Intro Many times a client wants some sort of customized view of the data they have in PowerBI. The truth is, as powerful as it is PowerBI, like all BI tools, offer limited customizability. However, PowerBI comes with a powerful RESTful interface that we can use to show the underlying data however we wish. This…
Read MoreUse Power BI to view your Smartthings devices
Intro This is more of a proof of concept to show that you can read from custom and not-often-used data sources into Power BI. As you go through this small showcase/tutorial, I encourage you to think about what type of data would benefit from you being able to look at it in a cohesive dashboard.…
Read MoreAdd a “forgot password” link to MicroStrategy.
Intro One of the issues that I’ve had in some of the MicroStrategy environments I’ve worked on is the fact that there is no option to have your password reset if you forget it. I decided to add the option because it makes it easier for both the users and the administrators. For this we…
Read MoreUsing a RGB LED strip as an audio visualizer
Intro I recently bought a RGB LED strip and wanted to do something fun with it. It was very much like this one [link]. Except I bought it at ebay for a whopping $11 shipped. After a bunch of deliberation, I decided to paste it under my two monitors on my desk. So what to…
Read MoreUsing Grafana to Report MicroStrategy Usage
At work, we live and breathe MicroStrategy. So when they announced that the 2019 version will start phasing out Enterprise Manager in favor of Platform Analytics for internal reporting, I was intrigued. From what I can see, MicroStrategy is now reporting realtime usage by using a combination of Kafka and their home-brew Multiple Table Data…
Read MoreUpgrading My Wife’s Car’s Headlights
For the longest time my wife has been complaining about her car’s light output and visibility at night. I finally got around to driving it. It sucks. So I decided to do something about it. I have a moderate interest in cars and usually lurk around different forums to see what people that have more…
Read MoreMicrocharts on OLED displays using a Raspberry Pi
When you think of microcharts, you probably think of something like these: This is fine if you want to display it on a traditional screen, but what if you don’t want it to take real estate on your computer screen or cellphone? What if you want something nice and bright and readily available? Enter the…
Read MoreSmartthings Control via Amazon Dash Button
Intro Previously, I had shown you how to hack your Amazon dash button and use it for other things. I recently discovered that Smartthings has a REST API. I love REST APIs because it abstracts a lot of the technologies between manufacturers and allows you to do all sorts of automation. What we’re going to…
Read MoreAnalytics on your keyboard? Why not?
Intro I’ve owned a Razer keyboard for a while now. I’ve always loved the fact that the keys light up according to the context of the application. For the most part this means that the keyboard will react to context. Amongst the supported apps there is one cool Adobe Photoshop integration, but mostly it’s games.…
Read MorePublished My First Skill!
I’m excited about this post! I just got my first Alexa skill published. You can view and add it here: https://skills-store.amazon.com/deeplink/dp/B07K87JRK8. I’m also providing the full source code to the lambda function for the skill in my github repository. Just zip it up and upload it to lambda. I’ve kept the code as simple as possible…
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