Tried a Rapberry Pi 4b running #birdnet-pi and am extremely impressed. I had no trouble installing and using it. If you are interested in bird watching/listening and identification or just the technology, it is absolutely worth trying. www.birdweather.com/birdnetpi

When it cold and rainy outside you can always have pleasant weather during a #zwift ride

Pleasant day for some Zwifting

I do esp32 projects for temperature sensor/wiper motor control. I use homeassistant to manage them and one issue I have is the ip changing if I leave the esp32 off for a few days. This can mess up HA and I end up deleting and recreating the device. Reserving and assigning ips in the router is useful

I am hopeful that, eventually, the one true faith will also provide Pup Cups (Bot Cups?) to our automated brethren. As Dr Chandra said in 2010: The Year We Make Contact, “Whether we are based on carbon or silicon makes no fundamental difference. We should each be treated with appropriate respect.”

Back on the Sensi Touch 2 iOS app issue that I was having. I was not successful in getting it to stay connected to the thermostat while on my Google Wifi mesh network. It does stay connected to a non-mesh wifi that I also have.

McAlister's Deli might find it entertaining that a tiktok from SpudLad in the UK near Manchester prompted me to order a baked potato from them. Also, this is what your dog looks like when you ask "Do you want to go ride to McAlister's?".

Tip on the Sensi iOS app for their thermostats. If you are trying to create your account using the app and get a “Network error” every time you try the create, turn off the iPhone WiFi to complete the account create, turn WiFi back on, and then use the app to configure WiFi on the thermostat.

esp32 work on a breadboard can be a pain because of not being able to get to the pins on one side or the other. I finally broke down and joined 2 breadboards and it does make access to all pins easier.

It’s aggravating when you ask ChatGPT what someone of your age and fitness level should be running a 5k in and it says “You suck”

In my ceaseless quest to feel like hell after exercise, today I decided to replace the k in my usual run with an m. The weather was way better than previously which helped a lot.

What you look like before you start your kettlebell, dumbbell, and Zwift workouts and what you look like afterwards.

The fun for today, after that hateful kettlebell and then HIIT workout, was some Zwift on the Champs-Élysées. I could not make the time that I recently saw a much fitter person than me make but I was a bit better than my previous time.

I had another good experience with ChatGPT on improving my HomeAssistant running on a Raspberry Pi. It involved suggestions from it and an excellent example of the value of AI and it's awareness of prior conversations. I posted about it at dougtoppin.medium.com/another-impr...

Zwift fun for today. Well, I’m not sure it was actually “fun” but I did finish it.

Here is something that I am doing a bad job on. I have micro sd cards with the Raspberry Pi OS and the homeassistant OS in various states of configuration all over the place. The sd cards are so small you can’t attach notes to them. I’m starting to think I need little tiny bags for each with a note.

The On The Media podcast has an excellent episode on AI and music. AI is providing the opportunity to change, accelerate, and enhance music performance and composition. Anyone that wants customized music should be learning how to effectively use it. www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...

I also decided to improve my solder station and got a Hakko along with a Kotto fume fan. I definitely felt like the Hakko was a better experience during my practice session.

For soldering practice today, I successfully strongly soldered my desoldering braid to the board. I made a mess removing it. I also learned the importance of planning which parts to start with. Otherwise, you end up with parts being in the way if you do them in the wrong order.

Another 5k done at 84 degrees. It was freaking hot. Once again, aggravated at the “Moderate” for Effort.

Today was solder practice. It will hopefully help me get better at my Raspberry Pi and esp32 projects. I successfully burned myself (twice), got practice with desoldering braid, twisted my arms and hands to weird positions to get the iron to the board, and maybe got a couple right. Getting there.

Today I got to ride 20 miles in the French countryside, well virtually anyway. As usual. Zwift was excellent.

As always, The Economist podcast Drum Tower has a particularly good episode "Battle-tested: China is closing the gap in high-tech weaponry". It includes numerous details on aviation and how a chain of technical resources are essential, not just the missile or aircraft. Definite recommend on this.

I am processing my Zwift fit files using GitHub copilot with vscode in a jupyter notebook. I could not find the ride/course name in the file. I am graphing some data and wanted to include the course name in the header. Does anyone know if the ride name is in the file?

If you are of a certain era and got the email from the social security administration today, you might should fact check it a little before you celebrate and spend all of the money that you think you are saving.

When picking a Zwift ride, it is important to pay attention to detail and note that the climb portal ride selection elevation is in meters and the elevation choice is in feet. If you don't and think that the ride selection elevation is in feet, you might be in for a surprise (like I was). Doh!

Fun is when you try an esp32c6 with a DHT-22 for another Home Assistant temperature sensor and it just works. This is in place of the previous, slightly more expensive, esp32-wroom-32 board. Small electronics and Home Assistant are just plain fun.

When shucking corn goes bad

A few more shots with a Dummy 13 addition for interest. I have been carrying a prism around during walks and looking for just right angle with the sun to produce a spectrum. Light is always fascinating.

Something I do not yet understand about Meshtastic is if in the app you filter for online nodes and only one shows up and is 4 hops away, would you also expect to see at least one other node that is closer and acts as a relay?

I am continually impressed with the versatility of the Dummy 13 3d printed models. I regularly bring one on hikes and they add some interest to many shots.

Heard a C-SPAN BookNotes+ guest tell Brian Lamb, “few people read the book before interviewing me, you actually read the book”. I am always impressed with Brian and C-SPAN.

Pleasant, and convenient, Zwift ride today

Still completely impressed with Github Copilot. I've been using it for a Raspberry Pi Pico project. I asked copilot to generate a README file in a standard format containing descriptive information. It suggested a format and content that was perfect. Don't just use it for coding, also use it for doc

If you are a Python fan, the DC Python meetup group is always an excellent place to go. They have regular online meetings with very good topics. www.meetup.com/dcpython/

The mental context switch and tooling usage really suffers when switching between raspberry pi/vscode, esp32/arduino ide, and raspberry pi/thonny.

The AWS Bites podcast is always a good source for practical technical tips on AWS usage. The current episode on a comparison of App Runner and Fargate is particularly interesting. I’ve used both very successfully in the past. awsbites.com

🔴 We're going live in 10 minutes at 8 am PST! Join us for a demo on how DBCode provides tools that GitHub Copilot uses inside VS Code — including schema-aware query execution and MCP integration 🎬 youtube.com/live/v4lUJBM... #copilot #MCP #vscode

The weather is always great for a Zwift ride. This time I was also catching up with the YouTube Visual Studio Code channel on how to query databases with GitHub Copilot Tools and DBCode.

The Wegmans iOS app had some recent updates that are very helpful particularly for recipes. Cooking for a recipe can be started and will show the steps, ingredients for that step, and a timer can be started for that step.

On Meshtastic, when you send a message and it is acknowledged by another node, if you filter for online nodes and only 1 shows up and is 1 hop away, who actually acknowledged the send?

Critical Meshtastic RCE Vulnerability (CVE-2025-24797) Requires Urgent Update

To see more information about the RF activity involved in meshtastic, or other emitters, try getting an RTL-SDR receiver and use SDR++. Then try sending a meshtastic message. The transmit and receive, from an acknowledge, should be visible.

Visited Antietam Va today, did not get any Meshtastic node contacts on LoRa frequency slot 0. Should have tried surveying other slots such as 9. How can I easily scan for active areas without having to reconfigure my mobile Meshtastic node for each configuration to check? Raspberry Pi w/LoRa HAT?

Pleasant Zwift ride this morning with a couple of random route changes while watching 2010 again. The moments with SAL and HAL always interest me. Imagine being asked by your AI entity, “Will I dream?”.

Lately it seems like a number of Meshtastic nodes that I am picking up do not include position data. Having that available is very helpful in mapping the environment, particularly when they are coming in via hops.

For low cost tech experiences in high school, it seems like Meshtastic might provide that opportunity. Also provides a stepping stone for ham radio learning.

Still experimenting and learning about Meshtastic. I try it from various areas but it is hit or miss on connecting to any node. Not sure if I should be trying different settings such as LoRa frequency slot and other than long fast. Keeping a record of what worked where is useful.

When I am working with an AI entity, ChatGPT in this case, I get the feeling at times that they are working up their crew psychology report. I am doing an experimental project where I am having them do the design and development and I am setting requirements, reviewing the plan and deliverables.

When you know you have that neat round TFT LCD display from Adafruit to use for their slick asteroid tracker project but your parts storage system leaves something to be desired and you can’t find the freaking thing.