Connect To A Raspberry Pi Zero With A PiUART Module

March 5, 2018 Nic Raboy

As you're probably well aware from my previous Raspberry Pi articles, I'm a hoarder. I have several Raspberry Pi Zero as well as the wireless edition and various attachments that go with them.

When I was first getting started with the original Pi Zero, I had a tough time trying to figure out how to connect to it. I mean, how do you connect to something that doesn't have some kind of internet connect?

I had written two articles previously for connecting to a Raspberry Pi Zero. The first titled, Connect to a Raspberry Pi Zero with a USB Cable and SSH, demonstrated how to connect with nothing more than a USB cable. The second titled, Connect to a Raspberry Pi and Pi Zero with a USB to TTL Serial Cable, demonstrated using GPIO pins and a serial cable to connect.

We're going to simplify the connection process by using a nifty PiUART module and eliminate any complicated wiring or software configurations.

Generate Cryptocurrency Private Keys And Public Addresses With Golang

February 26, 2018 Nic Raboy

Over the past month or so I've demonstrated how to generate address information for a variety of cryptocurrency Altcoins using technologies like Node.js, Vue.js, and Angular. The thing about my previous tutorials are that they all used the JavaScript stack in some sense. What if we wanted to adventure into other technologies like Golang?

The process for generating key and address information for Bitcoin and popular Altcoins is pretty much the same. In reality, the difference is defined by the private key and public key prefix information, typically associated to a network.

We're going to see how to generate and import private keys for a variety of cryptocurrency coins as well as their addresses using the Go programming language.

TPDP Episode #17: Going FaaS On Serverless With OpenWhisk

February 20, 2018 Nic Raboy

I am pleased to announce that the latest episode of The Polyglot Developer Podcast is now available for download. The episode titled, Going FaaS on Serverless with OpenWhisk focuses on the development and deployment of functions to be deployed on a serverless cloud platform.

In this episode I'm joined by Carlos Santana who is part of the Cloud Functions team at IBM. While Apache OpenWhisk will have an emphasis in this episode, other cloud services are mentioned as well, including AWS Lambda and Azure Functions.

Encrypt And Decrypt Data In A Golang Application With The Crypto Packages

February 19, 2018 Nic Raboy

Being able to encrypt and decrypt data within an application is very useful for a lot of circumstances. Let's not confuse encryption and decryption with hashing like that found in a bcrypt library, where a hash is only meant to transform data in one direction.

Not too long ago I wrote about in a previous article how to encrypt and decrypt data using Node.js. This was partially inspired by me learning how to build software wallets for cryptocurrencies and encrypting the sensitive information. However, what if we wanted to use Go instead of Node.js?

We're going to take a look at encrypting data and then decrypting it within a Go application by using the already available crypto packages.

Use Sendy To Build And Maintain An Email List For Cheap

February 12, 2018 Nic Raboy

When you're building a business, the experts all say that you should make your list building strategy a priority. Using social networks like Twitter and Facebook for your marketing is great, but those might not be around forever. Email has been around for a long time and it will likely exist a long time into the future as well.

I've briefly mentioned this before, but I'm currently using Sendy to manage my email subscribers and send out my monthly newsletter. However, I wasn't always using Sendy to accomplish this task. For around a year, I was using Mailchimp, a similar product.

We're going to see what Sendy is, how to use it, and why I'm using it over the various alternatives that exist.

Tracy Developer Meetup in California

February 11, 2018 Nic Raboy

After having thought about it for quite some time, I've finally decided to start a developer user group in my home town of Tracy, California. This group titled, The Tracy Developer Meetup, was started to give developers living outside of the Bay Area, a chance to collaborate with other developers in the same position.

If you're unfamiliar with Tracy, it is a town about 1.5 hours from San Francisco and Mountain View, but significantly more affordable and home to many engineers that commute to the Bay Area for work.

Use Angular To Create A Cross-Platform Stellar XLM Desktop Wallet

February 9, 2018 Nic Raboy

With Android and iOS so obtainable and development so easy, people often forget the importance of desktop applications. I have a phone and tablet, but I depend on my desktop applications much more. However, the development of these applications are not difficult.

With frameworks like Electron, developers can create cross-platform desktop applications with JavaScript and HTML. Take the example I wrote about previously in the article titled, Create a Cross-Platform Desktop DigiByte DGB Wallet with Angular and Electron. I demonstrated how to leverage a very popular framework to create a cryptocurrency wallet.

DigiByte isn't the only popular blockchain on the internet. I've also been looking into Stellar because of all the buzz it has been receiving from popular companies like Stripe.

We're going to see how to create a Stellar XLM wallet for Mac, Windows, and Linux using Angular and Electron.