@bytesnz

Jack Farley, Computer Engineer

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  • 6/16/2022

    JS Binary Decoder

    software

    I have recently been dealing with parsing binary data packets from various sources, and have published two NPM libraries from it - binary-decoder and sbd-direct-ip. How's how they came to be.

  • 4/19/2022

    New Zealand Low Power Wide Area Networks

    electronicssoftware

    I have started experimenting with low power wide area networks (LP-WAN) in New Zealand using a u-blox SARA-R410-02B. Here is is what I have experimented with so far.

  • 2/7/2022

    Starting with ESP32

    esp32electronicssoftwaretrap-watch

    I started developing my trap-watch project on an ESP32-CAM using the ESP IDF. Here is the newbie difficulties I ran into.

  • 2/4/2022

    VIM Window Rabbit Hole

    linux

    Developing ESP-IDF components I thought it would be great if I could make a command to open all the files for a component at once. What a rabbit hole it was. Here is how I did it.

  • 1/28/2022

    Parsing Arguments in Bash

    linux

    Making a script parse arugments in Bash took me way too long last time I did it, so here is a nice full example of how to do it using getopt

  • 1/8/2022

    Where's my bait gone?

    electronicsconservationtrap-watch

    I have recently started trapping some introduced predators around my local area and have had baits and pre-feed disappear with nothing to show for it, so I decided to get sparky and see if I could catch the culprit in the act.

  • 3/26/2021

    Bathymetric Contours

    gisgeoserveroceans

    Finally got around to creating a SLD style for GeoServer to display bathymetric contour lines using the GEBCO gridded bathymetric data. Here's how.

  • 2/25/2021

    shm That Cache

    yarndockerdevelopment

    I am often trying to find more space on my hard drives and found today my own docker containers wasting space thanks to ! Here's how I fixed it.

  • 2/2/2021

    Blob blob blob blob Stayin' Alive Stayin' Alive

    softwarejavascriptdebuggingmemory

    Upon recently trying Deezer again, I found their web app ate all my memory when running in Firefox, so I decided to see if I could find out why. I got as far as memory-file-data/string and Blobs. Here's how.

  • 12/25/2020

    A new Litter Survey

    softwarelitterlitter-survey

    In a culmination of litter surveys and litter picks, linked data and data exploration, and remoteStorage and ActivityPub, I have created a web-based litter pick/survey app that I hope will allow federated citizen science.

  • 12/13/2020

    Hoe Stream Trash

    litterpi-trash-camlitter-pick

    My latest litter pick target was Hoe Stream and the White Rose Lane Local Nature Reserve. Here's how it went.

  • 11/24/2020

    Release the Beast

    softwaregitlabcirelease

    I just created a Gitlab CI job to create a release with information from a CHANGELOG.md file for some of my projects. Here's how I did it.

  • 9/30/2020

    Gitlab CI Caching

    gitlabcontinuous integration

    I noticed something strange happening during build process during a multi-tasking bug fix. Turns out I was using Gitlab CI's caching incorrectly. I should have been using artifacts. Here's what I saw.

  • 9/21/2020

    Birthday Trash

    litterpi-trash-cam

    As a birthday treat, I took the day off work to try out my electronerised litter picker. Here's how it went.

    The First Venture

    After a nice slow start to the day, my first plan of the day was to try my creation, the super-powered litter picker (with attached camera and GPS), in the local neighbourhood.

    I grabbed the battery, some spare electrical tape and a pair of scissors and headed to the Jackmobile (my bicycle).

    It didn't take long to spot my first target - in fact I didn't even make it onto the road.

    The first litter I found, 20m from my front door KFC takeaways

    I decided the trash was going to be there when I got back, so left it where it was and headed to the place I planned to activate the litter picker.

    As expected, there was trash to be had, so I pulled over and connected the battery, taped it in place waited for the GPS to start its 1 pulse-per-second flash.

    The first catch was a beer can, a water bottle and a napkin.

    Turns out litter-picking from a bicycle is not quite as easy as I hoped, especially with brakes that were needing some TLC. Going at slow pace, I was able to spot litter and then turn around and pick it up.

    After riding down to Westfield Common and picking a few bits round the Pink Pig, I decided to head to the Basingstoke Canal towpath via the flat to drop off what I had already picked up.

    I found litter scattered along the towpath and a couple of trees with lots of cans underneath them.

    The bad connection on the battery started playing up and the Pi started turning off and on again, and not in the fix it way.

    I headed back to base to review the haul and the footage.

    The First Litter Haul

    The haul totalled of around 2 shopping bags worth of litter, 60% of which was plastic bottles and can - a perfect example of why a deposit return schema is sorely needed in the UK. It also contained a pair of medical gloves, plucked from a tree, and two face masks.

    The non-recyclable litter haul The recyclable litter haul

    The Footage

    Unfortunately, the haul wasn't as good on the Pi.

    Just before leaving, I added some code to record the track I took, which unfortunately upset the recording of the positions on the images.

    The trigger on the upper part of the handle along with the bad battery connection also caused Pi not to capture images of most of the litter picked along the towpath.

    I fixed the code, taped off the twitchy part of the trigger and sorted a way to position the battery so that it did not keep resetting the Pi.

    To The Beach

    Ready for round two, I caught the train down to Littlehampton for the MCS Great British Beach Clean event.

    During the beach clean, the Pi and trigger worked much better. Unfortunately, the litter picker was not the best at picking the small bits of plastic and cigarette butts.

    The Results

    Unfortunately, I don't have a full tally of litter I picked up on my birthday, but have made the following clip from the images captured by the Pi during the picking. Definitely room for improvement, but the concept proved a success.

    A video of all the images of litter I picked up during the day
    Close
  • 9/13/2020

    Pi Trash Cam

    raspberry pielectronicslitterpi-trash-cam

    In preparation for a day of litter picking, I finally got round to a project idea - attaching a camera to a litter picker to record it all. Here's what I did.

  • 8/25/2020

    yarn add --dev webdriverio

    first-draftsoftwaretestinggitlab

    I finally started implementing UI testing on first-draft using WebdriverIO. While writing tests was easy, getting the tests running was a little more difficult. Here is how I did it.

  • 8/16/2020

    Hooray! My new blog is live! Based on Sapper, using MongoDB and eventually ActivityPub and ActivityStreams, it will be my federated posting hub to the world.

    softwareblog
  • 8/9/2020

    Removing EXIF Data from Photos

    exifphotos

    Creating this new blog, I wanted to make sure there was no metadata data leaking personal information. Here's how I removed all the metadata tags except the ones I wanted from my photos.

  • 8/9/2020

    tmux List and Reattach

    tmuxbashsoftware

    Using tmux for your terminal multiplexer but want an easy to reattach to a session? Here's a small bash script to do it.

  • 8/8/2020

    Selectable Shell Examples

    markdownsyntaxcss

    Here's how to help your readers save time by making your post's shell commands easy to select and copy - with a simple CSS property.

  • 8/5/2020

    Be Dates You

    mongodbdocker

    Making my new blog, I didn't initially set the published dates to be native dates in the database. Here what I did to change them ...and do all the upgrades I needed.

  • 7/8/2020

    Testing vue components

    softwarevuetestingjavascript

    I recently needed to test that some Vue components were creating the correct HTML. To do this, I decided to create snapshots of Object representations of the rendered HTML.

  • 2/20/2019

    No More Numbers

    javascripthtml5software

    HTML5 number inputs aren't useful, but tel inputs, have all the power

  • 12/21/2018

    A Hacker "Hacked" Me

    securityemailgrep

    I decided to look into the extortion emails I have been getting and wrote a small script to extract the bitcoin addresses that have been used.

  • 12/7/2018

    Mouse Surgery

    pledge to not upgradeelectronics

    As part of my pledge not to upgrade, I decided to repair two of my failing mice instead of replacing them with a brand new model (as tempting as it was). Here's what I did.

  • 10/29/2018

    Danger Danger, Highly Reactive

    vuereactivegraphingdata
  • 9/11/2018

    Switching to SSR

    reactssrreact-loader
  • 8/10/2018

    Clean Docker Registry

    nodedockerconsolejavascript
  • 2/1/2018

    Testing on the Filesystem

    testingjavascript
  • 1/26/2018

    Tag You Are

    javascripttags
  • 1/25/2018

    NaN Got Me

    rubber duck savejavascriptnodejsjson
  • 4/28/2017

    All our app's tabs are belong to us

    angularjavascriptlocalstoragerxjssessionstorage
  • 2/20/2016

    Developing NPM modules

    nodejsnpm
  • 2/20/2016

    Nfa + Nfb or N(f+fa+fb)

    arrayfunctionjavascriptjsperf
  • 10/31/2015

    Photo Layout

    arrangercssgallery hierarchyhtmljavascriptphotostinymcewordpresssoftware
  • 10/31/2015

    Browning Pass HideAway Web Site

    cssgallery hierarchyhtmlwordpress
  • 10/17/2015

    Think Mobile

    mobileweb
  • 10/13/2015

    Pledge to Refuse and Not Buy Bottled Water

    environmentpledges
  • 2/25/2015

    Run PHP run!

    maximum execution timephptrial and error
  • 11/26/2014

    Gallery Hierarchy

    galleryhierarchyphotos
  • 10/3/2014

    Vim and functions

    functionnavigationtagsvim
  • 9/26/2014

    I'm making hierarchies

    hierarchical datahierarchyphp
  • 9/4/2014

    Google Sheets fun

    googlegoogle scriptgoogle sheetsjavascriptsheets
  • 8/13/2014

    Travel Photos

    photo managementphotostravel photos
  • 8/13/2014

    Image managment scripts

    photo managementphotos
  • 7/31/2014

    MeldCE logo

    csshtml5javascriptsvg
  • 4/26/2014

    MoltenDB

    databasemoltendbmongodbnodejs
  • 10/29/2013

    The Expensive Side

    house
  • 9/22/2013

    abcde

    music
  • 7/16/2013

    Energizer Power Plus Rechargeable Batteries

    gadgets
  • 3/4/2013

    USAR FOGTeX

    fogtex
  • 2/21/2013

    Personal Gear Bag

    rescuegear
  • 2/18/2013

    Geocaching Stamp

    stampgeocaching
  • 4/2/2007

    Call Record Presenter

    parserpythonsqliteweb
  • 9/25/2004

    Kimi Ora School

    csshtml
  • 6/25/2004

    All About Catering Web Site

    csshtml
  • 7/26/2003

    Quantum Accounting Web Site

    csshtml
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