Ricky Moorhouse

Blog

2018 Reading Log

  • Legion (Talon #4) - Julie Kagawa
  • Roads of Madness (Island of Fog #5)- Keith Robinson
  • Chamber of Ghosts (Island of Fog #6) - Keith Robinson
  • Valley of Monsters (Island of Fog #7) - Keith Robinson
  • Summer Crush (Tournament, #4) - B. B. Griffith
  • The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie
  • Against the Inquisition - Marcos Aguinis
  • The Nostradamus Equation (Sam Reilly #6) - Christopher Cartwright
  • Rising Force (Jesse McDermitt #13) - Wayne Stinnett
  • Wicked (Wicked Years #1) - Gregory Maguire
  • Son of a Witch (Wicked Years #2) - Gregory Maguire

2017 Reading Log

  • Yellow Ribbon (Dev Haskell #11) - Mike Faricy
  • Triple Trouble - Russell Blake
    • JET (JET #1)
    • JET - Betrayal (JET #2)
    • JET - Vengeance (JET #3)
  • Fallen Series - Wayne Stinnett
    • Fallen Out (Jesse McDermitt #1)
    • Fallen Palm (Jesse McDermitt #2)
    • Fallen Hunter (Jesse McDermitt #3)
  • Fallen Pride (Jesse McDermitt #4) - Wayne Stinnett
  • Fallen Tide (Jesse McDermitt #8) - Wayne Stinnett
  • Fallen Angel (Jesse McDermitt #9) - Wayne Stinnett
  • Fallen Hero (Jesse McDermitt #10) - Wayne Stinnett
  • Rising Storm (Jesse McDermitt #11) - Wayne Stinnett
  • The Tournament Trilogy - B. B. Griffith
    • Blue Fall (Tournament #1)
    • Grey Winter (Tournament #2)
    • Black Spring (Tournament #3)
  • A Thyme To Die - Jamie Lee Scott
  • Rogue Wave (Sam Reilly #4) - Christopher Cartwright, Kris Densley
  • The Cassidy Project (Sam Reilly #5) - Christopher Cartwright, Kris Densley
  • The Third Temple (Sam Reilly #7) - Christopher Cartwright, Kris Densley
  • Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot #10) - Agatha Christie
  • Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot #17) - Agatha Christie
  • Murder in Mesopotamia (Poirot) (Hercule Poirot #14) - Agatha Christie
  • Cards on the Table (Poirot) (Hercule Poirot #15) - Agatha Christie
  • The Lost Plot (Invisible Library #4) - Genevieve Cogman

Pi Zero as a desklight

When we set up our office earlier in the year I decided on a standing desk which I put together using the Ikea Algot system.
In order to avoid using up desk space with a light I originally planned on a clip on light but then saw my Pi Zero and Unicorn pHat and thought they could make a good alternative.

Hardware

The Raspberry Pi Zero is in a simple case, mounted onto the underside of the shelf above my working space. Attached is it's power cable, a PiHut wireless adapter connected via USB and of course the Unicorn pHat. The power cable is routed down the side of the shelf to my PowerCube, which will eventually be mounted under my work surface but it's sticky pad wasn't strong enough to hold it on the underside of the desk!

Software

As I've not yet added any switch for my light, it all has to be controllable remotely, so I set up an API to set the colour of the light which I initially controlled via a web browser with urls like:

http://192.168.0.15:8009/colour/<red>/<green>/<blue>

As you can imagine that got a bit tedious - especially to turn off after I'd shut down my laptop! The next step was to add a simpler way to control the light through my phone so I set up iControl Web with buttons to adjust the light settings. Then when I saw the Home app on iOS 10, I researched ways to get my custom light controllable through that and came across Homebridge which I could point to my API via it's Better HTTP RGB plugin, a bit of config and a couple of changes to my API.

All the code for my API is on github and is very much a work in progress!