MrJoosh

Not all Arduinos support HID natively though - the 328p nano/mega for instance...
 
This can be worked around by re-flashing the usb chip on the board though in some cases...

True, as do the pro micro boards with the 32u4, for the most part it's just the 328p powered boards that require a bit of hacking around to get them to appear and function as HID compliant devices...

Hey, so not being able to leave well enough alone, I have another 'potential' solution, hold on to your hats, your gonna enjoy this.
 
So, I'm under the impression you want a programmable, usb, rgb light, with a super small footprint, right? Heaven knows what for, but here ya go.
 
Background info
Half Ass-ed Instructions
Fancy Photos
File Dump
Reference Links
Let me know if you need more of an elaboration. TAG @Faisal A your it!
 
Everybody else, feel free to poke fun at things, or improve them.
 
Edit: If you mange to get the boards fabricated, again, double check things, and use a 2mm board. Adafruit has ide setup instructions for the original board, this clone should be no different. Don't brick it, there's no easy way to re-flash things.

I don't think that the RPi would be suitable for this, as the encoding portion is CPU reliant and i doubt that a Pi would have enough oomph unfortunately...

You need to neutralize the crap that came out of the alkaline batteries first. Isopropyl alcohol will not do the job.  You will need some weak acids, like for example vinegar or lemon juice.
Easiest would be to mix a bit of vinegar and lemon juice (cheap citric acid in those bottles would work, but would be better to just squeeze a bunch of proper lemons) with water and use a toothbrush to brush EVERYTHING with that solution to neutralize the alkaline stuff.
 
Ideally, you'd carefully desolder that copper foil which is mostly there to protect the chips and parts underneath from interference. Alkaline crap may have leaked under that copper foil and without cleaning it will continue to attack the board.  Remember where that foil is soldered and which wires seem to be soldered to the foil because you'll have to solder them back. 
Ideally, you should get a new copper foil and cut it to the same shape, then use kapton tape or some insulating sheet on the side facing the circuit board so the copper won't short circuit stuff on circuit board... use liquid flux if needed, to solder
 
Once you scrub everything really well for a few minutes, wash the boards with isopropyl alcohol or if you have a hard time finding isopropyl alcohol, use distilled water.
 
The unit may work without the copper sheet but in some cases it could reset or glitch (like if you play close to a switching power supply or a microwave oven or an old TV, or some fluorescent tubes), because the circuit board may pick "noise" from the environment... like i said, the copper foil is a sort of shielding, to protect the chips from everything outside.

Oh, and once you're done with that, you should carefully resolder anything that looks dubious ... there's some areas that look like cracked solder joints or weak joints ... i've circled some I would inspect and rework ... i'd probably do the whole connector at the bottom and the stuff on the side by the volume knob
If needed, use a solder wick and some liquid flux to remove the solder and apply new solder (use lead solder if possible)
 

Happy to help. 
 
Oh and ...
Be sure to stick around.  Eventually you might learn how to spell "IQ"
?

I've looked into this with the intention of building an off-grid cabin.  Basically, I was going to wire the house for 12V and 110V.
Lights are a no-brainer, go DC.  LED lights sufficient for illumination are easy to find in automotive bayonet-style packaging and "cut what you need" strips, all standardized on 12 volts.  With DC, you need no additional circuitry, and you don't get flicker.  All told, very efficient.  Even if you have an inverter, I suggest running the lights on DC since you would then have lights with the inverter turned off or failed.
 
Electronics--I just looked around.  My Wi-Fi/Ethernet switch, Roku 3, computer monitors, and a handful of other appliances run on 12 volts via wall warts.  Replace their wall warts with simple passive cables and you can run them directly from batteries.  In practice, you'll just never know what voltages or amperages consumer electronics want, so for user friendliness I suggest an inverter for this.
That said, you mention homeless/refugee/emergency use...well, you could boil down any possible need for consumer electronics into one smart phone, and it doesn't take much to power one of those.  I could even see a small laptop-sized device being run from a man-portable solar system.  I would choose something that charges via USB-C here, for simplicity's sake.
 
Running water.  12 volt DC pumps are widely available for RV use; they tend to be suited to pumping water from holding tanks to faucets.  Larger tasks like drawing water from wells is pretty much exclusively done via AC grid power.  I know of a lot of portable or mobile devices for purifying water that require no electricity at all.  I'm thinking things like the Lifesaver Bottle.  For homesteading, you're probably either carrying in water or running a well pump from AC.
 
Refrigeration is a whole other ballgame.  I know of at least three different ways off-grid refrigeration is accomplished. 
Your typical household fridge (along with the heat pump or an automotive air conditioner) uses a motor-driven compressor, condenser, and evaporator to use the fact that boiling a liquid absorbs heat from the surroundings.  There are a few of these available designed for portable or RV use that can run their motors on 110VAC or 12VDC.  It's designed to run on DC from an RV's main engine while driving, and then plug into ground power at a campsite.  They could theoretically be powered from solar, but you'd need lots of panels and batteries to do it continuously. RV fridges are overwhelmingly absorption fridges.  I've tried to wrap my mind around how they work, but the best I can do is "ammonia is dissolved in water, physics happens, things get cold, then you have this useless ammonia water.  Fortunately you can get the ammonia back out of the water with some heat, then you can cool them down separately and use them again."  These usually have two or three sources of heat:  Propane for "boondocking" or off-grid use, 110VAC for when plugged into shore power, and optionally 12VDC for use while driving* or conceivably on solar.  If doing the off-grid thing, I could see using a 12V mode off solar under the "batteries are charged, no other loads on system, panels would be turned off otherwise" to save some gas.  It would also be possible to power these from sunlight directly, though I don't know of any off-the-shelf units that do that.
*For those units that can operate while in motion; many require being pretty close to perfectly level to operate. Some gizmos use solid-state cooling via the peltier process.  It's sort of like an anti-backwards thermocouple.  Put electricity into this thing, and one side gets hot and the other side gets cold.  They're simple, compact and lightweight, but they aren't very efficient and can usually cool to 20 degrees C or so below ambient.  Sort of a "better than nothing" solution, not much else.  In an emergency context, I see this sort of thing being more useful and necessary for keeping insulin cool than preserving food; I would suggest shelf-stable or canned food over fresh.  

Looks like a custom made piece to me, but I could be wrong...

Looks like a custom made piece to me, but I could be wrong...

thats why i didnt mention them

Seems like a really good compromise.
 
"I'll just go ahead and put a lump of solid CO2 on my HDD, this is so much better than those bloody modern drives that work without being cooled to negative temperatures"

So, no pictures tonight BUT: I just finished my test bench. This was my first attempt at even partially building a PC and OH MAN that is a tense hour or so! Long story short, I got my single beep from the BIOS. That was exhilarating. The evening's highlights:
 
1) I dropped the m.2 drive's mounting screw on the carpet and it took 20 minutes to find the damn thing.
2) I don't know how to short the power button connectors to boot the PC so I installed the power and reset buttons, but got them mixed up, so there was a tense minute of me resetting a PC that was off and wondering why nothing was happening. Checked all my power cables, powered down the power strip, etc. THEN realized I'd installed them in opposite positions.
3) EVERYTHING felt like I was gonna break it by the time I had enough pressure to connect 2 things (I'm fairly careful, so adding pressure when I know things are "delicate electronics" is counter-intuitive)
4) I forgot that I needed to plug a keyboard into the PC to boot to the BIOS, so the first boot was kinda anticlimactic.
 
Anyway, that's my story. As for other details, feel free to ask me... and yes I did wear an anti-static wristband AND still touch grounded metal things like it was a compulsion. Sensitive electronics are nothing compared to the overwhelming sense of dread that you're gonna break something just by existing near it.

if you're joining two signals you need a mixer not a splitter
 

The thing to remember with this is that soldering on a motherboard is hellish - so much heatsoak into the various layers of copper etc... probably not worth it IMO
 
Really nice system though buddy

After a new modding room and a full stack of amazing tools thx to Ryobi I could get back to modding and project Angl3d Ti. Some parts left to do on the complicated front as well as closing up the bottom and front. 
 

 
It was suddenly a dream. The last 3 angles to finish the front took 20min to finish instead of 200min. The saw and sander from Ryobi are monsters. Surprisingly quiet, but so powerful.
 
 

 
This is the last problem area left to do. Joining the bottom piece with the front piece.
 
 

 
Fast work at the new saw and some sanding
 
 

 
And we had a match. Left the piece a little big by choice, need to file it into perfect size to ensure an unvisible joint with the front.
 
 

 
Two larger pieces was all that was left to close up the bottom.
 
 

 
One final test fit before I added the pieces to the bottom. Then I will have to spend a few days sanding...
 
 

 
I spend almost the next week finishing up the 3 pieces. Just not sanding, but filling in all small gaps and uneven surfaces. The large beige section is plastic wood. Had to make up for a less perfect piece, but now it's even and smooth.
 
 

 
Will be so much fun turning this into black matt finish. Exterior is close to finish. Probably got 2 weeks left, sanding down the 3 front holes to perfect shape and size and then desining and 3D-print all the mesh pieces. Need to learn how to print and design...

Merry Christmas everyone 
 

Samsung- look we have curved screens!
Apple- hold my beer.

And probably soon one of forums macfanatics jumps up to defend this.
 
Like how shitty product Apple must do before their brainwashed zombie army gets it? Or better, how bad of an excuse Apple must come up that their zombie army doesn't buy it?
 
Apple is probably the only company that could actually sell a bag of dog shit as a phone and people would smear it all over themselves and when someone points out that it isn't a phone, get fucking lunaticly angry because the dog shit is actually the best phone they have ever used even though it's only dog shit.

Apple: *makes device easily bendable
 
Fans: That will shurely never happen in regular usage
 
Apple: Hold my beer

One of the things that put me off Fallout 76 was a JackFrags video where they noticed that the games tickrate was linked to FPS. They found that looking at the floor got them 200+ FPS and they basically looked like they were speed hacking...
 
Shown here: 
(Mods please remove if not allowed)

Cheers for this, will give it a go because i'm too poor for 144...

Yes. The speed of the RAID 0 array increase near-linearly when the drive number increases, as Tom's Hardware demonstrated.

Your analogy is correct.
Expected roughly 10% percent drop off due to controller latency and overhead.
You will need an 8-port hardware RAID Controller Card if you want to plug most of the drives into the system in RAID configuration. (I recommend a second hand MegaRAID one with some SFF8643 to SATA cables. More on that later.)
No, this will not work. As Intel RAID requires the drive to be connected directly into the chipset, i.e., the 6 port on your motherboard, rather than any third party adapter card(s).
If you want to use a RAID card, it's better to connect it to a native PCIe slot that connects to CPU instead of the chipset to avoid DMI link bottle-necking the throughput (that should be PCI_E2, PCI_E5 or PCI_E7 for your board, depending on your exact configuration. Consult you manual.)
You will also need some knowledge of Option ROM operation or command line operation. (MegaRAID card has a GUI MegaRAID storage manager, which may be easier for you)
Also check if your power supply is sufficient to power all the drives and if your case will ever fit all of them.
Use 8 drives with an 8-port RAID card, save 3 drives of the same model. In case of drive failure, just swap another one in.
 
As this is more of a hobby project, it's fitting for you to get some cheap stuff to work with. I estimate it will cost you less than 35 EUR (5 EUR for 2 SFF8643 to SATA cable, 30 EUR for an OEM/used MegaRAID card, there could be better deals) for the whole setup.

The laptop will only draw as much power as it needs, therefore the higher wattage won't cause a problem, it'll just allow for more headroom.

The laptop will only draw as much power as it needs, therefore the higher wattage won't cause a problem, it'll just allow for more headroom.

If you want to learn how to get that sort of thing set up, then go for it.
 
As you have mentioned though, with the age/usage of the drives, i wouldn't rely on them for anything important, which kind of makes it's use case for anything other than a learning exercise fairly non-existent.

Hey guys,
 
basically i thought i might share this here in case anybody is interested maybe some of you would like to do this yourself or maybe  youll just enjoy the trip with me.
 
So heres the basic idea:
 
i have a 2006 peugeot 307 cc.
 
the stereo sucks.
 
but it has that front display, meaning im not gonna just put in a different headunit and have that display there sitting all blacked out
 
my car also has one of these in the glove compartment - a rca(cinch) connector not just for audio but for video-in as well
 
i guess originally it is meant for some sort of dvd-player or rearview camera since it only allows you to watch the video-in while in reverse or up to 15-20 -ish km/h as to not distract the drive while driving but lets not worry about that just yet, 
the point is i have a way to feed video into the oem stereo enabling me to use the front display instead of replacing it
 
then i stumbled upon OpenAuto an open source version of Android Auto wihch i have been using as stand alone on my phone for a while anyway so wh not integrate it.
 
it was then in my planning that finally noticed...android auto is designed to be used with a touch screen ...which i dont have...  ...fuck
 
ok how do other car manufacturers interact with the system without a touch sreen?
 
the really big one all have those knobs in the center console 
 
bmw calls it idrive
audi calls it mmi
and whatever all the others call it
 
anyway so i bought a used but working idrive controller 2nd gen on ebay kleinanzeigen (german version of craigslist) 
 
and found one of these to interface the bmw ibus protocol of the controller with the pi over simple usb serial data
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 so far so good. theoretically i can now feed android auto via raspberry pi into my car display and control it with the idrive like you whould in a bmw.
 
theoretically....
 
so heres the game plan:
 
1. build openauto on my pi and make some changes so its all perfectly to my liking
2. open auto already allows keyboard input to i need to map the idirve signals and simulate key strokes on the pi
3. put it all together in my living room and test it before installation in my car
4. unlock my car stereo so it allow video to be shown while driving 
5. build a semi-fake center console overlay to fit the controller in since for once i dont want to cut up the oem one but secondly even if i wanted to, the oem center tunnel is to narrow and has no room for the idrive controller
6. install it all in the car
 
 
i will post updates regularly as soon as i have them wish me luck and please feel free to tell me what you think along the way. cause i might just derp and be stupid here or there