall cable management kit

• Extension cord & splitter

3D-printed mounts: ready for download!

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but if you have an idea for something, especially if it involves a popular item (e.g. Apple TV), check your favorite 3D-printing repository to see what’s available. In this case, Printables had several mounts ready to use, and I found one that I could just download and print out in PETG.

Velcro is your organization friend

What can I say about Velcro. Rumor is that it was actually harvested from an alien spacecraft circa 19472, but now it works really well for keeping terrestrial things in place. In this case, a bit of adhesive on the back of the not as fluffy bit attaches it to the TV, while the fluffier portion attaches to the mount itself with a bit more adhesive, allowing the Velcro to work its magic.

One might argue that you could just attach the Velcro directly to the Apple TV or other streaming device. But that seems like rather rubbish work, and you’re gooing up a beautiful piece of hardware. Best to avoid that if possible. As a rule, I tend to use the non-fluffy bit on the more permanent base, i.e. the TV in this instance. You might have a different opinion, but be consistent.

If you need to reposition, just pull it off and add more Velcro-tape as needed. As seen in the image above, I initially installed it a few inches higher and to the right.

Cable management [reusable zip-ties are awesome]

Circa 2020, I ran power/ethernet/micro USB behind the TV via the ECHOGEAR cable management kit listed above. While the Ethernet was largely useless for my ~2010 vintage plasma TV, I’m quite glad I left it there for my Ethernet-enabled Apple TV. Hooking it up was just a matter of splitting the power outlet with an extension, then connecting power and Ethernet to the Apple TV. HDMI then plugs directly into the TV.

This situation is convenient, but leaves a lot of wiring behind the screen that either: A, looks bad, but is hidden, or B, Actually hangs below the TV. If neither is acceptable to you, look no further than the reusable zip-ties listed above. Unlike normal one-use ‘ties, a little tab releases them, allowing them to be reapplied or adjusted as needed.3

A few tips on zip-tie wire organization:

• Lightly zip-tie to begin with, then secure when you have a good general layout for the wiring

• After locking things down, cut the zip-tie ends off at an angle, but leave an inch or so sticking out so that they can be reused if needed.

• Leave enough slack so that wires aren’t tight, and if they will move (e.g. a movable screen mount) that they won’t be tight (or be forced out) in any position.

• Loop extra cable and secure if it’s too long.

I was happy with years-ago Jeremy for leaving the Ethernet cable in place, even though it wasn’t then being used. I did pull out the Micro-USB cable that was previously powering my little Roku player. Maybe that would have been convenient in the future.

Final thoughts? What about the Apple TV?

Long story short, I like the Apple TV. If you want my more complete thoughts, dsee the post below👇👇

I don’t think Apple TVs are the most common streaming devices at this point. However, as other media players and smart TVs become/remain advertising cesspools, I could see them becoming more and more common as long as they don’t pursue that path. So don’t do that Apple. And stop reorganizing my icons while you’re at it.

I hope you enjoyed the article. As we all know, good wiring practice never goes out of style 😎🫡 -JC

Techadjacent is where I share engineering ideas, builds, and practical tech analysis. Subscribe to get the next post in your inbox — published weekly👇

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Addendum/Footnotes:

After a few choice words on my end, it eventually sent me to the store where I was put on hold until I hung up. A (pyrrhic) victory for them, as this interaction was successfully dealt with sans human labor.

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But then I called back. I submitted to the AI and asked it if they had a certain type of particle board. As with the website, it said it did not, but noted that they could order it for me. After again begging for a human, getting put on hold, talking to one person, then getting transferred to another person, I was told that no, they did not have it and could not order it. Thanks Mylow.

In a recent post about predicted words of the 2000s (as seen from our 2026 vantage point), I lamented that the term “voice-jail system” hadn’t become prominent in this future-present. As I consider it now, this might not have been a simple case of the wording itself being forgotten, but that things ACTUALLY GOT BETTER… temporarily. As the Internet fully proliferated our lives, returning a product, checking your bank account, or any number of useful tasks often transformed from a voice jail ordeal to a couple of clicks.

Sure, voice jail never really went away, but my gut feeling is that we as a society were spending less and less time in this audible purgatory. Rather than taking this opportunity to make the lower number of calls more efficient, corporations have doubled down on the concept—with the help of AI—to get their voice systems to “accomplish” more, a condition I’ll refer to as AI Jail.

AI Jail has, of course helped make voice jail systems less efficient on average2, while executives likely spin it as somehow saving costs. But consider where else AI has… affected our lives (for the worse):

• This AI Jail system in China automatically names and shames you if you jaywalk. Look for similar frivolous AI Jail automated enforcement coming to your country soon. Perhaps there will even be a version for ambitious home owners associations, automatically judging your grass and issuing fines!

  

  One could make a pretty good argument that this sort of overreach3 has already made it to the USA. Maybe it’s not as bad, but I wonder how USA AI Jail tolerance will shift in the next decade or two. At least Ring can find your lost dog… Or it could — in theory(?) — be used by hackers, government employees, or anyone with the proper access to do all kinds of Orwellian stuff.

• Fast food drive-through ordering is now AI-assisted(?) in many locations! You didn’t want 300 McBurglars? Good luck getting a human to change things around. Fortunately, it misidentified you as that other guy who also happens to have two eyes and brownish hair. He will have to venture into the realm of AI Jail to fight the charges on your behalf.4
  
  I recently went to Wendy’s and Mc-Voice-Jail inquired about what I wanted. I said two Biggie bags, which it got correct. However, when I tried to specify different drinks for each one, that blew its AI warden mind and I had to speak to a Mc-teenager (who, to his credit, did a good job).

• If you receive a long email that is grammatically correct, but maybe a little too wordy, do you read the whole thing out of respect for the time that the sender supposedly put into it? Or do you summarize it via your own AI, maybe missing a few details, but saving you precious seconds?
  
  Or maybe you run it through an AI checker routine to be sure it was written by a human, then read it… But then that takes time, so what’s the point of any of this? Here you’ve put yourself into AI Jail just based on the threat! [Further elaboration]

• While automation used to imply [getting out of] tedious manual tasks, AI can now take care of fun creative stuff that… you now don’t have time for, for some reason! In AI Jail — unlike regular jail, where you stereotypically, read, work out, and play/make up up harmonica-based blues songs — you no longer have to worry about such pursuits, or even finding songs that suit your mood by human artists. Just type in what you want to hear and the music will appear, as if by magic!
  
  AI can even help you work out, according to the commercials. So like real jail/prison, but with extra features!

  

• Verification, verification, verification! I’m not sure this can be blamed directly on AI Jail, but you may have noticed that verification often requires much more work than putting in a strong password. My particular credit union has me verify after logging in, sometimes more than one time during a session.
  
  I suspect they’re trying to catch up to the AI Jail technology employed at larger monetary repositories. At least they haven’t auto-opened any accounts for me (AFAIK).

• While we’re on this subject, who really wants more CoPilot on their computers? Do you really need CoPilot to tell you “do whatever you want, it’s temporary anyway” when attempting to skirt HOA rules during Christmas? I used Windows machines (and Linux for a while) up until ~4 years ago. For this and other reasons, I’m glad I made the switch to Apple. I hope that they don’t go all-in on the same mistake — it might be time to try Linux again.

What do all of these things have in common? AI, a technology that is supposed to save you time, make your life easier, and make business operations more efficient seems to be doing the opposite. Or, at the very least, it’s neutral-ish but annoying while taking a lot of power for processing.

In fact, who’s to say that THIS VERY EMAIL that you’re reading isn’t a product of AI Jail slop expulsion? It isn’t, but wouldn’t I say the same thing if I was an AI? How would you know? How would I even know? Maybe I need to lay off the caffeine.

But no, I don’t use AI to write this newsletter, save for some research duties and questions like “should I use lose or loose” if I were to talk about how I was going to lose my loose use of AI in a sentence. Thanks for reading! -JC5

And if you’re not reading this via email, please sign up below to get the next one in your inbox. More fun and/or educational posts are forthcoming👇

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Even better, use “AI Jail” in a sentence 👆 and when whoever is listening says “what’s that?” tell them that you heard about it on www.techadjacent.io!

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Thanks for reading! I hope you will follow along as I post weekly-ish about engineering, technology, making, and projects. Fair warning: I am a native Florida man, and may get a little off-topic in the footnotes. Maybe I even had an alligator or two as pets growing up. Perhaps they are alive today and could be used to test earth-wormhole pet friendliness. -JC

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Addendum/Footnotes: