#hardware setup

I made a lego case for my Raspberry Pi4 with fan hat and 3.5" LCD touchscreen module (that is attached with a flatwire to the Raspi-fan hat combination).

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Yesterday's version of the Raspi case without the screen part:

First day/Hardware setup

About a week before I was joining. I received an email from HR about what kind of workstation I would prefer. Wait…what?!  I get to pick my own fricking workstation? Perk number one of a well funded startup. My choices were:

- A PC or A Mac (I chose the Mac).

- Screen size (13, 15 or 17 inch) - I chose the 15 inch. 

- For the main monitor, a dell or an apple display (I picked the apple display).

After finishing up the paperwork I was taken to the storage space where they kept all the hardware. All my hardware was lying packed and sealed there. I picked up all of it, went to my desk and started setting it up. The feeling of setting it up all by myself was surreal and weirdly felt like an initiation ceremony. All the hardware is still registered under my name.

My initial setup looked as follows:

- A 15" beefed up macbook pro (8 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD HDD, 512 MB video graphics card, 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7). The laptop cost around $4500.

- Apple Cinema 27" display. $1000

- Apple Magic Mouse. $70

- Apple Bluetooth Keyboard. $70

I'd gone all apple fanboy crazy just because I had the opportunity to do so. As I spent more time with the hardware I found out that the cool looking things are not the best. It needs to be ergonomic, especially since being a developer you are spending most of your non-sleeping moments on a computer. 

I researched on how to best maintain your posture and adjusted my gear accordingly. About two months after starting, with lots of experimenting, I'd swapped out the keyboard and the mouse. I use an ergonomic gaming logitech mouse and microsoft's split ergonomic keyboard. There is an additional full keyboard from apple connected because others hated the split configuration and there are often cases that they end up "driving" my workstation when debugging an issue or while pair programming. My current setup is photographed below:

I have raised the monitor so that I dont have to bend over my neck while looking at the screen. A good heuristic is that the monitor's top should be in line with the top of your head. Also, my chair is also configured to my needs. My arm rests are raised upto the desk level so that my arms lay out flat on the table from elbow onwards and the keyboard is designed to be curving in so that there is no bending of wrist which is the primary reason of the carpel tunnel syndrome.

A couple of people in the office currently use standing desks and I am thinking of giving them a shot at some point.

Lastly, an important part of a dev's setup is the set of headphones, especially in an open office environment. I have a preference for over ear/circumaural headphones. I started off with a trusty pair of HDD 220 which I had bought as a student. I couldn't wear them for a long period of time since they pressed hard against my spectacle frames on the side. A few months in, I decided that a comfortable pair of cans would be a good investment and I chose HD 558 for their comfort factor.