I was recently interested in the intersection of Machine Learning and RF and I was taking a look into LoRa modulation, which is based on Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS), and ended up getting to know more about the Helium network. I still think that the most stupid piece of technology behind crypto mining is spending GPU/CPU/ASIC cycles to do proof-of-work (PoW), but in the Helium network, they did something quite interesting, which was to switch to something useful such as the proof-of-coverage instead of generating heat and burning energy. Therefore we can say that the miners are doing something useful by providing radio coverage, instead of purely generating heat.
I’m working on a new platform (hardware, firmware and software) to create “Stat Cubes“, which are tiny devices with OLED displays and wireless to monitor services or anything you want. While working on it I’ve made a little proof-of-concept using Arduino to monitor Redis server statistics. The Stat Cubes will be open-source in future but I’ve open-sourced the code of the PoC using Arduino and OLED to monitor the Redis server using a Python monitor that sends data from Redis server to the Arduino if someone is interested.
The main idea of Stat Cubes is that you will be able to leave the tiny cubes on your desk or even carry them with you. It will be a long road before I get the first version ready but if people show interest on it I’ll certainly try to speed up things.
Below you can see a video of the display working, you can also visit the repository for more screenshots, information and source-code both for the monitoring application and also for the Arduino code.
See more about the project in the Github repository.
Screenshots
I hope you liked it !