Chris Capobianco

Went to Victoria Park this morning, and met up with Parisa's former babysitter. She agreed to take some photos of the three of us while we were there, and some of them were quite good. ...

Went to Grand Bend Beach, we had a great time, but we are very tired. ...

I had the day off today, and the wife and I went out for lunch for the first time since the lockdown started back in March. Then we started to get stuff ready for our trip to Grand Bend on Friday for the day at the beach. ...

I wanted to look at my serial bluetooth board, but I wanted to relax this evening since I am taking the next two days off. I would like to figure out if I actually damaged the HC-05 in my testing of the AT-09 boards, but I also wanted to look at the anniversary gift I made over two years ago and see if I can figure why the alarm does not work as expected. I also need to sketch out the electrical and programmatic design on the activity centre (a.k.a. busy box) for Parisa, as well the design the ...

A package I ordered back in the beginning of May finally arrived. I got a message from AliExpress a few days ago saying my package was on its way, so it seems the original shippment was lost. Considering the time between the message and package arrival, they spared no expense to get it here. So I tested the /component tester, and it works really well! I tested some resistors and capacitors, and the values it comes back with is very close to the marked values. I don't know what I was expecting w...

New keyboard and mouse arrived today, and they both seem to work. I tested them in a few different scenarios, and they both fared quite well. I did not get enough work done today, so I am trying to do a little more work this evening so I do not fall further behind. ...

Had a great day with family today. Parisa had a blast playing with everyone, and even gave her little cousin a kiss. My Dad had expressed interest in making some bread, but he wanted to start by making sourdough bread. He decided not to try making any because he wasn't willing to wait a week for the starter to ferment, so I decided to show him the relatively quick recipe I use. It takes about 3-4 hours, but it could be shaved down to 2-3 hours. So I demonstrated how the recipe for him, but I al...

Visited my brother, sister-in-law and our nephew this afternoon. He is very cute, and quite expressive for a 2.5 month year old. We went to my parents' place for dinner, and to stay overnight. We are celebrating the summer birthdays tomorrow. ...

The wireless transmitters I ordered finally arrived, I received the wireless receivers last week. I tested them out soon after they arrived and they appeared to work sending 5 V through 5 mm of wood, but I wanted to do a more detailed test. So I connected the receiver board to one of the LiPo charger boards I have, and I wanted to observe if I could get a consistent 4.2 V at the LiPo charger. I used a wooden spacer to mimic my use case, which is to providing a wireless charging option for the a...

I was supposed to try working on the HC-05 serial bluetooth board this evening, but I found some interesting websites during the day. One was an easily deployable Wiki, but it appears too complicated for me to use as a knowledge base. I also realized that I can publish notes in my Standard Notes as a blog, but I did not think my notes were sufficiently organized/coherent to warrant a blog. It is nice to know I could move these entries there. I did download BoostNote to organize my notes for my ...

Looking above the granite entrance-way, she noticed the engraved phrase written in Latin: "Sic Itur Ad Astra". Octavio noticed that Dr. Singh-Lee was staring at the words written into the stone, "It means 'Reach for the stars'" he uttered. "Actually it means 'Thus we go to the stars'" she said calmly. "Isn't it the same thing?" he remarked quickly, noting the confidence with which she spoke. "What is at the end of that hallway?" she asked, pointing to the dimly lit walls of the mausoleum. #story...

Found a sketch that creates a radar map from ultrasonic sensors (like US-015), and is processed by a python script. If it is possible to convert the python script into C++, and find a way to display the radar image on a webpage, I could make it available from the ESP32-CAM dashboard. ...

Did a small test of the wireless charging receiver boards I ordered. I plugged one into a 5 V source (an Arduino), and measured a small positive voltage on the other with a multimeter. The reading on the multimeter was not 5 V, but if I created a better setup I might get a more reliable measurement. ...

I stumbled across an interesting algorithm for finding rational approximations to real numbers: Farey Approximation. I found an implementation in Python and C++, but they did not always give the expected answer. I simplified the code, and I was able to get the values that one would expect. ...

I heard the sad news that Grant Imahara from Mythbusters died of a brain aneurysm. He was only eight years older then me, and it got me thinking about my life. Now that we have Parisa, not only do we need to take better care of ourselves, but it makes sense that we get a few things organized in case something terrible were to happen to either of us. Mina and I had already made plans to share access to bank accounts, but now we want to organize all the online/offline things that we should know o...

Finally chatted with Peter this evening, he shared with me his updates to the code for his HAB project. Perhaps I should get back into it as well. I tested the serial bluetooth boards last night, and I found an Arduino sketch that worked with the AT-09/MLT-BT05 boards. Turns out that all of them are slave-only boards, still useful but not what I thought I was getting. Still have not gotten the HC-05 to work completely, but that sketch I found does not seem to work with it, even if I put it in c...

The city finally came by to cut down the dead tree in our front yard, only took them six months. I hope I do not have to wait six months or more for them to replace the tree. Went for a bike ride this evening, feeling extra tired. I did not get a chance to chat with Peter this evening, perhaps he decided to crash early. Testing HC-05 again, but mostly relaxing this evening. ...

Internet connection dropped at least twice today. Peter re-scheduled our weekly chat to tomorrow evening, without an internet connection that would probably be for the best. Saw a repo claiming most DS18B20 sensors are clones, and provided Arduino code to discover and classify each DS18B20. The two waterproof DS18B20 I purchased are D1 type clones. Apparently they are noisy, and have supercapacitors instead of EEPROM for alarms. Though the author also claims that these clones have a 3 C offset ...

Mike and Lisa came to visit today, and they had a great time with Parisa. She also had a great time with both of them, an improvement compared to even a few months ago when she would freak out whenever she encountered Mike. I tried to get record the serial transmissions from the HC-05 using the Logic Analyzer, bypassing the Arduino and using a USB-to-TTL (FTDL) board. I could observe the signals being sent, but the HC-05 never responded. I tried different baud rates, line endings, putting the H...

Managed to get the Logic Analyzer working, I had to install firmware for the generic driver. I also had to install and enable udev rules so that the regular user has USB access. Tested the logic analyzer by generating a 5 bit counter with an Arduino Uno, and I was able to detect the signal. I tried to connect the HC-05 and AT-09 serial Bluetooth boards to the logic analyzer, but I can only get the HC-05 and one AT-09 to pair with my phone. However only the HC-05 registers a connection when the ...

Had a long chat with Brendan. Hopefully we will continue to chat on a regular basis, though perhaps for shorter sessions ;) ...

Forgot to write an update last night. I tried for almost two hours to get serial bluetooth modules to work to no avail. I found a webpage with debugging instructions to try, and if that fails I will try to use the Logic Analyzer again. ...

Went for a bike ride this evening, and it is was still hot outside. Tried to use the Logic Analyzer to read the output from the serial bluetooth board, but I think I need to follow a tutorial since I seem to have forgotten how to use it. I did test the tiny boost converters with some drained batteries, and they were all able to boost 0.7 V to ~3.3V ...

Brendan agreed to chat more frequently so we don't have so much to catch up on when we do get together. Mina was very tired, and his daughter looked very bored while we chatted. I tried to connect to the bluetooth serial devices I purchased, but I either cannot pair them or cannot send or receive to them. The original bluetooth board worked fine, but not I cannot get it to work with the old sketches anymore. Perhaps the logic analyzer will show me what is going on, but I need to re-install the ...

Mowed the lawn, and got the pizza sauce ready for Saturday. Going to make the pizza dough in the morning, and defrost and marinate the meat for the BBQ. Had Brendan and his daugther visit this afternoon. I made the pizza dough in the morning, and made the pizza before they arrived. His daughter really liked the pizza, and Brendan really liked the chicken drumsticks. We had a lot to catch up on, and it seems like we have a lot more to do. I asked if Brendan wanted to chat more frequently, but i...

Solder pins onto the Arduino Nanos I got awhile ago, as well as the tiny power boost boards. One of the nanos did not have the bootloader loaded, and after an hour of trying I was not able to get it loaded. Not sure what I can do to install the bootloader on this Nano, but if I cannot I still have one that works. Still noticed the different IP for the baby monitor after a reboot, but at some point today it switch to the reserved IP in the router. Not sure what that is about. Going to try to cu...

My parents came over for Canada Day, and they spent alot of time with Parisa. We took Parisa outside in the afternoon to play in her little pool. Mina made a great lunch, and my peach cobbler turned out pretty good. Though I may want to adjust the recipe somewhat. Enabled the backend server for the baby monitor UI, and it seems to work as long as the IP address is fixed. I going to fix the IP for the baby monitor along with other devices, hopefully getting around the issue with the IP address ...

Had a relaxing morning with Mina. Parisa keeps saying 'OK' and 'Oh No', and it is very cute. Replaced RPi for baby monitor so that we can use the USB microphone again. Having an issue with the assigned IP address flopping between two values after each reboot. Need to check if commands in the Web UI still work. Made the base for a peach cobbler this evening. I will make the batter in the morning, before my parents come out for Canada Day. ...

I had the day off today, but I was still running around. Dropped off and picked up Parisa at daycare. Stopped at Home Depot for items we needed, but had to go back to return an item and get missing items. Replaced furnance filter, glued cracks in stipple ceiling in our bedroom. Also washed diaper pail twice. Prepared hamburger patties for dinner, then freezing them. The addition of the Parmesano, Pecorino and ground dried Porcini mushrooms made them really tasty. Grilled peaches, sprinkling ...

Visited family this weekend, and had a great time. Got to see my nephew in person for the first time, and Parisa had a great time with everyone. Salvaged several high voltage capacitors from an old TV PCB my father was tossing out. ...