All of us that have some sort of hobby soon realizes that no matter how challenging your project is, there is nothing harder than making time to actual do it. I am always graceful to have a job, family and friends. So sacrificing building time is not so bad. However I am always faced with what to do and when to do it.
These days I have taken the approach to do a little but frequently, that way I will eventually complete each and every project I take on.
My on going project is the GeoCar, every day I think about the project and what to do with it. During my private time (during shower). Oh yes, that place I can always count on (almost always) to be private, the bathroom. Anyhow, during that stand-up alone meetings I think on what to do and how to do with the project.
The goal is to make the GeoCar an Internet Of Things application. Internet of Things can be almost anything you imagine, so I realized that I have the freedom to experiment.
So in the way of doing that, I plan on installing a Raspberry Pi in the car, with a GPS (of course). But not only that, the Raspberry Pi will have a Wifi dongle not to connect to the outside world but to allow others to connect to it. The GeoCar will be a "Hot Spot" in the car. No necessarily with internet access but with movies and information about the trip. Something similar to what you see on airplanes, but in your car. For display it shall use any Wifi capable device, like a tablet or phone. If everything goes well I will hook up some movies to the pi, and share them via the wifi. The car will be a entertainment center for anyone connected to the local wifi network.
For all this I am building a web application using Python and Flask to do so. All code is already published on my github repo, however it do not work. But little by little I am pushing it everything, regardless of it working or not. That way I can get stuff done from different computers wherever I am and keep it going.
As of the raspberry pi, The Pi is running inside my house with the GPS connected and the apache web server configured to run the python application, but it is not ready to deploy but soon will be.
I ended up writing more about my project that the actual title, but the idea is to show how I am dealing with something lack of time to do this other stuff that we all love to do.
When you think you are very, very busy. Well you are not alone, we all are. However there are a lot of things we can still accomplish just by one small step at a time.
Have a good build!