Home on Scott Preston

Goodbye WordPress, Hello Hugo

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0000

I switched this site from WordPress to Hugo, a static site on S3. No more servers to hack, no more PHP or Apache vulnerabilities, and no database. Simple, still looks good, and less cost and headache overall.

M1 to M4: The Apple Silicon Performance Ladder

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 17:46:18 +0000

I was curious and wanted a list with no advertisements. Apple’s M-series chips have moved fast in just a few generations. What started with the original M1 as a huge leap over Intel Macs has expanded into a full ladder of standard, Pro, Max, and Ultra chips that scale from everyday laptop performance to serious […]

Trip Radius Planner – A Tiny Tool for Big Roadtrip

Thu, 22 May 2025 15:23:53 +0000

Ever want to take a road trip… but have no idea where you actually want to go? Same. So I built a quick tool: Trip Radius Planner Just type in how many hours you want to drive, and it shows you a map of how far you could get. That’s it. No logins, no planning […]

Created A Playground

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 23:42:39 +0000

I’ve really the playground, you know the days when you could just FTP a few files to a directory and bam it was live on the internet! So I created one again called https://playground.scottpreston.com. Right now I just a a few examples projects/experiments.

Some of my Favorite Business Books

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 14:47:40 +0000

Over the years I’ve ready many business books. I thought I would spend some time talking about my favorite top 5.

YouTube – ScottPrestonTV & Exoskeletons

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 20:57:35 +0000

So a few years ago I created another channel on YouTube, called “Almost Ironman” but I’ve decided to stop posting there and just stick with “ScottPrestonTV“. Too much work when I don’t even have one channel doing well, to try to maintain two. So in my spare time I’ve started working on my exoskeleton again. […]

Goto Robot Brains

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 17:22:42 +0000

These are my “Go To” robot brains or robot “compute”. Below you’ll see an Arduino Leonardo ~$25, an ESP 8266 (NodeMCU) ~$8, and a Raspberry Pi 3 ~$45. I’ve included links to purchase below along with their specs as well as the specs of other similar items. So why these items? Well the Leonardo has […]

Data & Dieting – Your System (3 of 3)

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 18:52:42 +0000

While there’s errors in data in (calories in) and data out (energy expenditure) it’s your system that makes the difference on whether or not you lose weight. Remember you need a calorie deficit in order to lose weight: Deficit = Calories In – Calories Out. First you need to calculate your RMR or Resting Metabolic […]

Books

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 20:44:29 +0000

These are some of my older books, however you can still buy them on Amazon.Com.

Learn HTML5 and JavaScript for iOS (2012)

This book covers the basics HTML5 and JavaScript and how to create web applications for mobile devices. It includes a sample application using PhoneGap for iOS.

This book is still for sale on Amazon.Com.

The Definitive Guide to Building Java Robots(2005)

This was my first book. It covers how to build and program robots with the Java programming language. While old the Java code still works and it’s a useful guide to how to do the basics of machine vision, text to speech, speech recognition or other robotics applications.

Data & Dieting – Calories In (2 of 3)

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 23:59:08 +0000

Calories In is a really interesting problem, you would think it just comes down to measuring how much food is taken in but when you calculate fiber, mis-measurement, and or use a misleading app, trying to calculate that 500 calorie per day deficit for that 1 pound per week weight loss becomes very hard, or […]

Data & Dieting – Calories Out (1 of 3)

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 19:59:02 +0000

Taking a short break from technology and building things to talk about fitness and weight loss. I’ll present a 3 part series of posts to talk about what I’ve learned over the past few years. There’s been a lot of books I’ve read over the years about losing weight and getting fitter. Low Carbs. No […]

What’s Old Is New Again – App Store

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 17:34:02 +0000

I decided last night to renew my Apple Developer Account and decided to work on apps again. As a result my old App came back to the App Store. This app is the “Are You Worthy?” App, which is basically a Magic 8 Ball to test to see if you’re worthy of wielding Thor’s Hammer, […]

Miscellaneous Robots & Videos

Mon, 29 May 2023 21:42:00 +0000

Here’s a few robots and videos from 2007 to 2009. CRAB Robot Diagnostic This is a small robot I hooked up to my PC and I added some TTS (Text-To-Speech). I think this is around 2007, so it’s pretty old footage. For anyone that recognizes it, this is the same J.A.R.V.I.S. voice I use for […]

Contact

Mon, 29 May 2023 15:52:36 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for trying to contact me. I’m sorry there’s no contact forms, I just don’t have the time to moderate spam links. You can contact me via LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter/X.

Also if you want to checkout my videos on YouTube, you can checkout my channel here: @ScottPrestonTV

If you need access to some of the code from my books here’s the link to my GitHub.

Thanks,
Scott

The Feynman (Robot) Years

Mon, 29 May 2023 15:33:29 +0000

This is a continued post about my robots as I prepare to archive and rebuild ScottsBots.Com. Feynman MK1 – 2002 The “Feynman” name for my robots actually comes from the names of the computers in my house, this computer housed in wood below was called Feynman, and I happened to turn it into a robot. […]

The Early Days of Scott’s Bots

Sun, 28 May 2023 18:25:55 +0000

I thought I’d put a post together summarizing some of my robots as I prepare to archive and rebuild ScottsBots.Com. TetherBot – 1999 I built this robot in 1999. I hacked two hobby servers (Futaba 3003) to make it move and built my own sensors with some parts from Radio Shack. To move this robot […]

About

Wed, 24 May 2023 00:33:43 +0000

I grew up in Groveport, Ohio, and graduated from Groveport Madison High School in 1988. I attended Ohio State from 1988-1990 until I joined the US Navy in 1990 where I studied electronics and I left as a 2nd Class Petty Officer (E5). From 1994-1996 I attended Ohio State and earned my BS in Mathematics.

After school, I worked for a variety of companies as a Software Engineer, CompuServe, Bank One/Chase, UUNET, MCI/WorldCom, Covansys/Saber/HP, Victoria’s Secret. In 2006 I started working full time with my own company Preston Research LLC and in 2012 started a new company CodeGin LLC, where I’m focusing on Mobile & Web Development. I’ve also worked at various companies in between from Architect to Vice President of Software Engineering, but my heart is in start-ups and Entrepreneurship.

A Chat GPT Thing

Sun, 21 May 2023 01:35:58 +0000

A few months ago I wrote a program to use: Speech Recognition via Web Speech API. Pipe that to Chat GPT’s API Pipe the response to AWS Polly’s Text To Speech Engine I put the code here: https://github.com/scottpreston/chatgpt-srtts Nothing fancy, just a little playing around and enough content for about a 30minute talk at ColumbusJS.

Fun Learning Final Cut Pro!

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 20:05:24 +0000

Built a new “intro” and adding some movement to my video clips.

MK3 Exoskeleton – MK1 Arm

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 22:06:03 +0000

The first part of the MK3 Exoskeleton the MK1 arm (forearm). 3D Editing Software – Fusion 360. CNC – Shapeoko 3 w/HDZ. Materials – PLA for Protptype 3D Parts. 1/4″ 6061 Aluminum Plate, 4-40 Stainless Screws w/Lock Nuts, 3d Printed Spacers Next part the bicep and actuator.

No CodeMash 2022

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 21:02:56 +0000

In early December during the build of the Mark3 suit I had a catastrophic failure of my CNC Z-Axis limit switch. (See Below). Because of this the machine was unable to home, and without being able to home, I couldn’t cut anything. I was unable to get it fixed with new parts until the week […]

Ethereum Mining Trial

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 13:30:19 +0000

So this week-end I did an experiment with Ethereum Mining. The first thing I did was use a calculator. Here’s one from CryptoCompare.com. Now according to this calculator, I should make around $36 bucks a month for my Nvidia GTX 1060 Card. Well, I did an experiment and after 28 hours I made $1.10. This […]

Created A YouTube Channel – Almost Iron Man

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 23:42:43 +0000

So yes I created a channel, Almost Iron Man. The name is suppose to be fun, it’s about all my adventures trying to make a suit and make my home smart. Here’s my first video: Enjoy!

Old CodeMash Talk – 2016

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:53:48 +0000

I found this when looking for media from my original Exo-Skeleton talk. Sadly nobody thought of recording it while doing the talk, we were all too busy hoping I wouldn’t fall over. Thanks, The-Ohayo-Dev.

The Big Network Refactor – Part 2

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 20:00:41 +0000

The next step in setting up my network was adding additional “LANS” to my network. So while before I was happy with two networks 192168.1.1/24 and 10.10.10.1/24. I really wanted more isolation from my IoT network, Security Camera Network, my Raspberry PI and Smart-Home network and the computers and devices we use all the time. […]

Installing OctoPrint w/Docker on Pi3

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 14:58:42 +0000

I always found it a pain to deal with Python libraries and virtual environments on my Raspberry Pis. I decided to give Docker a try as it would completely isolate my OctoPrint environment from the other stuff I had running on the PI. Step 1 – Installing Docker You should get an output like this: […]

The Big Network Refactor – Part 1

Fri, 05 Feb 2021 20:22:31 +0000

I’ve been having network problems of late and also because of security I wanted to better isolate my network from IoT devices from Google, Amazon, Hue, Etc. I basically had a few ASUS routers (which have been great) and I’ve been using a Double NAT (Network Address Translation) with my more secure stuff behind another […]

Synology SSH – No Password

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 01:56:19 +0000

While this is usually a trivial task it took me about an hour to get my permissions correct to get this to work. Here are the steps that finally let me get things working: Open the sshd_conf by entering: Then edit as follows: Then go to your command line and change some file permissions. If […]

Remember it’s about “decentralization”

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 00:54:41 +0000

You can take my ramblings about Big Tech a number of ways but ultimately it’s about decentralization. Don’t put all all your eggs in one basket. Diversify your portfolio. Own your own path. Explore alternatives. Grow.

Big Tech Purge – Alternatives

Sun, 10 Jan 2021 17:41:37 +0000

So if you’re a cord-cutter and want to get rid of YouTube.TV or Cable. Check this out. https://www.suppose.tv/. It will let you select your channels and show you the best options available for you to pick. Today I canceled the following: Apple Developer Program Renewal – My app “Thors Hammer” will go away, but I […]

Big Tech Purge – No More Ears…

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 17:02:56 +0000

A bunch of Echoes will now sit in this bag until which time I’m confident these recordings are not shared with Facebook, Instagram, Advertisers… I’ve had too many things happen recently mentioning a company only to see ads an hour or so later….

The Migration From Big Tech

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 16:15:27 +0000

I’ve not done much on my “blog” in the past several years. With FaceBook, Twitter & Instagram it’s been too easy to just post there, but given the censorship and potential Anti-Trust lawsuits I thought it best to get back to owning my own content and start blogging again. So things to look forward to: […]

Installing Octoprint – Raspberry PI Sketch

Sat, 09 Feb 2019 19:14:00 +0000

As usual, instructions are not complete. I thought I’d share exactly what I did from bash history fresh install. I’ve excluded the fatal errors, with those and repeats excluded this is what I did: sudo apt-get install git python2.7-dev libyaml-dev libpython2.7-dev python -v git clone https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint.git curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py python get-pip.py –user ~/.local/bin/pip install […]

3D Printing Filament

Sun, 17 Jun 2018 19:43:17 +0000

I’ve been using lots of different PLA filament, mainly Hatchbox PLA and Inland (From Microcenter). The old Inland Filament was from eSun, but recently they changed to a new brand and it’s not held up as nice. I definitely recommend Hatchbox PLA from Amazon.

You’re Doing Your Tech Interview Wrong – 21 Tips

Fri, 04 May 2018 17:52:02 +0000

Here are 21 tips I’ve used when interviewing/hiring hundreds of people over the past 5 years. I hope you find them useful. If you’re asking questions that can be Googled, you’re wasting everyone’s time or you’re lazy. If you’re not asking questions that indicate someone’s attitude, you’re missing about 80% of their ability to succeed. […]

Upgrading The Thermostat Bot

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 17:57:10 +0000

The temperature bot a.k.a. the algorithm that controls the temperature in my house underwent a slight upgrade this week. The old algorithm: If (setTemperature > averageHouseTemperature) HEAT, otherwise COOL. Simple right? Not so much. Scenario 1: Let’s say I set the temperature to 70, and it’s currently 71 in the house. According to the bot, […]

Alexa / Voice / AI Chat

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 11:09:47 +0000

What does user experience look like without a mouse & keyboard or easy to enter form fields? How do people talk to AI systems to solve problems? These systems can be through devices like Alexa or virtual systems like automated chatbots. Understanding psychology and human behavior become just as valuable as business knowledge when designing […]

3 Trends about to take off

Sun, 25 Jun 2017 15:08:56 +0000

2017 is halfway over and while some of these trends started a few yeas ago I think we’re about to see a few of these really catch-on, and by catch-on, I mean go mainstream and get funded. Over the next week I’m going to discuss these three trends in a little more details and provide […]

Some Videos From CodeMash 2017

Tue, 04 Apr 2017 00:54:19 +0000

Dave Jansen was kind enough to post these, I’ll repost, since they have me 🙂 Part 1 Part 2

Redux’s Connect Method Explained.

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 21:31:47 +0000

Sorry but all the explanations this far have been bad so I thought I’d simplify it. In plain Redux without connect you need to manually bind up your store.dispatch to your components as well as subscribe to updates so you can call store.getState(). But your components are suppose to be dumb. const store = createStore(reducer); […]

JavaScript has become Java, sigh…

Tue, 23 Feb 2016 16:49:57 +0000

If I wanted to work with compiled languages, I would have stuck with Java. If I wanted complicated build systems, I would have stuck with Java. If I wanted complicated all encompassing frameworks, I would have stuck with Java. If I wanted complicated unreadable error messages, I would have stuck with Java. If I wanted […]

libopenzwave.so error

Tue, 23 Feb 2016 01:07:27 +0000

If you’ve ever seen this error: MinOZW: error while loading shared libraries: libopenzwave.so.1.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory or Error: libopenzwave.so.1.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Just type this and it did the trick for me (Ubuntu 14.04). sudo ldconfig /usr/local/lib64

Simple React Example

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 20:39:12 +0000

So I’ve been trying to find a simple React example, one that uses a flux implementation that works out of the box in a browser without any compilation or node stuff. I couldn’t find one so I built one. Here it is: https://github.com/scottpreston/react-examples. This requires, RefluxJS, ReactJS, React-Dom and a Browser. You can use node to […]

Openzwave Binary Sensors

Thu, 26 Nov 2015 16:10:49 +0000

I’ve been struggling a bit with openzwave items because its so poorly documented. I’ve finally figured out how to get results from a door sensors with the node package node-openzwave-shared. If you follow the install script, then just add this event handler below, you can receive updates. zwave.on(’node event’, function(nodeid, nodeEvt) { console.log(new Date(), ’node […]

Building An Exo-Skeleton

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 13:45:25 +0000

This is a “selfie” of my arm prototype. Finding ergonomics more of a challenge, but that’s why you build it!

Simple WebSocket & NodeJS Server Example

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 20:48:00 +0000

I’ve been searching for a NodeJS server for web sockets, but socket.io, required both the client and server to be run from within node. I wanted to connect to this server via a normal web page using WebSockets from HTML5. Here’s some code, hope you find it useful: https://github.com/scottpreston/examples Server Code var WebSocketServer = require(‘ws’).Server; […]

Home Grown Script Loader

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 23:14:19 +0000

I was wondering how RequireJS and AMD worked. So I created this snip. It might not be correct but it worked for me. load(‘foo’, function (foo){ var f = new foo(); f.a = 100; f.b = 200; alert(f.add()); }); function define(name, callback) { modules[name] = callback; } function load(file, callback) { var script = document.createElement(‘script’); […]

Created A Chevelle Blog

Thu, 08 Aug 2013 02:30:07 +0000

I decided to create a blog for my chevelle because there was so many things I was learning about it and thought I should help out some other folks working on their car. I’ve researched a lot on YouTub and the internet as well as Chevelles.Com, but making a post there about what I learned […]

Dead APC Back-Ups & Alternative Batteries

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 18:30:03 +0000

I recently had an UPS failure. My UPS and APC 650 ES, has a battery they call for is the RBC17. Which on Amazon.Com is $39.99. However when you peal the sticket off you get Vision UB1290. This battery (which is the same battery) cost around $15.00. I imaging this happens a lot with companies looking […]

Chevelle Updates – Part 2

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 02:22:01 +0000

Throttle Cable: So I found that I needed a new throttle cable as the original one was 21.5″ long. For a Holley carb this was about an inch too short. I decided to get a Lokar 24″ universal cable with a new bracket. This should allow me to cut-to-fit the cable and get full throttle […]

1971 Chevelle Updates

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:44:31 +0000

To get my car running here’s what I have done to it thus far. New Diff – New Moser 12 bolt, Tru Trac, 3.42 gears. New Rear Suspension – New Hotchkis control arms, stabilizer springs and shocks) Front Suspension – Powder coated stock control arms, new Hotchkis springs and stablizer and new shocks. Brakes – New lines, power booster […]