Step by step

In our exciting previous episode of The Never Ending Adventures of Rusted Rin Tin Tin Cup our intrepid hero ... Okay so this isn't a 1930's radio soap series. But last week I did bring the updated Smart Home Demo Board to CDL. Unfortunately all the previous week's work was for naught as I forgot to add the default fallback IP address to the DHCPCD setup. I also forgot to enable the serial port on the Raspberry Pi. So there was no accessing it. Everything was working but I couldn't access anything. :-(

I've now added the default fallback IP and enabled the serial port. So I should be able to demo that on Monday night (yea!). I'll try to get HASS loaded as I will eventually need to demonstrate that at TCF. So far HASS eludes me and I'm finding it very frustrating to get started with.

I now have the correct WiFi information for the Pi to the AP. I still need to work on the DHCPCD for the Etherenet and the WiFi. The Ethernet doesn't start up like I hoped. Once that's done I can connect my laptop and the Pi to the Demo board's AP and really do a proper demonstration. I do have access to the Pi via the Demo board AP and the serial console. So all is not lost. :-)

Some future projects are:

• More work on the Demo and the presentation
• Talkie Toaster - which will be used during the TCF presentation
• Jetson Nano AI - I've not quite figured this one out yet so it's for learning now
• Z-Wave Thermostat - This will actually be installed in the CDL building
• ESP32 Touch switches - WiFi to MQTT to Node-Red. Basically WiFi wall switches

Rough start

So I took the demo board to Computer Deconstruction Lab (the CDL makerspace). While setting up the demo board my laptop had forgotten all it's WiFi settings. Which made the connectivity to the board difficult. I didn't have the default DHCP fallback address on the Ethernet yet. Also the serial console was still on Bluetooth and I've not tried that yet. So I have a little more work to do before my Trenton Computer Festival presentation. Of course that's one of the reasons I'm bringing it to CDL, so I can work the bugs out before the presentation. I didn't attempt to reprogram the Sonoff ZigBee Bridge. Seems I forgot about it. I'll try that at home some time this week.

Back to blogging

Back to blogging Blogging, Computer Deconstruction Lab, Makerspace, Smart Home, IoT

I've been wanting to blog for some time but my automated scripts broke when the email authentication method broke. I've since found that Google has put up APIs and I now have an easier way of publishing blogs without enduring Web editors. So this is my first blog entry in several months.

Okay let's get down to what I've been doing. First I've updated and rebuilt my HA Demo Board. I'll be working on the demo board and HA further on Monday nights at the Computer Deconstruction Lab in Wall Township, NJ. I'm also getting it ready for the 2022 Trenton Computer Festival at the College of NJ on March 19th. The main issue was that the SSD died because the power supply was border line. So a new power supply, a powered USB hub, a new 500GB SSD (totally overkill) and the original Raspberry Pi 3B. Also a lot of software updated, the entire Linux OS and Node-Red but the same flows I've been using since 2014. I'll work on some new flows. I wish I could demonstrate with an Echo or Google Home but I'm not prepared to deal with Two tons of creamed corn. I'm also building a friend's Smart Home system. His ISY99 is not aging well and he's pulled out most of his Insteon. We has a few Sonoff's but he's using them manually (web interface). He wants something that can monitor his garage door status and email him on changes. I'm pretty sure we can do that and a bit more. ;-) Meanwhile I've been busy with automating more of my home. Next up is the HVAC.

I've also been busy trying to figure out how all this social media stuff works so I can get more members for the Computer Deconstruction Lab (CDL) makerspace. I'm a board member and I've taken it upon myself to handle this. The official web site: Computer Deconstruction Lab is not very good. It's extremely basic, bland and not very easy to find information on. I can't say my Computer Deconstruction Lab site is much better but it's not basic and I can manipulate it the way I want. The official site is Wordpress and I'm trying to figure it out. It may also be tied to InfoAge so I need to be careful. I still need to get access to the Facebook account and the Twitter account so I can official post for the Computer Deconstruction Lab. This is a bit problematic as that means a lot of folks will be sharing the passwords which is not a good thing. I think I can get around this by creating some automation to hide the details but let certain folks posts as Computer Deconstruction Lab representatives. Need to work with the board on that.

Finally the oddest thing I've worked on was the New Jersey Makerspaces list. I went searching for "NJ Makerspaces". What I found was that I couldn't find the Computer Deconstruction Lab even mentioned on the search results of Google, Bing or Duck-Duck-Go. And the lists I found were severely out of date. So I added our makerspace to hackerspaces.org. The created a web page with a list that I think is up to date. I've been busy getting our pages added to the search engines because they haven't been finding them. Additionally I've been trying to get an reference to the Institute for Exploratory Research pointing back to Computer Deconstruction Lab. Like I said I have a lot to learn about this stuff.