Thanks. I found it. It’s the television set to the right of the image inclusion widget.
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I don’t have my panel/PCB set yet, but I noticed on the project page it says “The output is very low. this was so it could all be mixed together happily and passively.” This is good news if you’re a kilodrone, but I’m only planning on a one-panel decadrone. @lookmumnocomputer, any tips for boosting the level of a single panel to synth levels? I know the schematic mentions a level booster module coming out, but could some values around that LM386 perhaps be swapped out to make it synth level on its own?
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go yotta or go home…
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The LM386 is connected up with 10 µF and no resistor between pins 1 and 8, which is the maximum gain configuration (see datasheet). It’s not intended to drive high impedance which I’m guessing accounts for the low output. Maybe you could pick off the LM386 input (pin 3) and send that to an op amp output stage.
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One good estimate is that there are in the region of 10⁵⁰ atoms on earth. How many atoms in a kilodrone? How many kilodrones would we have if every available atom were included in a kilodrone?
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What’s a module made up of, element-wise? Quite a lot of them from hydrogen (in for instance the FR4 epoxy) right up through lead (if present in the solder). Some of those elements are rarer on/in the earth than others, so if we converted the planet into modules there’d be some left over once we ran out of the rarest necessary element. Let’s guess the average atomic weight in a module is 50 and that 75% of the planet can be used. (That’s optimistic, considering most of the planet is silicon, which is of limited use in making modules, but let’s start with that.)
I don’t have a dekadrone but a dac/ino weighs about 50 g, so scaling up, about 450 g for an assembled dekadrone PCB. For the panel, calculating from the density of FR4, about 200 g, total about 650. With average atomic weight 50 there are 1.2x1022 atoms in a gram, so total of 7.8x1024 atoms in a dekadrone module.
75% of Earth would be 7.5x1049 atoms, conveniently within rounding errors of 1025 times what’s in a dekadrone. That’s 1026 Super Simple Oscillators, or 100 yottadrones.
Of course this could be way off; once you discard the excess silicon perhaps only 0.75% of the planet could be used in which case you’d have only 1 yottadrone, for instance. Or maybe even less, but then by the time you’re done you’d probably have access to extraterrestrial mining facilities, particularly since destroying Earth would give some incentive to advance space technology to the rest of humanity (if only to run you out of the solar system on a rail) so maybe you could go higher.
Anyway, a zettadrone should be well within reach, probably a yottadrone, and perhaps a [insert new prefix here]drone.
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This may be my favorite reply yet…
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It’s an interesting coincidence that, if you could convert three quarters of the Earth into dekadrone modules, there’d be about as many modules as there are atoms in one module.
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This is reminding me of the “Paperclip maximizer” problem in AI safety.
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Followup project: Convert Mars into patch cables
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Kosmo’s basilisk: a universe-spanning self-aware hive of kilodrones that will resurrect you in a simulation in order to punish you for not striving hard enough to turn everything into a kilodrone.
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Patch cables are always the most expensive part.
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Bringing this slightly back down to earth…
I wonder if it would be possible to create “DroneNet” where all the drones around the world try and play in unison.
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Right, so let’s just get Schwarzenegger’s agent and ask if he’s free.
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yeah! I was thinking about this for the next big number, if enough people build em, as latency isn’t such an issue as… well… they are drones. but was thinking a situation with a bunch of computers streaming the separate streams from around the world
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Sounds like fun! If the panels are still available (even b-stock because I don’t care about scratches) when your next module goes up, I’ll pick one up (ordering in batches because shipping to US).
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