Eyes Front: Giving the Volvo EX30 the Speedometer It Forgot
A CAN bus dead end, a rectangular prototype, and a little round M5Stack StopWatch that now lives exactly where a speedometer should have been all along.
The AI Meeting Buddy: A Pocket Recorder for People Who Talk Too Much to Take Notes
A portable, voice-controlled meeting recorder built on the ESP32-C6, three prototype expansion boards, and the two hours of UI debugging that nearly did me in.
Building a Portable AS3935 Lightning Detector with the XIAO ESP32-C3
A handheld lightning sensing and ranging device built around the Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3, a Grove AS3935 Franklin sensor, and a 240x240 round display. For those rare moments when Britain actually has weather.
Building a Custom ESP32-S3 ADS-B Radar Display with Ultrafeeder
How to build a dedicated, real-time ADS-B flight-tracking display using an ESP32-S3 480x480 screen, LVGL, and a local Ultrafeeder/dump1090 stream.
Taking Back Control: How a Cheap ESP32 Saved My Car From the Data Harvesting Overlords
There is a distinct flavor of modern irritation that only a "smart" gadget can provide. You buy a piece of hardware; you plug it into your own property; and yet, somehow, you are suddenly signing away your digital soul just to read a simple number. Such was my
The Ultimate Arsenal Fan Accessory
We’ve all been there. You’re rummaging through your electronics graveyard and you spot them: a spare 3.2" OLED display and an ESP32 microchip just gathering dust. Your inner engineer immediately whispers, “We could build something with that.” Then you remember your 15-year-old daughter is a massive
From Miles to Microcontrollers: Building a Custom Strava Dashboard
There is something deeply satisfying about seeing your hard work visualized. While I love diving into the deep analytics provided by the statistics-for-strava project, I wanted a way to see my progress without opening a browser or checking my phone. I wanted a physical object on my desk that whispered
Tracking the Heavens: Building a Laser-Guided ISS Tracker
There is something inherently magical about watching the International Space Station (ISS) streak across the night sky. It is a football-field-sized laboratory hurtling at 17,500 mph, 250 miles above our heads. But unless you are constantly checking an app, it’s easy to miss. To solve this, I built
The 6th Screen: Building a Unified, Multi-Surface Calendar Dashboard
They say five monitors are enough for anyone. They were wrong. My latest desk addition: the "6th screen" - isn't just another display; it's a dedicated, ambient window into my entire life. I built nextUp Calendar, a self-hosted ecosystem designed to bridge the gap
My GitHub Projects
A quick reference to all my public GitHub repositories at github.com/merlinmb, covering ESP32 hardware projects, home automation tools, and various utilities. Repository Description Language esp32_cosensorCO₂ monitor using a Sensirion SCD4x sensor on ESP32, with a 256×64 OLED sparkline display, MQTT telemetry, and a built-in web server
Is my study environment toxic?
Building a Custom CO2 Monitor for my Home Lab My study is more than just a place where I take work calls; it’s a high-density engineering hub. Between the 3D printer humming in the corner, the frequent scent of solder smoke, and a 10U rack housing my full homelab,
More (Green) Glow on My Desk
Bringing the GitHub Contribution Graph to Life There is a certain rhythm to a developer’s life, often measured in the small green squares of a GitHub contribution graph. For years, that graph lived behind a browser tab; a digital ghost of my productivity. But as I’ve rediscovered my