Lots of developers have side projects, but if you ask about them, they’ll probably say, “I’ve got a bunch of ideas and a few things in progress, but nothing I’ve finished.” It seems to be a common theme. Lots of interesting problems and big ideas, but not enough follow-through. A lot has been written about […]

Yesterday, we created the hardware, decorations, and Neopixel software for a DIY alphabet wall from Stranger Things. But what if one of your friends gets stuck in the Upside Down*? It’d be nice if our ESP8266-driven project could make full use of its wifi capabilities and receive messages wirelessly.

I recently got on the Stranger Things bandwagon, by which I mean that I binge-watched Season 1 in one weekend… and then I recreated the “alphabet wall” that Hawkins-resident-and-eternally-anxious-mother Joyce Byers has in her house (um, spoilers, I guess?).

This post is the fourth in a series exploring home automation using a Raspberry Pi, each covering a different aspect of the build of a garage door controller: Basic hardware acquisition and installation into a project box Software installation and code for controlling the door Software camera configuration and code streaming video to HomeKit Installing […]

This post is the third in a series exploring home automation using a Raspberry Pi. Each part covers a different aspect of the build of a garage door controller: Basic hardware acquisition and installation into a project box Software installation and code for controlling the door Software camera configuration and code streaming video to HomeKit […]

This summer, I decided to explore home automation using a Raspberry Pi. I thought that it would be fun to control my garage door with Siri/iOS HomeKit and spent some time building a basic controller using JavaScript and some nice Node.js packages.