Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Arduino”
Software I used for Programming in 2022
Python
This year I really worked a lot on Python web technologies so I came to appreciate all the work that the JetBrains team does to make all the little things (like running Django test server commands) incredibly easy. I essentially did all my Python development in Pycharm. I’ve had access to the paid JetBrains suite because of the work I’ve done for my open source project: Extra Life Donation Tracker. Since development has slowed a bit on there, I may not be able to renew the subscription. If that’s the case, there’s a big chance that I’ll start saving up some money for a Pycharm Professional license. The only real exception to using Pycharm for programming was when I was editing code on a server. There I would use vim or nvim (more on that later).
My Programming Projects and Progress in 2020
Back in 2019, when I did my programming retrospective I made a few predictions. How did those go?
- Work on my Extra Life Donation Tracker? Yup! See below!
- Write more C++ thanks to Arduino? Not so much.
- C# thanks to Unity? Yes, but not in the way I thought. I only did minor work on my game, but I did start a new GameDev.tv class.
- Learning Ruby? Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say I learned Ruby. I did finish the book Ruby Wizardry and I took copious notes. But until I do some practice - maybe via some code katas, I don’t think I’ll have solidified it in my mind.
- 3D Game Dev? Nope, not really.
- Rust and Go? Not even close. Although I did make sure to get some books on the languages.
So, what happened? On the programming front, I wanted to continue my journey to truly master Python after having used it at a surface level for the past 15ish years. I dedicated myself to doing the Python Morsels challenges (more on that below) and working through various Python development exercises. Outside of programming, the time I had off from COVID was used to play with my kids and they wanted to play lots of video games. So we took advantage of having way more time than usual to do that. So a lot of my goals slipped. We’ll get to 2021 predictions at the end, so let’s take a look at 2020!
Last Week or So of Programming: Python, CircuitPython, Scratch, Arduino, and MakeCode
Because I’ve been busy with programming and other tasks (including getting re-addicted to Cities: Skylines), I’ve got a roundup from about the last week or so in programming.
Python
Python Morsels
I got the mid-tier of the Pycharm Humble Bundle which came with a bit of a subscription to Python Morsels. Every week Trey Hunner, a Python trainer, sends subscribers a problem to solve along with a few bonus questions to deepen the learning. Here’s what I’ve loved so far:
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 while trying to figure out how to run a computer case fan. So far I’m still working on the wiring aspect of this part of the project, but some folks on reddit did point out that part of my problem was getting a pair of my BJT connections mixed up.
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 - $34.40
- 5V 2.5A power supply - $7.50
That’s a total of $74 before taxes and shipping. To get the same measurements on the Pi platform I went with:
An Update on my Roll-Your-Own IoT
As things continue to happen in the commercial IoT space like Wink switching to requiring subscription fees, I continue to feel happy that I’m creating my own Internet of Things solutions rather than relying on commercial vendors who can decide to disappear or suddenly start charging fees. The cost for me is that things go at a slower pace and, obviously, don’t have sleek packaging. I think I can live with that.
2019 In Programming
This was a VERY busy year for my coding. This year I had over 769 commits to GitHub; my previous best was 58 in 2014. The commits were very unevenly distributed. If you look at the graph of my commits, outside of a busy week in January and another in May, I didn’t really start coding until August.
GitHub activity graph
But perhaps commits to GithHub isn’t the best metric. If you look at what I accomplished in the second half of 2019, I worked on an incredible number of projects.
BBQ Thermostat Project: First Live Test
This is copied over from my Hackaday.io page.
BBQ Thermostat: Arduino MKR 1010 and Therm Shield measuring temperature during a smoke
Today I was smoking a turkey so I figured it was a good time to do a live test of my project. There was good news and bad news. I think it’s illustrated quite well by the following graph:
Grafana graph of my BBQ Thermostat while measuring the smoker temp
BBQ Thermostat Project
I recently started an electronics hacking project to build a thermostat for my Weber Smokey Mountain. You can find details at Hackaday.io, but if you’ve been here long enough you know that I don’t trust other sites to continue to exist. (It’s why I copy my book reviews over from Good Reads). As of right now I’ve got the board able to read temperatures from a thermocouple that I send, via WiFi, to an MQTT broker. Then, via Python I take subscribe to that MQTT topic and put it into InfluxDB. From there I use Grafana to graph it. Here’s an early beta where I was trying to make sure it was working from end-to-end: