Using a Shelly 1 Mini Gen 3 as an MQTT-controllable relay

For my Christmas lights, I've been using homemade MQTT-controllable relays. I've been wiring up an ESP2866, a relay, and a AC-DC converter. While this works, it's a bit of a rat's nest of wiring. So I decided to try …

Nestbox camera with a Pi Zero W and PiCamera2

In an early post on this blog, I detailed my steps for creating a nestbox streaming camera. I've updated my setup so I thought a new post on the topic would be in order.

A Raspberry Pi Zero W and its …

Using CircuitPython on a HUB75 LED matrix

I bought a couple of surplus LED matrix panels a while back, and I finally got around to playing with them. My panels are 16x32 HUB75-compatible panels. I planned to "stack" them to create an effective 32x32 matrix. Adafruit makes a neat little …

Finding outdated Python packages

A quick Python technique this time. You can get a list of outdated Python packages installed on your system with a simple command:

pip list --outdated

That will list all the packages, including their dependencies. That's nice, but sometimes it makes it hard to know what …

In the first post in this series, I introduced RGB pixels, discussed the various types, and compared analog and true RGB pixels. In the second part, I covered wiring and shared my tips for reliably connecting to your microcontroller. In this third part, I will discuss the FastLED library, one …

In the first post in this series, I introduced RGB pixels. I discussed the various types and compared analog and true RGB pixels. I also covered power requirements. In this post, I'll cover wiring and share my tips for reliably connecting to your microcontroller. I also include a basic sketch …

RGB LEDs, sometimes called pixels, are lots of fun. Who doesn't like blinky lights?! They're not hard to use, though there's enough complexity to make these LEDs seem a bit daunting. In this post, I'll go through the basics to get you started on your blinky fun.

Traditional LEDs display …

Throughout my career, I've frequently heard developers lament that "this code is crap!" (well, they usually say ). It's usually some mid or senior level engineer looking at the existing codebase whining about how "bad" the old code is. To those situations, I say there's never a valid time to say …

Everyone loves a good dad joke

... now, if only there were some good dad jokes!

The ICanHazDadJoke site claims to maintain the internet's largest collection of dad jokes. GitHub user CrossNox has made a nice wrapper around their API. Together, this lets you retrieve a random dad joke programmatically.

Why …

Getting a Boolean value from any data type

Recently, I was building a webhook that needed to accept and operate on varied data from outside sources. Included in that data were values meant to be Booleans. However, some callers were sending values like "Yes" or "no" or even "-1". I …