Author: Johannes Ernst

  • Reverse-engineering the ESPRESSObin’s GPIO pins

    The ESPRESSObin is a nice single-board computer with, unusually, 3 Ethernet ports and a SATA port. We have some plans for it (which I’ll talk about later) and which necessitated interacting with its GPIO pins. But unfortunately, Globalscale’s documentation seems at odds with what the board actually does. So here are the results of some…

  • What’s interesting about Lunera’s smart lamp #IoT platform

    As some of you know, I had been on contract as the senior systems architect for a company called Lunera from last year until this summer. Today they finally announced the vision and product that I helped create, starting with the very first git checkin of the code running on the lamps! We’ll see how…

  • Scripting the colorful LEDs in my office

    Finally, Wireshark to the rescue, I got my LimitlessLED home office RGB LEDs scripted. In plain English: I can now send commands from a computer to my lights via WiFi and their base station, and they will turn on or off or red or blue or bright-white or “party” or whatever. While I previously could…

  • Thoughts on this special day

    Today, October 31, 2017, is a special day for me. For one, it’s my birthday, and a very round one at that. (Thanks for all the good wishes!) But also, 500 years ago today, an obscure cleric nailed some highly provocative statements on the door of a church in an obscure town, an act —…

  • Learning to OpenSCAD

    As a proud new owner of a 3D printer, obviously I have been attempting to learn how create 3D CAD models for it. My friend Joe Andrieu pointed me to OpenSCAD, an open-source, “programmer’s” CAD tool. Unlike all other CAD tools I’ve ever heard of, OpenSCAD uses a textual programming language to describe the object…