Raspberry Pi


We’ve been thinking about getting into 3D printing here at the Hammel household.  I’m looking at building small enclosures for the various embedded boards I work on.  My wife is looking at creating components for the designs she works on for Vindicated Vinyl, her small business.  After doing a bit […]

Getting started with the Robo3D printer and OctoPrint


The value of an over-exuberant penchant for experimentation and fiddling should never be underestimated, if only because it helps measure the onset of age-associated mental debilitation. In other words, everyone needs a hobby. Or two. Or ten.

What to do in 2017


Back in October I started work on a new app for PiBox: an XM radio player.  The hardware is an XMPCR, a device sold in the early 2000’s that connected over USB to a PC.  The device didn’t last long.  I think there was some concern that people would steal […]

PiBox: XM radio app (PiXM) and wifi scanning in PNC




It’s official: PiBox will be at the Colorado Springs Maker Faire on October 15th. The Maker Faire will be held at Library 21c which is just North of the Northeast corner of the Chapel Hills Mall.  Last year saw around 6300 attendees and turnout is expected to be even better […]

PiBox @ CS Maker Faire, Oct 15th






One of the directions my PiBox project is headed is as a central hub for sensor management.  This implies the ability to communicate between the PiBox and the sensor node using BLE or Wifi.  PiBox can do that already over Wifi (and supports basic BLE communication though lacks a meaningful […]

Embedded project: 4 channel Arduino-based power controller



One of the longterm goals for PiBox is to integrate it into the home.  I want to see the PiBox Server provide centralized communication for an array of IoT devices.  One way to do this is with Bluetooth Low-Energy, aka BLE, aka Bluetooth 4.0.  This specification allows very low power […]

PiBox: bluetooth for video means no omxplayer


When I was just getting started with embedded development I found many tutorials on how to perform cross compiles required setting up some shell functions and variables before working on builds.  This is a necessity for embedded work because the embedded build for the target platform won’t use the same […]

cdtools, because who has just one project?