31 posts authored by “Chris Crocker-White”

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See and hug other humans: Mini meets for remote teams!

Balena is a fully remote company. We’re remote first (since long before the events of 2020), but still acknowledge how important it is to see and hug each other in real life as much as we can. This July, we held our second annual Cornwall (UK) mini-meet (you won’t find a blog post for the first one - let’s call it a pre-experimental, undocumented, proof of concept). Separate from how we usually…

August 25, 2023 / 10 min

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Creating an IoT marketplace and launching Fleets for Good

Today we’re launching a big update to balenaHub, creating a marketplace to find and share resources for IoT building products and services. Alongside, we’re launching Fleets for Good (formerly open fleets), our way of sharing our technology to enable users who want to use our platform for a good cause. balenaHub rebrand Back in November 2020 we launched the first iteration of balenaHub. Then in…

March 01, 2023 / 5 min

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The road to multi-app, mile 2: surfacing Apps on balenaHub and balenaCloud

In the first part of this series, we renamed the old concept of balenaCloud “applications” to Fleets. Due to that work, today, we’re able to surface a new concept on balenaHub and balenaCloud to continue driving down the long and winding road to multi-app: Apps. Road to multi-app Previously, we removed the concept of applications by renaming it to Fleets. That change ultimately enabled what we’re…

July 19, 2022 / 5 min

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The balenaCloud dashboard: why we change stuff and move things

There’s a lot of thought and reasoning behind what seem like trivial changes that I want to share with you all publicly. From the outside, I feel that the effort that we put in to ensure things such as product longevity, maintainability, and reliability may not be obvious, so I want to explore that today. Chris here, your friendly neighborhood product guy, back with another attempt to take down a…

February 14, 2022 / 12 min

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The road to multi-app: transitioning balenaCloud Applications to Fleets

Applications on balenaCloud are now Fleets. We’ve changed this to progress us towards our long-term vision of disentangling devices from software, allowing you to manage both independently and solve for use cases of ever-increasing complexity. We want to provide ultimate flexibility for fleet owners and believe that working within the confines of the application scope was limiting what we could…

August 09, 2021 / 6 min

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Receive and store LoRa sensor data from TTN using a Raspberry Pi (part 2)

Back in the first part of this series, we detailed the process of building a simple LoRa-connected weather station to monitor temperature, humidity, and pressure, and send the readings to The Things Stack (TTS). In this second part, we’re going to take a look at how you can capture that data, record it and produce a dashboard and graphs to visualize the data. Note: 28th June 2021: The Things…

October 28, 2020 / 9 min

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Build a simple solar-powered weather station with LoRa & The Things Stack (part 1)

We’ve covered a couple of ways to build a LoRa gateway for The Things Stack (TTS) here on the blog and on YouTube, but what about if you want to take advantage of your own gateway and deploy some sensors in your home or garden? Build a simple solar-powered weather station This two-part series will explore how to build a simple, solar-powered weather station, and in the second part, set up a way to…

October 27, 2020 / 11 min

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Build a simple radiation monitor using a Raspberry Pi, InfluxDB and Grafana

We wrote in detail about our Raspberry Pi geiger counter project in another post, now this guide focuses on the basics necessary to build your own. Read on to discover how to assemble a background radiation monitor with a web dashboard to show pretty graphs (who doesn’t like pretty graphs?!). Introduction We build and feature projects that monitor the environment around them quite frequently at…

July 06, 2020 / 6 min

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Show & tell: a steampunk desktop background radiation monitor

I was always a fan of the steampunk style, and having also had experience building steam engines in the past, there was only one real direction this project could go. Once I had my radiation detector kit hooked up to my Raspberry Pi running InfluxDB and Grafana, I found myself woodworking, machining, and fabricobbling an enclosure out of mahogany, brass, copper, toggle switches and, because it…

July 01, 2020 / 15 min

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Two projects, one device: turn your Raspberry Pi into a multitool!

Built one of our projects, and want to expand upon it? Perhaps you want to build a second one, but lack the hardware? Fear not! One of the great benefits of balenaCloud is that you can combine different projects and run everything on one device. In this short guide, we’re going to take a look at how to run multiple projects on a single device, allowing you to do more with the hardware you already…

January 07, 2020 / 10 min

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Control your Christmas tree: A Raspberry Pi powered RGB LED matrix v2

Build and animate your own web and remote-controllable lighting from commonly available RGB LED strings and a Raspberry Pi. We’re going to go through the process of building a fully-configurable 10x25 LED matrix with a graphical configurator to run animations and patterns. Introduction Last year, I wrote a blog post showing how to build an RGB LED matrix. Since then, we’ve developed the project…

December 23, 2019 / 9 min

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Beyond the cloud: Docker containers in space

On the 13th June 2019, a rocket launched from Kiruna, Sweden, carrying 280kg of scientific experiments; among them, a Raspberry Pi Zero running Docker containers on balenaOS. To our knowledge this is the first time a Moby/Docker container engine has been flown to space! Nico Maas, an IT Engineer & Ground Controller from the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt (the German Aerospace Center…

October 09, 2019 / 4 min

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Install a balenaFin outdoors, for use as a LoRa gateway, flight tracker, weather station and more!

Back in May we looked at deploying the software to run a balenaFin as a TTN LoRa Gateway, today we’re working on the natural progression from this; mounting the hardware up a mast and making the installation more permanent. The techniques we look at here will allow us to install hardware in a weatherproof enclosure outdoors which can then be used for a variety of applications such as the planned…

August 26, 2019 / 12 min

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Build a Raspberry Pi powered live train station sign for your desk

Last updated: 10th December 2021 Build your own UK train station platform departure display (next train indicator) with live data using a Raspberry Pi Zero/Zero 2, OLED display and 3D printed case - a cool (and practical!) desktop gadget. It involves a bit of software, a bit of soldering, and some 3D printing too. Introduction A while back I came across this tweet by Chris Hutchinson, he’d…

July 30, 2019 / 8 min

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Turn your old speakers or Hi-Fi into Bluetooth, Airplay and Spotify receivers with a Raspberry Pi and this step-by-step guide

Last updated: 16th March 2021 If you’ve got an old Hi-Fi or sound system with an AUX input, this project is for you. Try balenaSound, a starter project to quickly and easily add Bluetooth, Airplay and Spotify Connect and multi-room capability to an old Hi-Fi, speakers, or any other audio device using only a Raspberry Pi! Before you start Updates We’re continually updating this post along with the…

July 08, 2019 / 12 min

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balena monthly roundup - July 2019

Happy Summer Solstice to the Northern Hemisphere, and happy Winter Solstice to the Southern Hemisphere. Regardless of where you are in the world and how hot or cold it is, we have some tasty treats for you this month! We’ve been busy hacking dummy security cameras, combining data from air quality sensors and setting up digital signs. News from balenaHQ Shaun's secrets One of the little known…

July 02, 2019 / 4 min