Using adafruit-ampy for the ESP8266

 Posted on March 1, 2017  |  Alejandro Guirao

I recently wrote a blog post about how to work with MicroPython on the ESP8266. In that post, I used a tool named webrepl to connect to the board and upload the Python code over the air. That could be a feasible workflow once the ESP8266 is already in a WiFi we can access from our laptop, but sometimes that is not the case. And, of course, the first time we need to connect the board to the WiFi, which needs to be done over the serial connection. [Read More]

From Nikola to Hugo

 Posted on February 17, 2017  |  Alejandro Guirao

Today I have migrated the static generator for this site from Nikola to Hugo. Part of the motivation has been trying a new technology, part of it, having less movable parts. Nikola is great but carries quite a lot of dependencies (specially with the themes). My previous workaround involved building a Docker image with the tools, and using that image inside a GitlabCI pipeline that built the statics and deployed them to my server. [Read More]

Building a Slack button with ESP8266/MicroPython

 Posted on February 10, 2017  |  Alejandro Guirao

In a recent post I explained how I implemented a “push to Slack” button using the Wemos D1 (ESP8266) board, programmed with the Arduino-like interface. Having discovered that it is possible to use MicroPython on the board, now I will re-write the software in Python. In order to do so, the first thing to do is install the MicroPython firmware on the board. These are the steps to achieve that first milestone. [Read More]

Building a Slack button with ESP8266/Arduino

 Posted on February 8, 2017  |  Alejandro Guirao

I have recently discovered the powerful ESP8266-based development boards. These boards have built-in WiFi connectivity and many GPIOs, low consumption and can be programmed in many different ways. In this article I will show how to build a smart button that sends a message to a Slack channel, using a Wemos D1 mini pro. This board can be programmed in many different ways. In this article, I will show how to do it using the Arduino-compatible programming interface. [Read More]

FOSDEM 2017

 Posted on February 7, 2017  |  Alejandro Guirao

Last weekend I went to FOSDEM 2017. In this post, I will share links and notes regarding several talks I have attended to. Etiene Dalcol (@etiene_d) spoke about Making wearables with NodeMCU. Although I have very little knowledge of the Lua programming language I attended to this talk because I had heard about NodeMCU as a firmware to power the mighty ESP8266 dev kits. During the talk, Etiene discussed the different boards available in the market (I didn’t know about the ESP8285, a good alternative), how to upload the Lua code to them and several examples, including a party dress with LEDs attached that changed patterns controlled by her wristwatch (and even by the music volume itself). [Read More]

Codemotion 2016 highlights

 Posted on November 21, 2016  |  Alejandro Guirao

This weekend I have attended to Codemotion 2016. I have gathered some links of talks and workshops that I consider really worthwile to review: Susana Morcuende (@yosoytumadre_ti), Yamila Moreno (@yamila_moreno) and Jorge Arévalo (@jorgeas80) talked about Los androides no sueñan con ovejas eléctricas; sueñan con conciliar. It is quite refreshing to find a talk about this important aspect of work. People attending to the talk seemed really interested on the subject and enjoying the talk. [Read More]

dotGo 2016

 Posted on October 14, 2016  |  Alejandro Guirao

This week I have attended to the dotGo2016 conference in Paris. It is a one-day, one-track, 20-minutes-per-talk conference. Very few laptops, people were really focused attending to the dense talks. Here I will highlight some concepts that I have found interesting in some of the talks: Dave Cheney(@davecheney) talked about first class functions (Don’t fear the first class functions), how to implement them in Golang and why they are sometimes a good choice because of the advantages of passing behaviour (encoded in functions) over raw data structures. [Read More]

An intro to Hypothesis

 Posted on August 8, 2016  |  Alejandro Guirao

I have recently listened to the Episode 67 of the TalkPython podcast, which is an interview with David MacIver, the primary author of the Hypothesis Python library. The concept of property based testing immediately caught my attention so I decided to give it try. The rough idea behind property based testing is focusing not on specific examples of inputs and otputs but checking the properties of the expected results. It has many concepts in common with functional programming. [Read More]

Caddy 0.9 has arrived

 Posted on July 19, 2016  |  Alejandro Guirao

Yesterday, Matt Holt announced the 0.9 Release of Caddy server. It is not a normal release, there are very important changes in the project. Let’s see some of them. Caddy has been redesigned into a core + plugins architecture. Now, the server part is a plugin, so you can basically exchange HTTP for DNS, mail, SSH, Git… yes, it is amazing, that means TLS out-of-the-box for any supported protocol server. Wow, this is a game-changer. [Read More]