Was exposed to a couple varying pieces of tech this week. Here's a rundown.

Wireless bridge over WDS

Saved some $30 by configuring a WDS bridge via the unused AP (TP-Link Archer C50), providing wired Internet access to the Dell 2850 in the study. Didn't quite work on OpenWrt the last time though.

::: warning Open Issues DHCP doesn't seem to travel across the bridge. Hosts across the bridge have to be on static. :::

Docker (and Rancher Kubernetes - RKS, Pi)

Reinstalled the Dell 2850 to latest Debian without any significant hiccups. Installing Docker was a breeze following the official steps. Installing Rancher Server is just a typical container install; worked the first time!

Created my first super simple but working Node-based container. Here's the Dockerfile content:

FROM node:latest
WORKDIR /usr/app
COPY package.json .
COPY server.js .
RUN npm install
CMD npm run dev

Learnings

1. Picking up basic container creation/ management over CLI isn't very difficult. Looking forward to connect across containers, and see horizontal scaling in action.
2. It's amazing seeing how the modern tech tool stitch together: new code from the developer workstation gets saved in Git repo. Gets downloaded and built into a Docker image (build host), and deployed into containers (production hosts). Full stack development cannot be more exciting!
3. A powerful Pi (or a cluster of) is a great opportunity for edge computing. These articles (here and here) are inspiring.

Nuxt.js

Digital UI development is a lot more complex than it was 3-4 years back. The success and progress of Angular and React, plus mobile web developments such as NativeScript means the same UI developer can effectively code UI for browsers and mobile apps in one language. Throw in Material UI, Progressive Web App (PWA), and Angular/ React/ Vue Universal. That's quite a handful!

Nuxt enables rapid scaffolding for apps that need some or all of the above using Vue; maybe less NativeScript integration. Oh what I wouldn't give to dive back into HTML and CSS and lots of Javascript (maybe TypeScript too)!

ESP8266 and ESPToy

Revived an old project, this time soldering some wires to the ESPToy board and connecting to the DHT11 on the small breadboard. Works as expected. Now I need to figure out if I should set up a queue receiving readings from the gadget. Also need to complete the graph plotter.