https://www.thario.net/tags/hardware.htmlRecent content in Hardware on Software Engineer and HobbitHugo -- 0.167.0en-usSat, 03 Oct 2026 14:43:11 -0700https://www.thario.net/post/a-lighthouse-in-reverse.htmlFri, 02 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0700https://www.thario.net/post/a-lighthouse-in-reverse.html<p>A lighthouse turns its beam so that ships can find it. The lidar on my workbench turns its beam so that it can find everything else. Ten times a second, the LD19 sweeps an infrared laser around the room and times each reflection, a method its manual calls direct time-of-flight (<a href="https://github.com/LudovaTech/lidar-LD19-tutorial/blob/main/documents/LD19_Development_Manual_v2.5.pdf">LD19 Manual, 2022</a>). Paired with a Raspberry Pi 5 and a PiSugar battery board, it becomes a portable device that knows the shape of any room I set it in.</p> <p>My partner on the build was my AI assistant, the agent that runs on my Mac in a runtime called Hermes. I brought the parts, four wires, and a goal. The agent brought a terminal on the Pi and a habit of checking its own work. Together we went from a bare board to a working web application in a day. What came after, a month of building, taught me how a person and an agent can experiment well together.</p>