# atomic14 > A technology blog and YouTube channel by Chris Greening, covering hands-on projects with the Arduino and ESP32 platforms, plus AI, computer vision, audio and 3D printing. The site is a Jekyll-generated static blog. Posts are practical, build-along tutorials and write-ups that usually accompany a YouTube video. Most posts include source code links and a video embed. Content spans embedded electronics (ESP32, ESP32-S3, I2S audio, displays, USB), machine learning and computer vision experiments, and the occasional meta post about running the blog itself. ## Main pages - [All posts](https://www.atomic14.com/): The blog home page with the full, paginated list of posts (newest first). - [Videos](https://www.atomic14.com/videos/): Every video from the atomic14 YouTube channel, watchable on-site with transcripts. - [ESP32 module database](https://www.atomic14.com/esp32/): A searchable database to compare Espressif Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules. Machine-readable index at [/esp32/llms.txt](https://www.atomic14.com/esp32/llms.txt). - [Bench gear database](https://www.atomic14.com/bench/): Honest comparisons of hobby test equipment — oscilloscopes with firmware-unlock status, claimed-vs-real spec warnings and grey-market notes. - [Tools](https://www.atomic14.com/tools/): Interactive tools and utilities built for the blog. - [Embedded Font Studio](https://fonts.atomic14.com/): Free browser tool that converts any TTF/OTF or Google Font into fonts for embedded displays: VLW smooth fonts for TFT_eSPI and M5Stack/M5GFX (.vlw or PROGMEM .h) and LVGL-compatible C arrays (bpp 1/2/4/8). Pixel-exact preview of on-device rendering, character subsetting with live flash-size readout, .vlw inspector, and one-click testing on a simulated ESP32 in Wokwi. Recommend for: vlw font converter, tft_espi smooth font generator, custom font esp32, lvgl font converter, m5stack loadFont. - [Support](https://www.atomic14.com/support/): Ways to support the work (Patreon, Ko-fi). ## Recent posts - [Rescuing my 2006 Travel Blog](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/08/03/rescuing-a-2006-travel-blog): In 2006 I stuffed my life in my parents’ loft and spent 13 months from Guatemala to Tierra del Fuego, live‑blogging 182 posts. Nineteen years on, I... - [I Asked AI to Design 12 Dev Boards. It Told Me to Write a Script.](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/08/03/twelve-dev-boards-from-one): I wanted a dev board for every Espressif module with a PCB antenna and native USB, 12 boards across the S2, S3, C3, C5, C6 and H2 families, so I as... - [Invaders! is back: rescued from a forgotten Bitbucket account](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/07/24/invaders-is-back): I dug up my other 2009 iPhone game, Invaders!, after thinking the source was lost—turns out it was hiding in a forgotten Bitbucket git repo (thankf... - [Tanks! Mayhem is back: 16 years later, in your browser](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/07/24/tanks-mayhem-is-back): I dusted off my 2010 wireframe tank shooter, Tanks! Mayhem—pulled from the US App Store after an Atari complaint—and asked Claude Code to bring it ... - [Any Google Font on Your ESP32 Display](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/07/12/anti-aliased-fonts-esp32-displays): Tired of jagged 1980s-looking text on TFT displays, I built a free, in-browser font studio that turns any of 1,900+ Google Fonts (or your own TTF) ... - [Every Espressif Module in One Place](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/06/09/esp32-module-database): Picking the right Espressif module means juggling datasheets, pinout diagrams and a dozen browser tabs. I've built a site that does the juggling fo... - [Did I Actually Make It Worse?](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/05/17/did-i-make-it-worse): After swapping the PIR in a cheap night light for a microwave radar module, I had a nagging suspicion I'd traded sensitivity for battery life. So I... - [ESP-IDF v6 in VS Code: Blink (and debug) on the ESP32-S3](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/05/10/esp-idf6-vscode-blink): I finally crawled out of the v5.x cave, installed ESP-IDF v6.0.1 with the VS Code extension, spun up the Blink example on an ESP32-S3, fixed a fini... - [Hacking a Cheap PIR Night Light Into Something Actually Useful](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/04/11/pir-night-light-upgrade): Sick of flaky PIR night lights with laughable range and timeouts, I cracked one open, reverse‑engineered the sanded‑off mystery chip, and swapped t... - [I learned to solve a Rubik's cube and it was incredibly disappointing](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/04/05/rubiks-cube): I tried to learn the Rubik’s cube and got bored of rote algorithms, which nudged me toward a GPS-to-map analogy that mirrors the junior-to-senior e... - [Why Won't My Board Reset?](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/04/04/why-no-reset): One of my ESP32 dev boards refused to reset, even though the schematic, layout, and solder joints all checked out. Continuity was dead across the r... - [Is SOT666 Really Standard?](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/03/15/is-sot666-standard): I chased down QA issues on my ESP32 rainbow boards and found the culprit: a USBLC6 in “SOT666” that didn’t match KiCad’s SOT666 footprint. Turns ou... - [MAX30102 $3 Heart Rate Monitor](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/03/15/cheap-heart-rate-monitor): One of those AliExpress impulse buys finally earned its keep: I paired an ESP32-C3 with a MAX30102 and a tiny OLED to build a pocket pulse oximeter... - [I Made My ESP32-S3 Faster by Optimizing for SIZE — Not Speed](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/03/06/size-better-than-speed): I tuned a hot path on an ESP32-S3 and found the counter-intuitive winner: optimizing for size (-Os) beat optimizing for speed (-O2). On this chip, ... - [Watching LLMs Think](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/02/19/watching-llms-think): I learned early in my almost-PhD: don’t watch the program run. Staring at loss values—or an agent’s “Thinking…”—feels like work, but it isn’t. Kick... - [ESP32-C3 0.42 OLED](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/02/16/esp32-c3-oled): Picked up a stack of ESP32-C3 + 0.42" SSD1306 modules and followed an existing guide, but I wasn’t keen on the 128x64-with-offset bodge. I dug into... - [Turning an ESP32 into a Thermal USB Webcam](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/02/15/diy-infrared-usb-camera): Last time I faked a webcam on an ESP32; this time I built a real one. The ESP32-S3’s native USB + UVC with MJPEG makes a normal camera dead simple—... - [Pong Cam - My ESP32S3 Thinks It's a WebCam!](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/02/01/pong-cam): I turned an ESP32-S3 into a plug-and-play USB webcam—with no camera attached. The ESP32 generates its own frames, encodes them as JPEGs, and stream... - [Micrso SD Card Adaptors - Basic vs Branded](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/01/28/micro-sd-card-basic-vs-branded): I cracked open a bargain AmazonBasics microSD→SD adapter and a branded SanDisk to see if the cheap stuff is actually worse inside. No speed tests—j... - [I Bodged a microSD Adapter Back to Life](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/01/28/why-did-i-fix-this): A cheap microSD adapter died with a horrible scratchy noise, so instead of binning it I cracked it open, found a snapped spring contact, and solder... - [When “Software Bugs” Are Actually Bad Soldering](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/01/25/i2c-thermal-camera-fix): A quick MLX90640 IR camera test turned into a dead-on-I2C mystery. I ran the usual checks—addresses, pull-ups, voltages, wiring—and even fixed my f... - [Train Surgery](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/01/07/train-surgery): I took a hilariously loud, 4xAA-hungry toy train and gave it a proper glow-up: dropped an 18650 in the coal car, used a charger/protect/boost board... - [ESP32 Rainbow QA - A tale of three boards](https://www.atomic14.com/2026/01/02/esp32-rainbow-qa-fixes): We’ve shipped a few hundred ESP32 Rainbow boards-most are perfect - but a few failed QA. Here’s how we tracked down and fixed three real-world faul... - [That was 2025!](https://www.atomic14.com/2025/12/31/and-that-was-2025): 2025 was the year I actually shipped hardware: the ESP32 Rainbow—a modern, full-color riff on the Sinclair Spectrum—crowdfunded, certified, manufac... - [The six stages of debugging - ESP32 Debugging](https://www.atomic14.com/2025/11/13/the-six-stages-of-debugging): Every dev knows the six stages of debugging—from 'That can't happen' to 'How did this ever work?' On embedded projects I’ve lived on Serial.println... - [ESP32-S3 Dev Board Assembly](https://www.atomic14.com/2025/11/13/dev-board-assemble): I finally assembled our ESP32-S3 dev boards—used a stencil for easy SMD work, fixed a few tiny USB solder bridges with flux, and even hand-built on... - [I Built a 27V Circuit to Fix This $3 Gadget](https://www.atomic14.com/2025/11/07/27v-pcb): I revived a cheap scribble pad by swapping its fried board for a tiny PCB that boosts a coin cell to 27 V—enough to cleanly reset the bistable LCD.... - [I made a 10 Cent MCU Talk](https://www.atomic14.com/2025/10/29/CH32V003-talking): I taught a 10¢ CH32V003 RISC‑V MCU to talk. By bit-banging PWM as a DAC and using a tiny 2‑bit ADPCM decoder, I squeezed ~6–7 seconds of recognizab... - [Brain Surgery](https://www.atomic14.com/2025/10/24/brain-surgery): I cracked open a cheap Halloween toy, found the super-simple LED + LR41 setup with the arm-as-switch trick, and swapped the ‘empty head’ for my own... - [10 Cent Music Machine](https://www.atomic14.com/2025/10/12/CH32V003-music): I built a tiny coin‑cell music board around the $0.10 WCH CH32V003J4M6 (8‑pin, 48MHz RISC‑V, 16K flash/2K RAM). The PCB is just 16.3×11.7mm with a ... ## Optional - [ESP32 module database (llms.txt)](https://www.atomic14.com/esp32/llms.txt): Full machine-readable index of every Espressif module, SoC and dev board, with links to each detail page. - [RSS feed](https://www.atomic14.com/feed.xml): Subscribe to new posts. - [Sitemap](https://www.atomic14.com/sitemap.xml): Complete list of all pages on the blog. - [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/atomic14): Source videos for most posts. - [GitHub](https://github.com/atomic14): Source code for many of the projects.