Permacomputing Meetup Notes ☀️ July 24, 2022

A flyer with a black & white drawing of a flower at the center, with a microchip instead of a flower head. The text reads \"Iffy Books Permacomputing Meetup / Sun July 24 • 1 pm – 3 pm EDT / 319 N. 11th St. #3E, PHL / Join the audio meetup with Mumble! Server: 134.209.32.64 Port: 64738

E-waste in Philly

• Rabbit Recycling
https://www.rabbitrecycling.com

• eForce Compliance
https://www.eforcecompliance.com

E-waste we want to reuse

  • Computers
  • Motors
  • Speakers
  • Hard drives
  • Cell phones, even if they’re carrier-locked
  • E-paper displays

How can I turn an old Android into an e-reader?

Install F-Droid (free & open source app catalog) and search for an e-reader app:
https://f-droid.org

Or install one of these:

LineageOS (Android OS with mostly FOSS software)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LineageOS

/e/OS (Android OS that doesn’t leak data to Google)
https://e.foundation/e-os/

Can I turn an epaper display into an offline e-reader? Maybe an electronic price tag?

The Kindle 3 (Kindle Keyboard) is apparently a solid e-reader.

KOReader is a document viewer primarily aimed at e-ink readers.
https://github.com/koreader/koreader

Gempub is an ebook file format that uses the “.gpub” file extension. For ebooks in the “text/gemini” format.
https://codeberg.org/oppenlab/gempub

Transflective LCD screens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_display

GooDee YG200 Mini Projector (runs on 5V via microUSB)
https://goodeestore.com/products/goodee-yg200-pico-projector

Low-Budget P2P Content Distribution with Git (install Lagrange or another Gemini client)
gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/gemlog/low-budget-p2p-content-distribution-with-git.gmi

LibreOffice Draw can edit PDFs!
https://www.libreofficehelp.com/modify-edit-pdf-free-libreoffice-draw/

MuPDF is good for viewing PDFs.
https://mupdf.com

How to Get Your Apartment Off the Grid
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/05/how-to-go-off-grid-in-your-apartment.html

Talking Newspapers in the UK, locally organized media distribution networks for blind/visually impaired people
https://tnf.org.uk

What if you only had access to the Internet for 10 seconds per day? Or 10 MB per day?

You could try to use wget to grab copies of sites you want to check, but that doesn’t work for sites that use JavaScript rendering.

Offpunk: A command-line feed reader that lets you download pages from Gemini, Gopher, Spartan and the web and read everything offline.
https://notabug.org/ploum/offpunk

Running a headless browser with Selenium:
https://pythonbasics.org/selenium-firefox-headless/

Use Selenium to get a page’s source code after rendering:
https://pythonbasics.org/selenium-get-html/

The DjVu format could be used to compress website screen captures along with the corresponding text.
https://djvureader.org/format.html

Zack’s life sim engine LiSE on Mastodon and Itch:
https://gamemaking.social/@clayote
https://clayote.itch.io/LiSE

Donald Knuth is no longer developing TeX, and the version number tends to the limit pi as bug fixes are released.
https://texfaq.org/FAQ-TeXfuture

LilyGO E-Paper Watch
https://github.com/Xinyuan-LilyGO/E-Paper-watch

How can I make a minimal white noise machine + alarm clock?

DFPlayer Mini MP3 Player for Arduino
https://starthardware.org/en/dfplayer-mini-mp3-player-for-arduino/

TF card U disk MP3 Format Decoder Board Module Amplifier Decoding audio Player
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/253662599028

A British company (now defunct) that made MP3 players and speakers
https://web.archive.org/web/20220129111841/https://www.kingsaccesstechnology.com/


Off-grid encrypted chat with LoRa + Meshtastic
https://meshtastic.org/docs/getting-started

If you’re in Philly, try connecting to the Iffy Books Meshtastic channel:

Follow Iffy Books on Mastodon:
https://post.lurk.org/@iffybooks

Mark your calendar for Mesh Jam 2022, August 13th and 20th. We’ll have a video stream if you want to attend remotely.

A flyer with black text on a white background: "MESH JAM 2022 at Iffy Books / Two Saturdays of workshops and talks about mesh networking! / Day 1: Hack / Sat, August 13 / 1:00 PM 'til ??? / Day 2: Test / Sat, August 20 / 1:00 PM 'til ??? / Community wi-fi projects / Encrypted messaging with LoRa + Meshtastic / Off-grid networking with Reticulum / & more! / 319 N. 11th St. #3E, PHL / IFFYBOOKS.NET" In the middle of the flyer is a network diagram with 18 nodes connected by lines. An arrow is pointing to one of the nodes, with the text "YOU'LL BE HERE"

The next permacomputing meetup at Iffy Books is scheduled for Sunday, August 21st at 1 pm EDT. See you there!
https://iffybooks.net/event/permacomputing-meetup-august