It has been a while that I wanted to leverage the power of ESP-8266 NodeMCU to monitor my aquarium. My first experiment is to read the water temperature every x interval and upload it to ThingSpeak. For this experiment, I need: ESP-8266 NodeMCU; DS18B20 waterproof sensors, which I bought from Amazon; 4.7kΩ resistor. The setup … Continue reading Simple Aquarium Temperature Sensor
Securing an Azure Storage File Share behind a Point to Site (P2S) VPN
When working with Azure Storages security of data is a common topic of discussion. With the latest changes in Azure, the security of the data at rest is now by default. It is also possible to set the transfer of files to use TLS 1.2 for further security. However a commonly missed security setting is … Continue reading Securing an Azure Storage File Share behind a Point to Site (P2S) VPN
Re-Running scripts using Terraform
When deploying complex architectures, sometimes it might be necessary to run SQL imports or PowerShell scripts using Terraform. It is not uncommon that these commands are executed in local or remote provisioner under a special resource called null_resource. A Null Resource simply stores the desired state without doing anything to the environment. After the first … Continue reading Re-Running scripts using Terraform
Passing values between ARM template and Terraform
When working with Terraform it might become necessary to include an ARM template deployment for part of the solution. When this happens and the ARM template is creating resources with a managed identity it is necessary to return the managed identity to the Terraform script. ARM templates can output values as part of their deployment … Continue reading Passing values between ARM template and Terraform
Salt under the microscope
A simple experiment that is fun and easy to do is to see salt crystals under the microscope. It requires only a microscope, a couple of slides, salt solution, and time. In this post we will go through the preparation stage and then show off some photos from the results. Let’s go! Preparation Create a … Continue reading Salt under the microscope