melanpan.nl

Hacking A Marine Dish

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 23:07:23 +0200

Back in 2024 I got inspired by the YouTuber saveitforparts and started looking into automatic satellite dishes. The ones sold here in the Netherlands are typically compact offset dishes on a motorised base, like a Megasat or Oyster, not quite the same as the Winegard units saveitforparts had access to in the US. (I still will probably end up getting one of those, though.) But while browsing Marktplaats I came across something arguably more interesting: a marine dish. An Intellian i4, going for around €200 (with a current new price of about €4000). I bought it immediately and became the proud owner of a piece of boat tech.

Using AI to detect garbage containers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 18:10:33 +0200

At NURDspace, we have a very specific problem: nobody remembers to put the bins out. Or bring them back in. There are two garbage containers, a blue one for paper and yellow for general waste. On collection days someone has to wheel them outside, and back in after pickup. Simple enough in theory.

We had Home Assistant firing automations based on the municipal garbage calendar: yelling on IRC every few hours, spamming Signal and Telegram, and if the space was open, triggering the TTS system to yell at people in person. Passive-aggressive, but effective enough.

About

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 16:55:24 +0200

Hi, I’m Melan (🍈)! A Dutch Programmer, weeb, homelab gremlin, and chaotic member of NURDspace.

I spend my time on NixOS and Linux, AI, self-hosted services, ham radio, electronics, and Japanese animation in all sorts of forms.

This is where I write about whatever hyperfocus has consumed me this week.

The domain name is a mashup of メロンパン (melonpan) and my nickname Melan, which itself comes from Medicine Melancholy from Touhou many red moons ago.

Pirating a TTS voice

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0200

One of the favourite text-to-speech voices at NURDspace is Femke, a Dutch-Flemish sounding voice by Acapella Group. She gets used for announcements, the !say IRC command, yelling at people to put the bins out, that kind of thing. For a long time we were pulling audio from an Android API, which worked well enough that I even started training my own model based on it.

Then the API got shut down. This is the story of how I pirated Femke. Twice.