Hey, I'm the OP. I originally started with FreeCAD. There's not much to "hook up" to Claude. It can natively write for FreeCAD. You don't need to use the FreeCAD editor and can point to an external, local file with an import. At that point there's not much more than pointing your LLM to that file. You'll need to tell the FreeCAD desktop app to update on changes.
Eventually I moved to JSCAD for the application mentioned in my blog post because I realized I wanted a more complex UI (which meant a web app) than what FreeCAD provided natively. If you're looking for something simple with some var statements though, FreeCAD might be enough.
In my experience, the MCP isn't really needed. Claude at least already can write the code pretty well. The problems are more with getting it to understand the output, which the blog post covers.
I can see it working with scad, and then having that generate some things. I'd imagine it'd struggle with an STL file. I don't know much about the format of FCStd files but I'd find that surprising if it worked fine. Obviously three.js code and everything it could be alright with.
It might be my lack of knowledge, because I've mostly just used Freecad to create and edit things and then just exported to STL (which doesn't feel like the thing Claude would be good at modifying)
Over the last year I've been hacking on Table Slayer [0] a web tool for projecting DnD maps on purpose built TV-in-table setups. Right now I'm working on making hardware that supports large format touch displays.
Since I also play boardgames, this past month I threw together Counter Slayer [1], which helps you generate STLs for box game inserts.
Both projects are open source and available on GitHub. I've had fun building software for hobbies that are mostly tactile.
I have 2012 Sonos hardware. You can still get the original Sonos S1 controller, which works with old stuff. It's pretty annoying that all the new stuff is S2 (and that app is better supported), but it's not as hard as you're describing it. You can get it off Google Play and just use it.
The quality of the software, and the fact that it isn't really updated, is another thing, but the actual software availability is there.
One place where "TVs" still remain fairly expensive is in large format touch screens. Outside of using IR frames, getting a large (40 inch) touch capacitive display still requires quite a lot of legwork. I've been trying to find them for my DnD map system Table Slayer [0] and I had to contact factories in China directly. It's still many hundreds of dollars per device even for raw hardware.
I suspect the main issue is economies of scale. There is little demand thus there are no multibillion dollar plants optimized for delivering them at scale. (The same reason why 8K TVs are not yet cheap.)
There used to be tons. Heck there were even options we used to use where you could overlay over your CRT. That market has leveled out to what the market wants at this point.
If you're right handed then I assume a USB camera from the back-right can either detect a big colored sylus, or your hand pointing. A hacked wireless mouse/device for buttons?
Long ago I did semiconductor work for https://www.flatfrog.com/flatfrog-board , which uses the beam principle combined with in-surface refraction, and I see they're still pretty expensive. You do get an awful lot of little DSPs around the edge for that price, though.
I worked on (and very briefly ran) MP3.com after the CNET acquisition of the domain (CNET only bought the domain, which I think was for $1 million). It had nothing to do with the original site mentioned here (good on them for archiving it).
The initial idea of the CNET version of the site was that in 2004 we assumed you would need a directory of which music was on which service. At the time there were quite a few (itunes, recently legal Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic...etc) and the thought was that the labels would sign deals separately on each, splitting where legal MP3s could be bought. Rhapsody was the only one where you paid a monthly fee for access, the rest were pay per song or album. The directory was similar to something like justwatch.com now, and it was really hard to build the data catalog from the early Internet spiderweb of music content from these services. Believe it or not, we got most of the data from FTP drops from each service. The site also would review all the different MP3 players of the time (there were a lot of them!).
The iPod and iTunes devoured the industry to a degree that no one needed such a directory. Everyone was happy to pay 99 cents per song, or get it illegally. Rhapsody, which was way ahead of its time, was too niche, and pre iPhone, no one could "stream" on anything buy a computer.
Everyone of course hated our new site. It didn't carry the spirit or the catalog of the indie bands from the original version (we didn't own any of the rights to keep the content), and all of those artists were rightfully very angry about losing a pay stream (which again, was a nod to what was coming later with YouTube partners). It got so bad that we had to remove the message boards completely because it was pure vitriol. We later added independent artist uploads, but by 2005 it was too late and the site mostly made money converting "eyeballs" (search any artist + mp3) into money through ads.
Despite all this, I had a lot of fun working on it, and as a young 24 year old who just moved to San Francisco it was a great way to learn about online communities and how they could turn on a dime. Other, later sites of mine took the lessons learned from MP3.com and became successful, but I'll always have a soft spot for MP3.com.
I read a really interesting post in The NY Times (having trouble finding it) that really broke down how crazy sports betting has gotten in the last couple years. The gist is that states love betting, because they can tax them at high rates with little pushback from citizens who are marketed that the money goes to schools. The sportsbooks have to eat the new tax, and change the odds so that they can make a profit. This forces more losers in the state, and causes possible indirect costs from people losing so much. It’s an ugly cycle where no one wins.
On the other hand, some fraction of people are going to gamble away their life savings on bad bets. No idea how you balance the two, but gambling addiction does have a human cost.
It is admittedly not that much different than any other addict looking for their next fix. Yet, if feels lot uglier when it is a billion dollar corporation on the other side optimizing for the human tragedy.
Sure, and I actually have less of an issue with gambling than I do with social media companies and indeed advertising companies in general, but in both situations it's a massive unaccountable corporation abusing people for profit.
Lot’s of people win from Facebook as a communication platform. It also does all kinds of explosive crap, but being able to keep up with distant family and friends has meaningful value.
I'm building Table Slayer[0]. It provides tooling to display battlemaps on TV-based tabletops for games like Dungeons and Dragons. The source is open[1] and it's built with Svelte, Partykit, Turso and Three JS.
I'm currently building a prototype hardware component (essentially a large format touch screen) that people can purchase alongside.
For those that are looking for something more advanced in the Android space a friend of mine built https://limitphone.com/ to handle something like this. It requires a reset, but comes with a lot more options.
Looks very interesting. The price is not good. I mean, we have to do it for 4 fones, that is 120 dollars per year, which is a lot of money, not in it's own, but it ads up with other subscriptions. The trial is too short, i think a months will be better.
This is why I love Lucia. They took the "teach a man to fish" route when they converted to a docs only approach. Now I've got my own auth system and understand a lot more about security.
Eventually I moved to JSCAD for the application mentioned in my blog post because I realized I wanted a more complex UI (which meant a web app) than what FreeCAD provided natively. If you're looking for something simple with some var statements though, FreeCAD might be enough.
In my experience, the MCP isn't really needed. Claude at least already can write the code pretty well. The problems are more with getting it to understand the output, which the blog post covers.
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