Four focuses this week:

• continued work on Contributoria, in advance of the March issue going live on Saturday the first. Mainly tidying up loose ends, adding a few useful features, getting things shipshape.

  • a day fettling the Hello Lamppost code, in advance of two installations of it.

  • working on my talk for Random String, which was coming together after a day, but will still need some time in the week before the event to really haul its disparate influences together.

  • continuing to prod some hardware/software integration tests for Hutton. As part of that, I shared my somewhat-documented demonstration code on Github. It’s a very straightforward demo – retrieving a random number from a web server via an Electric Imp, and then pushing that number over a simple serial protocol to an Arduino. It doesn’t do much, other than illustrate how the components fit together. Except: it’s an end-to-end demo. It covers each part of the service – Arduino code to handle serial data; Squirrel code for the Imp to request data and process it – and more Squirrel for the agent to make the HTTP request and return it to the device. Now all that remains is to swap out the server being used, the data being sent, and the representation of that data on the Arduino. By understanding the end-to-end process, I’m now in a better place to focus on the unique aspects of my implementation. It felt worth sharing, as it’s a little conceptual hump to get over.

  And the usual comms management: handling inquiries about my availability, meeting people to talk about future projects. My March is wall-to-wall busy, with two talks to write and deliver, more work on Contributoria, some IOT work, a workshop for BBC R&D, and, if there’s time, a bit more work on Hutton. Blimey. For now: onwards.