Author: Peter Jones

No, not business, but cats. Or really, a cat. Reese is a fast little ninja and being good cat parents includes not locking her into a room on accident.
I knew a few years ago there were articles about indoor positioning via wifi, and indoor diode flight plans and stuff, so I figured all this was old hat by now. Totally not as far as I can tell. Currently the only simple looking solution recently got funded on kickstartr and costs  more than I have.
Drawing board it is.

Smile
If you can’t say something nice
Smile
If you can’t say something nice
Smile
…
Ooh, but I do haz a kitteh at home

Just dropping some notes to self:
http://www.adafruit.com/products/700

Really, been working like a dog. Six days a week, averaging twelve plus hours a day. Definitely takes a toll. English not so good.
The Wif and I wandered about then Saturday as we ate wont to do somedays, and stopped in at Ada. Amongst my other treasures, I got a bag of candle-flicker LEDs.
This morning, which I only wire about now because I’ve been driving to work, I realized I could make a wicked wall since with them.
Note I’m trying to decide if I go discrete components for an elegant solution or run them with a Photon, for extensibility. I think I should go discrete for elegance and Science! and then whip out one with something like a Photon for (practicality?).

—–

I’ve now had done sleep. Taking the bus today because the Wif needs the car to pick up our new kitteh.

Basically, for the discrete version:
Solar cell fills cap (probably nationalized from an old power supply), when light level goes low enough a photoresistor triggers a transistor and we start discharging through the LED. I have everything I need but the solar cell.

Switching to emergency power. Beep beep beep  beep   bee….

No really. Just kinda tired. First two days of work this week put me at something like 25 hours. Add in commute and everything and now I’m getting run down and everything. I went to bed early last night and it totally didn’t help.
My big box from Sparkfun can in and I started taking a look at my treasures. Tonight I should clean off my work table, so I can get working. The only thing is the Den of Inequity is quickly becoming saturated with stuff again. I need to get on that. Maybe my goal every night is to do something with a cubic foot of stuff everyday. That sounds doable.

I had a pretty strong showing this weekend. I worked around four hours on Saturday. After that I picked up the Wif and liked at cats at Catapalooza (Humane Society event), but no kitties picked us. We than went to the Wif’s favorite pizza that’s even farther from our house. On the way home we went to Fry’s and I got flux and solder and an aforementioned cable. I picked the wrong cable, because I conflated multiple needs. The staff there was also so depressed I might have to really question before I go there again.
Sunday, after walking to get an afternoon coffee and treat, we slotted out to Petco and got an aquarium. The Wif, who never had an aquarium, was concerned about the size and everything. For this reason we got one of the one and done Aquafarm kits that we could put up in the living room and she could see the relative ease of aquarium management. This also gives me an extra buffer of time between me getting my great tomorrow and going live with a built aquaponic system.
I think tonight is beer bottling night. I lifted the carboy onto my work table, and it’s well past time to get that done.

I got a weekend coming up; I got stuffs to do.
Electronics stuff is here Tuesday. I’m getting an aquarium this weekend. That means I need to get my beer bottled to start making room. I need to throw more stiff away or at least decompose it a bit; I’m looking at you last cheap inkjet printer. I need a place for my aquarium, a place for my sewing machine, a place for building stuff. I think it’s time I start to start looking at undesking my computer. I keep thinking of mounting my screen into one of my bookcase cubes.
I need to look at some Amazoning, mainly a DisplayPort (should that be capitalized and smooshed?), solder and flux. Oh, I also need vermiculite or whatever it is I’m supposed to use as planting material.
Speaking of planting material, I need to sprout me some peppers or tomatoes. Whichever one I’m gonna grow aquaponic like needs to be ready to plant. This reminds me I need soil for the raised bed. I’ll get radishes in there and hope for the best.
I have nails now, which means I need to build my moisture probes, and get that dialed in.
I’m tired after another long work week,

I’ve been working a lot. I’ve been doing things with the Wif a lot. The downtime I’m taking has been die rather unrewarding gaming. It has nothing to do with the games. It’s me.
A while back, I realized the best way for me to be a happier person consisted of thinking of other stuff. Not the thinking of kittens or a warm beach, but the shallow project thinking I do.
Totes getting my aquarium on this weekend.
I’m doing this.

…in my email from Sparkfun. There also is an overflow sale happening. These two things mean I’m ordering all sorts of small things to help full out my project supplies.
I think it might be time for me to build stuff. I think I’m gonna get my aquaponic system going soon.
Notes to self:
Thermistors
Flux
Solder
(Maybe a pump)
Probably drop the transceivers

Someday I need to actually learn this stuff right, so I know how to implement it right. I’m penalty going back to my original idea of pulling in data from sources and creating tickets in Processing. At least this time I’d be looking at some of the incoming data being relatively clean and the files being relatively static.
I also had maggots all over the garbage can last night. Sprayed the lurking menace with a 30% bleach mixture. Garbage gets picked up tomorrow. Tomorrow night they get to enjoy boiling water. My skin is crawling again.