Terraform is an infrastructure configuration language. It supports the declarative, stateful definition of abstractions ranging from compute resources, network components, server configuration, and user accounts and permissions. With a wide range of provisioners — environments and scripts that facilitate the creation of these abstraction — it has a strong position…

When you build a robot, there are basically two approaches: You can either start from scratch, get all required hardware, the chassis, sensor, actuators and microcontroller or single-board computers, and program the software. Or you buy a complete kit which includes all parts and a software stack. In 2021, I…

The Raspberry Pi Arm kit is a 4 degree of freedom robot manipulator. Its 4 servo motors are connected via a custom motor hat that put on top of the raspberry Pi. This hat is based on the PCA9685, an I2C motor controller. Using Python, we can program this arm. …

A robot arm manipulator consist of joints and servo motors. It’s attached to a fixed base, and upon receiving command, executes movement actions. Moving is a two-step process: First, the arm needs to receive a command, and second it needs to translate this command into coordinated actions that will move…

When you build a robot, there are basically two approaches: You can either start from scratch, get all required hardware, the chassis, sensor, actuators and microcontroller or single-board computers, and program the software. Or you buy a complete kit which includes all parts and a software stack. For the first…

Home Assistant (HA) is a versatile solution to manage IOT boards and their sensors. It helps to facilitate data collection and provide user friendly home automation. In its default configuration, HA will store every state change in its own internal SQLite database. Yet for IOT developers, using and working with…

Home Assistant is an open-source software providing a complete toolset for home automation. It offers by far the biggest interoperability with all kinds of boards, sensors, and external services. Getting started with Home Assistant can be tough because it offers so many features. Yet understanding them does not only make…

In your IOT home network, several applications are provided as Docker containers. Typically, containers expose a port on its host. To access the applications, you type in the IP address of the host and its exposed ports. This is ok if you have just one or two applications, but soon…

My Raspberry PI based IOT stack, introduced in an earlier article, is productive and online for more than one year. It’s time to make a full upgrade of the operating system, the Docker containers, and all associated configurations. This article completely covers my approach, including regrettable mistakes that I disclose…