Blog - Unpacking some hardware/IoT things

Unpacking a bag of electronics.

• 2 mini computers (one a gift from my colleague)
• Leatherman Surge Multi-tool
• Raspberry Pi 3 with official touch screen
• Prototype touch screen from work
• Philip's Hue with 4 lights
• Aurduino kit
• Random electronic parts box
• z-wave switch (work property)
• z-wave colored light (work property)

I'm thinking about experimenting with this stuff more. There are things I wanted to try last summer that I never got around to.

I think it would be cool to hookup a water and sunlight sensor into a garden. There could be interesting applications for IoT and agriculture/gardening.

Works out because the guys in the apartment up stairs are working on a garden. Of course it's just an idea and time is limited so I'm not completely commited to the idea yet.

Still a bit more to unpack. I'm happy with how my luggage has been holding up. I've dragged it around everywhere. I have 3 Travel Pro bags, when I first started traveling I got one Travel Pro bag.

I stopped over at Chicago airport, an older man saw that we had the same bag. He said it was the best and asked if I wanted to get into the travellers lounge. He had a plus one because of his frequent flyer status. I did and we chatted a bit. Funny thing is he was a developer working with electronics. Said he'd travelled to every state and every province for work.

A computer programmer from the previous wave (generation), because he was fixing old hardware for industry he had the opportunity to travel to the work sites.

I guess that's part of why I ended up getting two more bags of the same brand. Maybe also one reason I became interested in hardware.

Though to be clear when it comes to hardware I'm somewhat of an amateur. I know my way around Linux, scripting, and front-end development. I only know the basics of hardware.

I'm learning more each month where I work thanks to one of my colleagues. He's the opposite a hardware guy whose actually pretty good at programming. Great with Linux.

He showed me how to debug hardware using ssh over a serial connection. You just plug it in and use a program called picocom. The only thing you need to know is the baud rate (number of signals per second) of the device.

Once you have an ssh connection to a device it's basically the same as being connected to a server, with some small differences. Often you can find some interesting things in the /dev/ folder, the default location for files representing a device on Linux.

Also most devices are ARM based which leads to a ton of compatibility issues.

That's all I have for my hardware stuff. Looking forward to experimenting more, maybe posting about it will help motivate me to try new things.