Top all-time · #5157
The Cat House
Personal blog · scd31.com/postshardwareprogrammingdesign
The Cat House is a personal blog at scd31.com about hardware, programming and design. Since 2023, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “Building a 24-Bit Arcade CRT Display Adapter, from Scratch”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-03, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Posts about a weather balloon's real-time video downlink, covering a 500 kbps link, 640x480 video at 12 FPS, and LDPC error correction. The HN comments mention it only in passing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Building a 24-Bit Arcade CRT Display Adapter, from Scratch3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-04
- Extreme Server Side Rendering3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-02-17
- My Nix Config Is Intimate2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-04-28
- Real Time Video from a High Altitude Balloon2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-24
- I program on the subway2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-16
What Hacker News says?
I wrote a bit about it here: https://www.scd31.com/posts/real-time-balloon-video The actual bandwidth is 500kbps, or about 350kbps usable after FEC. I'm encoding video at 640x480, 12FPS. It's almost entirely custom software. I'm using a Gstreamer pipeline to take in the video stream, encode it, and encapsulate it. From there, I packetize it, run it through an LDPC encoder (for error correction), data whitening, and…
Comment linking /posts/real-time-balloon-video
on “Weather Planning for Eclipse Day”Submitted The Taylorator – All Your Frequencies Are Belong to Us as a story · 332 points
HN discussionAs noted in the article - and in the related article [0] by Stephen who goes in-depth into the development of the custom CRT display adapter - some of the constraints/wishes were: wanting to go beyond 18-bit color to avoid color banding, and also to have a generic USB interface so that the CRT could be driven by a laptop or any PC. I also think that the people involved in this project enjoyed inventing/creating/codi…
Comment linking /posts/building-an-arcade-display-adapter
on “RCade: Building a Community Arcade Cabinet”Submitted I program on the subway as a story · 219 points
HN discussionThis is a 52m video presentation on the RCade. Blog-post submission from its creator Frank Chiarulli Jr. (fcjr); 5 months ago, 10 points, 2 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901081 Eva's previous submission of Frank's blog post; 4 months ago, 89 points, 16 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47170599 RCade's website: https://rcade.dev/ (straight to the browser-playable games: https://rcade.…
Comment linking /posts/building-an-arcade-display-adapter
on “RCade: The Arcade Cabinet with CI/CD Deployment, Custom Graphics Card for CRT [video]”Submitted Daily-Driving a Blackberry in 2023 as a story · 41 points
HN discussionSubmitted Extreme Server Side Rendering as a story · 28 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Nix Config Is Intimate as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Extreme Server Side Rendering as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Built My Own Hair Electrolysis Machine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Program on the Subway as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Extreme Server Side Rendering as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted MIT Flea Market Survival Guide as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Custom AMOLED Wearable Makes Great Icebreaker as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Nix Config Is Intimate as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building a 24-Bit Arcade CRT Display Adapter, from Scratch as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building an Over-Engineered Basement Monitor as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Real Time Video from a High Altitude Balloon as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
