This is our backyard setup as of last month, in sketch form, before the leaves came out :)

Back from the asparagus patch!

(drops into Atlantic Canadian accent)

“Turn yer head for a minute and those fuckin’ asparagus will be three foot tall and not worth a fiddler’s fuck!”

Anyway, I digress…

Some of my go-to podcasts | relevant episodes, are below:

Poor Prole’s Almanac | Skillshare episode on Arduino

It Could Happen Here | Meshtastic/LoRa episode | recent episode on off-shelf solar solutions

That LoRa episode led me to the guest’s website for more information on his pretty cool shit: Hydroponic Trash/AnarchoSolarPunk

He was also featured on Live Like The World Is Dying, which I had been listening to for a while anyway | S1E49 – Andre on Solar Power, DIY Internet, Mesh Networks, and Solar Punk

Less radical podcasts I listen to are some of the maker-type folks like Simple Electronics and the (now discontinued?) Make: Magazine podcast.

That just about covers it, other than some of the solarpunk podcasts I listen to, but I kinda feel they - while informative and entertaining - aren’t as…hands on (?)… as some of the links I shared above.

Cheers gang

SK0

I started messing about with Linux/Raspberry Pi, Arduino, LoRa/Meshtastic in the past couple of months due to being (further) breadpilled with podcasts about open source, greenhouse automation, autonomous text-based communication and such.

I’m not a tech person so I’m literally doing kid-level electronics tutorials on the Arduino (“Congratulations! You’ve made your first circuit!”) and still get a kick out of running sudo apt-get update/upgrade and seeing the lines of text scrolling by.

But I really like the concept of appropriate tech in conjunction with open source “stuff” and, since I’m in a position of being able to listen to ~6.5 hours of podcasts during my workday, I might as well learn something. I hope to get comfortable with electronics for DIY solar eventually, too

I have three boards on order just to play with, see if I can get coverage in our town for family and friends. It’s an interesting rabbit hole that I’ve been reading up on for a few months, and I’m the least techy person you’ve ever met (literally called my family into the room to watch a LED blink slower & faster with my Arduino beginner kit last week - and I’m in my late 40s).

First heard of it on It Could Happen Here podcast with a guest named Andre aka hydroponic trash, and he has a decent comprehensive write-up about it (I dunno how to put links in here, sorry) and been watching youtube, etc about it since. It’s the reason I have the above-mentioned Arduino beginner’s kit, tbh :)

Funny side-note: it’s apparently popular in the UK, where youtubers have shared lots of tips plus stories about meeting like-minded folks, having informal meetups at local pubs with people on the mesh, etc. Contrast that with US-based youtubers posting about it: “When the guv’ment shuts down the networks & civil war starts yer gonna need this to stay off the grid and communicate with yer team!” Like, c’mon…