Quick References

How to make applications on your Windows 10 laptop use the camera and microphone of your webcam

One of the demo stations in my office needs to run applications that receive video and voice from the user. Since we have several Windows 10 laptop lying around, we decided to use one to run the applications.

Given that the Windows 10 laptop is to be hidden in a cabinet, I need to use an external webcam with microphone.

However, the integrated camera and microphone can be chosen by the applications that I run on that laptop.

So how can we make applications on a Windows 10 laptop to use the camera and microphone of your webcam?

This post shows how I made applications on my Windows 10 laptop use the camera and microphone of my Logitech C525 HD Webcam.

How to use NSSM to setup Jupyter Notebook as a Windows Service running its own Python 3 virtual environment

When you take Andrew Ng’s Deep Learning Coursera course, you can get a better understanding of deep learning. In addition, you will get many Jupyter Notebook documents that you can reference while building models that can solve interesting problems.

When you want to readily access those documents, you can setup Jupyter Notebook as a Windows Service on your Windows machine.

As I had mentioned in how to use NSSM to run a Python 3 application as a Windows Service in its own Python 3 virtual environment, NSSM is a very helpful tool for us to create Windows Services.

Since we can install Jupyter Notebook via pip, we can run Jupyter Notebook from its own virtual environment. In addition to that, since we can create a Python 3 virtual environment in Windows 10, we can setup Jupyter Notebook as a Windows Service running its own Python 3 virtual environment.

Given these points, let us look at how we can use NSSM to setup Jupyter Notebook as a Windows Service running its own Python 3 virtual environment.

How to use NSSM to run a Python 3 application as a Windows Service in its own Python 3 virtual environment

If you want to run a Python 3 application as a Windows Service, then you are going to love NSSM. Since NSSM handles the life cycle of a Windows Service for our Python 3 application, we can keep it platform agnostic.

Previously, we saw how we can use a Python 3 virtual environment in Windows 10. Given that, let’s see how we can use NSSM to run a Python 3 application as a Windows Service in its own Python 3 virtual environment.

How to write a C# program to communicate with an ESP32 development board via Bluetooth Serial

Coupled with Bluetooth Serial and GPIO pins, ESP32 can augment a Windows machine with the ability to read from sensors.

So with an ESP32 development board, you can turn your old Windows machine into an IOT gateway that can sense its operating environment.

Given these points, let us look at how we can write a C# program to communicate with an ESP32 development board via Bluetooth Serial.

How to connect to an ESP32 development board via Bluetooth on Windows 10

When you have an old Windows 10 machine, you can reuse it as an IOT gateway.

Given that your Windows 10 machine has working Bluetooth, you can connect it to an ESP32 development board.

In case you need a reference to connect to an ESP32 development board via Bluetooth on Windows 10, here are the steps to do so.

How to connect to an ESP32 development board via Bluetooth on your Mac

When you are trying to build a ESP32 project that uses Bluetooth to receive from or send data to another device on Mac, you may want to use your Mac to connect to your ESP32 board to test Bluetooth connectivity.

In this case, you will need to first connect your Mac with the ESP32 development board via Bluetooth.

So how can you do that?

In case you need it, this is how to connect to an ESP32 development board via Bluetooth on your Mac.

How to get your ESP32 development board to communicate with another device over Bluetooth Serial

Since a ESP32 development board comes with Bluetooth, we can get it to communicate with another device over Bluetooth Serial.

With this in mind, let’s look at how we can get your ESP32 development board to communicate with another device over Bluetooth Serial.

How to use a ESP32 development board to read temperature and humidity from a DH11 sensor

When you have a DHT11 sensor, you will be able to get the temperature and humidity of your environment.

Given that, this post shows how to use ESP32 development board to read temperature and humidity from a DHT11 sensor.

How to prepare a virtual environment to run a gpiozero based project on Raspbian Stretch

When you use a virtual environment to run your application, you isolate the dependencies in its own container.

In such a situation, you can ensure that your application can run alongside other applications with incompatible dependencies.

Therefore, I always favour the use of virtual environment for running my Python applications.

With this in mind, this is a story about preparing a virtual environment to run a gpiozero based project on Raspbian Stretch.