Latest Posts
Root Meridian Part 7: Solving Problems That Do Not Exist Yet
Got a personal Fusion 360 license, opened the software, and immediately spent the session researching custom PCBs, panel-mount SD slots, and product viability for a prop I haven't printed yet.
Root Meridian Part 6: The Cardboard Box Before Fusion 360
Measuring the confirmed electronics stack with calipers, sketching the housing footprint, and building a cardboard mockup — because it turns out a month of dreading Fusion 360 is easier to survive with scissors and painter's tape first.
Root Meridian Part 5: First Solder, First Light
Learning to solder for the first time with a Pinecil V2, wiring the NeoPixel ring, and the moment all four gem quadrants lit up together — topaz, emerald, ruby, diamond — on a real bench for the first time.
Root Meridian Part 4: The Compass Gets a Voice
Building Chronicler — the Discord bot that lets the DM control the Root Meridian from a slash command. Adding a WiFi web server to the ESP32. And the moment /compass east moved a physical stepper motor over WiFi from Discord.
Root Meridian Part 3: The Needle Flies, the Speaker Speaks
Fixing the stepper motor speed bottleneck, wiring up a DFPlayer Mini with five CC-licensed sounds, and hearing the compass come alive for the first time — motor and audio running together on real hardware.
The Stepper Motor Finally Moved: A Hardware Debugging Story
First real hardware session on the Root Meridian — flashing firmware to an actual ESP32, debugging a stepper motor that refused to move for two hours, and the moment it finally spun.