{"id":553,"date":"2019-11-11T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T20:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/?p=553"},"modified":"2019-11-11T03:38:04","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T11:38:04","slug":"two-small-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/2019\/11\/11\/two-small-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Small Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I did a couple housekeeping projects. Let&#8217;s get started!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Things are still settling from the fire. I did a followup to last week&#8217;s post on FimFiction, but I was able to come up with separate content for the two this week. Check it out if you&#8217;re interested: <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Post Evacuation Shakes (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fimfiction.net\/blog\/878216\/post-evacuation-shakes\" target=\"_blank\">Post Evacuation Shakes<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Also of note: the workshop I&#8217;ve mentioned every so often is now officially open. They&#8217;re called <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"The Third Workshop (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thirdworkshop.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Third Workshop<\/a>. I&#8217;ve been going there regularly for quite a while, working on whatever project I want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finally to the topic for today. I went to Third Workshop today while some strong-smelling chemicals were being used as part of the smoke cleanup. My stated goals: write a Bash script to setup Blinkie for testing code related to my OrbitCam project, and to get Blinkie to connect to any familiar WiFi network while headless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My first project was almost trivial to write. I&#8217;d include it here, but I still haven&#8217;t figured out how to do a block of code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first line told the OS what interpreter to use. The second and third lines prepare the virtual environment, and since I was feeling adventurous, a fourth line changes directory to the folder I&#8217;m working in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I added execute permissions to my script and went to test my script at the command line with &#8220;.\/OrbitCV&#8221;. It ran for a few seconds, then spat me back out to the exact same place I was in before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My first thought was that it didn&#8217;t work for some reason. I tried renaming it to include the .sh name extension, but changed it back when I read the &#8220;hashbang&#8221; comment at the beginning already took care of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A relevant article had a couple typos, one involving a snip of code. The article was aimed at beginners. I sent some feedback. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My eventual theory was that stuff was actually happening, but it was being thrown away afterword, giving me a net of zero progress. Further reading and a couple tests confirmed that Bash scripts start new &#8220;shells&#8221; within one another like Russian nesting dolls. Reading a little further, I read about sourcing a script with &#8220;. .\/OrbitCV&#8221; so it would run in the same shell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My conclusion for now is that shells can be pictured as a computer streams of thought as managed by sets of parentheses.  Likely not ideal, but I&#8217;m working with it for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My other mini project promised to be more difficult, but was similarly simple in the end. Blinkie, or at least Blinkie&#8217;s SD card the operating system is running off of, travels back and forth, but I&#8217;ve had difficulty getting it to automatically connect to a single WiFi network at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the great things about Third Workshop is that you aren&#8217;t often alone alone in your projects. If you are doing something new to the workshop, certain toys tend to appear. One such toy was a counterpart body for my BlinkiePie computer. Skill sets of those around you tend to expand to help you as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This time, I ended up on a small bit of a chase. I looked into solutions involving prioritizing what network to connect to. Two or three possible solutions later, I took a look at \/etc\/wpa_supplicant\/wpa_supplicant.conf. What I saw reminded me of NBT data from Minecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I saw each WiFi network Blinkie had ever connected to represented with a name, plaintext password, and another line I don&#8217;t know much about. The fourth line on most of them was what interested me the most: disabled:1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Based on my own observations in the past, events in the present were not making sense. If what I was seeing was what I thought I was seeing, I should just be able to comment out the lines and have it work. I tried just that, and set Blinkie up at home, sans head (the glue didn&#8217;t hold the head) and without tightening the screws holding the board in place. Would you believe it just worked like I wanted for once?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Final Question: Have you ever taken on a tiny project you knew you could finish just because it would help with self-esteem?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I did a couple housekeeping projects. Let&#8217;s get started! Things are still settling from the fire. I did a followup to last week&#8217;s post on FimFiction, but I was able to come up with separate content for the two this week. Check it out &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/2019\/11\/11\/two-small-projects\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Two Small Projects&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554,"href":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}