Welcome to Arcana Labs
The best puzzles are those not intended to be solved.
-- Unknown
Providing Software, Hardware, and other Amusements, Arcana Labs is a small, independant technology exploration and development hobby shop operating out of Atlantic Canada. My past work has focused on security and disaster recovery, with present work focusing on creating toys, games, books and puzzles, such as through my flagship project, PETI. I’ve organized my projects into a few categories: hardware, software, writing projects, how-to guides, and a blog.
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Latest Updates
PETI gets PWM Audio
2025-02-12 00:00:00 -0600
For the last few weeks, particular during our scheduled lab livestreams, I’ve been working on the 0.5.0 firmware update for PETI, our house-developed virtual pet. While the main focus of the update is going to be the Bathing and Bathroom gameplay features, the update also includes some window-dressing changes and an important change to support the Revision D development kit, which should be coming out sometime this spring. This last bit is the piece we’ve just implemented: the use of Pulse-Width Modulation to drive an audio signal on the pet.
Reclaiming Techno-Optimism
2025-01-22 00:00:00 -0600
It’s sort of the vogue right now to be a techno-pessimist, and to be honest, the position has appeal. It’s hard to look at what is currently being lauded as grand technical achievement, now that we’re nearly done the first quarter of the 21st Century. It’s even harder to satirize the idea - I came up with the phrase “AI-driven air freshener for gamers’ basements” and then found out that GameScent Exists. So much of the technology of the contemporary era comes to us like Jurrassic Park - we concern ourselves with Cans rather than Shoulds. We get everything from the dangerous (radiology-interpreting “AI” solutions that misidentify cancers) to the pointless (AI-driven lapel pin that gives no functionality the smart device you already carry doesn’t) to the dangerously pointless (Space-X catching its booster stage with the launchpad rather than having a seperate landing pad). But I don’t think it would come as a galloping shock to anyone to say that I - or most engineers I know - came into the tech industry motivated by techno-optimism. By and large, the industry is full people who think they’re helping. So how did it get this way, and how can we reverse the trend?
Resuming PETI Work After Some State Loss
2025-01-13 00:00:00 -0600
As is the running tradition around here, I can open this post by hooping my thumbs through my suspenders and saying “Boy, it sure has been a while since we had a PETI update, huh?”. For a project that’s been running for multiple years now, the progress certainly seems slow when you view it on the aggregate timeline. That’s why I have good news: the next firmware update is coming soon!
Model 2, Part 5 - Building Back Better
2024-07-15 00:00:00 -0500
While I’ve been tinkering with the idea of design changes or rework for the Model II more or less since I “completed” it last year, I didn’t really feel strongly compelled to pursue it. The beat-up Dell OEM keyboard I’d been using as a daily driver worked more reliably, wasn’t a “bad” keyboard, per se, and wasn’t sorely missed from the computer where it was supposed to be - the salvageware multimedia/light-gaming PC hooked up to the TV in the livingroom. It wasn’t until my birthday began to approach in June, and I realized that nobody, including myself, had really planned anything, that I felt the need to deal with it.
Releasing Version 0.4.0: The Sleep and Growth Update
2024-06-02 00:00:00 -0500
Only half a year or so behind the original projected release date, I am absolutely thrilled to announce the release of version 0.4.0 of the firmware for PETI, which has been tested and validated against the very same Revision B/C development kits that sold out back in February. 0.4.0 is being billed as The Sleep and Growth update because of the features it comes packing, and also includes all the fixes needed for a few bugs introduced in 0.3.0, which was released last fall.