Hey,  I’ve decided that I’ll be updating my website with my hobby adventures in IoTs….(aka Internet of things)!

Here I’ll post my progress in learning about different hardware and stuffs that I buy….I mainly buy all my IoT hardware from Ali/ebay…have been lucky for the most part as I haven’t had too many issues.  I when I did have issues, I got a full refund!  But waiting another 3-5 weeks isn’t fun.  (oh, and if I really, really need it I’ll buy from my ‘local’ shop (which charges about 5x-10x more but I don’t mind supporting local business!)

I’m more of a software guy (well I’ve been programming for 30+ years!, damn I just dated myself!)….but what’s fun is those old DOS days are helping me with these ‘integrated’ SOC type systems!  Learning embedded hardware is fun too, lots of great info on the web these days.

I’ve been playing with Arduino (uno/nano/mini) for over a year now…but now I’m enjoying the ‘freedom’ of the esp8266 chip.  (http://www.esp8266.com).  Ideas are abundant as I plan on working on a few projects with all this stuff…  If you’ve used the Arduino IDE….do yourself a favour and checkout the Visual Studio arduino plugin VisualMicro .  It makes developing on UNO and esp8266’s a lot more fun/easy/efficient!

My first ‘big’ project is working on a BBQ smoker controller.  I have two Kamado type charcoal smokers and I want to upgrade them to be a “set-and-forget” type system with full internet-webby enabled.  I’ve already written a module that will allow a NodeMCU device to connect with the popular HeaterMeter smoker controller….

This is all a hobby  and plan to keep everything opensource….I know other systems are out there, but this is for DIY learning and fun trying to keep things are ‘cheap’ as possible!

oh,  and if you want to learn how to do the rubiks cube (my son does it in under 10 seconds!)….I’ve got a video series on youtube from waaay back when….    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYVvVqtjROk