Hello frens, how are you? 

I have a lot to share, and I’m really excited, so I hope I can explain it clearly without yapping too much.

First, the baking victories (because why not start with sugar highs?): 

Last week I made a delicious cake with a chocolate frosting fail: it was runny, my kitchen was a disaster, but oh boy was it WORTH IT. Mistakes are just new opportunities to thrive, (although I’m nervously laughing remembering that mess :P). 

The “frosting” was used as a “sugary dip”. 

A few days later, I baked banana bread with… drum roll please homemade mascarpone cheese. I had no idea it was so easy, and it came out glorious. Neither cake nor bread lasted more than 3 days.

I also baked sandwich loaf.

Now, onto the real protagonist here muaahahahaha 🫙

I’m very happy to have made this one happen. While I was about to start something else, my husband found this project, Raspberrarium.  It is a terrarium that simulates light with a Raspberry Pi and two LEDs and I had to try it. It was just too cute I couldn’t resist. 

So I decided to build my own terrarium. I thought it would be easy to gather everything from my neighborhood, but once reality hit me, I started to hesitate. In the end, I bought a terrarium kit on Etsy, and it was gorgeous on its own. I could have left it like that, honestly.

But I kept going. Who hasn’t overthought something so much that they end up being the prisoner (and guard) of their own mind? Guilty as charged. So I pushed forward.

I also bought a Raspberry Pi kit, so a lot of what I needed (the Pi, LEDs, and cables) came with it.

I used a Raspberry Pi Pico W, and I had some experience tinkering in VS Code, but I had never used the Pico extension before. I tried the blink example first and felt very much like a wizard for a moment.

QA said OK

In the end, I didn’t use VS Code for this project, though. Thonny was much easier for it.

As usual, one of the biggest obstacles was time and effort. I misjudged both. But honestly, I don’t really feel betrayed by that, if I’m learning something new, I expect it to be challenging and at the same time slightly easier due to my enthusiasm. It’s part of the fun.

When I wasn’t sure what to do, I asked my husband for help or vibe-coded my way through it.

The original code was very direct, but it was made for a Raspberry Pi 3B. Since I was using a Pico W, I had to adapt everything to MicroPython, which I initially underestimated. I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal... a very smug move, apparently.

After a lot of patience and one more afternoon of troubleshooting, it all came together.

The hardest part was WiFi, my personal nemesis. We do not always get along, and it’s usually the thing that gives me the biggest headache in projects like this. But once that was sorted out, everything started working as it should.

My Raspberrarium is quite similar to the original, but I gave it three LEDs instead of two. I thought it would be a missed opportunity not to add one more light and create even more ambiance.

I also didn’t solder this time. I connected the cables directly to the Pico pins and the LEDs, because I plan to add something else later.

It simulates the sun and tracks dawn, noon, and sunset, and it also follows moon phases (3 hours pre-dawn) just like the original project.

So, what do you think? Would you build something like this?

I really enjoyed the whole process, and now I love looking at it glowing with its tiny lights.

Another QA approval

Monday morning 🌅 ⬆️ 

Monday sunset 🌅 ⬆️ 

Don’t worry, folks, I have a newish entry here, it’s about Beltane. I updated an old blog entry too just like my crow one (caw caw.)

I love how both came out, nature as you can see has a sweet spot in my heart. So I just had to refresh both entries. Let me know what you think. In the meantime, I’ll go dancing by the moonlight of my LEDs.

Flora

Take care, be safe and see you later, alligator. 🐊 

PS remember the Game BoyxRaspberry Pi?  I ended up adding a battery. There was no soldering for this in case I wanted to remove the shell.

But once I played and tried to save the game while using the battery… it didn’t save. I can use the Game Boy just with the battery and it works perfectly but now I’m afraid to not be able to save so nowI plug it in and then save and I haven’t had any issues like that. 

My husband also fixed front button holes too,  now it's flawless.