## hpr2173 :: Driving a Blinkt! as an IoT device

 Driving a Blinkt! as an IoT device
Introduction
I managed to buy a Raspberry Pi Zero when they first came out in December 2015. This was not easy since they were very scarce. I also bought a first-generation case from Pimoroni and some 40-pin headers. With the Zero this header is not pre-installed and it’s necessary to solder it onto the Pi yourself.
I have had various project ideas for this Pi Zero, but had not decided on one until recently. Within the last month or two Pimoroni produced a device called the Blinkt! which has eight APA102 RGB LEDs and attaches to the GPIO header. This costs £5, just a little more than the Zero itself.
My plan was to combine the two and turn them into a status indicator for various things going on that needed my attention.
Long notes
I have written out a moderately long set of notes for this episode and these are available here https://hackerpublicradio.org/eps/hpr2173/full_shownotes.html.
Links

Raspberry Pi Zero
Pimoroni Ltd
The Blinkt! add-on from Pimoroni
Pimoroni’s documentation “Getting Started with Blinkt!”
The GitHub repository for Blinkt!
The RIBBA picture frame from IKEA
Inkscape vector graphics editor
MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport):

Wikipedia article on MQTT
Wikipedia article on the Publish-subscribe pattern

BlinkStick MQTT page
Mailbox Alert add-on for Thunderbird
Jezra’s Orb project
Resources:

My Inkscape template “blinkt_legends.svg”
My first primitive listener script “blinkt_client.py”
My cron script for checking comments “cronjob_comments”


