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Plants The 2023 Installment

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Note all images below are stock images.   Plants will be in plain plastic pots so if you want something fancy that is a good excuse for a trip to a plant store or Home Depot African Violets: For more info see  https://www.almanac.com/plant/african-violets . Currently working on these, don't have any spare now:( Aloe: No blooms.  Really easy to care (only really issue is overwatering):  Currently have plenty to spare. Amaryllis: Hippeastrum: Have 2 haven't figured out propagation yet.  For more info see  https://extension.umn.edu/houseplants/amaryllis . Cape Primrose:  This is a really neat plant was going great then got overwatered then underwatered and now it is struggling.   Christmas Cactus (Schlumbergera x buckleyi ): Pink Blooms (early winter - early spring) Stupid easy to care for (almost un-killable) very easy to propagate.  I now have: pink, white, and red so that was one 2022 plant goal achieved. More details at  How t...
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To Do List Integration

Fun With Smart Speakers We had a conversation recently at work about smart speakers and it occurred to me I wasn't doing much with our smart speakers.  I've got a couple echo dots and a couple google home devices.  Note if you are a stickler for privacy this probably isn't for you:) A To Do List I Can Speak To -- Round 1 I often think of to do items when walking around the home and I don't always have my phone.  My requirement was 1. Compatibility with Google Home, those were in more useful places 2. Web and phone interface 3. General to do list not just shopping list So Google integrates with Google Keep, Any.do, AnyList, Bring Shopping Lists.   Free web integration knocks out AnyList (paid option) and general to do list knocks out Bring Shipping Lists so its just Google Keep and Any.do.  I figured Google is most likely to stay free so I started there. Wait I've got some extra Echo Dots So I was cleaning out the basement and found two echo dots, why not pu...
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BLE Plant Monitoring Purpose and Notes About Links I'm doing this work for myself as a fun project, if it turns out to be useful for others great, if not that is also fine.  Along those lines the links I've used are just what I found useful.  I didn't go through any big effort to find the optimal, most stable, or most authoritative links.  I can say that all the links I found, were at least useful to me.  Also note this is my first experience with Raspberry Pi's and Arduinos and BLE so if your looking for professional insights into those, you've come to the wrong place.  Though I've been a professional programmer for a long time so I'll gloss over many programming concepts. Why I Got Started On This I was initially encouraged that I wouldn't have to reverse engineer anything since there is a published API. https://developer.parrot.com/docs/FlowerPower/FlowerPower-BLE.pdf   Startup The first part of this is startup.  I've decided to use a Raspberry Pi...
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