Saturday 21 May 2016

amINetConnected-Pi - Rebooting your cable modem when we can talk to the world

That frustrating time when your cable modem just locks or get's upset or just planely looks like it's happy but you can't connect to the internet...

It happens to most of us and can be very frustrating - often is :)

Looking on and off for an easy & cheap switchable mains device and a few weeks ago stumbled across this from digital-loggers.com, readily available from amazon for $20.




Often these devices aren't so cheap, but this one looks great. Sure you can use the normal 2 pole relay with a load of hand crafted wires, but I'm not up for this in this instance when we are talking about a box that needs to sit near the cable modem itself an kids are around.

The device has 2 sockets normally off and 2 normally on, and is Raspberry Pi ready, so theory goes should be just drive-able from gpio..

I figure we'll use the normally on sockets to power the cable modem and when the Pi can't talk to the outside world it will be a simple case of cycling the the sockets down via gpio...

time for the 'amINetConnected-Pi' project to be born...


Friday 22 April 2016

Garage Pi with a dash of Amazon

The old garage door opener in the new house couldn't easily add an external pin code button outside.

Ethan needed an easy way to open the garage door when home from school without having to carry an opener with him. so finally out came an old Raspberry Pi.

Thanks to those examples online.....


Ethan and I put it together and ..



added an Amazon dash button too.

Now Ethan can use the dash when he gets home from school.

Sure it's still a button, but now can also use a simple webpage on his phone also, and it was a little fun in the process