Posts

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Sat Apr 27, 2019 – Wireguard IPv6 VPN – IPv6 in the Land of NAT

10:00am
Camosun College
Interurban Campus
4461 Interurban Road · Victoria, BC
Tech Bldg, Tec 177(parking at lot 8 for park users)

Go to any Starbucks, McDonald’s, the airport, the Library or even Camosun, and you will find yourself on a NATted network. How to get on the IPv6 Internet when stuck behind NAT? Enter the VPN (Virtual Private Network).

In this talk, we’ll show you how to use a VPN to get to the IPv6 Internet, but also share it with your friends (using an OpenWrt router)
Craig’s presentation can be found here. Your IPv6 web funny, Toads, can be found here. (IPv6 required).
The IPV6 utility, IPvFoo, is a Google and Firefox extension/addon, the github version can be found here.

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March 23, 2019 Let’s Encrypt

“Let’s Encrypt” is a free, public usable Certificate Authority that makes encrypting your web server’s http traffic easy. All you need to know about setup up a Raspberry Pi to use Let’s Encrypt will be presented by Mark G.

Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 177 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users)

Download: Using Let’s Encrypt As A Certificate Authority on a Raspberry Pi

letsencryptpresentation


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Sat, May 11, 2019 – Useful Tools

Useful Tools (git, sshfs, bash, etc)

Over the years, we have found certain software tools, which not only make our life easier but make the project more fun to do. In this meeting, we’ll share some of these software tools, and ask the group for other tools that they have found useful.

Presentation Notes Here:
http://drsol.com/~deid/pi/gitCraig/index.html
Saturday, May 11, 2019
10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Q-CollegeSuite
303 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC

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February 23, 2019 – Linux Containers on the Pi: A Server Farm in the Palm of your hand

Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 177 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users)

Another container technology which can also run on SBCs is Linux Containers (LXC/LXD). Each LXC Container appears to have its own network stack. And therefore is much more flexible than Docker.

We’ll run 20 webservers all with individual addresses, all listening on port 80, on the Pi, something that can’t be done with Docker in its NAT-constrained world.

See Craig’s documentation here.

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February 9, 2019 – Project Day

raspberry pi

VicPiMakers will be supporting Projects in 2019. What are Projects? Deid’s pond is a project, for example. If you have a project idea, bring it in and we’ll see how we can help you complete your project.

George Bowden – Timed Lock
Heidi Bada – Intro – https://badadigitalmarketing.com/piprojects/
Ideas
Phillips Hue – timed dim/colour
Weather Sensors
Wearable Sensors in sport
Home Safety –
Flow sensor in toilet
Launchpad pro using python – Open Firmware project
Environmental Sensors – birdfeeder motion (wisecam), soil moisture
Pi version of “the clapper”
Eileen & Cody – Space Station Light & Sound – https://github.com/cozyhost/
Plan on lighting Neo Pixels
Peter Sprague – Packet Radio Satellite tracker
Portable, run in truck
Moved from Pi, to FreeBSD
Dan Willis – LED running as a Canadian flag flying
Weatherproof boxes outside

10:00am
Q-College, Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

Contact projects at vicpimakers dot ca to share your project on our next Project Day.

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November 24, 2018 – Docker and a webserver on rpi

Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 177 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users)

10:00am
docker logo

 

Docker is a computer program that performs operating-system-level virtualization, also known as “containerization”. A Container is a lightweight application component including all the required elements (libraries, config, etc). Containers can be quickly started up without polluting your file system with libraries, and config files, and easily upgraded with one command.

In this presentation, we’ll install docker on the Pi, and get nginx webserver up and running in a container.  The presentation material can be found here.

Docker Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docker_(software)

 

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November 10, 2018 – Lights Out!

Saturday, November 10, 2018

10:00am
Q-College, Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

Hosted by George Bowden and Craig Miller

LIGHTS OUT, a possible life saver. An acquaintance fell in the washroom and was unable to raise attention for thirty hours, and never fully recovered. The monthly cost ($50) of wearable alert bracelets and the habit of not wearing them is a large risk to seniors living alone. This alarm system, based on an ESP8266 and a php web app, alerts friends that a bathroom light has been left on for way too long. The link to the presentation docs is here.

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October 6, 2018 Adafruit’s Circuit Playground Express

Saturday, October 6, 2018

10:00am
Q-College, Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

A shallow Dive into Adafruit’s Circuit Playground Express
The Circuit Playground Express is a small, cheap($32) dev board from Adafruit Industries designed to introduce electronics and programming to the novice. It’s built around an ATSAMD21 ARM Cortex MO processor and is programmable with either circuitpython or Microsoft’s ‘Makecode’ block programming interface. The board also houses a variety of sensors (motion, temperature, light, touch), buttons, a slide switch and IR transmit/receive capability. In this presentation I’ll demo some of the easier projects that I’ve mastered and maybe include something using the Adafruit Crickit, and add-on board for the CPX designed for simple robotics.  See the reading list here.
Hosted by Paul and Craig Miller

Meetup Sign Up

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September 22, 2018 – ESP8266 Web Controlled LEDs (part 1)

10:00am
Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 259 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users) presentation pdf

led

In this session, we’ll cover programming Neopixel LEDs driven by the ESP8266 using a Web Interface. We’ll cover the hardware interface to the LEDs as well as the web interface (running on the ESP8266 utilizing the PL9823).

In Part2, we’ll harden the installation by adding TLS/SSL and IPv6 support via NodeRed running on a Pi

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Summer Break 2018

Victoria PiMakers and Others are on a summer break.  We will meet again on Saturday, September 8th,  at Q-College.  The presentation(s) will be “My Summer Show & Tell.”

In the meantime, do attend the Linux Sigs! Saturday, July 7, 2018 and Saturday, August 18, 10:00am to 12:00pm at Island Savings, 3195 Douglas St.

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May 26, 2018 – R part 2

10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

Two views of Statistical Programming. The second in the series. R is a programming language and free software environment for statistical computing and graphics that is supported by the R Foundation

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May 12, 2018 – Node-red and MicroPython esp8266 sensing

10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

A Double-header:

Node-RED is a programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways.

It provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using the wide range of nodes in the palette that can be deployed to its runtime in a single-click.

Deid will connect his ESP8266 to nodeRed and show us how easy it is to put sensors online.

See the document here.

AND Mike will present MicroPython on the ESP8266. The presentation will share the Micropython breakthru that allows a $4 WiFi-enabled microprocessor to run a good portion of the Python standard library. It’s really quite amazing to have the Python REPL and filesystem built right into a microcontroller.

See this document here.