A Million Useless Thoughts

Hold on your butts, this one is a wild ride, and specifically from my point of view. It's more a journey from when I was about 6, until today, and a little bit beyond that, about a week under normal conditions, but that last part flucuates quite a bit. I cannot explain all of it, but I can describe my experiences, and you don't have to believe them, they are merely my observations. I feel I have to start with sleep and dreaming, since so much of the experience is rooted inside dreams and more specfically dejavu. We have to suspend the dejavu for a moment to get through this, but trust me, we'll get back there, it's too important to leave out. I am a lucid dreamer, in full color, full audio, lots of detail, but not sharp details. Note that last one, it's important as well. I have been my whole life or as far back as I can remember, dreamed vividly of all my childhood nightmares and having the ability to conjure heroes to fight them. This battle somewhere in the...

Yocto again, but it always takes some time to learn something new. Today we are going to venture down adding a custom layer to setup wpa-supplicant and interfaces. The goal is to make a Pi Zero W come up and connect to WiFi from a base build.

Today's goal in the build toward the house of cloud PI is to add WiFi and SSHD to our current Yocto Image. Currently following instructions from This Blog . Stay tuned with the results. One more thing here, we will a do a full wrap up once we get a build that is ready to be setup and will open a repository to all of the changes that were done to make a pi-zero-w that auto-connects and can do updates to the image. Looks like everything is ok, but we'll need a make a new layer to make WiFi work.

Got all of the seeds planted into the plant grow lights. So progress on this. Unforutnately not quite done on the Yocto Side. But progress, it looks like the output 'core-image-base-raspberrypi0-wifi-20210205102113.rootfs.wic' Is what we can use without having 'dd' working correctly under WSL. So now will try out the image and make sure it works. Using the WIC works! But no WiFi on startup. Next steps WiFi, then SSHD and we'll be up about what a raspian build looks like.

Getting the gardenator prototype onto the grow lights. This includes a monitor for temperator and humidity sensor and a moister sensor for the plants. Part of the goal was to get a timelasp on the plant growth, but the camera fell off, so we will have to switch out the PI with a new PI once we get more of the yocto setup going.

Put the grow lights back together today. Most of the work was spent getting it back out of storage. This is in preperation for the prototype gardenator.

Yocto is currently building as Dunfell. We will know more later on how well this works. Excavator switch from relays to H-bridge L298N is working so much better. The relays were getting back powered and stuck on after an abrupt stop or turn. The H-Bridge has fixed this issue. Now we need to fix the rest up the rest of the excavator. Vitory on dunfell building. Now to put this on a SD card and test it out.

Let continue the thing-a-day with continued effort on the Yocto front. We last left off with the Zeus and Ubuntu 18.04. Which has failed. We are now moving on to try and get warrior to work. This currently feels like a bit of a retreat, but so far the results are little different time will tell as it takes a while to build out Yocto. Warrier failed to get files from github. So next up we will try dunfell, this is one past zeus, maybe there was a fix there. Dunfell is also one branch back from the lead branch. Fingers crossed for this working.

There is still a bug with getting yocto to work with Docker for Windows. One issue might be related to the underlaying Ubuntu version being 20.04. There is some evidense that file names play a role in preventing it from running successfully. If the latest clean and rebuild fails we will rebuild the Docker using 18.04 as the base and spin it back up. Looking at Docker Hub there are several Yocto Dockers, but none with instructions on how they work or even what version of ubuntu they use, in short they all look like crap-shoots. With that in might I will publish my version when this work and add some documentation on how it works. In the meantime there has been a need to update the Excavator project as there was an issue with the relays getting stuck open cause the wheels to constantly spin. The upgrade will be switching to using a H-Bridge for the main motors. Hopefully with some good thoughts we'll make progress today.

Currently Yocto is still compiling. Partially due to the issues that needed to be resolved in the setup to get to building with a little luck today we will test out the image produced, provide some results below, and then get started on the next task which will be to get a SWUpdate working with the image. So fingers crossed here that we get everything up and running. Decided this was not going to resolve well. Rebuilding the Docker and the build. Fingers crossed, this takes about 8 hours or so to build, so we may end up having to switch to something else to try. On the plus side this is progress the Docker appears to start and work on the first try now. This means that the docker can continue to be evolved into something more complex. It also likely means we are missing something from the docker for building out yocto, might have to download an image from docker hub to get past this issue. While this might be a downspin on getting an image going for "The House of Clo...

Yocto! Today we will attempt to build/install Yocto for a Raspberry Pi Zero W. This is also a part of the The House of Cloud PI . Like the begining of the software setup side. Directions Attempt 1 Follow instructions and wait for about an hour or more, so long delay here before we get an image. Then we will move on the next step. The instructions did not work for WSL at all. Ended up creating a docker for building yocto. This is part of my virtual machines projects now. Ended up having to added 'cpio', 'locales' and 'python2' to base Ubuntu. Then had to generate the 'en_US.UTF-8'. Finally had to build inside the docker volume by changing the TMPDIR in the local.conf for yocto. So not entirely ideal here, but it's building, which is a great start! As a side note, thinking about building up the docker (tomorrow) to assist with making the build process that much easier, likely going to need to add in some sheel scripts to...

Continuing on the House of Cload Pi. This though is about the software and how to get it setup and going at least for getting things staged YOCTO Being familair with Yocto from other projects, this seems like a good place to start. It means dropping the ease of Raspbian Lite, but adds the customization and flexibility we are going to need to make this work. So, first Task is to get a basic image for a pi3 or pi zero w and then we can work from there. We will be following this toturial to get started at getting a basic setup for a PI. We should be able to add recipes and modify from there. Yocto can also be configured to create cross platform SDK's which will be useful in early development. SWUpdate After getting a basic image down we should attempt to get some level of updating system in place for the pi in the field. We are not going to be able to simple remove/replace and SDCard easily if there is a pi stuck some where in a wall or too high, so having a method of up...

Been watches a lot on landscaping, gardening, and food scaping. If you are not familar with food scaping is using eatible plant mixed in with/as decorative plant. The idea is to create a beautiful landscape that you can eat. I like to think of the gardening version of Willy-Wonka's room where everything is edible (a land of pure imagination!). Along these line of watching a lot of garnding and landscapes box elders are used quite a lot as walls for creating outdoor rooms. Box edlers also get used for a lot of other landscaping sculptures, but let's for this let's focus on the wall concept. Could the box elders be replaces with some thing like blueberry and cherry bushes? Brei the plant lady does some level of blueberries as bushes, but would they, could they be sculpted up to have the same effect as a box elder? How would cherry bushes do? Would both get tall enough to create walls or would they be limited to bush/half walls? Could you creatively use something e...

Continuing from "The House of Cloud Pi." General idea is a Wifi Mesh network of pi's that can also perform as a cluster for home automation I have started ordering parts to start experimenting with various components required to build out the House of Cloud PI. The base model is going to use Raspberry Pi Zero W's as these will work for outlet controls, light dimmers, ceiling fan controls, and even RGB light controls, irrigation controls and monitoring. I'm not convienced about using them for cameras, but there appears to be much success in the community for using the pi zeros as security cameras. I'd feel better if it was a PI 4 for ones near the house as that would provide more house power. The Base Unit Pi Zero W - $10 ref AC USB Charger or USB Auto Charger - $4 ref 64 GB micro SD card $5 ref Base unit does not have headers, everything will be soldered, this will make it much more reliable. The USB power supply is the smallest cheapest p...

Vaccines are designed to train our immune system to react to incoming virus and track component of their D/RNA. That information is generally stored inside cells inside our bone marrow. Current technology is that we find the virus break it apart and identify the piece that will trigger an immune response. What if we could change it up and simple put the information needed by the body direcctly into the storage cells? Could we take survivors of a disease and extra the DNA alterations stored in the bone marrow? Could we use that and build a CRISPR sequence that could be used to give immunity with needing to invoke an immunno response? Could end the need for endless vaccines in early childhood and start by modifying the immune system from the get go, many less injections? Could we accelerate future vaccines by already having this vetted and in place, so the time from initial infection to herd immunity basically drops to a few days? We can use crispr for virus id. ref We are pla...

For some reason people dislike bread ends and this alwasy leaves them to be turned into bread crumbs. We always cook them in a pan even the major manufactures. Now, there is a type of bread that is made without ends, but it's very different. But why couldn't someone like Wonder Bread create a convayer belt of bread and remove the pans? That is the belt is a series of overlapping U shapes. The pans drop down from the back preventing dough from going backwards. The U's are sprayed with butter/oil then the dough is dropped into the U's in a continous fashion. The belt continues forward into a low temperator oven to help the dough raise it can take an s-shape here as we are only doing dough rising, from here the dough move to a long and slow oven for the hour or so to cook the bread. At the end of the oven tunnel the bread is sliced, now with no ends. The U conveyer belt drops down and the endless loaves now move to slicing and packaging. The U's now go up thr...

The concept of a smart house with a computer that is everywhere is a concept that is today possible with things like alexa and all sorts of technologies. But when the internet is down much of this breaks down to a more simplier format. What if it were possible to combine the cluster performance of the cloud with a set of smart home controllers. That is with the always on of many of the smart plugs and bulbs can we boost each's CPU power and combine that power into a cluster? The concept being take a quad core arm, but now every bulb, outlet, switch, appliance, and smart camera contains one. First would the combined house power be useful? or efficient? Efficent would be a draw of about 2 Watts per device, which be up from the near 0 most of the zigbee and zwave device produce now when they are in low power mode. Does that mean that let's assume you have 40 of these (40 from how many devices I had when I last constructed a smart home, but really we'd likely be higher o...

Mosquitoes are the bane of existing for summer outdoor activities. To combat this problem, we have used various harsh chemicals (DEET) and incenses (citronella) that just do not work in the long run, as they allow the flying hypodermic needles to simply fly off and seek other victims. Well, it turns out that nature has always had a way to keeping down the insect infestation through means of digestion by fish and frogs. Fish mostly just eat the larva and are constrained to the water areas, which are not always present at a backyard BBQ. That leaves us with frogs. Now, while frog are excellent insect hunters, we do have a few problems with frogs: 1.) They are amphibious and need a source of water. 2.) They eventually would get full and stop eating mosquitoes 3.) They tend to run away from us. This leads us into need a way to keep an maintain a wall of frogs and here's how. First we will glue the frogs together in a ring or wall configuration around the area to be protected ...

It occurred to me last night while drinking beer that the coast was both irritating and waste of resources. Irritating that almost no glass actually lives on the coaster, preventing them from performing their original task of preventing damage to the table. And a waste that they get thrown away every night and in some cases every drink. So I dreamed up this: The glass has ridges to direct the condensation down to a reservoir at the bottom of the glass. The reservoir size will be base on the humidity and temperature difference of the beverage and the surrounding air. The reservoir can be drained by a couple of rubber plugs along the sides. The vary bottom of the glass is covered in a bit of rubber to prevent damaging the table from the hard glass. The interesting part is that the water will make the glass more stable as it is drunk by increasing the base weight. Cheers for your thoughts!

I have a vision of a tablet and a desktop working together as monitor and workhorse. A tablet as just an extension of a PC. The PC acts as a rendering engine, compiler, digital library, the tablet as a screen an input device. When the tablet returns to be near to the PC it become a second monitor for that PC. Ok, I am in the market for a new PC at the moment and have dabbled a bit with early tablets (think in 2003). And for the most part the tablet part of that old laptop worked pretty well and the technology has merely been catapulted by capacitance and battery bad-assary. But the tablet still lack the true power of a desktop to compile complex code or render 3D graphics. Why can't we have both? A tablet that can dock to a PC and have the PC just use the screen. Then run off with just the tablet part and go read, take notes, etc. It seams useful. I think 'they' are starting to catch up with my ideas, given the Asus Transformer and the phone-laptop hybrid thing....