Author Archives: Brian

Else is never necessary – Really?

I had an interesting experience with Codacy today.  I got this error. When doing my IT Degree (many moons ago) I was taught 2 things (amongst others you understand): An If statement always has an else. You should always handle … Continue reading

Posted in Coding and Programming | Leave a comment

Keeping time on a Pi

Again, this blog fall into the category of a ‘I need to remember how I did this’ post.  I actually started writing this months ago but never finished it.  Good job as some of what I originally said was wrong … Continue reading

Posted in Technical - General | 1 Comment

Old DietPi Orange Pi Images

If, like me, you are a fan of DietPi, you may well have been irritated by recent events.  The decision to move to a completely new image that could not be upgraded to, was understandable, if unfortunate.  These things happen … Continue reading

Posted in DietPi, OrangePi | 2 Comments

Adding a DietPi VM to an EXSi Host

This blog very much falls into the ‘how in the hell did I do that’ category. A bit of background.  I have had an HP MicroServer for a number of years just sitting there not doing a lot except running … Continue reading

Posted in DietPi, Linux | Leave a comment

Displaying buttons on the TFT

Having successfully hooked my small TFT up to the Raspberry Pi, I now wanted to use it! As it was a touch screen version what I wanted was buttons. This is the end result; The code is to be found … Continue reading

Posted in Coding and Programming, Python | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Forcing npm to Update Packages to Latest

I have had a problem getting npm to update packages to the latest version.  The packages involved are packages that have been installed directly and have no dependencies.  It it is down to the use of semantic versioning in npm … Continue reading

Posted in Linux, Node-RED | Tagged | Leave a comment

Using a Small TFT with a Raspberry Pi

Introduction As I have said before part of the point of this blog is so I have a record of how I did things and this definitely fits into that category.  If others find it useful, that is a bonus. … Continue reading

Posted in Hardware, Linux, RaspberryPi | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Bash History

On several occasions, I have lost some of my bash history, as the ssh session has not been exited cleanly. This annoyed me as I use the history as a means to remember what I have done.  It prompted me … Continue reading

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Installing pywws and running it as a Daemon

I have been using pywws for a number of years to download the data from my weather station and it simply just works.  There is good support from the author though there are some gaps in the documentation.  Moving pywws … Continue reading

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Node-RED and icons

I’ve been looking at Pete Scargill’s thermostat and got stuck on icons. He blogged about icons recently but that didn’t say how to install them.  So on the basis of ‘if I didn’t know there will be others who don’t … Continue reading

Posted in Node-RED, RaspberryPi | Tagged , | 3 Comments