Currently, its only feature is that the logo says “Pro…” but soon it will have actual features.
The biggest challenge was figuring out how I’d distribute it to customers and keep them on a separate upgrade path from the free version.
I got 60% through writing a spec for a custom activation and license key generator, and I realized it was way too overengineered for this point in the product, so now I’m protecting access to the Pro version essentially by security through obscurity (unpublished, hard-to-discover URL).
Got TinyPilot working on most international keyboards with one change.
I was on this super labor-intensive path where I was going to have to somehow create custom key mappings for every keyboard layout.
Then at the urging of one of my customers, I realized I could use the code field of JavaScript key events and work in terms of the key’s physical location rather than what symbol it mapped to. If I tell the target OS which physical key the user pushed, the OS takes responsibility for mapping that to the correct symbol. That cut out half my keyboard logic and gave me instant compatibility with most keyboard layouts like French (AZERTY), German, and Japanese.
I’ll do a longer writeup on this in my next retrospective.
I initially thought this was a bug because the USB logs of computers where I connect the TinyPilot usually report an error, but upon further investigation, I think TinyPilot’s HID descriptor is valid and the bug is coming from Linux’s usb-gadget implementation or Raspberry Pi’s USB OTG implementation.
I tested the descriptor with several USB tools, and they all reported it as valid.
I grabbed the HID descriptor from my Microsoft keyboard and it had the same result.
It turns out you can pin indirect dependencies in Python by using pip freeze > requirements.txt
Am I the only one who didn’t know about this? I always used exact matches in requirements.txt and lamented the lack of a package-lock.json equivalent, when apparently it’s been sitting right in front of me the whole time.
Commissioned a freelance web developer to re-do the TinyPilot website’s Shopify integration
It currently automatically syncs data via Shopify’s API, but it adds so much complexity to the site and tightly binds my site to state on Shopify, so I’m going back to maintaining the data separately.
Updated instructions for all of TinyPilot’s products because the new power connectors work a little differently than the v1s.
Submitted proof of identity documents to Shopify
They demanded proof of ID, residence, and business because I’ve earned too much money. Yay?
Realized that a large portion of TinyPilot customers discover the product through the Github repo, so I added nicer product photos to the repo README
Reached out to YouTubers about reviewing TinyPilot
Reached out to a blogger to ask about doing a deep dive on one of their blog posts that reached the front page of HN
Misc
After about a year of dormancy, ingredient-phrase-tagger (the open-source precursor to Zestful) suddenly had 10 PRs from two separate users and a bug filed by a third.
