New Toys, Again.
This Christmas, I got an SDR Raspberry Pi 2, a Raspberry Pi 0, and two ESP8266âČs (though one is tied up in the Sparkfun Arduino WiFi Shield) and a Dremel tool.Â
The SDR in particular is  a BLAST. I started playing with it first, simply because it requires the least set up. At this point, I donât have an antenna for it, so I can really only play around with some weak FM radio, and looking for wifi weak spots in my new apartment, but itâs been promising so far. The nice folks in the RTL SDR Subreddit say that the best thing to do is build a planar disk antenna out of some dollar store pizza pans, so Iâm thinking Iâll do that next week some time.Â
I still havenât done much with all the stuff from last year. The Yun did make for a pretty nice wifi thermometer, but it really deserves so much better than that. Now that Iâm in the new apartment, Iâm thinking it might make for a nice home automation hub, especially if I ever get around to buying a Phillips Hue. The up24 was nice, but button popped off the end, and the replacement they sent me had about 24 hour battery life, as opposed to most unitsâ 14 day battery life.Â
Happy New Year!Â















