Posts

In addition to text analysis Microsoft’s cognitive services allow you to convert speech to text, text to speech, and even translate between spoken languages. This powerful AI service is surprisingly easy to use. I was able to speak into my computers microphone and receive a text translation in one language or a spoken translation in multiple languages –all with the code provided on Microsoft Learn. You have the option to work with the speech SDK (software development kit) in C# or python, I choose python. ...

As I continue to study artificial intelligence I’ve been able to practice using Microsoft’s cognitive services. I was first introduced to cognitive services during the virtual Microsoft Build 2020 conference, and I’ve enjoyed getting to use them for myself. Since creating and training your own artificial intelligence/machine learning software is all kinds of complicated, cognitive services allow anyone to use AI in their projects without having to write much code. All you have to do is call the service that you want, and it will do the hard work for you. ...

Arch Linux’s official website describes Arch as a distribution that “tries to Keep It Simple”. It also states that Arch is not for those without the ability or time for a “do-it-yourself” system–which is true. I recently built a machine that needed a lightweight OS, so Arch Linux was a good choice. Installing Arch Linux can seem complicated, but understanding what needs to happen in each step of the install makes it feel fun and easy. Here’s what I did: ...

For the home-lab, we used the following devices: Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X Ubiquiti UniFi 24 port switch 2 VMware ESXi Hosts A Synology NAS DS420j (Diskstation) Building the home lab also required quite a few patch cables to connect devices, and I made most of them myself. This required UTP cable, plastic clips for the ends, a cable crimping tool, and a lot of patience. The arrangement of the wires, or the pinout, had to be in a specific order. ...

The final step in building my bird cam was creating a way to view the bird photos on demand. To do this I utilized Docker on a third Raspberry Pi by installing Docker and Docker Compose. sudo apt install docker sudo apt install docker-compose Compose is a useful Docker tool that, among other things, allows you to run multi-container applications configured in a YAML file. On Docker Hub a useful photo gallery image linuxserver/photoshow has already been created, so I used that image to serve up the bird photos. At this point, I had already configured an NFS server and made this Pi an NFS client via a shared folder. To create the photo gallery, I first signed into my personal Docker account. I then added two subdirectories to my home directory on the Pi: a config directory, and a thumbs directory. ...

After setting up the NFS server, but before making any NFS clients, I configured another Raspberry Pi to take the photos for my Bird Cam project. For this I used a Raspberry Pi Zero W and the appropriate camera attachment. Instead of using a keyboard/monitor to configure the Zero, I created a headless setup to allow the Zero to connect to wifi automatically when plugged in. First, I put the Raspbian Lite OS on a mini SD card. Once the OS was finished downloading, I removed the card from my computer and inserted it again. On my computer’s terminal I entered the SD card’s boot directory (found with df -h) and created a new file to configure the wifi information for my home network. ...