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Miscellaneous

Here I will share some miscellaneous projects that don't really have anything to do with the rest of my homelab.

Arduino Weather Station

I made a little 'Weather Station' to display the current weather in my city using an Arduino, a LCD display and the OpenWeatherMap API. I did the following steps to make it work:

  • Install the Arduino IDE on my PC
  • Connect the Arduino to my PC and select the correct COM port, so the code can be loaded from the IDE to the Arduino
  • Connect the Arduino to the LCD display with jumper cables
  • Retrieve an API Key from OpenWeatherMap
  • Write the code, which you can find here.

Note

Make sure to enter the correct data types for the JSON values (e.g. double for Temperature) - the Arduino_JSON.h library doesn't allow the Convert.toDouble method.
Also, note that OpenWeatherMap display Temperature in Kelvin - hence the line double temperatureC = (temperatureK - 273.15); to convert it to Celsius.
Another tip: In the Arduino IDE, go to 'Tools -> Serial Monitor' to view the Serial.println lines. Make sure you have the correct Baud rate selected.

Arch Linux Configuration

A quick section to explain some things I had to setup myself when using Arch:

How to display AppImages in Rofi

I use rofi as an app launcher. It works great, but by default only displays and starts apps installed by the package manager. After installing AppImages, I wanted them to be accessible from rofi as well. To enable this, I did the following: - chmod +x Example.AppImage to make the AppImage executable - sudo nvim /usr/share/applications/Example.desktop to create a desktop file for the AppImage Content: 

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Appication
Name=Example
Exec=/path/to/Example.AppImage
Now rofi can also launch the AppImage.

Scripting notfications for battery usage

I noticed when writing a script to notify me when battery is low, that notifications can't be delivered. The script is: 

#!/bin/bash
bat_files="/sys/class/power_supply/BAT1"
bat_status=$(cat "${bat_files}/status")
capacity=$(cat "${bat_files}/capacity")
echo "${capacity}"
if [[ "${bat_status}"=="Discharging" && ${capacity} -le 25 ]]; then
    echo "Battery alert - ${capacity}%"
    notify-send \
        "Warning: Battery! Only ${capacity}% battery remaining!"
fi 
if [[ "${bat_status}"=="Discharging" && ${capacity} -le 10 ]]; then
    echo "Battery alert - ${capacity}%"
    notify-send \
        "Urgent Warning! Only ${capacity}% battery remaining! Feed me!"
fi
Everything was working but the notify-send command. I tried making the notification daemon a D-Bus service by configuring a org.freedesktop.Notifications.service file in the D-Bus service directory, but it still didn't reliably start. I then realized I hadn't enabled dunst via sudo systemctl enable dunst.service. Only using the systemctl start command will start the service in that session, but to be able to automatically a service, the enable command is needed. Then, I could simply autostart dunst via my window manager i3 (exec-always --no-startup-id dunst).

Video Game

In 2023, I used Game Maker Studio to make a 2D RPG computer game as a birthday gift. The engine uses its own language called Game Maker Studio, and I can highly recommend it, as I had a lot of fun and a great learning experience. I chose this engine because it was used by Toby Fox to make 'Undertale', a great game that majorly inspired my project. I can highly recommend Peyton Burnham's YouTube videos on the engine. I also uploaded a tiny bit of my code into this GitHub repo, so you can have a sneak peek at what the Game Maker Script Language looks like if you wish.