HomePi – What we will build

As announced before with my post , I am doing my first blog series about building a sample DIY home automation for everyone to copy.

But what will we actually build?

The general idea behind this series is to show you which steps are needed to connect a google home to you raspberry Pi. It may sound like a small thing, but actually some components are involved

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HomePi – Google Home connected to raspberry pi using RSI #wc3auto

pi + Google HomeI am currently preparing a series of blog posts to explain, how I connected my rapsberry pi based sprinkler system to my Google home. I will share code an insights about my journey.

You will need a raspberry pi (any generation is fine, I run a 1.gen) and a Google Home, or just your smartphone with google assist enabled. The more impressive is the Google Home though.

I will explain how to setup the raspberry pi, how to obtain a hostname for you dynamic IP address, the setup of letsencrypt certificates on the rasberry pi, how to auto-renew them, how to write a plugin for the rsiServer (http://github.com/rsiServer), how to setup the server for Token based authorization, how to enable https and finally how to hook up the Google Home to the entire system.

Please give me a little time and support me by sharing the announcement, I will be back with detailled instructionssoon.

[Infographic] Geeks vs. Nerds

Stuck in a geeks world.. What does it mean? Actually there are “10” different characters that are not easy to seperate for the rest of the wolrd: Geeks and Nerds. But what’s the actual difference? An Infographic compiled by  http://www.mastersinit.org/ is explaining how to seperate them.

While Geeks are more likley to be found in positions like web developers or Entrepreneurs, Nerds are more often working as rocket scientists or reclusive professors. Both are likely to be IT professionals.

I don’t want to repeat all the figures, so just have a look to the infographic below: HostGator Promo Codes
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Facebook Hacker Cup 2012 – How to solve Alphabet Soup

Alphabet Soup was by far the easiest problem in the qualifiers. I am not talking implementation but about understanding the problem. In some cases the “problem designers” did a good job in confusing me for at least an hour by their style in description. In alphabet soup’s case the problem was formulated as follows:

Alfredo Spaghetti really likes soup, especially when it contains alphabet pasta. Every day he constructs a sentence from letters, places the letters into a bowl of broth and enjoys delicious alphabet soup.

Today, after constructing the sentence, Alfredo remembered that the Facebook Hacker Cup starts today! Thus, he decided to construct the phrase “HACKERCUP”. As he already added the letters to the broth, he is stuck with the letters he originally selected. Help Alfredo determine how many times he can place the word “HACKERCUP” side-by-side using the letters in his soup.

Input

The first line of the input file contains a single integer T: the number of test cases. T lines follow, each representing a single test case with a sequence of upper-case letters and spaces: the original sentence Alfredo constructed.

Output

Output T lines, one for each test case. For each case, output “Case #t: n”, where t is the test case number (starting from 1) and n is the number of times the word “HACKERCUP” can be placed side-by-side using the letters from the sentence.

Constraints

  • 1 < T ≤ 20
  • Sentences contain only the upper-case letters A-Z and the space character
  • Each sentence contains at least one letter, and contains at most 1000 characters, including spaces

To solve it, simply iterate through the characters in the string, counting how frequently each of them occurs.

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Hacking Contest by Google, Code Jam 2012

Get seated, ready, steady.. GO. There is another annual hacking cup coming. I already pointed to the Facebook Hacker Cup a few days ago. Now it is time to announce that also Google is doing it’s annual contest in 2012.

Google Code Jam 2012

The first round starts in March 2012, so maybe you already want to lock the door for practicing.

Last year over 30,000 coders competed, be the 30,001 hacker that gets the almighty title of Code Jam Champion, and a hefty $10,000 reward.

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Tubalr – pandora for youtube videos

I just came across a very new site called tubalr.com A few minutes after checking it out I was addicted. Tublar is absolutely and easy to use, clear design fully working pandora for youtube. It’s creator Cody Steward writes: “Tubalr allows you to effortlessly listen to a band’s or artist’s top YouTube videos without all the clutter YouTube brings.”

Geekiest about it: The full Source is available at GitHub.

So how does it work and how do you benefit from it?

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StereoPill – your party playlist

It is 01:00 am and half of guest are already sleeping with their heads on the bar.. The other half seems to be in still in control of their fingers so they start taping around on the DJs iPAD to choose the songs they like. Unfortunately, they have a very special taste of music let’s say.

You already came across this situation? Next time choose StereoPill beforehand. So all your guests can file their favorite songs and share a”party” – playlist with the DJ.

You simply set up an event, and send it to all your guests.  It’s free to sign up and post your event, but costs money for future events.

What would have Facebook, Youtube and Google+ looked like back in 1997

1997, three brand new websites started their service. Check out the latest technologies used to form a new web. Forget about fireball and yahoo.. just get in touch and stay in-touch with your friends with google plus, facebook and youtube. Make sure that you have all your landline capabilities ready.. you will need 8kb/s data rate..

 

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