Welcome to Picks of the month, where I share a few things I have found useful the last month.
It can be anything from blog posts and software tools to books and techniques.
#1 Grove
I have written about Grove previously in my Smart Home Series, and I really wanted to pick this one for February.
Grove is a plug-and-play system for different embedded systems like Arduino and Raspberry Pi (I am using it with Raspberry Pi). All you need is a connector for your system and some sensors to plug into it.
There are tons of handy Grove sensors that can be purchased quite inexpensively from seedstudio.
After having so much trouble with electronics failure with the Arduino, going to something a bit simpler felt great.
The connector I have is this one:
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/GrovePi-p-2241.html?cPath=122_154_158
If you want to have a look at what you can buy, take a look here:
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Sensors-c-25/?terms_id=34&ref=side
#2 Node.js & Express
I recently wrote about the fact that Parse was shutting down and that I am writing the back-end for Extreme Results with Node.js and Express.
It has been such a great experience that I wanted to pick them both. It’s so easy to write the API endpoints with great test coverage.
The speed of development is also really fast. I can write a couple of new endpoints with a bunch of tests within the boundaries of a short evening.
Take a look at the blog post where I explain what I am doing with Node.js and Express:
Learning Web Dev Series – Part 7: Parse shutting down
#3 Pocket
Pocket was previously called “Read it Later” which in my opinion is a better and more descriptive name. It’s all about saving stuff for reading later. It has several other features, but none that I actually care that much about.
All I use it for is to save things to read it later.
During the day, whenever I stumble over something I want to read, but don’t have time for right away, I just save to Pocket.
Then I can pick it up and read it whenever I feel like it (on my computer, phone or tablet).
I have previously picked Feedbin, which is a fantastic feed reader. I usually save every interesting article I find there in Pocket for reading later. They go really well together.
Follow me on Twitter: @gjermundbjaanes