I’ve been immersed in discovery, prototyping and testing a variety of hardware and software with a steep learning curve. Its been a blast!
For the past four years I’ve been:
- Learning Python and Swift
- git version control
- Apple Xcode and Arduino IDE tools
- Digital electronic design with ARM, Raspberry Pi and Espressif processors
- Various open source toolchains
- Linux server administration
- Home automation using the Internet of Things digital electronics.
How to Guides
Securing Raspberry Pi
This guide will walk you through a series of steps to configure really basic security for your Raspberry Pi. First create a new user and remove the default pi account. Create a new user account Then ensure that the new newuser account uses bash. Simply add bin/bash to the newuser account if needed. Logout and …
Do It Yourself Home Automation System
The building blocks of my do it yourself home automation system (DIYHA) consists of nine elements: Adafruit.io host for dashboards, graphs, control buttons, data storage, etc. Alexa interface through the Fauxmo server which emulates a Belkin switch Mosquitto MQTT broker/bridge server handles local messaging and the bridge to Adafruit.io Environment sensor servers measuring temperature, humidity, air …
Raspberry Pi Python Tool Chain
Introduction I didn’t like Python when I was first introduced to it a couple of years ago. Since that time I’ve learned that it is a great quick-n-dirty language that can be used to build an app or what we used to call a “hack”. The extent of its built-in features and the enormous amount …
Setting up a systemctl service on a Pi
Each Internet of Things (IOT) device in my Do It Yourself Home Automation System (Diyhas) has three elements. Headless Raspberry Pi server with Wi-FI and Bluetooth (Pi Zero W for example) Build and production Python directory structure with my device or subsystem Python modules and a variety of Open Source modules. Boot configuration using systemctl …
Creating a New Headless Pi Server
Introduction Every time I receive a new Raspberry Pi, I go through the same error prone discovery process of creating my personal development environment. I know its going to be Python based with Flask, Paho MQTT, Adafruit modules, my own Python models and a standard pi user file structure. I also setup a “systemd” init …
Part Time Maker 