Hacker News: pentakkusu

New comment by pentakkusu in "Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer"

pentakkusu — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 09:25:07 +0000

So cool. Black and white printing is a different beast, where you can get away with much less precision and you can produce fantastic results by just eyeing things and winging it. I know a printer who operates like this, gauging the developement by a pair of well trained eyes, and know others who treat their darkroom as a scientific laboratory and do density tests and swear by their DIY chemistry etc.

Lot's of ways to do it, in the end, if you enjoy the process, then all is good.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer"

pentakkusu — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 09:18:58 +0000

Many such projects were actually made, some of them are better documented then others. For this application I wanted something that is as off the shelf as possible.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer"

pentakkusu — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 07:18:28 +0000

Voice mode… interesting. Not sure about that. Handsfree operation is traditionally done with foot switches in the darkroom. You mean like “hey Siri, expose for 8 seconds”?

New comment by pentakkusu in "Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer"

pentakkusu — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:43:43 +0000

Analog photography is a wonderful world and is a great rabbit hole to jump into in this day and age IMHO.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer"

pentakkusu — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:42:05 +0000

Exactly the reason I went with it, and of course the proper documentation on their website was very useful as well.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer"

pentakkusu — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:12:24 +0000

Yes. I thought It's fair. Under 50$ for the app and a compatible smart plug vs 300$+ for a boutique hardware enlarger with a narrower feature set.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer"

pentakkusu — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:10:49 +0000

Fun fact, I planned an Apple Watch companion app as well, but the Apple Watch is just too erratic in the way it lights up randomly, no matter what app (live activity?) you run, and there is no way to put a red filter on either.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer"

pentakkusu — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:08:58 +0000

Trust me, in the dark, your eyes adapt and you will be able to read the GUI just fine. And as someone said, the reason the GUI is like this, is to not emit unnecessary light in the darkroom, thus preventing fogging the paper.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer"

pentakkusu — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:07:26 +0000

Using slow motion recording, I measured 0.1s accuracy. I'd say it's more than good enough. You can see a print on the website I made with the app and a smart plug. The average print needs between 4-60s of exposure.

As for how dependent it is on that specific type of hardware (Shelly plugs), it is 100% dependent as the app directly controls the smart plug (with the help of the router ofc). There is no way around it, no other smart switch family is currently supported.

Show HN: I turned my iPhone and a $20 smart plug into an f-stop timer

pentakkusu — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:58:07 +0000

I am a film photographer and do some darkroom printing and always wanted one of the proper, advanced f-stop timers, but never really wanted to spend a couple hundred dollars on one. Eventually I figured my phone was already perfectly capable of doing the timing, it just needed a way to switch the enlarger.

So I built Darkplug around a cheap smart plug. The app controls the enlarger over the local network and does regular timing, f-stop timing, test strips, has an intuitive dodge/burn workflow, split grade (2 timing channels) and paper development timing.

I’ve been using it for a few months in my improvised bathroom darkroom.

Fair warning: the app was blindly vibe coded using Codex and Xcode.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49978595

Points: 83

# Comments: 38

New comment by pentakkusu in "EU KIDS Act"

pentakkusu — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:10:56 +0000

>the law in this shape should not pass and its horrible that it even is drafted/proposed in it's current shape

Explain please, I am not familiar with the opinions of "privacy activists" in this matter.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat"

pentakkusu — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 17:01:11 +0000

Except that parents have no power whatsoever to effectively prevent kids coming into contact with harmful algorithms, sites eliciting dark patterns etc. Parents don't have power over multi billion dollar companies that have their stakes in harvesting the attention of kids. Only governments can blanket ban these things. At this point the responsibility should not be placed on parents but on companies.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Good CLI Design Is Mostly Silence"

pentakkusu — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 13:06:45 +0000

holy slopperoni

New comment by pentakkusu in "They Stole Your Attention"

pentakkusu — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:45:08 +0000

no need to apologize, I like the vibe

New comment by pentakkusu in "A modern 35mm film scanner for home"

pentakkusu — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 15:58:59 +0000

I for example develop my (black and white) films myself and leave them to hang dry uncut, then proceed to store them in a box. When I have the time, I "scan" them using a MILC on a tripod, a 3d printed holder and a LED backlight panel. Afterwards I cut the strips up and file them properly for long term archival. Many of us do it this way.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Framework Making Printers"

pentakkusu — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 12:38:58 +0000

Framework Making Jokes

New comment by pentakkusu in "Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts"

pentakkusu — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 09:13:00 +0000

I woudn't say the current state of the interweb is in a flourished state at all.

New comment by pentakkusu in "Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts"

pentakkusu — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 09:09:49 +0000

Not trying to be snarky but it is quite obvious that giving you the ability to make your own conclusions is never the goal of regular news sites.