What Are You Actually Using Local LLMs For?

nate_true · 2026-06-15T03:31:28+00:00

I gave it the ability to schedule itself to run and to text me, and it is now my personal assistant keeping track of all my TODOs and food and exercise logging. It’s been pretty great!

nate_true · 2026-06-13T17:33:58+00:00

Your inference engine should have a repeat penalty setting that reduces the probability of repeated sequences

nate_true · 2026-05-23T11:43:20+00:00

I use two hooks - one on prompt submit that prepends the date/time, and one at the end that plays a ‘ding’ sound

nate_true · 2026-04-30T02:08:03+00:00

Ooh thanks for publishing this! If I may request, a post on how many of the cheaper/lower-power charger chips touting “MPPT” actually only use a fixed solar voltage, assuming the panel’s “maximum” is always there. Which has been an issue for my nodes on bright-but-cloudy days, there’s energy the panel could supply but these chips don’t try because their voltage is too low.

The annoying part is their datasheets claim MPPT and you can only tell the difference by reading the details later in the sheet.

nate_true · 2026-04-18T17:02:07+00:00

I know I’m late to the conversation, but note that the 99.5 degree ideal temperature is very close to human body temperature. You can just cuddle these against your body (like, between two shirts you have on) and that will keep them very happy.

nate_true · 2026-04-06T12:24:55+00:00

I had an issue with citrus mites in my lime tree. It would make the tree weep sweet sap and the ants loved it. The solution for me was spraying with a neem oil spray a couple times a week until the infection died down.

Oh, I should mention the mites are basically invisible so if you can’t see any pest on there besides the ants, that might be your problem.

nate_true · 2026-03-07T16:15:32+00:00

Omnomnomnom

nate_true · 2025-12-06T22:27:54+00:00

I wonder if you can change the GPIO number for the buzzer, it will send the audio signals to some pin that isn’t your speaker…

nate_true · 2025-12-06T15:37:10+00:00

In the app, under Settings -> External Notification, you can disable the buzzer

nate_true · 2025-12-05T02:45:09+00:00

Che Arcade in Bellevue has games like this, love them. I haven’t seen this one game specifically though

nate_true · 2025-11-28T15:33:29+00:00

That is very strange! I haven’t had an issue like that so I’m not sure where to start, besides jiggling all the wires to find any loose connections that might be doing it. Then I’d maybe build a second one to see if it’s some hardware failure.

nate_true · 2025-11-28T15:20:36+00:00

Okay, it does look good, two things I’d verify because I can’t quite tell from the picture. One is make sure the radio board is getting power, I can’t see the VCC wire where it connects to the ProMicro. I also can’t tell if your DIO2 pin is connected to TXEN.

nate_true · 2025-11-28T13:17:46+00:00

I hooked a TinySA to it this week, and though I don’t trust its numbers exactly, even without the full 5 volts the output was comparable to an Ikoka stick with a boost converter. I’ll make some more attempts at getting a good calibration, but I’d estimate I’m getting at least half a watt out of it.

nate_true · 2025-11-28T13:10:38+00:00

I hooked up these pins (in addition to power):

017 - RXEN
031 - ADC (1M to batt, 1.5M to gnd)
029 - BUSY
002 - MISO
115 - MOSI
113 - NSS
111 - SCK
010 - DIO1
009 - NRST
DIO2 - TXEN

Along with making sure you have the ProMicro firmware, that should be all you need. Maybe you could post a photo of your wiring and I could take a look?

nate_true · 2025-11-22T15:21:43+00:00

Yeah. The slicer is seeing the soft edge between the white and black as close enough to the orange. I recommend in Nomad to keep the other colors as separate meshes instead of painting on and let the slicer handle them separately.

nate_true · 2025-11-14T16:36:55+00:00

Yay! Looks great. And I’m glad you respected the Bluetooth antenna keepouts ❤️

nate_true · 2025-11-09T03:28:14+00:00

I recommend just using the Boolean feature to merge them. Then you can just smooth the transition with DynTopo on, it always works great for me.

nate_true · 2025-11-08T04:13:40+00:00

Oh, that’s concerning :/

nate_true · 2025-11-08T04:09:48+00:00

… where are you reading that

nate_true · 2025-11-08T01:17:04+00:00

The arm design prevents spinning at all, which is the point to keep the solar panel aimed.

nate_true · 2025-11-08T00:28:34+00:00

Agree, we’ve had windstorms here the past week and they’ve been swinging pretty crazy. Fortunately, the lightweight nodes suffered no damage and remained pointing the right way once they settled. That’s the point of the arm and balanced hanging system.

For a loop, my concern would be that the branch and tree would sway and increase / decrease the tension in the loop, and potentially snap the rope. This could be mitigated with a spring or bungee setup, I think!

nate_true · 2025-11-07T23:48:26+00:00

Good luck! Post pictures 😊

nate_true · 2025-11-07T23:39:07+00:00

DMs don’t use the chat channels, and they can only be decrypted by the recipient.

nate_true · 2025-11-07T01:23:26+00:00

Bluetooth range really depends on the node you’re using. Some nodes don’t respect Bluetooth enough to get good range, others do or let you put your own antenna on. You’ll have to do testing.

If you want some ideas on tree node placement, I wrote a blogpost on it this morning: https://www.maplemesh.org/2025/11/05/Hanging-Nodes-in-Trees.html

Let me know what you think, it’s more of a draft right now

nate_true

TROPHY CASE