This is the first volume of my Vectr preset breakdown. In these posts I will be breaking down all elements of my presets to better explain the intricacies of Vectr.

My most recent and likely last firmware for the OSMs is Vectr and has been rewritten for the second iteration almost entirely from the ground up. This post will attempt to explain the architecture of Vectr and the reasons behind that architecture.

It’s here! Just in time to facemelt Santa, Primer 0.8 and Tekton are here to illuminate your Christmas. If you’re too impatient to read the changes, you can go straight to the Primer homepage and try out all the new goodies, but I’m going to ramble on a bit about the update anyway.

Blinking patterns are an interesting area for me as both an artist and an engineer. The artist wants to be able to express every blink pattern I can imagine while the engineer wants these expressions to be as generic and malleable as possible. These are less in oposition to each other as they are different sides to the same coin. If I can come up with something incredibly generalized, new ideas don’t need new code, they just need tweaking some numbers. And if I can test new patterns just by tweaking numbers, then it’s easier to come across novel patterns.

Due to an issue with my sleep code, Primer was draining approximately 0.28mA of power when sleeping. Thanks to help from Jonathan Tz and the great Ramiro Montes De Oca, it now drains about 0.27uA. That’s 1000x less.

I’m headed on vacation for the holiday and won’t be back until the end of November. Since I have no Black Friday deal to offer, I’m offering an 11-11 special as a going away present.

After the Halloween Edition, Hex is shelved for the time being. While Hex and Primer share much in common, the most tedious code shared between them does not. This is mostly the button-handling code, but it’s the largest block and maintaining features in both firmwares increases the chance of bugs being introduced so until Primer is near complete, Hex will remain stagnant.

Both Hex and Primer have been updated with a few new features for Halloween.

Note Due to a bug in v0.1, I’ve updated Impact to v0.1.1 to fix the behavior when the button is held.

Hex and Primer are glover-focused firmwares for the Open Source Microlight (OSM). The goal of these firmwares is to maximize customization with an easy to use interface allowing glovers to truly leverage their creativity. The two share their palettes, strobe animations, the ability to select between and customize 4 bundles (mode playlists), conjuration mode, and the color and prime configuration control methods. They differ in their core concept that they try to perfect.