Naturefriends routesetting workshop 2025
Since 2022 I am the owner of a Trainer C license for Sport climbing, since 2023 for Bouldering and since 2024 for Sport climbing Inclusion from NaturFreunde Deutschlands e.V.. To ensure that I don't lose these licenses, I have to undergo further training at least every three years. But I actually do one or two training courses every year. Simply because there are so many cool things to learn about climbing. This year I finally had the opportunity to take part in the routesetting training. This training course took place from April 25 to 27, 2025 in the DAV climbing gym Selb.
Drilling holes for the LED system of my home climbing wall
Things are getting serious. I bought 6 x 50 12 volt addressable WS2811 LED chains and tested how I can control them from a Raspberry PI 5. Now it's time to drill the holes for the LEDs in the wall. This step should be carefully considered, as I could destroy the climbing wall in the long term.
A selfmade dynamometer board
I bought a tindeq Progressor 500 a few weeks ago. The idea is to measure my peak strength in my fingers once a week. And to plan my finger strength training based on this data. It has proven to be practical to carry out the measurement with the Tindeq in the same way as training with a loading or lifting pin. I therefore needed a board on which I could stand and attach the dynamometer.
Loading Tailwind CSS color palette into Inkscape
I am working on a small project that uses Tailwind CSS. Normally, I always start programming UI things in HTML and then wonder why it's not as clear and clean as I imagined. Most of my work actually always takes place in the backend. In order to proceed with this project in a more structured way, I wanted to create a few user interface layouts before I start programming.
I think the tool of choice for professionals is Figma. However, I thought to myself, with Inkscape I can certainly implement this for my purposes. When I wanted to assign a color to the first elements, I found it very complicated to take the Hex triplet from Customizing Colors and assign them again each time. I would like to show you how to do this more easily.
Light up WS2811 LEDs with a Raspberry Pi 5 via SPI
A few weeks ago I bought 300 addressable LEDs. To be more precise, 6 x 50 12V WS2811 with a spacing of 25 cm each. Also known as NeoPixel. I wanted to control these LEDs with a Raspberry Pi. So I bought the latest model, Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB RAM.
After I had set up my Raspberry Pi, I wanted to follow the tutorial NeoPixels on Raspberry Pi by Tony DiCola to carry out a first test with the LEDs. I had already done the wiring as described under Using External Power Source Without Level Shifting. But then I read the following information in the next item Python Installation of NeoPixel Library.
The next line then said that you should watch the tutorial CircuitPython NeoPixel Library Using SPI. With the help of the Adafruit_CircuitPython_NeoPixel_SPI library, an LED ring is controlled via an FT233H. I would like to show how I did this with a Raspberry Pi 5.
Planning my home climbing wall reset with Inkscape
My adjustable home climbing wall is now three and a half years old. I made once a smaller and once a bigger upgrade. And next year I would like to do a reset. The main reason for the reset is my need for LED support when memorizing routes. I would like to show how I will plan the reset with the help of Inkscape.
Meal-Prep macronutrients calculator
Since a few month I am little bit into meal preparation or meal-prep. Largely through the book The Stealth Health Meal Prep Cookbook by Tom Walsh. However, I transform all the dishes in the book into vegetarian versions with soy granules or seitan. The advantages of Meal Prep for me are as follows.
- I eat more protein-rich food, which I need for my sporting activities.
- It structures my eating habits.
- There is always a ready-made delicious meal at home or at work.
- No more spontaneous unhealthy food purchases.
- I save money.
I have built myself a calculator that helps me to create such dishes independently and to calculate their macronutrients.
Design a Heroicons like SVG icon with Inkscape
Since a few month I try to refactor a few of my web projects. Part of this also involves changes to the design. A topic that I actually like, but have to admit to myself that I'm not good at it. That's why I was very happy about the emergence of Bootstrap and Font Awesome back then. Libraries that you simply use and that's it. For the new design revision, however, I would like to build on Tailwind CSS and Heroicons. But for one of my projects I need a customized icon. I would like to show you how I do it.
Selfmade wooden loading pin
A few weeks ago I attended a workshop by Gabriel Prange in the Berlin bouldering gym Berta Block. The workshop was about training for climbing. Part of it has been a strength analysis of the fingers. And this is still one of my weaknesses. I also discovered that finger strength training with a lifting device can have certain advantages over a classic hangboard. Even if I have a very nice beastmaker Motherboard setup.
I already had the 360° Hangboard to warm up at the crag. And enough weight plates. So all I needed was a loading or lifting pin. I found this beautiful Lifting Pin. But I thought I could handcraft a similar one by myself.
OscillatorNode example to play beep sounds in JavaScript
I am using my interval timer tool more often in the last couple of month. Mostly for lifting weights with my fingers. And to improve the usage of this tool I would like to play a beep sound before and after every break. One possible solution could be to load and play a audio file in JavaScript. An other solution are OscillatorNodes. I like about this approach that I do not need to buy a audio or create it on my own. And I am even more flexible on sound timing. So I created a small post to play around with OscillatorNodes.