Projects

I don't do much web development anymore — the commercial sites that used to live on this page have all moved on without me. These days my projects live closer to the hardware: sensors, old protocols, and a Raspberry Pi or two wired into something useful.

Self-Monitoring a Cancelled ADT System (with Twilio)

When I cancelled monitoring on our ADT security system, I didn't want to lose the alerting — just the monthly bill. ADT panels report over a phone line using the Ademco Contact ID protocol, so I built an IVR that answers the panel's call, decodes the Contact ID handshake and checksum, and translates the event codes — zone, alarm type, open/close, trouble — into something readable. Twilio handles the call and SMS plumbing, so the system pages me directly now, with more detail than the monitoring service ever gave me, for a fraction of the cost.

A METAR Weather Map With My Logbook Built In

I collaborated on a Python-based live METAR map — the kind of wall display that lights up airports by current flight-category conditions. I added a module that pulls my electronic logbook from ForeFlight and cross-references it against the map, so it also shows which airports I've actually landed at, plus a mode that scales each airport's dot intensity by how often I've been there — so home airports light up brighter than the ones I've only passed through once.

Watching the Generator

Our backup generator predates any of the "native" IoT monitoring options, so I gave it one anyway: a Raspberry Pi running genmon, watching run status, load, and fault conditions and reporting home over the network instead of me walking out to the pad to check a gauge.

3D Printing

My 3D printer has turned into the fix-it tool I didn't know I needed — replacement blind tabs, a custom holder for my golf pushcart, and a steady stream of one-off parts for whatever around the house is broken or just needed to exist.