What is "design-based research"?
Design-based research is a conceptual framework and collection of methods for developing knowledge at the same time as you try to make practical improvements in the real world.
Designing "Playcology": A Mixed-Reality Science Game
A mixed-reality environment is one in which the physical world is overlaid or mixed with digital content, such that physical and digital objects can interact. For instance, camera-projector systems can overlay digital content onto a tabletop, and update the projected images as objects on the table are moved around. This degree of interactivity between the digital and physical is quite powerful– for instance, it allows Dynamicland to turn ordinary objects and pieces of paper into a dynamic comput
Tutorial: flashing a program to the ESP-8266 microcontroller
I was having trouble flashing my ESP-8266 using an Arduino (it used to work...), so I bought an adapter on Amazon. Here are the steps for using it to flash the ESP-8266.
Building "plug-and-play" Internet-of-Things sensors with Raspberry Pi
I have some leftovers of an earlier generation of sensors from the InSPECT project, and want to get them streaming their data over MQTT (as part of my general IoT-in-a-Box project). Self-identifying sensor/actuator devices InSPECT has had two main generations of sensors. This first generation connected over USB to a Raspberry Pi "hub", which sampled the data and sent it to over websockets to a server. (The newer, current set connects by audio cable to an ESP-32, which sends the data as MQTT m
Using "Internet-of-Things" cameras to create timelapse videos
The following is a technical post about using the Raspberry Pi and a Raspberry Pi camera to create automated timelapse videos. Since this project was part of a larger project to develop an "internet of things" science kit, the goal was to have the timelapse video triggered by an MQTT message. OK, so I don't currently have a really good reason to use MQTT to start a timelapse. I could have just ssh'd to the Pi and started a timelapse script that way. But I didn't, mainly because I wanted to move
Building an "IoT-in-a-Box" with Raspberry Pi, camera and sensors
Recently I've started the project of getting a Raspberry Pi to provide everything I need to IoT-ify my house. The general idea is to have one Raspberry Pi do three things: 1. read and stream data from any connected hardware (including usb-connected sensors, the Raspberry Pi camera, or GPIO pins), 2. run an MQTT server that relays those messages to/from any IoT devices, 3. serve a webpage where I can view data and control all available IoT devices A Bunch O' Uses Time-lapse controller: Wi
Tutorial: Making this Website
I'm going to reproduce the steps I took to create this blog, so that I can either do it again in the future, or help someone else do the same.