Author Archives: Siôn le Roux (sinisterstuf)

About Siôn le Roux (sinisterstuf)

I like freedom, GNU/Linux, programming and music. I work as a software developer and I play guitar for fun when I'm not out enjoying extreme sports.

How to fix permission denied flashing Prusa Firmware on Arch Linux

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I ran into a permissions issue flashing an update to my 3D printer “Prusa MK3S+” on Arch Linux and the fix was easier than expected.

For background, this is my first time doing this so I wasn’t too sure about the procedure, the printer beeped before print to let me know there’s newer firmware available and I should upgrade. I checked online and found these instructions on the Prusa help site for how to flash firmware. It seems easy enough:

  1. Connect the printer to the laptop with USB
  2. Go to Menu → Configuration → Flash printer firmware
  3. choose the .hex file you downloaded from the Prusa website

that’s it!

However, when I clicked the “Flash!” button I got the following error message from the flasher’s log output:

avrdude-slic3r: ser_open(): can't open device "/dev/ttyACM0": Permission denied
avrdude-slic3r: Could not open port: /dev/ttyACM0

Continue reading →

Ebiten vs PyGame

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The following is a copy of a response I wrote to a university student asking in the Ebiten Discord server whether they should use Ebiten or PyGame for their first time making a game:

Having used both I can say that PyGame provides much more out of the box but that this is not just a pro but also a con. For example in pygame there is a concept of “sprite” that has movement and you can tell it move left, move right etc. In Ebiten it surprised me to find that there is no such thing but it’s nice for two reasons: Continue reading →

Launched a new game: Cr1ckt

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Direct link to game: https://sinisterstuf.itch.io/cr1ckt

On the 1st of December Tristan, Rowan and I released the first version of Cr1ckt, a tricky platformer where you need to jump to avoid water and get to the fruit. It’s our submission for the GitHub Game Off 2021 game jam, an annual challenge to make a game based on a secret theme within the month of November. The theme this year is “BUG” so apart from playing as a cricket it also has some fun, intentional bugs.

It’s got downloads for major desktop platforms Windows, Linux & Mac, as well as Android. They’re quite small so you should be able to download and play quite fast. You can get the downloads or play online in your browser on the game page at sinisterstuf.itch.io/cr1ckt.

As hobbyist game developers in our free time this is one of the Continue reading →

3D-printed caps for protruding bolts

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When I attached our children’s swing to the ground there was still a significant piece of sharp-ish threaded metal sticking out above the bolt head and I was worried about them falling on it. Grinding the end off might still leave some sharp parts, so I thought it safer to print plastic covers for them.

Sharp bolt end protruding from the ground
Screenshot of bolt cap design in OpenSCAD
Screenshot of gcode printing plan
Photo of 3D printed bolt cap

I designed the caps with OpenSCAD, using the ScrewsMetric library for the bolt-shaped inset.

You can see the source code for Continue reading →