Raspberry Pi Motion Detection Security Camera

We have weekly deliveries of meat or vegetables to our home that are left outside our house if we are not there to receive them.  Although they are only there for a few hours and hidden behind some planters someone noticed them and started stealing them. I decided to catch them by using a Raspberry Pi to make a really cheap security camera.

Raspberry Pi Download Git

This is a quick post on how to download a git repository to a *nix machine - in this case a Raspberry Pi. I did it to get some cool code that my colleague had interneted/clouded to download to my Raspberry Pi.

Get Python IDLE to work on your Mac

An out of the box Mac comes with Python and a development environment called IDLE. Unfortunately it doesn't work very well e.g. raw_input() command causes it to hang and there are some other serious problems. Here's an alternative and a quick solution...

Mac Image Batch Processing with terminal

Have you got a pile of images you want to rotate or resize? You can do this really quickly on your Mac using built-in command line aka The Terminal in seconds.

Get started with Git: Cloning

Git is a software version control system.  It is good because you can use it in a distributed way keeping local and remote repositories kept in sync, with multiple developers strong project history and conflict resolution.

This post describes how to 'git going' with an existing project assuming you have already Set Up Git.  We create a local version of a project on github, make a small change and bounce that back to the github master.

Unhide Android Developer Options

I recently bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini with Android 4.2.2/Jellybean. I routinely use my phone for development purposes requiring access to Android Developer settings. Out of the box these options are hidden and you need to know how to reveal the options.

Go to Settings, More..., About Device. Tap on Build number 7 times.  You will get a little toast popup window letting you know developer options are enabled.  They can be accessed from the More... menu.

Secrets of bit.ly

I always thought the all those bit.ly shortened URLs were used to reduce the number of characters for tweets.  It turns out that using bit.ly does a lot more for you.

Accessing JSON Stored in NSDictionary

I'm still learning to be a developer... and probably always will be.  It helps me to write blogs about code that I manage to get working. I've written an app that uses OAuth to access a JSON input from the web and parse it. This post describes some of the new stuff I learnt on the way, specifically about parsing JSON and accessing NSDictionary.

Worldwide Reach

I've been writing this blog off and on for a while but really getting going around February 2013. I am astounded but (by July 2013) it has been viewed in 131 countries which according to the map below is most of them.  It's easy to forget that the internet is international and social media can go anywhere.

Country Views of WorkingMatt's Blog

Leap Motion Special Applications Restricted in SDK T&Cs

In the post about my #FirstLeap with the Leap Motion 3D Motion Controller I thought there would be particularly interesting applications in point of sale kiosks, controls for video DJs/lighting at live events and corporate presentations/collaboration.  The Terms and Conditions of using Leap Motion's SDK require a special agreement for these types of use; I hope that this doesn't stop the use of Leap Motion through overcharging or excessive red tape.

Useful Unix Commands

This is a list of basic linux commands which I find useful.  If you have any suggestions please let me know in the comments.

Leap Motion 3D Motion Controller

The new Leap Motion controller arrived on 24th July 2013 a couple of days after launch after months of waiting.  I was pretty excited by what this 3D Motion Control device could do.  This is a record of my first couple of hours of life with Leap Motion.