Latest Posts
Creating a Soft-Remote with MQTT and Home Assistant
Technology is amazing and as much as we want to use our smart phones or ask Alexa, Google and Siri to take action, nothing beats a physical button. In almost all cases they are faster and it’s a good reason why I practice passive automation. Walk into a room and its dark, then the light will automatically turn on based… read more
Tech Tee-Shirts: How to make friends and influence people
Who are you? The world of IT is big and ever-growing. Do you just blend in? Maybe you do, and that is fine (and could be appropriate), but perhaps your role is more of an evangelist, one of the plethora of IT based architects, a CxO, a Head Of, or even as the role I find myself in today, a… read more
Using Python To Buy A Canyon Aeroad
Cycling has always been something I have been passionate about. With the COVID-19 induced lockdowns I finally succumbed to purchasing an indoor trainer (Garmin TACX Neo 2T) and used it as a way to hit my distance targets each week. However, as the months went on, I found I was less and less willing to convert my sole road bike… read more
Azure Site-2-Site VPN with Ubiquiti Edge Router running EdgeOS and Azure CLI
Since I started working for the “Cloud Giants” some 7 years ago I have been on a journey. This journey always involves changing as much technology in my house to use the given platform, and with my recent change of jobs to Microsoft, building a bridge between my house and Azure in the form of a Site-2-Site VPN is a… read more
Tracking State Without Feedback Loops
Throughout my automation journey there is one thing I always strive for, that is full duplex communication. The ability to send a message, but also receive a message from a device. This need, often in many cases influences technology choices. Which TV will I buy? Why will I build an irrigation controller over buy? Automation is closely related to many… read more
Tear Down Your Castle! – A Story Of Culture & Cloud Natives.
We run our own path, but I still say I have been pretty lucky to see a lot of architectures in the last 15 + years, some rather average, through some pretty amazing architectures. The ones I count as amazing ones, you probably interface with as a user in your daily life as apps on your phone. As I pen… read more
Common Software Architecture Patterns For The Cloud
Stay tuned….
Making Data Driven Decisions With A PV Array, Home Assistant and MQTT
I have been always wanting to add a Solar PV array to my house and recently, it made sense and I purchased a modest (7.5kw) system for my house. It has been as much of an IT journey of integration and extracting value from disparate systems has it been of reducing my carbon footprint. When comparing systems, what is important… read more
Bridging Mosquitto MQTT into Azure IoT Hub with an Arduino based ESP32
I have been on a journey to explore Azure IoT and push the thousands of events that flow through my local MQTT broker (Mosquitto) in to Azure IOT. After my last post in using the Azure IoT SDK for Python conjunction with Paho MQTT I thought my work here was complete, but have just recently been made aware that their… read more
Bridge Building – Mosquitto MQTT to Azure IOT Using Paho MQTT and the Azure IOT SDK’s
I have been on a journey to explore Azure IoT and push the thousands of events that flow through my local MQTT broker (Mosquitto) in to Azure IOT. From direct connection to Azure IOT-Hub (via MQTT and SAS tokens) through to Azure IOT-Edge running locally with MQTT. I have been able to achieve my goals with varying levels of success,… read more