1. Introduction

Modern even mid-range phones are capable of lasting for more than 2 years of usage. Their performance in terms of CPU, RAM, etc is usually high enough to use for a longer time than we were used to back in eg. 2014. In 2014 phone market was progressing much faster and a generational increase in capabilities and performance was worth the upgrade even in 1 year intervals. Not saying about 2 years.
Nowadays, things have changed and 3 years old flagship device will not be the fastest, but it will still be working just fine for 90% of daily tasks.

Figure. Battery hero: BattLisa.

Unfortunately, what is the benefit of that, if my 2-year-old phone lasts 2 hours on a single charge!? This may be the case for a lot of devices. This pushes customers to buy new devices only because the battery of old one degraded too much. Since there is no easy way to replace the battery by the user without pretty specialized tools and knowledge (it is doable, but certainly does not mean ‘easy procedure’), you are left with a device that can be most used as a photo frame permanently connected to the wall.

In this article, I will mention a few ways to prolong the battery life. I will focus on one solution which in my opinion is important - max charging percentage.

1. The Problem

The problem appears when there is more than one device connected to the SPI bus. As it is known, SPI interface uses several wires to achieve fast data rates [1]. It requires one data-in wire, one data-out wire, one clock wire, a ground reference and one chip-select (CS) wire.

The last one is the problem.

ESP32 allows remapping the default SPI pins for almost any other available pin [2]. This allows a certain level of flexibility in a design.

Each of the new devices connected to the same SPI bus requires one additional chip-select wire dedicated to this device. Since there is a default CS pin, there is a problem with changing it.

It yields the issue that only one device can be accessed, since the CS pin points to only one device.

1. GMG12864 display overview

The GMG12864-06D display is and module which can be used with microcontrollers with SPI interface. It runs on 3.3V logic as well as a power. Screen size is: 58 by 28mm, amount of pixels: 128 by 64 pixels. Driver IC is ST7565R.

The display also have the nice texture of the displayed characters which make it more appealing than other screens.

1. Discord Updater

Little simple bash script which allows automatic updates of Discord app for Linux.

Every time there is an update of Discord app it is required to open browser and download then install .deb package. It is not really hard but annoying over time. This little script will do it automatically without user input.

2. Link: https://github.com/AlekSmola/Discord-Terminal-Updater

https://github.com/AlekSmola/Discord-Terminal-Updater

1. Introduction

During studies, it is required to back up the word you type with some other research papers/documents/scientific research [1]. Basically, by writing a theoretical introduction chapter to some thesis everything should in some way be quoted and not ‘made up by students imaginations’ [2]. It is usually accomplished by putting [number#] after each sentence/paragraph which leads to a full source listed at the end of document [3]. It is annoying and students hate it [4]. Not only the list of references should be kept in order [5], but also each figure should have its number leading to it. Tables and equations follow the same scheme [6].

This process seems easy when you start writing the document. You just go from start to the end and write everything in order and numbers will match up [7], right? Well, if you are very consistent, yes but it happens all the time you start writing from actual work and after that, you go on with introduction and theory. In such a case, you would have to change all of the numbers in [] after each change which is a NIGHTMARE [2134]
Most simple text editors do not implement any functionality to automate this [2314]. In reality, it is an easy task to automate. In this example, MS Word will be used to show how easy it is to automate handling references like a pro! [4234].

1. It’s surprisingly easy to create your own GUI app nowadays

Modern solutions for programming became extremely accessible.

Figure. Example GUI app

Python programming language is easy and intuitive to learn and lacks unnecessary syntax caveats which may confuse young players. Making an app that simplifies our life, solves some problems or just outputs funny things is as easy as ever before.

Making a GUI app for your already existing application will make it not only more accessible to non-terminal people but will also simplify using it and make it more error-proof.