Ventures of an ex indie game developer

Alarm functional

I finished my homebrew security alarm some months ago. Or so I thought, after the initial smoke test. So this summer we turned on the alarm for the first time and left home to go swimming in a nearby lake. When we returned home after four hours the alarm was buzzing and had done so two times since we left. I've mounted the horn on the outside of the house, so the neighbours had duly noted the false alarms. They weren't too happy about it.

My initial reaction, as always, is to blame someone else. I e-mailed the IR sensor manufacturer and got back
... check your power supply for noise
- Mhm, I thought. So much for support. But a couple of days back I pulled my finger out and tried a software approach instead. I use signal sampling instead, i.e. 50+ hits means sensor activated, instead of single hit. Voilà, everything works! (Or at least with a chance of 268435456:1 if we assume the conditions are the same as this summer. Which they're not, we had an exceptionally hot summer. Climate change. Where was I.)

Alarm works, my homebrew internet radio/music player works and my Wi-Fi auto-off works. The last one is a miniscule hourly cron job on my Ubuntu server which curls to my DSL router once an hour and turns off Wi-Fi (if on). It's not that I'm hostile towards technology. Ok, maybe a little. There are two main reasons for this invention:
  • I'm afraid of the radio waves generated,
  • if you prefer to use the iPad to surf on something, it should be a deliberate act where you first take the time to go the the router and press "Wi-Fi on".
I don't believe surfing or watching Youtube on end is any good for one's well-being nor for the general level of education. Sure, you'll see tons of new stuff if you spend a day surfing, but you never go into detail the way you do when you read a paper book or article. And pretty much the same way TV works, there's a rubber-banding effect where your brain wants more, but which steals humongous amounts of time from mindfulness, exercise, working with your hands and so forth. Less being more, this too is a good hack of mine which I'm proud to run at home.

No gamedev lately, but at least I've reset my intentions. Next game (after some refactoring) isn't going to be an MMO. Possibly the next one thereafter. But the next one might just be a 3D version of Cross Fingers.


Cross Fingers is an exceptionally simple 2D puzzle game, in the most original sense. If I make a 3D clone if it and call it something like "IQ", it could actually sell! And it's so tiny, it would be a shame to not do it. I think I will, but not today. Today I'm simply going to enjoy my hacks.

About the author

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Gothenburg, Sweden