> Welcome to TomTec <

For the technical voyeurist, the closet engineer, those with ENTP personality types or people who studied engineering but got a business development job. This is for you (and me), and maybe our kids.

Herein lie adventures in:

  • Web and Linux hobbycraft
  • Hardware tinkering
  • Project ideas and mis-adventure
  • The joy (pain) of 3-D printing
  • Things that annoy me
  • Cool fonts
And the like... I'll detail what I'm working on, what "works" and how I got it "working" (or if I got it working), with the hope to save you some of the gray hairs I've accumulated in the process.

Projects

(aside) - This is an rendering of my desk.

~The Weather Project~

Does it ever annoy you that weatherbug or the weather channel give you the "weather" around your house but it really-isn't-because-its-really-the-nearest-cities' weather? Then you, my friend, will love this one. Home-made weather station. Who doesn't need that!? I know I do. I'm working on it in pieces.

These steps sort of build on each other and reflect generally the voyage I took in this project:

Build a Home Weather Station:

"The Weather Sensors" :: Challenges: Sensors/I2C/Driver integration Micropython Hardware Wiring Software Logic LCD Display
  • STATUS: Documenting right now
  • Humidity (oy vey!), Temperature, Atmospheric Pressure, Forecasting based on pressure trends, Heat index / Wind Chill - you get it.
  • We'll select the right sensor modules, wire them up, communicate with them through the right drivers, and then take the data and make some predictions
  • CHALLENGE RATING: (it's alright)
  • Ballpark Cost: $15
Wireless Data Channels :: Challenges: Raspberry Pi Pico & Pico W, IoT wifi Micropython
  • STATUS:I'm workin' on it!
  • Running a wire all the way outside your house to an outdoor sensor just isn't practical. Establishing a wireless channel between two microcontrollers is going to enable us to query an external sensor and pull data to my central display unit
  • CHALLENGE RATING: (A little tricky)
  • Ballpark cost: $7
"The Anemometer" :: Challenges: Mechanical, 3D printing, Sensors, IoT wifi, Raspberry PI pico W
  • STATUS: I'm workin' on it!
  • This is the spinny thing the scientist uses on the volcano to tell the wind speed (I'm sure I saw this on YouTube). Here is an actual video that descibes a cup anemometer. It brings challenges in mating electronic sensors to mechanical motion, mechanical design of a rotating element and also physical shape considerations of the anemometer cups....FASCINATING!
  • I'm now realizing I need a way to get wind direction too
  • CHALLENGE RATING: (Very tricky)
  • Difficulty depends on your qaulity of equipment
  • Ballpark Cost: $15-$25
"The Final Assembly" ::Challenges 3D printing Mechanical
  • STATUS: I'm working on it!
  • Design a final enclosure for the weather station base-station. 3-D design mounting and container - with PLA wood fiber filaments. Make it look weathery. Tie all the pieces together. And build my weather station!

Web, and Linux hobbycraft

I put Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi 5. Actually this site is currently being served on a Pi-5. Below are some articles with shortcuts to getting a LAMP server up and running on the ARM x64 processor in the Pi-5.

I also spent some time developing a custom Dynamic IP solution (check your router first to see if it'll do it for you) for folks who have standard internet with no static IP but want to have their server in their house and not "pay the cloud". My Pi 5 is way cheaper than paying digitalocean.

(pictured, roughly my current server setup)

Things that annoy me

Here are some solutions I've found to things that annoy me and maybe they annoy you - I dunno.

  1. Visual Studio autocomplete
  2. My garage door obstacle detection sensor
  3. Manually levelling my 3-D printer bed
  4. Hosting a webserver on a dynamic IP
  5. Google
  6. Donald Trump