https://irjudson.org/Writing on AI systems, hardware, firmware, PCB design, and independent building. Based in Three Forks, Montana. 2026-07-06T11:30:16-06:00 Ivan R. Judson https://irjudson.org/ Jekyll © 2026 Ivan R. Judson /assets/img/favicons/favicon.ico /assets/img/favicons/favicon-96x96.png 2026-06-29T00:00:00-06:00 2026-06-29T00:00:00-06:00 https://irjudson.org/hardware/technical/2026/06/29/led-controller-current-monitoring-design.html Ivan R. Judson

Per-channel current monitoring on a WLED controller is harder than it looks. INA219 address limits, shunt sizing, dual power rails, and level shifting — solved.

2026-06-16T00:00:00-06:00 2026-06-16T00:00:00-06:00 https://irjudson.org/ranch/community/2026/06/16/montana-festival-what-the-ranch-is-for.html Ivan R. Judson

This is the first time I’ve talked about our home, Buffalo Jump Ranch, what we are building, and why. Montana Festival helped me find the right words. I went to Montana Festival because I recently started Buffalo Jump Forge, it is in startup mode. So I signed up for two days in Bozeman, 1,000 people, as many conversations as I could find. What I came home with is much different than what I w...

2026-06-09T00:00:00-06:00 2026-06-09T00:00:00-06:00 https://irjudson.org/hardware/entrepreneurship/2026/06/09/led-controller-finding-the-gap.html Ivan R. Judson

First in a series on building the Buffalo Jump Forge LED Controller from idea to Kickstarter. Ryan Pedersen and I go back to my Microsoft days. We’ve been tinkering with LED strips for years — longer than either of us would probably admit. The problem we kept running into was always the same: we wanted to run a lot of lights, outdoors, simply. Nothing on the market did that well. The control...

2026-05-26T09:00:00-06:00 2026-05-26T09:00:00-06:00 https://irjudson.org/projects/astronomy/2026/05/26/astronomus-i-built-a-robot-to-run-my-telescope-so-i-can-sleep.html Ivan R. Judson

I’ve been doing astrophotography for a while now. It started as a hobby and quickly became an obsession, the way these things do. The problem is that astrophotography has a lot of friction — planning which targets are up tonight, figuring out when they’ll be optimally positioned, checking weather, watching satellite tracks, staying up until 2am to babysit the scope so it doesn’t point into a tr...

2025-11-04T01:00:55-07:00 2025-11-04T01:00:55-07:00 https://irjudson.org/technology/professional/2025/11/04/preparing-for-opportunity-a-github-profile-toolkit.html Ivan R. Judson

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” - Seneca I call it serendipity. You can’t control when the right opportunity appears. But you can control whether you’re prepared when it does. Repository: github-profile-upgrade The Preparation Gap Most engineers prepare for opportunity by building skills, shipping code, solving problems. Crucial. But incomplete. What they’re mi...