After holding Christmas at my mother's place, I went on to Andorra to hold New Years with my father.
As usual, we took daily walks through the snow-covered mountains, but this time he had something fun for me to play with !
I've talked to him about crypto for long enough that he decided to look into it himself, and he's invested a bit in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and together we've invested in the ICO of Haken too, as it seemed to us an interesting company.
One Token he's been very interested in from the start is IOTA.
After all, it's a coin designed to not only be used by the Internet of Things, but which could potentially allow scientists to gather tons of data for their studies for a relatively low cost !
So, he got himself a Maker Kit, as well as several extra components that would allow it to be installed on his plane to measure data, from Onion, who makes micro-computers in the same style as Arduino, but with a more modulable feel to them.
As soon as I arrived, he proposed to me that I could play with the micro-electronics while I was there, as his kit , plus the extra components he had ordered, contained several breadboards, microcomputers and docks.
The overall concept of the Onion microelectronics "ecosystem" is pretty good.
The Expansion modules are all designed to fit onto the docks using their pins, or can be linked using wires to certain IO's independently too.
And with the breadboard and special Arduino-Onion expansions, you can extend it's capacity so that it can communicate with lots of other components !
After a bit of playing around with the tutorial projects, I decided I'd try my hand at making a crypto-monitor, similar to that created by 
I wasn't the first to think of using an Onion for this, but as of this moment (there's a more advanced tutorial in the works by someone else) I'm the first to have created a dedicated Github repository for my project, which explains how to set up an Onion Omega2+ with a Docker and OLED Expansion so as to interact with the Coinmarketcap python API to display the prices of several cryptocurrencies !
It's not perfect (I'm still having trouble with getting the Onion to connect to WIFI... it is the main weakness of the Onion system that it's absolutely HORRID with it's built-in wireless connectivity XS), and for now the second branch of the project, which aims to create a cron-enabled system that can automatically update itself every 2-5 minutes, isn't tested yet.
But for all intents and purposes the Master branch, which is composed of a Python script that:
- initializes the OLED display
- gets the current Dollar values of Smartcash, Ethereum and Steem, some of the interesting crypto I have.
- and displays them for 10 seconds before shutting down.
As you can see from the readme file in the github, I've got plans for a few extra features/projects:
Use the Steem API to display my current voting power, and possibly even adjust it using an electronic slider-and-button or two-button system. As well as show a display of recent comments I haven't reacted to yet (I nearly always upvote comments I've answered, or don't intend to answer, so that shouldn't be too difficult).
figure out how to display the value of my holdings currently on my Ledger Nano S (my father's christmas gift to me <3).
And I'm sure I'll figure out more things I can do with it...
Especially since my father, after seeing how much I liked "playing" with it, is giving me several components + a selection of Expansions, a Dock and an Onion Omega2+ micro-computer so I can continue experimenting at home !!!
I still haven't made a list of the components I'd like to have, but I plan on making a preliminary one tonight before I go to sleep, as I leave tomorrow at 5PM to get back to my Master's degree.
I have only a low-resolution photo of the onion with it's OLED display, so here's one from the official site to show you:
Given the horrid network capabilities (I'm going to take an Ethernet Expansion module with me...), I STILL haven't been able to display the prices again while I had a camera at hand.
I'll update this post sometime in the next 3-4 days when I get a good picture of the current state of the project, with cryptocurrencies displayed X/
As an aside, because I can't stop telling everybody since I learned about it a few hours ago...
Guess who won a 3D printing Christmas design competition with Vectary, and is going to get a 3D printer!
I've not received the official confirmation email yet, so I don't know if it's first price (a 3,500$ M-Jewellry 3D printer) or second/third (a pre-order for MakeX's Migo 3D printer... which gets delivered in August 2018 according to Indiegogo).
G'night. Gotta get some sleep now :)