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It's almost Christmas and the time for buying presents is there.
If you have a relative or friend who is interested in electronics and the internet of things here are some suggestions to help them starting. There is still some time to get them delivered in time.
The books can be bought from your local bookstore or through Amazon who ships world wide. My Dutch books can be bought through BOL or your local bookshop.
Buying one of these books helps supporting this weblog.
Raspberry Pi Pico Simplified
It is the perfect way to start programming in MicroPython and teaches the first steps in starting your own projects. The book starts with installing the programming environment (Thonny) and shows what libraries are and how to install them. The Pico's pins are discussed and after that working with a breadboard is discussed. So no need to solder !!! Attention is also paid to properly powering your projects through a USB power adapter or with batteries.
There is a short course in programming in MicroPython.
Next a myriad of topics are addressed like adding buttons to your projects, adding leds, fading leds with PWM, the DS18B20 digital thermometer, using an LDR to measure light intensity, using a potmeter, attaching a servo motor, working with mains by using a relay, touch sensors, controlling a motor, making sound with a buzzer, neopixel addressable leds, motor control with an H-bridge, movement detection with a PIR or a RCWL-0516 radar, measuring distance, using a tilt sensor and vibration detection, displaying your data on a TM1637, using a rotary decoder and displaying data on an Oled screen.
Every chapter has detailed build instructions and example programs.
Raspberry Pi Pico W Simplified
Click here for more info or to buy the book
This book can be used with the Raspberry Pi Pico W and the new Pico W 2.
Most topics from the Raspberry Pi Pico Simplified book are discussed in this book. But this edition adds information about the Wifi capabilities of the Pico W. After explaining how the basic sensors work the book shows how to connect the Pico W to your home network. Then it discusses Ping which is used to test if devices are on-line or if anyone is at home. With urequests data is fetched from servers on the internet. Sending data to an online cloud service (Thingspeak) and obtaining the data is discussed. The book shows how to send notifications (if a door is open or a temperature has been reached etc) to your phone using Pushbullet. And it shows how to send messages to Telegram. A chapter is dedicated to Dweet a simple messaging service to which data can be send and retrieved from. And there is of course attention to building a webserver that shows sensor data (like button state, temperature etc.)
ESP32 Simplified
Click here for more info or to buy the book
Basically this is the same book as Raspberry Pi Pico W Simplified. The difference is that this book uses the Arduino IDE and the C++ programming language instead of MicroPython. This was the first book I wrote and some information is outdated. You can find updates for those parts on this weblog. The most part is still current.
ESP32 Uitgelegd is ook in het Nederlands verkrijgbaar. Klik hier voor meer info en om te bestellen
Javascript tips
Click here for more info or to buy the book
This book does not teach you how to program in Javascript. it is an aid to programming Javascript. The book offers more than 500 tips that make programming Javascript easier. There are tips on working with numbers, working with strings, working with date, working with arrays, working with objects. Tips on functions, communication. Some tips are in the category various as they did not fit in one of the mentioned chapters. And there are lots of tips on manipulating HTML.
Javascript tips is ook in het Nederlands verkrijgbaar. Klik hier voor meer info en om te bestellen
Til next time
have fun !!!
Luc Volders
