Articles

With the cloud native multi-user MQTT platform deployed, I started designing IoT devices that I could distribute to end users. However, without a GUI, interacting with those devices would be difficult. Of course, one could install applications like MQTT dash or similar but this would require tedious configuration such as MQTT broker and topics. I wanted to give users a simpler UX so I made this simple control interface that automatically displays a users devices and allows those to be controlled.

There are multiple tools available for API testing, Postman and Insomnia being probably the most popular. However, those are desktop applications that need to be installed. I wanted a solution that I can use in the browser so I made a simple web application to achieve basic API testing functions.

Over the years, I have built multiple Vue.js applications. Although their business logic differs, those applications often share similar components such as a navigation panel, a header with my logo and an authentication mechanism. Writing those from scratch for each application would be time consuming so I designed an application template that can be installed using NPM to bootstrap my projects.

With the user management and group management microservices, users and their groups can be easily queried through HTTP requests. However, the GUI that the user interacts with must also be properly designed so as to provide an optimal UX. To facilitate the query of users via the GUI, I designed a group and user picker component for Vue.js that can be easily installed using NPM.

One day I got fed up with my solder spool rolling around all the time so I designed this simple spool holder in Fusion360 and 3D printed it.

Web applications commonly require a user database and the management logic for it. Having to build such software infrastructure for each individual app would be time consuming so I designed a general-purpose user management microservice that can be easily integrated in a project.

The SONOFF S20 is a cheap Wifi smart socket that enables the remote control of appliances for less than USD 10. Although the hardware is more than decent, its usage requires a proprietary app which most likely involves a third party server between the user and the device. Since the socket uses an ESP8266 at its core, I decided to write my own firmware for it.

I recently started using Grafana to visualize my apartment data. Although I can easily open a browser tab to view the dashboard I created, I wanted to have a standalone display dedicated to the task that I could put on a shelf of my living room.

Wifi controlled smart light bulbs can now be purchased from less than USD 10. However, those can often only be used by a specific application provided by the vendor and can involve exchanging data with a third party server. I wanted a solution to use my own software while benefiting from the cheap hardware so I replaced the wifi module of a a cheap Wifi light bulb my own electronics.

As a graph database Neo4J is a great choice to manage highly relational data. On the other side, a great number of applications feature at least some form of user management system. With Neo4J, those users can be store as nodes and connected to other items via relationships. A typical example would be a blog, where both articles and users are individual nodes while authorships are represented by a relationship.