Using a Raspberry Pi Camera to create a time-lapsed video

January 31, 2024 | 1 comment

For my birthday last year I was bought a Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 which I’d wanted for a while. I’d decided that I wanted to create a time-lapse video showing the change in seasons in the back garden. The rest of this article describes what I did and the results.

Setting up

As this didn’t require a huge amount of computing power I paired the camera module with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W.

That turned out to be the easy bit! Getting it fixed such that there weren’t any reflections from the window took a bit of creativity. What … Read the rest

Posting to Bluesky via the API from PHP – Part Eight – Retrieving a Post

January 26, 2024 | Comment

Once again I have been looking at the Bluesky API as part of a question posted on my Github respository. This time the question was “Can I specify one URL and use PHP to retrieve only one bluesky post by someone else?”. You don’t actually need my library to do that but I thought it would be useful to post details here as it’s not immediately obvious.

Identifying an Individual Post

The first thing to consider is how to identfy an individual post. Consider that we want to retrieve the following post progamatically.

Looking at the URL for this … Read the rest

Posting to Bluesky via the API from PHP – Part Seven – Handling Multiple Images

January 10, 2024 | Comment

It really is very gratifying when people use your code in their own projects and get in touch to ask questions, suggest changes or, heaven forbid, highlight bugs! Yesterday, someone raised an issue asking if it was possible to upload four images to a post. Let’s take a look and see…

Who Wants Multiple Images Anyway?

To be honest, when I wrote PHP2Bluesky it was very much for my own project and that only required one image per post. However, Bluesky allows up to four images to be uploaded per post and so I can understand why others would want … Read the rest

Posting to Bluesky via the API from PHP – Part Six – Handling Handles and Oversized Images

January 3, 2024 | Comment

I wrote a series of posts towards the end of the year that took you step-by-step through using the Bluesky API to post to the social network. Having used the code Patrick Delahanty got in touch to say that he had found a couple of issues. Firstly, handling user handles and secondly dealing with large images. Let’s take a look at both of those.

Handling User Handles

As with every social network, Bluesky allows you to select (or assigns for you) a unique user handle. As we saw in the last post I have changed mine to be my … Read the rest

Changing your Bluesky handle to be your own domain

December 27, 2023 | 2 comments

I’m liking Bluesky, which is a little like a rough around the edges X without the toxicity found there. And here’s a neat thing you can do on Bluesky that you can’t on X. If you have your own domain you can use that as your Bluesky handle. In the rest of this article, we’re going to look at how you do that.

Why would you want to do it?

First off why would you want to do so and what are the implications of making the change? I see a number of reasons to make the change:

it

… Read the rest

PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar 2023 – Day Twelve Project

December 24, 2023 | Comment

And here we have the very last projects from this year’s PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar – Let it Glow. Today we are making use of the LCD screen that came in box 12 along with the string of RGB lights and the temperature sensor from previous boxes.

As part of the design of the calendar there are two double width boxes for day one and 12 leading you to assume (correctly) that you get double the goodies in these. While you don’t actually get double the contents you do get double the value as these boxes contain higher cost items. … Read the rest

PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar 2023 – Day Twelve

December 23, 2023 | Comment

The final box of this year’s PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar – Let it Glow. Today is a big box like the first and similarly, this contains a big item. Have a look at the video to see what’s included and check back tomorrow for the final video going through the projects making use of this very special item!

Day Twelve included the following:

1x 16×2 LCD (with I2C backpack)
4x Male to female jumper wires

… Read the rest

PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar 2023 – Day Eleven Project

December 22, 2023 | Comment

Today’s projects had strong ZX Spectrum vibes. When I was a youth I used to hammer the spongy keyboard of first the ZX81 and then the ZX Spectrum writing programs in BASIC. The Spectrum keyboard was particularly difficult as it had multiple functions on each key. The 4-way membrane keypad included in box 11 very much reminded me of the Spectrum. Oh, happy days!

As you will see from the video below we are now combining the contents from several boxes to create interesting projects. The last one today, as you will see from the video, doesn’t include any … Read the rest

PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar 2023 – Day Eleven

December 21, 2023 | Comment

We’ve reached the penultimate day of this year’s PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar – Let it Glow and today it is another non-light item in the box. Have a look at the video below to see what’s included.

Day Eleven included the following:

1x 4-way membrane keypad
1x 5-way extra-long header strip
5x Male to male jumper wires

… Read the rest

PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar 2023 – Day Ten Project

December 20, 2023 | Comment

🎵It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas🎶

Back to the land of lighting today with a 15-LED addressable RGB dot strip from box ten. Like the circle LED light from day eight this has multiple LEDs each of which can be accessed individually to change its colour and intensity. This strip light looks and feels very much like the LED lights that you get for your Christmas tree and the projects reflected that today.

Have a look at the video below which runs through most of the projects.

… Read the rest