A couple of posts ago I wrote about the ‘WeatherPi’ Raspberry Pi that collects the latest weather readings every 10 minutes and make a decision whether or not to lower the storm shutters in front of our house. I also added that the service was publishing minute-by-minute photographs of the sea view. This post explores …
Decoding TV Teddy – Part Four: The 2018 Hifi Version?
In this ‘Decoding TV Teddy’ series of articles, I’ve found that the best audio bandwidth available is no better than that of an AM radio. But now it’s 2018 and I’m using software to do this, could I improve on that bandwidth? Here’s a challenging audio source which I have created from two music tracks …
Live weather data and images!
I wanted to take the peaceful few days between Christmas and New Year to really refresh the data collected from the local weather that helps our Raspberry Pi-powered Storm Shutters Controller (known as ‘WeatherPi’) make good decisions about when to lower and raise the protective barriers from our sea-facing windows. I wanted to share the …
Be part of the HEALTH-e-HACK hackathon @ Food Matters Live 2018 (ExCeL, London on 20–22 November 2018)
FoodMaestro and Nielsen Brandbank are hosting their very first #hackathon at Food Matters Live 2018, and I’m delighted to be hosting and helping organise this event with their teams. Technology is changing, and so is our appetite to eat better. We are calling for creative minds to join us in creating the next big revolution …
MySql 8 and PHP mysqli_connect login failure – fixed on OSX
If you develop on a Mac as I do, you’ll want to get up to date with the latest versions of the software! So I installed a fresh new copy of MySql database server – now version 8, and made sure I was using PHP 7.2 for use with my Jetbrains PHPStorm IDE. The trouble arrived …
My failed A-Level results found me my vocation
How my failed A-level results put me on a path to a vocation I never knew I loved until I discovered it!
Decoding TV Teddy Part Four – The Search For Encoding That Works
If you’ve been following my articles on reverse-engineering the TV Teddy soundtrack embedded in the video picture, then you may have wondered why I’ve gone silent on encoding my version. The previous article (part three) found me working to encode a new signal for Databits, the excellent retro-tech Youtube channel. Well, all I can say …
Wi-Fi Mesh ‘Whole Home’ Networks really work!
I have finally fixed the Wi-Fi! Since the BT engineer had to rewire our telephone cable to the back of the house, getting Wi-Fi signal to the front of the house has been a nightmare – especially to the main TV where we watch internet shows from BBC iPlayer, Netflix and others. This is because …
Decoding TV Teddy – Part Three: Encoding a new TV Teddy Video
In part two I successfully decoded the TV Teddy audio embedded in a TV Teddy video, and I’ve watched the sync’d playback with the original video. In performing the decoding I learned that: The TV Teddy audio track is created by mapping the audio waveform to shades of grey The bit rate can be only …
Decoding TV Teddy – Part Two: Programming and Audio Output
As a purely fun and academic exercise, I’m going attempt to decode the TV Teddy audio track embedded in a TV Teddy video programme, and output the audio as a separate file. I’ll then try and play back both the audio file and the YouTube video in sync to enjoy this particular TV Teddy episode …