Sept 5 2025 - WWVB Part Two
My friend in Chinese class said that was pretty boring, so I’m gonna write my own thoughts on this. I built it for the radio clock, like I said. It has this little quirk of trying to correct itself by getting the signal automatically and somehow the JJY transmitter on Mt. Otakadoya can reach me here in the Bay Area and it messes up the time I set. So, since building a signal jammer felt messy and lazy, I wanted to make my own transmitter to properly get the actual time from WWVB (max accuracy!!!!!). However, there’s too much noise here and I can’t get the 60 khz signal from Fort Collins. I tried many times to get thr right thresholds on the receiver but it just seemed to be a mess every time. So for the foreseeable future, I probably can’t get it to work. Another issue is that it’s really hard to transmit on the LF band easily, and even if you build the antenna it’ll transmit maybe a few centimeters, 5 meters at best. I do know of the radio signal apps that emulate it using audible sound. I’m not sure how it works, but even though it seems easy enough to make the clock sets itself some time around 12 to 3 am, and that sound will probably wake me up, which renders the alarm clock useless. It’s a cool project in theory though. Also about this website - I just moved it to https://sebastianmaung.com/. You should already be here actually, since going to the GitHub site takes you to the domain anyway. A friend recommended Spaceship, which was way easier to set up with GitHub Pages than Google Domains (rip) was. I used Google Domains for another project and it took me ages to set up.
Sept 4 2025 - WWVB
This is gonna be a little more on the atomic time signals - I made some tools for it here. In the United States, a transmitter in Fort Collins in Colorado sends out the time signal on 60 khz. It’s like the signal on WWVH on 15000, 10000, 5000, and 2500 khz but without the voice and just the signal without anything else. I guess it’s kinda like Morse code but only time and with its own time code. The Wikipedia article was very helpful in understanding the transmission format. So the repo, WWVBEMULATOR.ino serves as the faux receiver in place of actually getting the transmission from the antenna. It sends out signals over GPIO 3. WWVBGEN.py creates the time signal format as a string for the current minute. The DST, leap second and leap year indicators have not been implemented yet. The WWVBDECODE.py script decodes the time signal into a human-readable format. You’ll need to edit wwvb_bit_string. WWVBREADER_PI.py is like the same thing except it builds the string from the receiver/Arduino. It’s able to pick up when it starts and stops from the markers in the signal. WWVBSOUNDGEN.py creates the time signal as a wav file (wwvbhelper.py is a dependency) - I actually modified this script from somewhere, but I forgot the source. I’ll update it when I find it. wwvb-wav-decoder.py decodes the wav signal, hence the name. It’s pretty tuned to the WWVBSOUNDGEN.py script since it didn’t work when I tried the actual time signal. So, it isn’t very helpful in my use case. I want to add the real-time conversion to the Japanese JJY signal - it shouldn’t be too hard since what I think I’m gonna do is convert the WWVB signal to human-readable time and using that I can generate the JJY signal. I’ve yet to make the JJY conversion script though.
Aug 10 2025 - School and a Seiko radio clock
School starts on Tuesday. I think senior year is gonna be much more laid back than junior year, hopefully. My classes this year arn’t as demanding as last year’s - but I did a schedule change to AP Chem because I think it’d be good for university. I made up my mind over summer, so I already turned the form in. Unfortunately (maybe) the class is full so I’m on the waitlist. So instead of AP Chem, I’m in CP Physics. Physics is pretty cool, but I’d rather be learning chemistry since it’s more in line with the field I want to get into. But it seems that all the general science programs in university want me to take a physics course anyway so I might just stick with it. When I was in Japan, I got this Seiko radio clock that was pretty cool, but it didn’t work in the USA (California). So I tried building a real-time WWVB to JJY time signal converter using a Raspberry Pi. I managed to put together a simulator while I was waiting for the antenna. which I’ll share soon. An Arduino acted as the antenna instead, and sent out WWVB signals over one of the GPIO outputs. The Raspberry Pi was fed this on one of its own GPIO, and decoded it to the time format. Through the Python script I was also able to get the time data. I never got around to creating the JJY signal, but someone already made a script for that anyway that I tested. When the antenna arrived, I wasn’t able to get a clear signal and I just gave up eventually lol. I might come back to the idea later. Goodbye, and good luck if you’re also a student starting the new year. (Edit Aug 10 2025: I just sent the commit to the website of this post but I forgot to write the reason I went on this ramble about the clock lol: I thought taking Physics would’ve been helpful in some sort of way since I was dealing with a lot of stuff about wavelengths and things like that. Maybe I’ll figure out how to reduce the noise in the data later.)
June 30 2025 - Hokkaido
I got back from Japan about a week ago. It was really nice and I got to check out Hokkaido University and Tokyo Institute of Technology. Hokkaido University was really beautiful and peaceful. I didn’t see a lot of students around, so it might’ve been off season. It’s my first choice for university, so I hope I get in (they only accept 4 students per science subject so I probably can’t get in lol). I stayed in Sapporo and it was great but I also loved the other parts of Hokkaido and how calming it can be - I went to Otaru and Abashiri, two small towns. While taking the express train I noticed all the other small towns and how peaceful it all seemed. If I lived in Hokkaido I think I’d like to visit these villages. I’ve read that JR Hokkaido is closing down stations though, so that kinda sucks. On the train to Abashiri I went on Google Maps often to see how close we were and when I used the satellite imagery I always noticed how the villages were in the middle of nowhere. A bunch of trees or hills and then suddenly a village. Everything is so less concentrated than the Tokyo area which I revisited after a week in Hokkaido. It sounds kinda obvious now that I write it but it seemed surprising to me since I don’t usually go to the countryside of any nation I’ve been to. Overall it was a nice experience, people there seemed nicer than 东京人，a lot more easygoing (no offense). It’d be a shame if I don’t get in to Hokkaido University since I want to experience Hokkaido more. Of course living there is a lot more different than being a tourist but regardless I still want to go lol. Goodbye.
June 1 2025 - End of school
School ended last Friday. I think it’s been a great year despite all these issues, etc etc etc. I don’t know how to make a personal post about this. Thanks teachers, friends, lab partners and classmates. I had an awesome year. I’m going to miss these classes, especially AP Bio. I’ll also miss that first science AP course struggle that I faced, but I’m taking AP Chem next year so I’ll probably struggle again anyway. In a couple days I’m going to Japan again to visit around Sapporo and later back to Tokyo. I’ll put some pictures here if I remember. Good bye and have a good summer. (Edit June 1 2025: I also added Google Analytics - I don’t advertise it or anything since it’s just a place for me to write things but I like to see data.)
May 7 2025 - gah
That final didn’t go so well but my grade didn’t fall that much. The AP Biology exam wasn’t too bad though. Anyway, I made this post because I wanted to post this🔥video I made for English a while ago. That’s about it lol, good bye. (Edit May 28 2025: Just barely got the grade I wanted by 0.4 percent lol)
May 1 2025 - I love AP Biology
AP testing week is next Monday, and I’ve got AP Biology to start it and AP Psychology to end it. I’m not stressed or worried, but the fact that I feel fine is worrying in itself. It’s not like I’m so confident that I’m not worried - in fact my grades arn’t so great compared to my peers and lab group. Hell, I’ve got a final tommorrow for AP Bio and here I am writing this on my website for no reason. Maybe it’s good to just write things out. I usually just tell myself that everything will be fine and the end, and I actually haven’t had a case (or at least I don’t remember a case) where it didn’t turn out fine yet. Maybe this will break that streak or it’ll be another unexpected win for me. There are 29 days left until the end of school. Honestly I don’t not want a break but I also don’t want it to end - just the fact that I’m taking AP Bio and enjoying it and learning is such a cool feeling. I bet I’m going to feel so empty without it. I’m excited for the summer though - I think I’ll go to Japan again, specifically Hokkaido this summer. I’ll probably check out Hokkaido University since I think they have a pretty interesting international program going. This isn’t really the kind of stuff I wanted to post when I made this site but I don’t see any harm in doing it. Anyway, good bye and good luck to you and I. I’ll make a post later saying how things went.
Feb 23 2025 - Calculator drawing
It’s me again. I haven’t been posting too much since I’ve been a little busy, but I want to get around to posting some pictures from my trip to Japan in December-Janurary. Anyway, I’m making this post since I made this new project that converts an image to a Casio graphing calculator (FX9750GIII, FXCG50). It’s one of the most fun I’ve had working on a project here. I originally made something like this on Scratch a few years ago. You drew an image, on a 128x64 display, and it goes through each pixel, checking if it’s been drawn on or not. If it was, it adds the location to a list with the casioplot function with the position, and keeps going until it reaches the end. This is pretty much the same thing, except now you can put an image in which gets converted to black and white, and then pretty much adds them to a script with the casioplot functions, and you put that script on the calculator. I have this one dilemma where adding them straight to the script, no loops or anything will cause it to have a huge file size (relatively huge, anyway). Why not just make a list with the positions and a single function to draw it, you might say. Well, yeah, I did that and I got an error on the calculator. I think it uses too much ram. But, in really small file sizes, it works great, and quickly. The first method is more reliable though, even though it takes a bunch of space. I was able to do 16kb max on the FX9750GIII and a crazy 183kb on the FXCG50. I’d like to work on this more to see if I can maximise the image quality while keeping a low file size and having it work at the same time. That’s pretty much all I wanted to add for now.
Nov 30 2024 - An introduction
Hey there, I’m Sebastian Maung. This is just a personal site for me to put all my social links and random projects I make (programming related or otherwise) or just random babbling. I figured that a lot of people going into computer science and engineering have a website or at least something to write about themeselves, so here’s mine. It’ll probably look nice on applications too, and I’m probably going to delete this sentence when the time comes to apply. I hate front-end development, so thanks to the project simplecss for making it so easy. I made this thing in 5 minutes thanks to that.
I don’t really have many hobbies except playing games with friends (Helldivers 2, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, Buckshot Roulette, Lethal Company, etc) and working on games together. I also enjoy soldering things since it’s much more convenient than having a mess of jumper wires everywhere. I’m not great at it, but I was able to install a modchip on a Mariko switch and I thought it went alright. I’ve been playing cello since I was around 9 or 10 years old, and was in the orchestra for about 5 years (here’s a video from middle school). After I left the orchestra in 10th grade, I’ve only been playing on and off. I do volunteer at my middle school after my school ends to try to stay around music and help out younger cellists. Something I’m looking forward to completing is this game my friends and I have been working on for a bit. Progress has been slow recently, but once I finish the basic things needed in a game (written in pygame from scratch), I’m sure progress will speed up. That’s about it for an intro to me though.
Stuff/Index:
- Theme downloader for the Miyoo Mini Plus
- Fire Emblem “clone” I started and got nowhere
- Support for a 16x02 LCD display for pwnagotchi
- Safebooru downloader in Python 3
I’ll get around to making articles talking about them eventually. Goodbye for now.