Cloud orchestration with terraform in Aliyun for an IoT cloud deployment

Aliyun Logo

Automating cloud deployments around the world can become very tedious because each cloud provider API has quirks. Luckily, the world is moving beyond declarative cloud deployment automation into procedural orchestration. I’ll show how to Hashicorp’s terraform for an example IoT cloud deployment in the fastest growing cloud in the world: Alibaba’s “Aliyun” cloud, based out of China.
Read More

Automated drip irrigation system for a hanging basket garden

My wife and I love enjoying Chicago summers on our back porch. Two years ago we decided to buy hanging planter baskets. We were excellent at purchasing plants but did not plan ahead to ensure there was sufficient light, water, or nutrients. Any project manager with a thousand yard stare knows what happened next. Within a few weeks it was a irrecoverable garden of death. Last year I decided to try again, but not fail. I used a fully automated drip irrigation system and the results speak for themselves. Here is how I pieced it together.

Read More