Ever since I put together the Raspberry Pi with a 7” touchscreen I haven’t exactly figured out what to do with it until I put it on top of a Google AIY Voice kit. What if I made a google home hub? I’ve built an Alexa with a Raspberry Pi and a ridiculously large microphone…
Twas the Night After Xmas
Not a creature was stirring in Micro Center, not even a mouse. So I went out and decided to throw caution to the wind and this is what happens. I “accidentally” buy a ton of random stuff from Micro Center! Here’s the breakdown: Raspberry Pi Zero W Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Raspberry Pi 7 inch…
A Rather Complicated Way to Turn on the Lights
Fitbit + AWS API Gateway + AWS SNS + AWS SQS + AWS Lambda + Particle Photon
Kidsplained: Wi-Fi
A very interesting dinner conversation happened tonight about how the internet works at home. My 11 year old son was curious why he can’t watch youtube outside of the house. I told him that the wifi network we have at home is not able to reach the outdoors and that is why he can’t watch…
Ready Player One and The Man in the High Castle
Both very good reads about dystopian worlds. One is set in the world of 60s Nazi USA and the other is in the future of global economic turmoil. Both show how humanity adapts to the world they exist in no matter how harsh their realities are. One deals with how humans hope for a better…
How to Win an Argument with Your Wife
For years now my wife and I could never agree what “cold” meant. She would always tell me that it’s not that cold and I should turn the heat down. Since the winter is upon us again, I’ve decided to settle this argument and finally prove to her that I am feeling cold because it…
Pi2-D2 Wide Angle Camera Upgrade
I decided to upgrade the sad, slow, fuzzy, old web cam that I installed in my Pi2-D2’s head back a few months ago. I had to move the raspberry pi zero w out of its body to inside the head casing. This ensures that the camera ribbon cable does not get ripped up when the…
I am an engineer for life. I will never be a manager – The Woz
When I was 10 years old I found the code for breakout in C++. This was a derivative of a game Woz wrote for Atari back in 1976 using discrete logic. Woz’s version was legendary for being optimized to a point that it was so difficult to manufacture and understand for most engineers at the…
Kidsplained: How Code Runs in Volatile Memory
The year is 2018. Ask any tech savvy 10 year old to restart a computer and they will look at you like you we’re a crazy person. My own child, someone who has a parent that took apart and put back together computers at his age, does not know how to restart a computer. I…
The Tale of Two Pis: AIY Vision Kit on a Pimoroni Pan Tilt Hat
Home alone with my vision machine learning robot friend. It thinks I’m sitting beside a banjo, acoustic guitar, fiddle or wine bottle. Runs off 2 raspberry pis. One controls the pan and tilt motor which houses the camera. The camera is attached to a movidius myriad 2 VPU for neural computing and another raspberry pi….
