It may not be recognized by most but today (May 25th) is Towel Day. Fans of Douglas Adams carry a towel (as referred to in Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) with them to demonstrate their appreciation for the books and the author.
Don’t Panic — no matter what the day throws at you, draw comfort from the knowledge that you’re armed with your trusty towel.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned my initial foray into IoT for the home. I now have my Ring Doorbell installed and a few Wemo switches.
It wasn’t hard to do and with IFTTT integration I can set up actions for numerous triggers like:
My only complaint is that IFTTT is a bit slow in recognizing a triggering event (like motion) from the Ring doorbell. It takes a minute or more for the action to occur.
It is great that I can have my devices talk to each other, I just wish there was a bit more for them to say. A number of years ago I put together the following illustration:
It seems that IoT is like Metcalfe’s law for the internet: the value generated is proportional to the square of the number of connected devices in the system. The one thing that’s true though is that there are more devices with more interfaces all the time.
Yes, once again it is Star Wars day and it also happens to be my birthday. Kismet!
Unfortunitely, I don’t have much time to blog today but I had to get something out.
Here is a link to a post a few years back on the topic of What if CIOs were Star War’s characters?
Over the years, I’ve played around with a few IoT solutions. Sunday, I decided to seriously tackle some outdoor lighting, by replacing one of my light switches with one that can be controlled from the Internet.
I looked at a number of solutions and found that there are surprisingly few that will replace a 3-way switch (in fact the only 3-way switch I found was from GE and then I would need a controller…). After looking at my requirements, it appeared I only needed normal light switches and the one I chose was the Belkin Wemo® Light Switch. Fortunately, my house was already wired with switches that looked fairly similar, so my wife was happy with the result.
Thanks to Amazon same day delivery, the new switch was at my house at 6PM on Sunday.
I had it unboxed, wired in and controlled by IFTTT in under an hour. So now I can control when the light go on and off automatically and can turn them on manually from my phone. Not bad… for an hours work.
I have a few more projects that I am planning to do around the house, so I’ll write about those too, as well as anything I learn along the way. An example setting up a dedicated wireless LAN just for the IoT devices (to localize any security issues).
For a while I’ve been helping out judging for FIRST and I just got into Houston where one of the FIRST championships is being held.
This is the first time here and the numerous fields look ready to handle the crowd. This is one of them
We don’t start interviewing until tomorrow and the teams look strong so I am sure it will be tough.
Every April 18, radio amateurs worldwide take to the airwaves in celebration of World Amateur Radio Day. It was on that day in 1925 that the International Amateur Radio Union was formed in Paris.
From the 25 countries that formed the IARU in 1925, the IARU has grown to include 160 member-societies in three regions. IARU Region 1 includes Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Northern Asia. Region 2 covers the Americas, and Region 3 is comprised of Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific island nations, and most of Asia. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has recognized the IARU as representing the interests of Amateur Radio.
Though some may wonder about the value of Amateur Radio in this age of the Internet, there are actually more ham radio operators in the US (graph from 2014) than at any time in the past — thanks to interests in disaster preparedness, the maker movement and a variety of service functions that the hobby provides.
It all went smoothly EXCEPT I lost everything that was pinned to my start menu. If I were to do it again, I’d take a screen snapshot before installing the update. All the programs were still loaded and working, they just were not arranged on my start menu anymore. The update does take much longer than the normal monthly upgrade.
There are a number of minor enhancements here and there but what I was waiting for was Paint 3D. I wanted to see what it can do. So far, I’ve not really figured out the controls but you can manipulate solids (in the picture I pulled in some 3D space ship models). You can change them in simple ways, as well as color them or stamp designs on them…
Once you create a model you can export it as .3mf (what Microsoft 3D builder uses) as well as PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP and TIF. Not sure how much use it will be for 3D printing, but the capabilities were intriguing. You can also load your models into Remix 3d – a Microsoft hosted creative community
