Jake Reid Burlington, ON

Notes from the shop floor Engraving · Hardware · Software

Jake Reid

I run Llamacoids, a lamacoid engraving shop in Burlington, Ontario. This is where I write up the jobs, the builds, and whatever broke along the way.

Latest

4 posts

Shop notes4 min read

Lamacoid or sticker? You can tell from across the room

A printed label and an engraved tag look the same on day one. A few years in a panel room later, you can see the difference from the doorway. Here’s why, and what the code says about it.

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  1. The screen was fine. The solder joint wasn’t.

    My ESP32 desk display stayed black for an afternoon. A wiring check that runs at boot found the problem: one cold joint on the data line.

    Hardware 4 min read

  2. Mayhem: I cut my own app down to three tabs

    It started as a do-everything app for coding agents. The version I actually use does three things: terminals, projects and skills.

    Software 3 min read

  3. The Mystery Panel: a 30-second promo written in React

    No editing timeline. Every frame of this breaker-panel video comes from code, which made the tags easy to get exactly right.

    Video 3 min read
Jake Reid in a grey Llamacoids hoodie, sitting in front of the Llamacoids Inc sign

About

I make engraved tags for a living, and I build a lot of my own tools.

Llamacoids makes engraved phenolic tags for electrical work: panel and breaker ID, MCC labels, equipment nameplates, and the red/white plates solar installs call for. Most orders go out the same day, and we ship anywhere in Canada.

The rest of the time I’m building things that help the shop run. A desk display that watches the printers. A Mac app for running coding agents side by side. Promo videos written in code. This blog is where those get written down.