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Switching up the hardware for the Garage IOT
Back in May, I set up my Raspberry Pi B as my garage door monitor. Unfortunately it stopped working, I haven’t investigated yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it got hit with the infamous SD card corruption that was a big problem with the early Raspberry Pi boards. (I think I read it’s much…
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Last few weeks in Programming: Python, Ruby
You may notice it’s been a while since I last wrote about programming. Well, a lot of the programming I was doing with the kids was due to having more time on my hands thanks to COVID. With Scarlett back in school full-time, there’s a lot less time for that as we focus on making…
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Last Week or So of Programming: Python, CircuitPython, Scratch, Arduino, and MakeCode
Tons and tons of programming and electronics projects!
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Trying out the Code Syntax Block Plugin
I’m not a huge fan of plugins for key parts of the site. There are some blog posts that no longer make sense because they used, for example, the iframe plugin to embed Google Maps. That said, my previous solution for displaying code on the site – special CSS is also brittle because I lose…
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Opening Adabox 015 – Come to Your Sensors
I’ve been awaiting this Adabox forever because of the pandemic. It’s finally here. Celebrate my excitement at my first Adabox!
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Today in Programming: MakeCode and Python
Python A user of my Extra Life Donation Tracker program discovered that I had introduced a regression for brand new users who didn’t have a persistent setting. I thought about it overnight and it was exactly what I thought it would be – when I switched away from threading for the GUI, I forgot to…
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Last Few Days in Programming: Python and Arduino
Python Spent the last few days finalizing the 5.0 release of my Extra Life Donation Tracker and then pushed ahead to get version 5.1 out. Here’s the PyPi page if you want to use it for your Extra Life live streams. Arduino I got back to my BBQ Themostat project and did some minor programming…
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Today in Programming: Microsoft MakeCode
With the twins, I messed around with a Neopixel strip. Not sure what I’d do with one in a future project, but at least I know how to program it in MakeCode now. Our project:
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Today in Programming: Microsoft MakeCode
Since I’ve been making a lot of great progress programming with the kids in Scratch, I bought some Circuit Playground Expresses to program with the kids. The Circuit Playground Express can program in Arduino’s C dialect, CircuitPython, or Microsoft MakeCode, which uses blocks like Scratch. Today Scarlett and I made our first useful bit of…
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Setting up my Raspberry Pi Zero W for the Pimoroni Enviro Mini pHAT
As I mentioned before, I got a Raspberry Pi Zero W to replace my Arduino MKR WIFI 1010 and ENV board in the bathroom. My Pimoroni Enviro Mini pHAT (or bonnet, as Adafruit calls them) finally arrived a few days ago, so I setup a git repository for my code. The Pimoroni git Enviro+/Enviro Mini…
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Today in Programming: Python
I noticed that something had gone screwy with the Raspberry Pi 1B in the garage that was monitoring the garage door. I restarted it and discovered that last time I was coding and working on making it more robust if it had a temporary lapse in WiFi (so it wouldn’t crash), I’d created a little…
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Raspberry Pi Zero W for new Projects
The next project I wanted to work on was to see if maybe my environment monitoring might be slightly more reliable with a Raspberry Pi than with an Arduino. So I wanted to do some comparisons. For my bathroom IoT project, I am using: Arduinio MKR Wif i 1010 – $32.10 Arduino MKR ENV Shield…
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Yesterday and Today’s Programming: Scratch
Stella’s Project Because last week was busy with house projects, this week I continued the ocean/water-themed programming from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The first project was a game I made with Stella (her first computer game creation), a boat race in Scratch. While we mostly stuck to the tutorial, we did partake in the challenges,…
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Last Three Days of Programming: Python
I’ve mostly been working on version 5.0 of my Extra Life Donation Tracker. Since I adopted the Semantic Versioning principle for the project, an API change means a major version change. I’ve been taking everything I’ve learned about Python programming from 2019 and 2020 and tried to make my code both more Pythonic and more…
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Today’s Programming: Ruby and Python
I don’t know how long I intend to keep doing this, but I decided I wanted to document my programming as I went along. So yesterday I worked on Scratch and here’s today’s entry. Ruby A while ago I got a bunch of kids’ programming books in a Humble Bundle. I tried showing Ruby to…