February 2019 Meeting Report

February 2019.

IP address notifier - Alex.

A Raspberry Pi notifies its IP address using UDP communication protocol.

A Java utility running on PC picks up and displays the address.

Details are in : alw1746/RPI-IP-ADDRESS-DISCOVERY

Blue Pill - Alex.

A 'Blue Pill' micro (STM32 ARM 0) drives an LCD touch screen.

A Raspberry Pi LCD display was interfaced to an STM32 mcu using SPI.

Details are in : alw1746/RPI-LCD-STM32.

Demoed a touchscreen paint program with customised pen sizes, smiley/sad faces, buttons, etc.

Battery Monitoring System - Andrew.

A PIC12F683 has just 8 pins, 2048 program words, 128 Ram bytes and 256 EEPROM bytes

which turns out to be more than sufficient to produce an automatic

battery monitoring system that can be configured via a PC to provide

a range of battery monitoring options. The device only uses, on

average, about 300microamps as the 3G modem is only switched on to

make SMS calls. Only a few simple AT commands are needed and the

PIC12F683 uses its internal 10 bit analogue to digital converter to

measure the battery voltage. The application C-code includes a

software UART that communicates with a 3G modem to make the SMS

calls. Apart from 'battery-low' warning calls routine 'heartbeat' SMS

calls are also produced to verify the system remains fully

operational over the long periods during which the battery remains

above a specified low voltage.

Podcasts - Steve.

There's plenty of podcasts that cover a big range of technical interests.

My favourites are 'embedded.fm' and '99% Invisible'.

And of course there's also the Amp Hour.

Suggested pod casts. Mostly technical, some general interest.

· Embedded.fm

· 99% Invisible

· The Engineering Commons - Topics in engineering.

· GeekWire - A technology podcast from the Seattle region.

· Science for the People - Science for critical thinkers from CJSR Edmonton.

· Science Friday - Weekly science from Public Radio International.

· Silver Bullet Podcast - Frank talk about our crappy security habits from Cigital and IEEE.

· Software Engineering Radio - From the IEEE Computer Society.

· The Spark Gap

· Spark - Tech for the masses from CBC (The Canadian Broadcorping Castration).

· Quirks and Quarks - Canada's weekly science program from CBC

· Reply All

· Car Talk reruns - Soon to be ending from NPR

· CiTR - The Jazz Show - Three hours per week from CITR student radio from UBC Vancouver

· Click - Technology weekly from BBC

· Comedy of the Week - From BBC

· Engines of Our Ingenuity - 3 minute daily romps into engineering from Uni of Houston

· The Irrelevant Show - Sketch comedy from some of my friends via CBC

· Freakonomics Radio - The hidden economics of everything from WNYC.

· Jazz Northwest - This week in jazz from Portland to Vancouver from KNKX Sea-Tac.

· RadioLab - Thought provoking and award winning radio from WNYC.

· Innovation hub

· The Startup Podcast (Gimlet media) (Especially the first two seasons!)

· The Tim Ferriss Podcast - Lots of great interviews, including some people from tech

· Detective

· The Nerdist

· Security Now (MP3)

· Still Untitled : The Adam Savage Project

· The Story Collider

· MacroFab Engineering Podcast

· StarTalk Radio.

· NPR’s TED Radio Hour: TED talks with more depth

· The new SupplyFrame DesignLab podcast: Hosted by past guest Daniel Hienzsch

· Don’t Panic GeoCast: Mentioned recently on the Embedded.fm show with John Leeman

· Cognicast, the O’Reilly Solid Podcast,

· Herding Code

· Macrofab

· Code Newbies.

· Retro Computing Roundtable An old tech nostalgia fest.

· Accidental Tech Podcast: ATP is mostly Apple-centrist geek talk.

· Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin: Interviews by Alec Baldwin. He is an excellent interviewer, which surprised me; I only knew him as an actor before I stumbled on this show.

· Hanselminutes: Scott Hanselman’s podcast, which he describes as “Fresh Air for Developers.” This long-running tech show covers a wide range of programming topics & questions answered.

· Serial

· S-Town