First a few quicks asides.
FIRST ASIDE
I failed to receive an email notification indicating that you had responded to me in this forum. However, because I made a note to check for a response “ manually” I saw that you had responded to me. Perhaps I forgot to check the box to receive replies. It seems to me that it should be checked by default.
SECOND ASIDE
Also, because I was unable to copy the text of your response with my mouse (I tried yet failed, both in Firefox and Google Chrome on Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon), in order to copy the text of the response which you sent me (so that I could paste it below), I right clicked with my mouse to choose to view page source, found the HTML code, copied it into ChatGPT and, finally, had ChatGPT parse it for me.
THIRD ASIDE
2003 just called: they want their ugly forum UI/UX back. Why not use a static site generator such as Astro or 11ty which you can host for free on, for example, Cloudflare Pages or Netlify?
FOURTH ASIDE
I'm not sure which forum software you are currently using for this project but, if Discourse (forum software) seems like too much of a hassle to install and/or requires too many resources, then, if you care about UI/UX, Flarum (forum software) seems like it might be a better choice than the forum software which you're currently using.
At least to my eyes https://forum.chipchop.io/ proudly proclaims with a harsh shrill scream (yes I am invoking artistic license to mix my metaphors): wonky, indy software project you (Mr. potential user) shouldn’t waste your time with, because the dev behind it will soon give up on. In other words, I am concerned that your potential users might be put off by this site’s ridiculous UI/UX dumpster fire.
End of asides.
>> I've got annoyed reading the replies, no sense of adventure left in people and no one to give you proper advice
Thanks for your support.
It might sound harsh, but, well, it seems to me that a plethora of Redditors are losers. Instead of going to a bar (sorry mate, that’s American for “pub”) to drown their sorrow in alcohol, they enjoy pontificating about subjects beyond their ken.
They also typically tend to enjoy bathing in adulation showered on them by a tyrannical majority of their fellow losers. (One of your former prime ministers was famously quoted as having opined, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.")
>> so I thought to invite you here (didn't fancy posting what I thought of some answers there and getting banned...again :-)
Thank you.
By now I guess I’ve created at least a score of accounts on Reddit over the years. I consider Reddit accounts I create to be disposable. I’ve been downvoted to oblivion, and banned so many times I’ve actually lost count. Pro Tip: create at least one Reddit account well in advance of using it because many subreddit prohibit new accounts from posting.
>> You clearly know the risks to yourself and if you kill a few potatoes in the process so what, it's all in the name of progress and I have a feeling it's more to do with your own health & safety operating that damn digger.
Like Elon Musk, the ignorant losers/trolls on Reddit who gleefully, yet incorrectly criticized my idea, were typically bullied in school. As a result of being traumatized by bullies they typically became obsessed with security at a young age.
In engineering projects, they typically manifest this obsession (what I characterize as mental disorder) by proffering inane suggestions which they strenuously defend as being “necessary and proper.” In other words, when many engineers engage in purportedly serious engineering discussions, they tend to actually engage in a sort of cathartic psychological “brain dump” as they seek to satisfy their need to discuss and placate a fear which at least consumes them, and sometimes torments them.
At the end of the day, when I am being charitable, I normally consider them to be incompetent liars who wantonly violate the scientific method in order to scratch their festering mental itch. But normally I tend to characterize them as losers or trolls.
>> Anywho, I think most of what you have mentioned is doable,
Unsurprisingly, I agree.
>> don't know if it would be industrial strength (although no reason why not if it's tested properly)
Initially, I want a solution that is "cheap and pretty good," not "expensive and industrial strength." Of course, later, if it failed to meet my needs, I could iterate to improve it.
Oh. Right. Sorry. I almost forgot: you are an engineer. Let me try to explain this to you in terms which might warm the cockles of your heart: the coefficient of static friction is normally far higher than that of dynamic friction. Ok. Yuk! That’s enough scientific jargon for me. In plain English, if you “get the ball rolling” it’s easier to keep it rolling so that you can, for example, surmount, say, a hill.
>> but at least before you piss money in the wind you can have a proof of concept quickly.
Most of the losers on Reddit who unfairly criticized my ideas seemed to presume I was going to buy a mini excavator tomorrow, and shortly thereafter set it loose to, I dunno, roam the streets of Manhattan to wreak havoc on throngs of innocent and unsuspecting New Yorkers.
Some of these Redditors might have had nightmares in which they saw women and children fleeing in horror during the opening scenes of a horror movie called, “Revenge of the Mini Excavator: AI is coming for you!” or “Why didn’t we Stop this Madman when we had the Chance!”
I have zero intention whatsoever of purchasing a mini excavator until I have first played around with a bunch of stepper motors that, say, push around some wooden blocks sitting on my desk.
>> The biggest enemy with this concept is going to be latency,
I don’t mean to seem snarky, yet I adamantly disagree.
Of course latency will be a fundamental limitation, yet it’s not even remotely close to what I would characterize as an “enemy.” I am convinced that for excavating and moving earth (as I have imagined) latency will almost certainly be little more than a minor annoyance to which I suppose I will soon become inured.
After all, I’m not trying to cut diamonds or perform brain surgery; rather, I’m trying to move earth. Yeah. Sure. For things like laser leveling of agricultural fields, precision is crucial. But generally-speaking, such as in my use case in particular, precision isn’t important. In other words, for this project, what an engineer might deem “pretty good”, I would probably deem “excellent” or even “superb.”
See, I don’t need much precision for this project. When considering inherent limitations (which, in this case, is latency) engineers tend to reflexively implicitly fret that the limitation they have identified will result in a "sub-optimal solution." When considered theoretically, almost all solutions are sub-optimal. I don’t think in those terms. Like most users, I want a solution that meets my needs.
Engineers tend to confuse benefits and features. Fundamentally, sensible users normally don’t focus on features; rather, sensible users normally focus on benefits. Engineers, by contrast, tend to focus on features instead of benefits.
In case you didn’t glean what I was trying to say, I was implicitly excoriating engineering professors and engineering curriculum designers. Let me be explicit: generally, I despise them for improperly educating and then unleashing a bunch of incompetent engineers into the world.
Even without your delightful-looking software, for a clever engineer (even one without any IoT experience) I suppose the project I want to create would be very easy to “get up and running” because, essentially, this project will allow a user to control a group of stepper motors via the web. To my non-engineering mind, that part seems only slightly more complex than a “Hello world” type of project.
I guess, as is the case with many IoT projects, a handful of edge cases might be vexing. I guess that, for example, redundant ESP32 deadman switches (which would work locally, that is, which would not need to be connected to the internet) would immediately halt one or more stepper motors when the mini excavator encounters a particular edge case.
After one or more stepper motors had been halted, the remote operator of the mini excavator (yours truly) would be able to manually solve the problem. In my mind I might think something like, “Oh yeah. Every time this happens, the mini excavator automatically shuts down. Then I need to do X, Y, and Z a couple/few times to get it working properly again.”
>> but as they say, there are many ways to peel a potato and I've designed ChipChop to have many peelers ;-) Trust me, what you want to achieve is much simpler than some stuff I work on.
I believe you.
>> I know you hate engineering but if you don't mind getting your hands a wee bit dirty for an hour you will be able to see how multi-ESP communication can work.
Actually, I do mind getting my hands dirty. Nonetheless, I frequently get my hands dirty because I need to. In this case, I am willing to get my hands dirty.
The following is a bit of a rant/wall-of-text but I want to be sure you understand my perspective.
As boastful as it might seem, I am a non-engineer who is a much better technical architect than most so-called engineers. I truly wish that weren’t the case because, yeah, I really do loathe engineering. I don’t possess the proper temperament.
See, I like to stop being “the main guy” after I create the functional architecture (The Functional Requirements). Yet I have invariably become the technical architect because most so-called engineers are little more than technicians. Furthermore, in my exp
