[Blog]

I haven't had much walktime recently, so not many walktime blogs. However, I have been working on creating some videos for SuperHouseTV relating to home automation using Arduino and other Open Source hardware and software, so I'll start uploading those soon and updating the content on www.superhouse.tv. These video blogs will probably switch over to a personal account soon.

Also, my wife and daughter have been giving me a hard time about going around wearing a Freetronics shirt hoping someone will recognise it. So I'm upping the ante, and offering a prize: if a random person meets me in the street, recognises the Freetronics logo, and says hello, I'll give them a free LeoStick (Arduino-compatible board).

View or comment directly on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO9uRfvupoM

After 25+ years of dreaming about my ultimate home workshop, it's all starting to come together. Part of it is setting up adequate storage for all the little bits and pieces that are necessary in a typical electronics lab.

So when I heard that Element14 had a special on parts drawers, I put together a spreadsheet to figure out how many parts I needed to store and ordered in the necessary number of drawers. This video shows how I mounted them on a wall.

View or comment directly on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYwj-mqlYto

On episode #85 (or was it #84? I can't remember) of The Amp Hour, Dave and Chris mention in passing different techniques for storing their CAD files. Having spent many years working in software, the techniques I've seen used by hardware devs for managing their project files seem to be pretty much the approach that the software industry gave up on a decade ago. Having learned some lessons from large software projects I now use a combination of Dropbox and Git to manage my hardware design project files.

View or comment directly on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJtxjlVInms

Links for this ep:

• Git: www.git-scm.com
• Dropbox: www.dropbox.com

Every lab needs a whiteboard, so when I saw a nice piece of glass being thrown out when helping a friend with a clean-up I grabbed it to mount on the wall. But glass is heavy, and it's not particularly easy to drill holes in. With a bit of care though it can be done, and the result turned out really well.

View or comment directly on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKMQpeyuU7c

Yes, I said "conical" at one point when I meant to say "tubular". I didn't notice until checking the playback!

I'm in the process of setting up my home office, and the computer I'm using is an old machine decommissioned from regular use. It's really noisy, so I'm on a mission to make it silent. The first step is replacing the power supply.

View or comment directly on YouTube: http://youtu.be/zuvPJvcersY

I need a monitor stand for the triple-head computer in my new home workshop, so I had a go at making one out of bits of left-over timber.

View or comment directly on YouTube: http://youtu.be/iiOo8YOLAEk

If you're just getting into home automation and go searching for Open Source HA projects, you'll discover there aren't any obviously dominant players - more a mix of partly-developed personal projects that aren't very portable. Why is that?

View or comment directly on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywulcl_PCUM

Links for this ep:
 * Allison Randal: www.twitter.com/allisonrandal
 * Desktop Home Hacks: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8asl5SsGy4
 * Mister House: misterhouse.sourceforge.net
 * Open Remote: www.openremote.org
 * SuperHouseTV: www.superhouse.tv

Despite Australia's strong involvement in the early history of space exploration, we're now lagging way behind many far smaller nations in our commitment to the industry. At linux.conf.au 2009 in Hobart, Marco Ostini gathered together a group of like-minded people to create Lunar Numbat: a project to develop Open Source space technology as part of the White Label Space team competing for the Google Lunar X-Prize. At linux.conf.au 2012 in Ballarat I managed to pin him down long enough to film this interview.

View or comment directly on YouTube: youtu.be/6PQ6mIEmKfc

Links for this ep:
 * Marco Ostini: www.twitter.com/marcoostini
 * Lunar Numbat: www.lunarnumbat.org
 * White Label Space: www.whitelabelspace.com
 * Google Lunar X-Prize: www.googlelunarxprize.com