As a once-dedicated C programmer (I learned with the K&R book) I originally dismissed Javascript as an interpreted toy (great for websites of course), that is until I started playing with Node-Red. At that point, after much struggle, I started to get reasonably good with it and once I got…
File Share Quickies
Following on from an initial comment by Keith Howell in the blog about NGROK, Antonio and I were chatting today about TKaiser’s little testing script and I wanted to share something with him. Skype of course is useless at this unless it’s a very small file – but we’ve used…
A Question of Lifespan
Here we started a conversation about SD Lifespan. How can we make our SBC projects run for longer? In comments I’ve seen elsewhere, people seem to think it is OK that a Pi may well fail within a year due to SD – I don’t think that is even REMOTELY…
Raspberry Pi 3 Serial
Just bought a new Raspberry Pi 3 with WIFI and Bluetooth? Using it in a project with serial? Happy? Well, you might not be so happy when you find out what I just found out. I had my Node-Red project that has been controlling the house for around 18 months…
Microwave for the Weekend
If you read the blog about the Maker Faire, I just came back with a bag of goodies and one of them is a microwave movement sensor. Not the two-board solution I discussed a while ago that never really worked – this is a small, neat single board called an…
Newcastle Maker Faire
What a great day. Newcastle has an annual Maker Faire and it is on this weekend – and what a faire it is. I headed off first thing to get some parking and was pleased to find that Newcastle College had some cheap parking – £4 for the day. I…
Help
Looking for help on a couple of items where Google has failed me.. 1. Friedland door/window contact twin-pack DC-55. I have them running – I have RFLINK talking to them – I understand the codes for door opening and door closing and another for the internal spring being released (anti-theft)…
A Fine Sunny Weekend
Evening all, it has been a busy weekend here at the Scargill’s man-cabin. No Friday, frequent blog-visitor JAY popped over for a visit and we spend some time discussing new stuff: First on the list was a new toy Jay just picked up on offer at Maplin – a “SmartSensor…
Enter the NanoPi M1+
Today must be my day for easy installs. The FriendlyArm NanoPi M1+ turned up this morning along with spare heatsink and antenna. So first of all what is it? – this is a small SBC, a development from the Nanopi M1 which I’ve reviewed here before. So is this worth…
FriendlyArm S430
This could be one of the shortest reviews I’ve ever done! The S430 is a low-cost 4.3” capacitive touch-display designed to work with FriendlyArm boards such as the NanoPi S2, M2, M3, the NanoPC T2 and T3 and finally the Smart4418. When I think of the HASSLE I’ve had getting…
Android Phone as Resource
This is the following up the previous Android Phone as Server article. Last update 22/03/2017. Servers: So having now tried various phones and tablets, it does look like the Linux Deploy App on a rooted Android phone makes for a good Debian installation in order to run software like Apache,…
Android Phone as Server
Why am I showing you a picture of a cracked-screen phone? Well because this particular phone is a bust Oukitel K10000, the phone with the world’s longest-lasting battery and an excellent workhorse. My friend Aidan gave me this (rather than chucking it away) some time ago and it has been…
Raspberry Pi Zero WiFi
I should have just entitled this “Raspberry Pi” as it keeps expanding (now covering the rest of the Pi boards – but keep reading).. as you will see, the title is a little restrictive given what we’ve done over the last few days. Friend Antonio over Italy and I (still…
Node-RED Global Flow and Context
There’s a mouthful. This short article is about the various kinds of variables used in Node-Red and more importantly how to initialise them and how to view them. So in Node-Red when you want to use variables – there are three basic types as well as local variables. So for…
Editors
Programming editors, like music, are a matter of personal taste and I don’t hope to convert anyone here today. I would however like to bring something to your attention which I discovered at the weekend. I’m a “Notepad++” man. I don’t particularly like the look of NotePad++ but it is…
AlexaPi and a Warning
It’s been a busy week already – I’ve been saving up a load of “Can we write articles for your blog?” emails and this morning I decided to take a look. The sample articles were ATTROCIOUS and now I know why so many articles are bad out there – they…
Node Red and HighCharts
First things first – HighCharts are not free for commercial use. However, for your own website, a school site or a non-profit organisation they are free to use. You are also OK to make modifications. So – that’s the “cover my back” bit out of the way – now, how…
The LCD Object
It has been a very busy week for us here in Spain – what with partying and what-not, so I’ve not had as much time as I would like to develop my JavaScript object skills, however, I’ve managed to get much further with a project I’ve been working on in…
Odds and Ends
Just a few odds and ends… we’ve arrived safely in Spain and I’m not getting quite as much blogging time as I’d like as there are repair jobs to do – but I managed a little item on Node-Red earlier – I’ve had people in here asking for simple-use examples…
NR Templates and the Inject Node
When testing Node-Red, the common INJECT node is invaluable. Indeed it is just about the only way to instantly inject information into another node. Here is a typical example. It doesn’t get any simpler than this. Here I have merely dropped an “Inject” node onto the Node-Red working surface along…