A Million Useless Thoughts

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...