Solarpunk social hardware with Scuttlebutt

First off, we'd like to extend a huge 'thank you' to Sean Billig and Martin G for their support towards our OpenCollective! It's wonderful to know that other folx share some of the excitement we feel about the PeachCloud project. We've been making steady progress behind the scenes and wanted to share a little about what we've been up to.

Here are some of the highlights of the past four months of work:

• Pub owner research: questions drawn from the #pub-help channel to better understand feature needs
• Development environment setup: we worked out the kinks in order to run Debian Buster ARM64 on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ (including I2C)
• Client / AP-mode switching: a script was developed to allow the PeachCloud device to serve as an access point for network connections, enabling initial setup
• Microservices architecture: we have settled on running microservices over JSON-RPC and have begun writing these modules in Rust
• peach-web : web interface for monitoring and interacting with the PeachCloud device (built on Rocket)
• peach-network : query and configure network interfaces
• peach-display : write and clear an HD44780-compatible 16x2 LCD display
• peach-oled : write and clear an OLED display using SDD1306 driver

Close-up, black-and-white photo of an Adafruit 128x64 1.3" OLED Bonnet. The circuit board features a 5-way joystick on the left side, two push-buttons on the right side (labelled #5 and #6), and a central OLED display. The display shows text reading: "PeachCloud" on the first line and "IP: 192.168.0.8" on the third line. A circle is displayed beneath the two lines of text and is horizontally-centered".

We will continue working on the microservice modules in April and are aiming to implement a simple OLED + push-button menu system. This will allow basic monitoring and control of the PeachCloud device when running in headless-mode (no laptop or mobile phone required).

Social News

Andrew (glyph) attended the Agorama Web Jam in London, UK in January. He had a great time hanging out with fellow Butts and p2p enthusiasts while hacking on PeachCloud code and sharing visions of the p2p cypherfuture.

Mikey (dinosaur) helped host the very first ScuttleCamp - held near Wellington, New Zealand at the end of February. This was a magnificent moment in the evolution of the Scuttlebutt ecosystem.

Until next time, much love from the PeachCloud team!

A vertical split-screen showing the webcam feeds for Mikey (left) and Andrew (right). Mikey's smiling face is illuminated by a rainbow-hued LED wand he is holding up. The wand is topped by a geometric frame made of wire, mostly in the form of triangles. Andrew is also shown smiling and is foregrounded against a pale wall in the background.