Monthly Archives: April 2026

Time to Delve Into Tech Stuff

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I got my artsy itch out of my system, I’ve spent the day creating some music, but I can’t record it because, once again, I’ve lost track of my portable Zoom H8 digital recorder and my notebook to log what I’ve done to create the piece.

I also did some prep work on some paintings I want to do instead of waiting for nightfall when there are fewer bugs to get stuck in the paint. Yeah, I paint out-of-doors. It was a lovely, not too warm day.

But the real work will be to make progress coding the Brainfuck app that I want to run on my newest acquisition, 2 Brainfuinos. Supposedly I’ll be able to run Arduino type apps on the Brainfuino. It’s a little tedious coding Brainfuck apps, but if I can get something useful to run, my creative urges will be satisfied. Because the Brainfuino doesn’t have the exact pin layout as the Arduino Uno, using commercially available hats is out if the question. Well, off to cook some dinner, then get down to business.

More Arduino Bad News

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Well, the Raspberry Pi 5 I bought months ago was put into services a couple of months ago. I decided to clean up my electronics workbench and replace the old PC that still barely works using Winblows 10. So I went to download the Arduino IDE so the Pi was a full-fledged tool. Arduino (sort recently) released an update, 2.3 for some platforms, but not Linux ARM. So I use what they call legacy software.

The main thing Arduino seems to tout about the new release is “AI” integration. Sorry, if that’s all you’ve got is a shitty Idiot Assistant (AI), then I can do without the new release. I don’t need a tool with an IQ in the 80s, as my IQ is about 80% higher. Slop code doesn’t help me one bit, especially since that slop code was lifted from other users, most of which don’t know what they’re doing. And more importantly, code lifted without permission or attribution. Up yours Arduino!

I’m prepared to jettison Arduino since the news came out about selling out. As DDG says in their summary:

Arduino has been acquired by Qualcomm, which means it is now owned by a large corporation rather than being an independent entity. This change raises concerns about the future direction and independence of the Arduino platform.

No more corporate slop!

More on Brainfuino

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I didn’t really get into in the last post, but the Brainfuino implements the brainfuck language in a FPGA platform emulating an Arduino Uno (sort of). Here’s a picture of what I received in the mail:

The instructions I received are somewhat minimalist, two sides of a single sheet of paper.

The terminal you use to interface with the Brainfuino is recommended on Winblows to be PuTTY, but since I interface with a Rapsberry Pi, two programs seem to be the options available. Both are installed with apt get and the programs are minicom and gtkterm. I’ve used GTKTerm and it seems to do the trick.

Some of the instructions are non-starters because you must dismantle the case to access the reset button, and I don’t have a 2mm hex key handy, that I know of.

I haven’t done much programming on the Brainfuino, as I’m still developing the software and it’s easier to develop using the tool at monocalc.com: https://monocalc.com/tool/programming/brainfuck_interpreter. More info is available about brainfuck, just use your browser. Here’s DuckDuckGo’s web page on brainfuck:

Oh, and I don’t think you’re going to find out too much about the Brainfuino, DuckDuckGo’s page is here:

I’ll look up the web info in my browser tabs and post it here, or you can use the email addresses in the docs above. The web site for the current build of the Brainfuino is https://lectronz.com/products/brainfuinov1-1.

I heard about the Brainfuino from a post Thalia made on the fediverse. My handle on the fediverse is @jaypeach53. Yeah, not a tech site, but on the fediverse you can talk to the whole fediverse from any instance.