Category: Engineering Life
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e14 Project: Raspberry Pi 2 Laser Dog Watcher
My dog Penny is one of the best. She has the two critical commands of ‘come’ and ‘stay’ down pat so well that I can go for a run with her off-leash here in Denver. She’s gentile with our newborn baby, and she doesn’t destroy things. Her only issue is that she goes BONKERS for…
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e14: Laser Doorbell in the Cloud!
Sometimes the notion of the Internet of Things (IoT) strikes me as silly; why would anyone want to connect their dishwasher to the internet? But still, I wanted to develop a hobby project that would explore some of the tech. I came across Xively, a service that can take data from a Raspberry Pi and…
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e14 Project: A Silent Wireless Laser Tripwire Doorbell
I’ve had a problem since moving into my new place that I can’t hear people knock at my front door. Sure I could get a doorbell at the hardware store, but those things stink. Instead, I thought I’d create a quick and simple Arduino and XBee based system to do it for me: Doorbells are…
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Compiling Chris’ Context: An Interview with Chris Gammell
Chris Gammell is an accomplished Electrical Engineer who currently works in electronics design by day and talks his head off about electronics by night to anyone that’ll listen. He co-hosts The Amp Hour podcast, writes on ChrisGammell.com, tweets more than most engineers, and is on the cusp of launching a new way to learn electronics:…
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Frame-It: A Tool For Wading Through Millions of Parts
Hardware engineers everywhere know how crrazy selecting parts can be. Especially when a part change needs to occur months after intiial part selection. Why was this part so special? What were the nuances of it again? Frame-it is a chrome extension that allows you to save a document or web page while taking notes as…
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E14 Op Ed: A uC course for Everyone
Have you ever heard Hardware people swearing up and down that a failure cannot be a problem with the board? What about hearing that after listening to the software folk extolling the virtues of their code while explaining how that very same failure cannot be a software issue? Human nature can be a funny thing…
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Chevy Keyless Entry Remote Failure & Repair
I currently drive a 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt which is a remarkable automobile in the most fundamental sense: providing reasonable transportation for a reasonable cost. She currently has ~102k miles and going strong. Although this last year I’ve had both of my keyless entry systems fail. Since I’m the only one who usually drives the car,…
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E14 Post: Learn The Art Of Giving An Interview
When people think of interviews, they often think of searching for a job. But for every interview there are two sides of the table. Giving an interview is one of the best things a young employee can do to learn more valuable skills, understand their company, and reflect on themselves. My most recent Element14 article…
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Using ‘ownCloud’ on Raspberry Pi to Take Back Control of Data
Last month I lost what could have been a beautiful night laying out a PCB while at a secluded cottage because Google Drive didn’t sync a couple of my board files. I switched to Microsoft Skydrive for my cloud-based storage since Windows Mesh worked so well for me over the years before it was discontinued.…
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EntConnect: A Conference For Those Who Make Things Happen
Last month I attended the EntConnect Conference to give it some coverage from Element14. I like entrepreneurship/engineering, and they had a bunch of fun events like Skiing at Vail which really drew me in. I wasn’t sure what to expect, with an attendee list of ~30 people how much of a conference could it be? When…