Let's rock like it was 1994 and make a blog!

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Disclaimer: I uploaded this to the blog in January 2025 but I have set the publish date to 21/08/2020 which is when I finished building the first version of the Pi Arcade. This post was taken from my Synology Note Station page pretty much word for word but there are also updates after the 21/08/2020 date, and I imagine in the future there will be new updates as well.
Read on for context and the build process!

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Today I had my summer moment of Zen:

This year I ventured into Asturias to a really cool cove that I discovered last summer in Tapia de Casariego:

and as I had hoped, it provided and amazing tide differential:

Once again I targeted a big tide moment, this year was not a double whammy like last year but it was still a big tide:

In the end I was capturing for 6 hours 10 minutes and 2 seconds:

Which gave a lot of time to:

• spoke with some pilgrims
• picked up trash on the beach
• had a cool beverage
• had lunch
• started reading Rise and fall of D.O.D.O.
• watched a fisherman
• watched some people kyaak

Here is the rig used:

And then combined all the pictures into a video: mencoder -idx -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mjpeg -o 2020_zen.avi -mf fps=24 mf://@list.txt

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).

For the last 3 years I have been celebrating what has now become an annual summer ritual: finding some cool spot, timing my arrival with the changing of a tide, setting up my camera rig, and spending 5 - 6 hours contemplating a bit of everything while my camera takes a picture of the changing tide every 5 seconds. This ritual I have baptized as my summer moment of zen (all credit of the “Moment of Zen” concept goes to Jon Stewart and the Daily Show).

This summer I coincided my excursion with a perigean spring tide.

Oh what is a perigean spring tide you ask? It is when a spring tide (nothing to do with the season but when there is a FULL moon or NEW moon) coincides with the moon closest to the earth in its orbit (perigee). Let me draw you a picture:

On august 3rd the moon was only 603,305 KM from the earth and coincided with an almost new moon causing a gravitational double whammy, bulging tides to higher and lower levels than are normally witnessed (a tidal differential of nearly 4 meters):

So I got up early and positioned myself on a nice perch overlooking the bay of the Eo River:

and setup my camera rig (camera, solar panel, Mexican blanket, and a thermos of coffee):

and hung out from 07:45 and until 12:45:

Here is how it was when I arrived and when I left:

And then i combined all the pictures into a timelapse video:

Enjoy!

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).

The second ever summer moment of zen (or maybe 3rd, but was not able to find any record or video from 2017!)

Implementation details

• Location: Peña Furada
• Date: 16/08/2018
• Duration: 15:58 - 20:45
• Camera: GoPro HERO3+ Black Edition
• Frequency: picture every 10 seconds
• Number of pictures taken: 1,707
• Photo Resolution: 6.75 MP Wide

Pictures

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).

The first ever summer moment of zen!

Nothing was saved on this first outing (no pictures of rig, mexican blanket, tide/moon, nor how video was created!)

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).

Disclaimer: I uploaded this to the blog in August of 2023 but I have set the publish date to 01/07/2013 when I finished the second prototype.

In early June 2013 I saw a guide on Adafruit about using a Raspberry Pi as a Mame game console. What I really loved was the idea of using the GPIO (general-purpose input/output) pins to directly connect the joystick and buttons. Not long after I was reviewing material in a warehouse to ensure that none of our networking equipment was stored there because the next day a chatarrero (scrap collector in spanish) was coming to take everything away. I did not find any of our networking equipment, but I did see an old Sony Trinitron security monitor that I immediately thought would make a great game console due to it’s form factor like the old Vectrex from my youth. So read on for the implementation and evolution of the project!

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