The timeline

After reading a neat little project by Nick Sypteras where he hacked a Staples "Easy" button to send him an alert when someone was at his cube entrance ( Blog post is here ), I was inspired. I borrowed Nick's Micropython code from his Github (link is in his article) and modified it. My goal was to create a quick notification tool for my team. I work in a fast-paced job where I will often need to leave my desk for meetings or for other urgent reasons, leaving my remote team members talking to an absent person in Slack. A person who often needs to approve their current actions. Most of my meetings require around an hour of time, so my focus was on that duration. As such, I modified Nick's code to have three buttons: Green - I am back from wherever I've been. Yellow - I will be away for up to an hour. Red - I will be away for over an hour. I like traffic light systems. My thinking was that green is a "go" for questions/comms; yellow is a "s...

I finally got my watering to work consistently. All it took was replacing the MOSFET with a switch relay and some persistence in getting the damn ESP8266 to connect to the network for more than 5 minutes. I also had my first crop: green beans (or as they seem to be called in the US, string beans). Still waiting on the tomatoes, but I fear the aphids may have undone the good work so far. So, here's the setup: Two window boxes featuring, from left to right, carrots, green/string beans, tomatoes, and strawberry. The white PVC pipe has drill holes to provide water with a length of flexible tubing entering it on the left, supplying the pipe, and the right end of the pipe emptying back into the reservoir. A design issue with this simple setup is that the pipe is too high - it can easily erode un-mulched soil. In a better-designed setup, I would have the reservoir lower than the return so that the pipe can sit on the soil. The reservoir: Nothing fancy here. A 12v DC pump su...

Using Python I was able to construct a simple Monte Carlos analysis tool for use in Project Management scheduling. It takes in the PERT outputs (a weighted average estimate and standard deviation) and runs simulations across a list of tasks, providing outcomes in percentage format (i.e. the percentage of times each estimate occurs relative to the number of iterations). As it just now exists, it will be an important task to assess the accuracy of the output over time. However, it was a useful exercise and cost-saving for the company if it turns out to be an accurate tool. Project Management software capable of running this type of analysis tend to be expensive, which is fair, but with my newly minted Python skills it was a chance to combine career and new skill to generate business value with a much lower total cost. Again, another item I intend to revisit on the blog as results come in, but also an example of how I sometimes stop sniffing the literal flowers in my planters and tr...

Tech aside, I had my first experience of pests the other day. The tomato plants were looking a little yellow on the lower leaves. Flipping the leaves over resulted in an army of little white aphids being exposed. A quick spray bottle of dish soap (washing up liquid, folks in the UK) and a rinse a short time later seems to have slowed the invasion. Another dose in a day or so will hopefully keep the blighters at bay. Positive news, bean pods are appearing, so at least one of my crops will produce a yield. Carrots continue to grow, but they're a little rangy, probably from the limited sun that my functional-but-ugly setup can receive in its out of the way spot. Not to say there isn't direct sunlight, but between the beans and the air conditioner condenser, there's a windows of about 1.5 to 2 hours of direct sunlight on the carrots. Still, for an experiment I'm relatively happy so far. Nothing died, but the time that the auto-watering has been able to run has been li...