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Inaugural

This might well be the ninth time I'm writing this, but here goes:

This is the first post of my new blog, Gekwetter. There was a Gekwetter before it, but it was ugly and ran on outdated software so I'm starting fresh. I may put the one actual post that was on there back, but other than that it's a fresh start.

The website barometz.name exists primarily for me to have some kind of web presence. It is something of an online resume in case anyone wants to know who I am and what I'm interested in. Additionally there's a blog - you're looking at it - where I hope to share projects I'm working on and hopefully insightful thoughts. Topics of interest include (mis)communication, education and my current field of study, (embedded) programming. When my posts aren't interesting, at least they're an excuse for me to get my thoughts about something organized.

Tech

For the technologically inclined, the site runs on Nikola 7.1, a static blog generator. This means I get a bunch of automation, but none of the security problems of dynamically generated systems such as Wordpress. Additionally, it's marginally cheaper to host on NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. All content and the modifications I made to the templates can be found on GitHub.

This incarnation of Gekwetter is the first time I admit to myself that honestly, I'm no good at web design. I made a few tweaks here and there, but for the most part you're looking at Nikola's stock Bootstrap 3 theme with the Yeti bootswatch.

Remote Senseo

Long overdue update

During the project demo, my Senseo ruined three Arduinos, one of which over a CAN-bus connection, and a USB port. I'm moderately proud of the remotely triggered explosion, but I can't stress enough how careful you need to be.

A few weeks ago I got the idea to mod my old Senseo pod coffee machine in order to control it remotely for a college project. It's finished and done, and I'm here to tell you how. For this post, I'll limit myself mostly to the electronics - the programming is a story of its own, although it didn't take me nearly as long.

Disassembly

Before I could tinker with the insides of my coffee machine I knew I'd have to take it apart. "No worries," I said to my self, "I'm pretty good at taking things apart!" I had no idea what I was getting into. I'll spare you the gruesome details and summarize: While serviceable, it's a pretty tough machine - halfway in I realized I didn't have quite the right maintenance manual and couldn't get one from Philips, and I ended up breaking every single clip that keeps the bottom in place. I got in, and that's when it got interesting.

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