Category: Uncategorized

Published on by Nayar

Iot Series: Internet of Things (IoT) in Mauritius!

I reach home from work when it’s already dark. I got to park my car in front of my house. I said to myself wouldn’t it be awesome if I could light up the house exterior light using my mobile phone? I bought some WiFI enabled switches from the internet and installed it. Here’s a diagram of the installation.

iotarch

‘All iz well’ except for 1 problem. Nayar’s highness has stop his car, unlock his phone, launch an app, press the LIGHT ON button, then reverse his car. Nayar is not happy!!!

So I had to make a system such that whenever Nayar reaches home, the exterior lights up automatically? Makes sense right? How did I achieve this? Simple but not so simple.

img_20160923_210617.jpg

The Wireless Switch was vendor locked in; meaning it works with their cloud service and Android/iOS app. It doesn’t give me the flexibility for I need. Had to do the following steps in order to be free:

  1. Flash an Arduino firmware (from github) to the wireless switch.
  2. Create a home automation server on a raspberry pi (which I dropped in favour of cloud hosting)
  3. Create an Android app which whenever I connect to my home WiFi, I sends the TURN ON lights on

After lots of research and development, trial and error, it finally worked 😀


Is it over? Nope. Who’s gonna turn off the lights when I enter home? Ofcourse I put a 3 minutes timer in it 😛

And the Laziest Award 2016 goes to?

Coming soon. Very soon:

  • Control garage doors (R&D stage)
  • Temperature and humidity sensors (prototype stage)
  • Get status of windows/doors status: open or closed (R&D stage)
  • Home Camera Surveillance (waiting for materials)
  • Smart TVs integration (prototype stage)
  • Solar Water Tank monitoring and control inflows (R&D stage)

Wanna get into the world of Home Automation too? Wanna turn on your coffee machine from your bed and more? Feel free to contact me on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

 

 

 

Published on by Nayar

The New MCB Internet Banking Website 2016

After logging in through the usual Internet Banking link, I was asked to choose a new password after which I was in the new web interface.

mcb1

It definitely looks better than the previous interface which had a long long menu bar. It feels very light and minimalist.

mcb2

However I am still facing a hard time accessing my Prepaid Card dashboard that is still dependent on flash; meaning it can’t be used on Macs and Linux unless you have flash plugin installed.

How did you find the new internet banking portal? How is it compared to other internet banking in Mauritius like SBM or HSBC etc?

Published on by Nayar

Noise at Tamarin “Public” Beach in Mauritius

These guys brought their fucking electricity generator and their fucking huge speakers. Spreading high amplitude noise waves. Totally spoiled my afternoon. I was at Tamarin since around 1300 and they were already present in the kiosk.

Tamarin Kioske

After swimming, I was in such  hurry to return home. Just when I was about to start my engine, I noticed they were leaving. It was around 1820.

Finally I could get out of my car. My sister said “now we can finally hear the sea”. The atmosphere became relaxing all of a sudden. I told everybody to get down and enjoy the beach and the clear sky for sometime. Listen to their shit:


Last time at Blue Bay had a similar experience. A guy in a restaurant was singing so loud in speakers so that even in the waters you could hear the noise.

Should I have called the Police or it was their “right” to put such loud music?

Published on by Nayar

n00b Review: Kubuntu 16.04 LTS

Paradigm shifts are very small in KDE as compared to what gnome and other workspaces offer in their upgrades. This might make following KDE upgrade kinda boring or unexciting. KDE’s look the same since maybe decades. This is one of the reasons people prefer KDE 😉

The desktop

After a fresh install. Here’s what you see. Nothing.

Kubuntu 16.04 Desktop

Look at how ugly the KDE Cashew button has become. It used to be so beautiful in previous releases.

Kubuntu 1604 Cashew

No more events and holidays shown in Calendar Widget :(. Maybe the feature might come in the future.

Calendar Widget Kubuntu 16.04

Start menu

Pressing the “start” icon. Nothing. I’d expect at least a browser and file manager there. How would people coming from Microsoft Windows get a hint where to start exploring?

Kubuntu 16.04 Start Menu

What? The icons are still like KDE 4 era?

Kubuntu 16.04 icons

Dolphin

No visible regressions nor visible improvements.

Dolphin in Kubuntu 16.04

System Monitor

Same

System Monitor in Kubuntu 16.04

New Screenshot App: Spectacle

Well. Like the previous app except that now it names the screenies with the time in the filename (‘Screenshot_20160424_141321.png’). Nice

Kubuntu 16.04 screenshot app: Spectacle

Kontact

Never worked 100% with me. In KDE 4, I couldn’t rely on it to bring me my mails and alert me. It would just stop working for no apparent reason and work again later. First time opening Kontact in Kubuntu 16.04. It looks like this:

Kontact in Kubuntu 16.04

Don’t think it is production ready. Will it ever be? I guess no one uses it. I’ll still test it in a few days at work.

Other issues:

I don’t seem to be able to drag and drop images from Dolphin or Spectacle to WordPress. Is it just me?

Conclusion:

It is just like KDE 4. Feels like KDE 4. Just maybe feels better (for now) with a refined “new” old look. Good to know that it is running with Qt5 with QML.

If your production Kubuntu 14.04 LTS works well for you, I don’t really see the need to go through the pain of upgrading knowing that the upgrade process *might* break. If you are installing Kubuntu on a new machine, definitely choose 16.04 LTS. Better stay up-to-date on paper 😉