Auto Attaching USB Storage To A Raspberry Pi Running Linux

I’ve written a few articles about how I’m using my many Raspberry Pi units. Recently I wrote about using a Raspberry Pi as an automatic network backup server, but I didn’t talk about expanding the storage beyond the micro or standard sized SD card. What if you want to utilize a much larger USB hard drive or thumb drive? By default Linux won’t mount the drive, and heck, it may not even be in the correct format.

We’re going to see how to format a USB drive, mount it on a Raspberry Pi, and then auto mount it every time the Raspberry Pi reboots.

Create A Mobile App From Your Angular Web App With NativeScript

Angular is all the rage right now. It is a significant step in the right direction from its predecessor AngularJS 1 for numerous reasons, one being its decoupling from the document object model (DOM). This separation allows for applications to be built beyond the web browser. Take for example, the mobile development framework NativeScript, which allows you to develop native Android and iOS applications. There is no DOM in this framework, but yet we can still use Angular to develop our applications.

We’re going to take a look at how to take an Angular web application and bring it to mobile using NativeScript.

Support iBeacons In Your Native Android Mobile App

I play around with iBeacons quite frequently. I created my own Internet of Things (IoT) iBeacon project as well as an AngularJS wrapper for using iBeacons in an Ionic Framework application. This time around I figured I’d take my iBeacon adventure to the next level and try to use them in a native Android mobile application.

Using the AltBeacon library by Radius Networks we can easily add iBeacon monitoring and ranging support to our native Android application. We’re going to see how to scan for a variety of proximity beacons and display them within an application.

Build A Password Manager For Android And iOS Using Ionic 2

Have you ever wanted to build your own password manager? Maybe you don’t trust the password management tools that already exist, or maybe you just want the experience. I personally use the tool 1Password, but many of my friends don’t trust the applications that exist on the market. It is a valid concern that they have. What if the password managers that exist are using an ancient or obsolete DES specification or similar, rather than the modern AES? What if the master passwords are not being hashed with a strong Bcrypt algorithm?

Not too long ago we created a password manager using the NativeScript framework, but what if we wanted to build one with a different technology.

We’re going to see how to build a password manager that makes use of the AES specification using Ionic 2 and Angular. This application will work for both Android and iOS and look great on both.

BART Control Skill For Amazon’s Alexa Released

I am pleased to announce that my first ever skill for Amazon Alexa powered devices has gone live in the Amazon Skill Marketplace. My skill, BART Control, accesses live information about the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in northern California.

If you’re unfamiliar with Amazon Alexa, it can be described as follows per Amazon:

Alexa, the voice service that powers Echo, provides capabilities, or skills, that enable customers to interact with devices in a more intuitive way using voice. Examples of these skills include the ability to play music, answer general questions, set an alarm or timer and more. Alexa is built in the cloud, so it is always getting smarter. The more customers use Alexa, the more she adapts to speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences.

I personally own an Amazon Echo, but there is a wide variety of hardware that is compatible with Amazon’s voice service.

Now let me share some specifics about the skill that I developed and what I used to develop it.

Create A Simple RESTful API With Golang

Most modern applications have separation between the backend and the frontend layers. The backend is typically a RESTful API and is critical part of full stack development. These APIs are generally further broken down into a collection of routes, often referred to as endpoints. Building applications like this is often very clean and maintainable in comparison to mashing everything into a single application.

I have been creating RESTful APIs with a variety of programming languages, for example Node.js and Java, but lately I’ve been doing a lot of research on the Go programming language. It is fast and very solid programming language that every seems to be talking about. Because of this it only made sense to see what it took to build a RESTful API with Go, often referred to as Golang.

We’re going to see what it takes to build a simple API that does basic CRUD operations using the Go programming language.

Build An RSS Reader Mobile App With NativeScript And Angular

Rich site summary (RSS) feeds are very common on blogs or sites that have a publication type feed. These feeds are in XML format and have information such as the publication title, a summary, or other bits of information that is rather useful. There are plenty of mobile applications on Google Play and iTunes that support the aggregation of RSS feeds, but have you ever wanted to build your own? Maybe you want to create your own news application based on your own algorithms, or maybe your company has a mobile application and you’d like to include a blog section to the mobile app. Whatever the need may be, doing so is not difficult.

We’re going to see how to use Angular, Yahoo’s YQL language, and NativeScript to build a fully native RSS feed reader for Android and iOS.