[flagged]
> 3rd party application to keep your computer from falling asleep
Type `caffeinate` into the terminal, your mac will stay awake until you ctrl+c it
TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale
21–30 of 156 posts
Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale
#22This is clever! and potentially useful too. Have you done any testing to determine how precise and accurate this is? I suspect their must be a lot of variance between laptops, since this isn’t an intended use case.
> I suspect their must be a lot of variance between laptops, since this isn’t an intended use case.
Yeah and so it is for ordinary strain gauges aka load cells. You can either use a 2 point calibration (aka no load followed by known load) or if you want more precision a 3 point calibration.
Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale
#23[flagged]
Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale
#24This reminds me of how, twenty years ago, I used the PowerBook’s hard drive vibration sensor to rig up a seismograph to measure construction noise: https://allthegooddomainsweretaken.justinmiller.io/2007/04/0...
Reminds me of the people who used their ThinkPad's vibration sensor to detect smacks on the machine, and rigged their X window manager to switch virtual desktops when smacked from the appropriate side, panning right when smacked on the left, and left when smacked on the right.
Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale
#25This reminds me of how, twenty years ago, I used the PowerBook’s hard drive vibration sensor to rig up a seismograph to measure construction noise: https://allthegooddomainsweretaken.justinmiller.io/2007/04/0...
I heard that IBM decided to move out of this building [1] because vibration due to the construction of the tower across the street kept destroying hard drives in their computing center.
Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale
#26This reminds me of how, twenty years ago, I used the PowerBook’s hard drive vibration sensor to rig up a seismograph to measure construction noise: https://allthegooddomainsweretaken.justinmiller.io/2007/04/0...
Reminds me of the people who used their ThinkPad's vibration sensor to detect smacks on the machine, and rigged their X window manager to switch virtual desktops when smacked from the appropriate side, panning right when smacked on the left, and left when smacked on the right.
this update breaks my case smacking workflow, please revert
Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale
#27I think this is neat, but only in a Rube Goldberg machine sort of way. The instructions are: 1. Open the scale 2. Rest your finger on the trackpad 3. While mainting finger contact, put your object on the trackpad 4. Try and put as little pressure on the trackpad while still maintaining contact. This is the weight of your object That is, the pressure sensors only work if it detects capacitance, so you need to be touch…
Can’t you get capacitance with a wet sponge? Like your typical dish cellulose sponge. You could make a small platform?
I remember drawing on my old iPad back in the day by shoving a wet q-tip into a BIC pen and using it as a stylus. I am sure something similar could be rigged here
Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale
#28[flagged]
> 3rd party application to keep your computer from falling asleep Type `caffeinate` into the terminal, your mac will stay awake until you ctrl+c it
It's a lot more fiddly than that.
I remember trying a bunch until finding some combination that worked, and looking around it sounds like it's still a common issue:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/475477/caffeinate-...
Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale
#29Apple would've made an app a long time ago but would get sued after someone put a tire on it.
Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale
#30I think this is neat, but only in a Rube Goldberg machine sort of way. The instructions are: 1. Open the scale 2. Rest your finger on the trackpad 3. While mainting finger contact, put your object on the trackpad 4. Try and put as little pressure on the trackpad while still maintaining contact. This is the weight of your object That is, the pressure sensors only work if it detects capacitance, so you need to be touch…
On iPhones at least a hack was to rest a metal spoon on the screen and weigh something in the spoon...