Category: Members

Members

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Sat. Jan 11, 2025 – What I got for Christmas

Happy Holidays to everyone. At this meeting we’ll share with each other what cool tech gadgets we received from Santa.

We will meet at Serious Coffee in Esquimalt, which has provided the mezzanine space to us (stairs are inside the coffee shop). Please buy a coffee or beverage on your way in to help support this business.

Where: Serious Coffee, 1153 Esquimalt Rd #27, Victoria, BC

When: 9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Sat, Dec 14 · 9:30 AM PST Unsolved Problems

Unsolved Problems is an opportunity for attendees to suggest solutions to projects that are stuck.

For example, George has a 36volt ebike battery pack that reads 25 volts, but the charger won’t begin to charge it, i.e. the charger shows a green light that indicates the battery is fully charged, or not connected. Maybe others have some idea about how to jump start charging.

Where: Quality Foods, View Royal, 27 Helmcken Rd #110

When: 9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Sat Jan 27 2024 – heat sinks and pi irrigation controller.

An application of Blue Board in calculating heat sink cooling capability, measured in Watts

By measuring the interior chip temperature over a few seconds of a chip cooled by a heat sink, you can calculate the watts dissipated by the heat sink. The DS18B20 measures temperatures up to 125℃ at the interior of the chip.
This is a useful measurement If you are making your own heat sinks out of copper tubes or folded aluminum sheathing,  You can also compare the effectiveness of different heat sink compounds this way.

The presentation is at this bookmark in a longer presentation on how to set up a Raspberry Pi Pico as a Blue Board learning tool. Blue Boards are available for free from George at 250-893-7423

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Nov 11 2023 – Intro to NextCloud on a Pi

Why just run your own video conferencing server, when you can simultaneously run that AND mail, calendaring, contacts, calls, IM, file sharing, remote backup, and a web-based office suite, all in one intimidating package. Get your own thrift-store Google G Suite going with the open source Nextcloud platform on a tiny Raspberry Pi! Great for the privacy-conscious, the independent, and masochists. We’ll do it the hard way and make configuring Jitsi look like recess at kindergarten (and then do it the easy way). Warning: the hard way will race through dependencies including Apache, PHP, MySQL/MariaDB and openSSL, so expect some mild suffering.

Richard’s Blog here:

Actual process including configuring a web server and database and installing from a source tarball:
https://tech.kosmokaryote.org/2023/11/technology-nextcloud-on-raspberry-pi_22.html –

here are the pdfs

Kosmokaryote_-TechDownload

and here


Much briefer post using nextcloudpi via docker from my notes, as originally demoed:
https://tech.kosmokaryote.org/2023/11/technology-nextcloud-on-raspberry-pi.html

Kosmokaryote_-Tech2Download

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Sat. Oct. 28, 2023 – Forgotten Pill Warning (Hybrid)

George gets a scolding from Alexa for not opening his pill box on time.  Technologies include 

  • A dollar store pill box,
  • ESP8266 micro-controller
  • PHP server page to receive message from ESP8266
  • Cron job to notice late opening and to send a scolding email and SMS
  • IF This Then That (IFTTT) to signal Alexa
  • Amazon Alexa Echo Show to further admonish George to open the damn pill box.

George’s presentation .pdf is here

For the meet and greet, George explains how this device can be shipped without the recipients SSID and wifi password, using only 20 bytes of code on the micro controller.

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Small Boardroom @ Quality Foods, 27 Helmcken Rd #110 · View Royal

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Sat, May 13, 2023 – Projects Day

We will be having a discussion about Projects that we are working on, but haven’t shared with the group. These can be projects that are successful or ones that just didn’t work out and have been abandoned. We’ll enjoy hearing about other’s projects, and perhaps even offer to help.

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Small Boardroom @ Quality Foods, 27 Helmcken Rd #110 · View Royal

Join Us Online here:
https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Sat. Oct 22, 2020 – Old Man Savers

George will share his old man savers. Consumer kitchen appliances are designed for one size fits all, not for my personal needs. My needs change as I age, and I need alerts for faults.

  • I like to turn off my drip coffee maker as soon as coffee is brewed. If I forget, it wastes electricity (500watts) and spoils the coffee. If I forget to insert the carafe, I’ve got a mess. A timed relay with a contact sensor for the carafe solves the problem.
  • So as not to overcook the meat, I turn off my induction hot plate based on a thermistor inserted into the meat to trip a relay to power off the hot plate.
  • A centralized monitor and alarm system, with text message notifications, can be tailored to one’s specific needs. My monitoring system needs to include at least 9 sensors:
  • Exterior door that gets left ajar.
  • Bathroom light gets left on
  • Bathroom water flooding
  • Fridge power lost
  • Fridge temperature too high
  • Freezer power lost
  • Freezer temperature too high
  • Exterior hall temperature
  • Smoke detector

George’s presentation is here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/107pIcvgMJfG5TxZLBdD5MD1n3QWQPcR2-Dehy2xVzjI/edit?usp=sharing

His code .pdf file is here:

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

QCollege has welcomed us back to meet in-person. We thank them for their support.

We will be holding a Hybrid meeting (in-person & Jitsi).

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Sat. Sep, 24, 2022 – Firefox Extension tracking

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation (virtual)
10a Presentation

Mark will share his work in stripping tracking info on Firefox on a Pi, and how to load it onto your Firefox.

QCollege has welcomed us back to meet in-person. We thank them for their support.

Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC

We will be holding a Hybrid meeting (in-person & Jitsi).

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

Mark’s presentation .pdf is here.

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June 25, 2022 – Recent Projects

Come share your recent projects with the group, online or in person.

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation (virtual)
10a Presentation


QCollege has welcomed us back to meet in-person. We thank them for their support.

George shared some pico links

https://learn.adafruit.com/welcome-to-circuitpython

https://learn.adafruit.com/getting-started-with-raspberry-pi-pico-circuitpython/blinky-and-a-button

https://learn.adafruit.com/getting-started-with-raspberry-pi-pico-circuitpython/neopixel-leds

Virtual…

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Sat. Feb. 26, 2022 Making a music player – bits of Python causing grief

I decided to build my own Raspberry Pi music player using Python, as the available players didn’t really do what I wanted. This is Python at the beginner level, and the saga of making the player. Mostly it is about the little things in Python that caused me to stumble for a while. The music player is functional, the interface isn’t elegant, and I learned a few things about Python programming. – Don

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation (virtual)
10a Presentation

Here are Don’s presentation .pdf and(change to .py) .txt file.

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Sat. Mar. 13, 2021 – Hardware Containers

Now that you have the world’s most useful project, it is time to package it up so the world doesn’t break it. We’ll discuss using different packaging containers to protect your project.

9:30 AM to 11:30 AM PST

Jitsi Virtual Meeting

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers
Please contact markg@vicpimakers.ca if you are having trouble connecting to the meeting server.

George’s packaging presentation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ivUou7D7rNFYmZPl1GAi4F6A5dP52ewsqoxxl0eUt5c

Deid’s packaging presentation: http://drsol.com/~deid/pi/packaging/