DIY Pedal board timeline

We finally launched the platform! Surprisingly, not by working on the actual product, but by going down the wonderfully inefficient rabbit hole of finding a blog system. We spent way too much time searching for something that was: Easy to use, Themeable without hacking CSS for hours, Not allergic to Markdown and didn’t look like it was built in 2003 In the end, the most promising setup turned out to be a combination of Docker, HUGO (https://gohugo.io/ don’t be scared, you can use HUGO without account), the HUGO Stack theme (https://github.com/CaiJimmy/hugo-theme-stack) — and that’s what you’re reading right now. Naturally, when you get familiar with such a system you start to develop your own templates. You can see progress (or not) on github (https://github.com/jens-goes-mad/diy-pedalboard/tree/master/documentation-web-hugo-stack-theme)

While adding more and more content, the HUGO sidebar gets hard to use. With a little help of ChatGPT we introduced an accordion…partial / component / JavaScript-wizardry. We scratched OO, created a serial protocol to communicate with our LCD, and JavaFX Simulator without any code changes on the user side. Furthermore cursor blinking was added to JavaFX LCD class, including scratching RS232 from 1960. And even UML is not forgotten. And last but not least ChatGPT created a fully running terminal app, so we can get rid of screen. I added lots of references to the overview page as quick-start navigation. Furthermore tools entered the scene to discuss visuals like GIMP and other applications, and a first look at 3D modeling with OpenSCAD.

Now it’s getting tough. We’re stepping back into 1991, into the world of cooperative and preemptive multitasking — concepts introduced (and fought over) with Windows 3.11 and OS/2. We are talking about ancient history to drive a simple LCD display! Even something as simple as refreshing an LCD over I²C can teach us important lessons about timing, blocking calls, and pretend working in parallel. For this we start a refactoring from spaghetti to OOA, OOD, OOP related concepts and introduce composition

I’ve added a new section as an introduction to Arduino and 8-bit processors in general (Arduino). We’ll take a closer look at instructions and cycles (AVR) and then really torture ourselves with disassembly, HEX opcodes, and low-level instruction analysis (Instructions and Cycles). Extended HUGO to show tags sorted (thanks to ChatGPT), added navigation links, some images, aso. Last but not least, I²C got some attention

Added a new Section as introduction to electronics in general, and how to burn fingers, while soldering. This is an introduction to upcoming topics like MIDI and Button Matrix devices (design - electronics).

Whatever I do lately, I can’t shake the feeling: I’ve done this before. Working with I²C LCD displays in 2025 feels eerily similar to 1986, when we hacked together our first games in assembly, squinting at green or orange screens and praying our 80×40 character displays would hold steady through the crash and programs were saved on cassette correctly. Or back in 1991, when I tried to squeeze every last cycle out of my Casio FX-602P — my first programmable calculator. 512 precious program steps. Solving a² + b = x equations on the fly, with hardware over-clocking. A time when no teacher had any idea what this little pocket genius could actually do (prototyping - thinking out of the box)

ChatGPT is such a powerful tool, so there is a section particular for ChatGPT demonstrating usage and results. But you can also spend time in useless comment sections and non-working iframes from cusdis (https://cusdis.com)