I recently discovered #NiceGUI when I was looking for a tool to provide a reasonable interface to #X1Plus Expander's manufacturing tests. I am pretty impressed so far. Basically, the idea is that you can use it to teleport a GUI into a browser, synthesized inside of Python -- and, of course, modify it as the Python program runs. The thing that this really seems like a win for is quick hacks that have a simple amount of state that is easily represented; the reactive model of web programming is nice for larger things but is incredibly heavy weight. The result is that, in about a night and a half of hacking, I glued together a chunk of straight-line Python into a nice web test runner UI. For better or for worse, NiceGUI feels like the ease (and attendant footguns) of building a UI in Visual Basic 6.

This feels like a super powerful tool to have in my back pocket as someone who periodically has to slap together UIs to just poke and prod at state. The nice thing is that I had to invoke npm a total of zero times, and write zero lines of JavaScript or HTML. If you find yourself with similar constraints, you might consider keeping it in your back pocket, too.

Screenshots attached; UI code here: https://github.com/jwise/x1-expander/blob/main/utils/boardtest_fe.py -- now all I have to do is persist state to disk, and wire it to the actual test jig (in boardtest.py).

OK so back in November I gave a talk at @hackaday #Supercon8. They released a video of that a few weeks ago, but a handful of folks were asking for a version of the video that has a higher resolution version of my slides so that they can actually read them. Fair enough request! So I scraped Hackaday's video, and loaded it into DaVinci Resolve, and spent the past like four hours editing together a version of that video that actually has the slides in it front and center. Below, here's the authoritative version of my #Supercon8 talk on #X1Plus -- a little tour of reverse engineering (and social engineering, or at least, navigating cross-cultural boundaries effectively!) shenanigans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QypTgq7sHc

Okay Peeps… I'm bored. Should I jailbrake my #X1C and install #X1Plus? 🤔

I did end up buying that #BambuLab X1 Carbon a couple of weeks ago. It sure is an upgrade from my previous 3D printers. It has only been briefly online for firmware upgrades and downgrades, and will probably spend the rest of its life in LAN mode. I have the official rootable firmware on it now, and I plan to install #X1Plus once an order of SLC industrial microSD cards arrives.

Wondering if you should install X1Plus on your X1C with all the recent news? You should do it just for this hilarious easter egg: #3dprinting #x1plus