Internet Radio example using Gambas cli

Now that I'm taking Gambas command-line programming more seriously, I thought I might rewrite the software on my internet radios.

As mentioned in a recent post, Gambas can be used to write cli programs (command-line interface) as well as the more usual gui (graphical) applications.

So this post just describes the software aspects of this project, while the other design details can be found in earlier posts.

KitchenPi: an internet radio for my kitchen

We needed a radio in the kitchen to replace our Bush DAB/FM portable which has put in good service, although DAB reception in our area has never been great.

As space is at a premium, I wanted the new radio to take up as little space as possible.

So I came up with the idea of building something that would fit under the eye-level kitchen cabinets, behind the decorative molding.

BirdBox2016: what's happening?

There has been plenty of interest shown by a number of local blue tits in both of our Pi powered bird boxes.

I've also added some enhancements to our bird box monitor which sits in a corner of our kitchen and raises the alarm if a box is triggered by a visitor.

It is the 12th March, so we may only be 2 or 3 weeks away from some real nest-building action!

BirdBox2015: no wait!....something is happening!

I dragged myself out of bed just after 7am to make the tea, and turn on the bird box monitor.

I was greeted by a blank screen, meaning both boxes were off.

But by the time I'd emptied the dishwasher, a female eSpeak voice proudly announced "bird box...on".

BirdBoxPi2015: this 'n that

The clock is ticking, but things are coming together nicely, if a little slowly.

Our garden is alive with birds at the moment, with mixed groups of finches, common tits (blue, coal & great), and the usual favourites including blackbird, thrush and a pair of robins.

To be honest, once we switched one of our feeders from mixed bird seed to sun flower hearts, we have seen quite an increase in bird traffic.

BirdBoxPiCam 2014: News from the Nest

The blue tits arrived at the beginning of March and continued to visit almost every morning for a few weeks.

However, they wasted too much time faffing around and lost their deposit. A pair of new comers arrived on Monday the 24th and took control.

This post provides an update on nesting activities and adds some technical details regarding operation and performance.

Giving Your Computer A Voice

I've found it very helpful in a few cases to add audible alarms to monitoring functions. For example, if you work in a network support environment and a server goes down, you need to know about it straight away.......preferably before your phone goes into melt-down!

 

By using text-to-speech, you can monitor several aspects of your working environment without having to continually check display screens.

I recommend eSpeak, which is a compact, cross-platform, open source software, speech synthesiser. Although the sound is not as natural as that produced by a system based upon human recordings, its very small size makes it a good choice for small devices, the Raspberry Pi and for applications producing announcements.