JavaScript and Hardware × Cars, Factories, Heavy Industry, Robots, and the Internet of Things

Welcome to Syntax. This is the podcast with the tastiest web development treats Out there today, we have a very interesting show for you, talking about JavaScript in, rid. I don't even know how you describe this. But, like, using JavaScript and and maybe we'll even talk about other languages as well.

Rid. In situations that is not your typical web app running in a desktop browser. So JavaScript can run-in other places, and rid I'll talk about that more in just a second. But first, we are sponsored by 3 awesome companies, log, rocket, JavaScript session replay, and Bryndham products. They're a new sponsor of ours. They make some really cool web components you can drop into your web app, rid for doing Gantt charts and scheduling. They're really cool. Talk about part way them part way through the episode. With me as always is mister Dot Talinsky. How are you doing today, Scott? Hey. Doing good.

Just hanging out, you know, the normal.

Not getting ready for Black Friday. That's that's sort of deal. So yeah. Big, big. And we also have our guest on today is Ant Rogen. Hi, Ant. How are you doing today?

I'm not bad, man. How is yourself? You're all okay?

Yeah. Yeah. Doing well. Doing well. We Are excited to have you on. So, a little bit of backstory here.

I don't know. Like, maybe a month or 2 ago, I I tweeted out, Like, where else is JavaScript being used on? Because I know like, I use these apps on my phone or on my TV, and the rid The TV apps are built in like, specifically, I use one that's called Embi, and they have the the actual app rid. Is the same, exact same app on your desktop as it is on your phone, as it is on my TV, as it is on the iPad. And I'm always marveling at, like, wow. This thing is, like, this thing is rock solid. It's a really nice app, and it works just so well across all of the the The different ones that we have. And I was like, like, where else is it used? And then, like, just as, like, totally unrelated, Anne sent me a message on, Instagram. It's just like, yeah. I'm working on something like IoT stuff right now. It's pretty interesting. And then I also worked at Nissan, rid and we I'm we're I didn't ask too many questions because I wanted to leave it for for the actual episode. But Yeah. He was doing some cool stuff with the head units in in JavaScript. And I thought, oh, man. That's super cool that I just went we just bought a new car. I just put a new stereo in it, and I was like, man, it'd be really cool. Like, I wonder what these things are are made in or even rid Even talking to them. So, you wanna give us a little introduction of of who you are, what you do, things like that? Sure. So, rid my name's Anthrogan. I've been in the tech game now for

about 15 years, so I've always been a developer. I was a developer back when we used to get called webmasters and work working from page and all that sort of stuff, and sort of followed the languages Over the time, JavaScript's always out of bay there, though. It's always been the main thing we wrote.

I work I live in sort of the northeast of England. Anyone who's ever been to England in the north Illinois, a lot of it's just industry based. They're really heavy industry car manufacturing, coal mining, shipbuilding, stuff like that.

Rid. And as a result, there's not a lot of there's not, like, a big developer presence, so there certainly wasn't.

So you were sorta a bit different when you you got into development, and you tended to End up at one of these factories and doing software things. You know what I mean? Okay.

But for the longest time, a lot of it was always, rid it's like stock management systems, just, part tokens, stuff. I I have part picking, things like that. But then over the years, The more experience I gained, the more things I worked on it developed into the file. Like, we can we can interface with anything, and we can build anything we want using Modern languages like Node or some of them you were forced to work with old languages. I see old languages. I probably upset some people saying that.

Things like c sharp and Java was was, for for the longest time, the only way you could do it.

But then, obviously, the rise in Nord and just it's just web technology in in general made everything easier for everyone, and it felt like it was overnight, that one day You are having to use all of these, I don't know, I guess, bespoke, light heavily licensed, heavily Yeah.

The it's, like, rid Really hardly integrated kit soft software off the shelf to all of a sudden we can we can just make an espresso and have all of this information at our sort of fingertips. Talking to it. Rid. Yeah. And it it was a it was huge, really.

That that's really cool to me because I've dipped into that world a couple times. I'm not by far, rid good at any of it. But, in the past, I have used Node to talk to a drone, And that is like, I don't even know what language is running on the drone, but it just communicated via UDP socket, and you just send rid These text commands to it, and, I've communicated with, LTE cellular modems. They run their own I'm not even sure what it is as well, but, again, just rid Text commands being sent to it.

And then I recently was looking into, like, rid Steering wheels and stuff in cars. I was just watching a random YouTube video about how do, How do cars communicate? And this I learned a lot of them run on this thing called CAN bus, and, they communicate through this thing. I was like, I wonder if you could do it in JavaScript, and there is. So that's sort of, like, the kind of stuff that you work on. It's just, basically, you just need to talk to things.

Yeah. I mean, I was out when I was at Nissan, I'm not there anymore, but when I was there, the the my role was, like, a systems engineer, and we didn't strictly make a lot of the software for the cause. That was still that's still we we sort of dabbled with it. When we made that head unit, for example, it was a little bit of a we had this innovation room, and it was Just filled with raspberry pies and bits of stuff that people would donate, and they started to see what you could do with it. And it happened to be at the time that I believe it was Talk, A company called Talk, and they donated, like, an OBT OBD 2, dongle, which you sort of plug in your OBD, software, which is what Mechanics used to diagnose and cause ACUs.

And as it that then that little Bluetooth device would record data, send it to a little server. And that made it really easy for us because instantly we had a server on an IP.

It was running on Android app, and we just used a Raspberry Pi to pull it out. But because it was on just a a close on network, it was almost there's enough to be real time. So we showed that we had, like, a little screen on the Raspberry Pi, and We sort of made it show little inputs and outputs and that sort of stuff, but, generally, that made it easier. But in in the terms of, like, having Communications on anything physical, like a machine, there is usually a wrapper for in in in Node, at least. There's 9 times out of 10, there is a Node sort of wrapper for these types of things. Rid but even if there isn't, you you can. If there was an interface, you can you can do it in puppeteer.

We did that quite regularly. Do you know what I mean? If some some things just didn't have it. Rid But for sort of the low level machine code, like you say, with steering wheel communications and stuff like that, they they generally had, sort of communication bus type Information, like, like, you mentioned, there's a cam bus you said it was for the steel wheels? Yeah. Yeah.

And then they this this old information ultimately had to go back To an ECU or to to something. Do you know what I mean? So it it would never be too much of a stretch for you to you could use an OBD device, example, they read that information because it can be communicate with the the ACU and all this sort of stuff. So it's it's like a lot of it in the IoT space is always writing that glue code To fix it together and make it work. Yeah.

Which it it could be risky doing it as well, especially when you've got, like, 7 inch services wired together to Show the status of some things, you know what I mean? Of course, it can be, but in in that industrial world, there just isn't another way to do it, in some cases.

You tend to find a lot of, Like, protocols communication protocols is, like, Event Bus and all this sort of stuff that was developed by Siemens and all this really old stuff. And, rid Eventually, they just stop working with it and stop supporting with it, but half of your factory is still built on it, or half of your wind farm runs on it, and it's nail the way to communicate with it. And as a I mean, I've been in situations where we've actually bought devices off ABS 2nd amp because there just isn't It doesn't get manufactured anymore, but you need 1. And changing the whole machine would be such more bigger, bigger cost than, sort Just replacing that part. Do you know what I mean? And it it it's, it is a big issue in the industry, but at then, at the same time, like, For the sake of, like, 50 quid or a 1000000 pound to refit, you you just kinda get a set and I'm going all the time. It's it's funny as a, like, a consumer of a lot of these things. You know, I think many consumers would say,

why is the tech in in cars and head units specifically So 19, you know, 19 nineties or whatever it is.

Me, personally, I I actually I had a a gig offered to me to do HTML apps in. I think it was GM cars at the time.

And I was working at Ford and they were doing, I think it was sync 2, which honestly is a disaster of a head unit. It it stinks.

And I remember the the GM job was so enticing because they were like, listen. This is the future of how we're doing all this. We're going to drop JavaScript and HTML, And it's gonna be a web browser based thing, and then it feels like what? It's nearly like 10 years later.

Oh, not a ton of progress has been made in that regard, and head units are still largely terrible.

So rid. It's just interesting to me that I feel like these things could probably progress a lot better if they opened up the tech. But again, you You know, the automotive industry is is a nightmare in some regards. So hearing you say these things, well, definitely validates a lot of my feelings around this topic. Rid Yeah. That I think the issue

it it's so I mean, I don't know if you've whether you've been you've been at fault. You you imagine the size of the lines and all that sort of stuff. I think there's there's a lot of regulation between different countries and stuff with safety specs and how fast things can communicate and rid All these types of things have changed, and it's just really done.

And it's I think as well, a lot especially in in particular the head units, I think Android Auto and Half of them have a lot to do with the fact that they've stopped really working on them and Mhmm. Everyone just connects wirelessly now. I mean, I think it was the big automotive Companies that invested the majority of their money for Vulcan, which is like a open GL, which Valve had something. It was like a for Linux and stuff. And then part of The advancement was, like, so they could have these cool head units in it. But then the only really decent head unit I think I've seen in rid The past 5 years is definitely Tesla's Yeah. Which is is almost certainly running node and

and probably React or something similar like that. So And I think the the poll Polestar is like a Volvo's subsidiary or they're they're, like, EV brand. I know their unit is just a straight up an Android tablet. It's just running Android straight up. Really? So yeah. Yeah. You can even access the Play Store on it. I always wonder that. Like, so when you get into a,

I don't know. A 3 year old car, and you, like, swipe on their UI, and you're like, oh, this thing is laggy as hell and and whatnot. Like, that is Like, what is that running? Is that what Vulcan is? I've not I doubt it. If it's if it's running poorly, then that's definitely not what it is. But it's,

rid Generally, it is like a I I vaguely remember the one that was in the dash. It was like a modified Opera browser or something similar like rid But it it also it also depends on, like, the head unit itself. I think, like, the really old ones, they will Maybe running their version of that because they didn't they don't have sorry. They don't have that, like, capability. Do you know what I mean? But I think the the modern ones be a lot more In, like, an Android tablet or Okay. A Raspberry Pi or something, and it can just run websites and the real internal something. Do you know what I mean? But It's not a different heavily. Like, it changed a lot, like, over the past 5 year. The capabilities in the car was hugely different. And then as well, for a longer time as well, like, you've gotta think there was there wasn't any real competition in it. So all car manufacturers have the same sort of head units. And then people like Tesla came up or or Paulson or whoever. And it was like, gosh. Do we actually have to just get out Mhmm. Together now and start offering things that's important, you know what I mean, or Helpful to people. And it's actually kinda interesting how you say, like, like, if we go back to what you're talking about with the

rid. Communicating with the car and just sending data, and you have, like, a layer of glue on top of it. And, I the head units In most cars already work like that. And the reason being is that if you pull that like, I pulled the entire head unit out of our van, And then I I pulled the entire, heating system and all the controls and everything out of the van, and then I needed to go somewhere. So I drove it without the head unit or any of the Controls or anything. And I was like, can you drive it like that? And I was like, I don't know. I'll try. And it it does because, like, you you you have to, like, sort of separate, like, the brakes rid. And the steering wheel and, like, the, like, core car things from, like, running like, you're not gonna run that on the same system that you're rid. You're you're sending an Imessage emoji to somebody because those things probably shouldn't be mixed, and core things that are vital to running a rid. Automobile flying down the hall highway shouldn't be the same computer that's

running, like, all the silly stuff on your head unit. I think as well, it's it's not like It's not a huge stretch from, like, I worked at about a couple of months ago. I mean, you did a you saw a fulfillment video you did, and you have, like, a little Zebra scanner and your heat Yep. Stuff. Alright. Rid What what IoT is isn't a 1000000 miles from that, really. And it's like, I I my bigger job I mean, the the head unit thing was cool, but my main job was actually sort of rid Really visualizing whole facilities.

So the the industrial world works on PLCs. I don't know if you've ever worked with them, but they're little programmable.

It's a programmable logic controller, and they literally run the planet. Right? They're everywhere.

And they're built by companies like Siemens and Umron and Alan Bradley, these big monster companies.

And they're just really efficient, really low level. You usually run on little, Like, ARM, CPUs, and stuff like that. And they're programmed in, like, a PLC language, which looks like an electrical diagram.

Okay.

And they they can take, like, 24 volt inputs and give a 24 volt output, and it's that that is their connection. Lit literally a physical connection.

Rid But my main main role was sort of, like I said, visualizing these massive facilities, and part of it meant meant I had to interface with these PLCs. And And then like everything else, everything's different and all that sort of stuff. And I literally all I wanted out of that PLC was a run mode. So whether it was running, did it have a part in it? Maybe, like, 13 rid Different statuses and that which got delivered as an integer.

And once I've managed to actually do that, that was That was huge because it meant we could move away from, like, bespoke systems. You know what I mean? Mhmm. And that that sort of took the magic off, like, physical kit now. It was like, oh, we just We just take in the face of it. And I've I've wrote some stuff that was literally packet crafting. So we had to send a packet across UDP a certain Yeah. And it would it would just, like, terrifying in terms of security because it would just leave these splits, just split its guts. Just like, oh, there's all the information that you need. No questions asked. But, like, this is we we spent some time doing it. And and, again, just like everything, there is a library for this sort of stuff on MPM.

So we eventually moved to that sort of stuff. And then before I knew it, I was right I was I had, like, a whole, like, build like, lots of builds, rid in a web page, giving us real time updated information on its run mode, what fault it was having, how many parts it's built, all this sort of stuff. Do you know what I mean? And it was if the to Having that in the industry was, like, a huge thing because it meant we didn't have to work with, skater systems or SCADA system is something called, supervisory control and data acquisition system.

Mhmm. Yeah. It's a like, and then, again, it's bespoke, Highly licensed software from companies like GE and Siemens, and they cost 1,000, and they're running Java outlets. And it's just a like a Bit of software from its dead air type thing. I just never got updated.

And as a result, I just went hell for leather and replaced it all with web Technology as best I could. That's a that's yeah. That's amazing.

So, like, we briefly like, the word regulations briefly popped up, And and I know that, like, hardware wise, there's a huge amount of auto automotive regulations, that, like, rid. Rearview mirrors need to be a very specific way, and if they're not, it can't be sold in the US type of deal.

And so I'm wondering as, like, a software Person, when you're when you're experimenting with this stuff, like, how at the forefront of your brain is, like, what regulations you have to meet, rid

in legal and any of that stuff, is that, like, at the forefront? Not not necessarily because it's it's not a case of us, like, potentially doing, rid Like, I couldn't really tell a robot to put a wing mirror on at the wrong height. It's sorta hard coded in that sense.

And you have, like, an event that you saw you would in the PLCs, there would be a memory area, which is just a big group of variables, and you would really only sort of communicate with that. You could rid Force a PLC to take an input, and then it would act on that input.

But the way that where everything works in it, I imagine this is is probably true right across the world. You have, like, 2 parts of it all. So you have, like, a a part of it that runs the machines to build the cars or build whatever it is that you're building. Then you have a safety section of it, which is a safety PLC.

And these are, like, closed, and there is, like, real regulations to these. How fast the run, for example, is a rid So if there's any ever issue with the normal running PLC, the safety PLC would, like, kick in, drop all it out of the machine and stuff like that. But what it did actually mean is there's been a couple of times where, like, if I'm you know, when we we wrote the original iteration of it, I rid. I would pull the PLC too quick, and it I effectively Daedos the machine.

And it just then you like, the machine's, like, rid And that takes 20 minutes to walk to the machine. So but then you've got, like, production operators trying to recover it, and they cannot recover it because I've got a node service that's just hammering it with data. And Oh my gosh. Like these actual real world impacts where people can't do their job because you've, you've sent too many parts to the other one. So There there was that that that it is weird feel having, like, a visceral real world feeling Yeah. Especially when you you balls up your code and you're like, oh, it's not that bad. I'll just restart it. But then rid Someone someone someone down the road just kinda did the job, and you're like, oh, god. Oh. So yeah. Yeah. It's it's

a weird of the taking down the entire production line or something like that. I do think about, like, Tesla, though, because they do do like, you can put the color on From the touch screen and stuff. Like, that must be like, imagine the the kind of test you'd have to have in your software if you could, like, control the car

Wait. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I don't know. I actually don't know if there's, like I don't know if you do. Like, I think as long as well, if you when once you build them, I think as long as you have Overruling safety aspect of it, that as soon as something goes wrong, it, like, it's, like, a fail safe, and they just say, I'm not done. I just die. You know what I mean? I think the you can sort, like, get away with almost anything. And there's only a lot of real regulation around the safety aspect of it after, because I think regulators do worry about stifling innovation. And if you did see, oh, it has has to run this way and has to run that way, then you're on your, really. So As long as the safety stuff's in there, which is, like, a tried and tested method, especially in all walks of industry, I think you you're pretty much alright. I mean, didn't I mean, SpaceX put, like, People in space with a with a web page is, like, the interface. Or Yeah. Yeah. That would freak me out.

My software going into space. I don't know about that.

Yeah. The I think it was the the SpaceX dashboard rid was built in Vue, if I remember correctly. Oh, that's fun. And it's just like, wow. Like and that it it does make sense. If you think about, like, okay, we have rid All of these systems in a factory, a car, or a rocket ship, what is a good way to create a single UI rid. That can talk to all these different some of them are running on Siemens Technology, and some of them are running on an an Eaton. Rid What's the word you PLC that you said? PLC. Yeah. Programmable logical control. Yeah. Programmer so I've I've seen these before. I was watching a YouTube video and this girl bought these, old aircraft boxes rid. And, they were full of them. And I was like, what is Siemens logo? And I, like, googled it, and I was like, oh, that's kinda interesting.

And now that you're saying Sorry. I mean, to put in perspective, like, how big the PLC it's it's like the world's best kept secret. It's insane.

Like, PLCs are in everything from, like, traffic lights To heartbeat, one of those, the big the nuclear power plants. There was a I don't know if you've ever heard of the Stuxnet. Rid Malware, which was that's the Sammons that was an old Sammons PLC. That like that. Oh.

They're in every they're in everything. If you want an efficient, low level See if we're to, like, build physical machines, then that is that is how you're doing it. You're doing no PLCs. And there's a 1000000 people trying. Like, I'm that's one thing I never did. I thought I rid I I'm I'm definitely not able to ever replicate that device with a node service.

But there was a there's a 1,000,000 people who tried to put, like, soft PLCs, like a software version of a PLC. Yeah. You could you could, you could operate the PLC with soft with the Nord app, But there would have to be a physical PLC there doing doing the actual communication.

But they're they're everywhere.

And I suppose if you're sending your UI up to the space with Vue, you'd probably want some sort of error and exception handling service. You wanna be able to see When the the astronauts are pushing the wrong button and, causing your application to fail, well, maybe you want to send LogRocket into space with an actual rocket. So you wanna check out LogRocket logrocket.comforward/ syntax. It's a perfect place to see all of your errors and exceptions happen in a scribble video replay along with the network requests, rid. Error log and more.

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Thank you so much to LogRocket for sponsoring. Alright. So I'm I'm just think Looking at pictures of these PLC's and they they take in power, and then they have all these like outs to to them. And I'm I'm like, this looks like my sprinkler controller. Like, I Mhmm. Made sprinklers this summer.

And You made sprinklers?

Rid. I I I put sprinklers in at at our cottage and Yeah.

Those the sprinkler heads, in order to open, you have to put, rid. 24 volts to them, and then they will open up, and the water will flow through that specific one. And what's cool about it is if the Internet goes off, rid They still work because the the box itself has the logic

sitting inside of it. And for the next, rid. Like, 3 weeks or whatever. If Internet doesn't connect for 3 weeks, it will continue to run your what's called offline schedule. And rid Is that an example of a of a PLC where it's just opening and closing valves? Like, without knowing the make of it, I couldn't definitely see it, but I rid Guarantee it's some version of a PLC, and it'll be running a little alarm here. If it's if it's output in 12, like, 12 or 24 volt, generally, it's it's from a PLC. And And it's based on, like, an IO module.

So you've got inside there, there'll be a little program, like a logic sort of routine that it runs, At, like, nanosecond speed, and then when it eventually hits time, it'll say, alright, turn this output on, and the output is connected to a 24 volt output module.

Rid. Yeah. It sends sends electricity to it, man. So that's that is literally how the the world works, to be honest. Just just sending voltages.

And those are connected to literally anything, a motor.

Yeah. Inverters, motors, anything. Wow. And To be honest, it's even better now because I'd say it's taken over in your head. You're like, I could I could write, like, a web page for you. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, like, this is You think, like, oh, I need to buy a motor that is Wi Fi equipped.

But you say, no. No. No. No. I need to just buy a motor, and then I need to buy a PLC that I can connect rid to somehow over the Internet.

And do PLCs need to be specifically be smart, or Can you just connect to them? Some of them, they need an Ethernet interface, generally.

That's the the major issue you'll find is the really old ones didn't.

And then sometimes you'll find to sort of connect them together, they'll use Ethernet, and then you're sort of screwed because they've used the only port on the board. Rid They use, like, unmanaged switches and all that sort. So but as long as you can network interface into it, you'll almost certainly be able to get information out of it. If it's a really obscure one, you probably cannot. There's even, like, another layer to to the PLCs. There's this communication protocol called OPC, and it's, I can't 100% remember what it made it stands for, but basically, Microsoft and Saiman set it up years ago. And it basically just meant that any These PLC foundation devices can communicate with each other because there was bespoke communications events. So if you can't write code directly interface with the PLC, you You can put, like, an OPC server in that will almost certainly be able to communicate with it. Open platform communication.

Makes sense? Yep. That'll be it. Yeah. There's one from, like, Ketware, a big company like that. And some of them are expensive, but you can get open source versions of them.

There's a Node or PC application.

I don't remember which is pretty comprehensive as well. It works with quite a lot of PLCs.

Rid Yeah. You can and you you can get them out and get the data. Basically, all you would do from there is you might have to modify the logic on the PLC. If it's, like, a rid Yeah. If it's a a closed one where you can't, like, change the logic on the on the device, you might have a Difficult times sort of reading values out of memory areas and stuff like that, but most of the time, you should be alright. And you probably find someone's already done it on it in it somewhere.

On the Node RED forums, almost certainly someone's done it in Node RED. Yeah. Node RED is one of those platforms that I think pops up. Like, I I open Node RED's

node red dotorg at least, like, once a year and feel like, oh, I'm gonna do so much cool stuff and then never do that again. What that is? Yeah. Hey. I've got some background rid. Found information on where Node RED came from as well, the new Fez. Yeah. Yeah. Let's hear it. Let's hear it. Yeah. So, originally, I don't know if you've ever heard of IBM's Watson, the ER platform that they've got.

And that that was developed for car manufacturers, I I believe, in the I think they're partnered with BMW or something. They used to be able to detect, like, paint scratches in it and stuff like that. And then, obviously, what they found was when they went in all these buildings that getting data out of these things is almost impossible. We need a way to, like, almost a clutch plate for these things.

Rid so they came up with Node RED, what is now Node RED, and it it sort of lived its life as a closed IBM platform for a little bit, and then they eventually donated it to the JavaScript Foundation. And the same guy who developed originally I can't remember his name now. I think it might be Paul or someone. He still maintains it, and it's huge. And it's, like, really sort of industry rid Or, like, an automotive, but industry PLC, like, focused for JavaScript. And I'll be honest, it's it's one of the best tools I've abused in my life, to be honest.

Rid It's really simple. It means you can do stuff on the fly. You're not, like, rebuilding a service, pushing it through a pipeline, all that sort of stuff. It just sort of you make your changes, and then it rid So it gets deployed, and that's invaluable in that type of environment, especially when you're faffing over with loads of different numbers and memory areas and all that sort of stuff. Node rid. It has, like, it has a whole UI. Like, you can sort of click together stuff. So you imagine, like,

when my wise can detects motion, Then go ahead. It's sort of like a if this then that on steroids. So it has a UI for building those things, but I'm assuming it also has an entire back end for communicating with all kinds of different, rid

pieces of hardware. Right? Again, like, an MPM where it kill it comes with its own library, and a lot of them are like I say, industry focused. There's the Siemens PLC one. There's an Amram one. There's, Myskala one. There's there's hundreds and hundreds, and they're they're all sort of built on JavaScript And, you know, the and that's another benefit as well because eventually, you'll find your Node RED flair flows will get too big, and you're like, I may have turned this into an actual service. And because it's rid This transcript doesn't say it'll take long to record it, but but, yeah, the flow play the flow based program is also really helpful for people who A little bit more engineer industry or electrical engineer minded and then Yeah. Developer.

That speaks to them more than Just like a big list of invas code with lots of different colored words.

Because people just assume it's too hard for them as soon as they see code a lot of time. Whereas, Node RED is, I think it's a lot more friendly than to interact with at times. I'm I'm my mind is blown that JavaScript is so popular in

Industry, like you say. Like, I I would never have thought that. Like, yeah, JavaScript is for making web apps, you know? And and, like, of course, you can run robots on it and stuff like that. But, like, rid To hear that it's, like, actually being used in in, like, heavy industry is really cool. Is are there, like, other people who, like, don't think that is a good choice, or is there other languages that people might use? Python's probably the next popular one. Be it has British sometimes I feel like Python in in Node, at least, have read

Almost similar at times.

Python's quite a popular one just because of how accurate it is. So, like, there there is times where rid Nord maybe isn't the right choice. Like, if because some like, some places some machinery we use, they measure measuring, like, values down to microns and rid Operating at, like, insane speeds and you, you know, you you probably need something more focused than that in Python or C Sharp or even, In some cases, Java might be the way to go, but they're just the best generic, let's just get approved of concept work, and then maybe turn it into a full time service. Node is Is the way to go, like, there there is there's always that pushback from some of the extended development community where JavaScript shouldn't be used for everything.

Yeah. And I agree with that to some degree, but, honest, 95% of the time, isn't no one is the choice, to be honest. It is the best dish. Rid. I'll try.

I'll try first, and then if I have the right job, I'll write that.

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Do so okay. So let's say you were you were coming at this as somebody who's all of a sudden, like, wait. I can I can work with this kind of stuff? You do you have any personal recommendations on resources or links? How do you learn from people? Yeah. YouTube channels or rid that that you consume to learn more about this kind of tech? Because it it's all

very interesting, but very overwhelming at the same time. That that that I think that is the it's biggest issue is it isn't easy to get a new. These PLCs, for example, some of them are 1,000 and 1,000 of pounds worth of kit. Like, you can't just put 1 in your house. You know what I mean? It doesn't even Mhmm. Like, you can't plug it in. It needs, like, special power, all this sort of stuff. And as a result, accessibility is almost impossible. Unless you're in that environment, it's impossible.

But just in terms of, like, all like, physical automation, getting nodes to make your garage door open or Mhmm.

Being on the then Node RED, 100 a 110%. That forum in Node RED is unbelievable.

Like, I personally know some of the automation engineers who who were in there. Like, I've I've worked with them personally, and they're some of the best engineers I've ever worked with in my life. So it's it is a massive resource and it's filled with that like minded mentality.

But then after that, it's it's the other side of the outside of the Nord bit is it's electrical.

So rid Being an electrician is helpful or Yeah. At least knowing how not to get electrocuted is helpful, so things like that. But there there is a lot of In terms of PLC, like, all of the all of manuals are on on the Internet and stuff out there, they're difficult. And it's It isn't it certainly isn't easy, I see, without being exposed to it. And also, like, having that, like I'm I'm a bullet of a brick, and I'm just gonna try. Like, without that, it's it's difficult. Do you know what I mean? You have to sort of just sort of didn't see a lot of the time. Totally. And there isn't there isn't, Unfortunately, there isn't, like, a straightforward route on that. And I think that's probably IoT's major issue.

It it's it sounds like a really cool thing, having everything connected to everything, but you're like, well, how how the hell do we rid Even do that. You know what I mean? So Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. But if I re recommend someone to get started, Node RED forums And ask questions and Okay. And there's lots of really helpful people on that. Yeah. I'm sure just typing,

PLC into YouTube as well will will fire up.

PLC JavaScript, PLC Node. I'm sure somebody's done something. Yeah. PLC on Reddit as well. That's pretty helpful. Mhmm. Mhmm. Still even even even now, I think Node RED forums probably super helpful.

So if we go back to the Nissan head units, I don't even think like, what were you actually doing with the head units in JavaScript? Nothing. Just Nothing.

Rid Literally using it. I had the I the idea that what I wanted to do was, like, capture the as you drove the car. So it was sorta like, oh, but It's a delivery van. Let's just say, for example, and you wanna measure, like, your miles per gallon and, I don't know, miles per gallon, how did the speed limit, things like that. Right? Yeah. So you didn't wanna have to, like, put a little 4 g dongle in or anything like that. So it would just sort of capture the information as it as the the vehicle moved. And then as you got to, like, a a depot, it would offload that information, put it in a database, and then just, like, display it in Grafana, and it would just give you that So that was, like, the the idea I was sort of going for. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Unfortunately, I've got, like, the attention span of a gold of it. Yeah. Once I realized I know that. I could interface with it, I I I could get that information. I was like, indeed, I'm not really that bothered about data. And I just Yeah. I never pushed on with it, but rid It's insane to me that these things don't already exist. Like, I can't see the metrics of me car drive. Me vehicle driven. Even in even in, like, Google Maps, why isn't it Capturing these metrics. You know what I mean? Like, what what is the issue? But I don't know. It's it's insane. I think they probably will in the future, but it was more just like rid Like, you see that in them types of industries, obviously, they're always, like, striving for innovation and Yeah. You get you get incentivized to get it. So they They used to put these spaces in for you to mess around in, spend some time. But, like, as as well, I was, like, a like, the one of 6 systems engineer is in a plant of, like, 6,000 people. So Wow. I didn't have a lot of spare time to go mess around with. Mhmm. It wasn't even a full car. That was the worst thing. It wasn't even a full it was just Dashboard on a on a cheek in a office room. So

but yeah. Yeah. Put her in. I've been thinking about that myself.

Rid I was looking into the web Bluetooth API the other day because, generally, when you want to be able to interface with these things And put them in the web browser. You have to run like a node server in between them. So the node server will talk to the hardware. Rid. In my case, when I was doing the talking to the drone, I built this little node service and it just talked via UDP to the drone and the it it gave us information about How high it was, the battery level, roll, tilt, and yaw, which is the 3 axis.

And then you You basically just receive that data and node and then hot potato it over a WebSocket or something like that, to the browser. And in the browser, you can display it. And rid. I was looking the other day at web Bluetooth because I have one of those o b d two dongles, and it's Bluetooth. And I can connect an app and see car codes and things like that. But I was like, it wouldn't be cool to, like, connect directly to this thing from the web browser so we didn't have to build an intermediary service? But rid Web Bluetooth is is very far away from being,

stable or in all the browsers yet, so maybe soon. I think everyone sort of Thought Bluetooth was one day just gonna disappear. And it's even in its, like, 5th iteration, it's still not the greatest. No. I thought that was better than this. No. It's it's insane.

It's funny because the so the Nintendo Switch has Bluetooth for its controllers. Right? If anybody gets in between the controller and the system, they just drop out entirely.

How is there nobody come up with something better than this buy now? I know Bluetooth varies greatly in their different specs, but, like, rid Come on.

It's like it's a bare minimum level of communicate. Like, you have to get so many levels of communication protocol in that, like, class it as a control. I see it, like, we'll just We'll shoehorn Bluetooth in and then tell them it's working, and then it's just, like, the the worst version of Bluetooth that you can ever think of. I avoided it like a plague. I think, Blue any anytime I work with communication, it's it's gotta be the worst part. You'd probably you'd be better off doing an MQTT.

Assume it doesn't make a problem as a web sauce. I've never heard the MQTT.

I've never heard those letters in combination to it before.

It's Wait. What is that?

It's, this is another route. The standard of IoT messaging, Wes. MQTT. Yeah. It is. Right? It's it it is it's like, rid Is it like Kafka? That's been a long time since I worked at Kafka. It's basically it sends messages via a very specific address set, and there is a broker in the middle of it. And then it'll sort of sub send that message out to all its subscribers.

But it it is the the fastest messaging protocol I've ever I got we tested Well, once we had it doing, like, a 1000000 messages a second just on a on, like, a a normal server, it's insane in the past days. Oh, so that that's, like, an alternative to, like, WebSockets.

It's I'll I'll I'll recently in one of the apps I'm working on at the minute with the company I work for now, like, I've I've put websites in because I I forgot How bad WebSocket actually was.

And now I'm, like, already planning on putting an MQTT broker in and getting rid of it. It's one of them protocols that once you've used once, think I'm I'm not moving away from this. It makes so much sense.

It's really, really, really good. And can you talk to that in the in the in the browser then? There's not it doesn't go to someone like native, like, a native browser version of it. You know what I mean? But there's a you can put it you can put, like there's a Vue MQTT client and Mhmm. Servers. You can make an MQTT MQTT broker in node.

Okay. But I would recommend rid Using somewhat like AMQX, which is just, like, quite possibly the the most freest version of software I've ever seen in my life because it just, out of the box, is, like, production grade level. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Wow. But I would, yeah. Just mess around with MQTT. It's really good. Really good. Again, it's in it's like Node RED's Go to communication protocols. Really helpful. Oh, okay. It has, like, wildcards in the messaging.

So you can have, like, I don't know, staircase 1 then slash hash, and it'll listen to everything on staircase 1. Or you can be really specific and be, like, staircase 1 Step 3. Mhmm. And it will only listen to that, so it's it's pretty good, though. That's man, like, forget about listening for click events. Rid. Yeah. Let's talk about stepping on stairs here. Right?

That's awesome.

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Rid Our quest list of questions has grown exponentially since we started this. Unfortunately, that's like my I have, like, 8 tabs open right now full of, like, research that I'm rid definitely buying through. That's it's so interesting to me. I've got a full circle web.

Like, this is how Putting web technology on IoT, and then this is what you get on your feedback if you wanna hear that one. That's it's it's in-depth, but it's it's locked out forever, though, but It's, it has machine learning in it. It has GraphQL in it. It's got all, like, the mad node buzzwords in it. So what is this? Sorry. But when we originally put all that software in to sort of visualize the plan, one of the other benefits where we were starting to get, like, rid Invitations from company there was in particular, a company called Sensei. And they were like, oh, we can run machine learning on your machines and tell you if they got a feel. Right? And it's this theory of predictive maintenance.

And it's like, alright. So what do we have to do? And then it was like, well, you have to monitor your robots. Let's see a a fanning robot that has 6 axes, and these robots can pick things up and put them down so far. And the air that have, like, so individual turning axes on h one. Now if you monitor, in this particular case, the torque value on those axes and then send that data to the sensei, sensei will then run their special, machine learning on it and spot deviations, I guess.

And then they can be at the time, they could then display that information on their app And be like, oh, this is gonna be a failure.

A little bit along the line, they then also released their GraphQL, GraphQL API.

So as a result, my web page that I had node running on and visualizing the plan, I would then also pull information from a GraphQLQL server, Which had machine learning, predictive maintenance built into it, and that we could, like you could predict the failure in a robot, like, 400 hours Before it even happened and all this sort of stuff. And you're like, like, what you're like, from 1 like, in less than basically, like, maybe 2 year, we went from working with SCADA systems that had a run-in Java app, and you had to have a license key to run it to, like we're we're using GraphQL to tell us when a machine's gonna feel. It it was honestly, it was insane. Rid. That's because

because you have so much data on these robots, you can basically say, alright. This sucker failed after all of this. And then it it's rid The machine learning is smart enough to know. Okay. Well, I don't I don't know what kinds of things. Voltage

skips or or misses or something like that. Off. Yeah. Torque Valley. Okay. Okay. So, I mean, it used to it was, like, super sensitive as well. Like, it would get, like you have, obviously, on your robot, and you've got, like, a tool head on the robot, maybe a welding head or something like that. You have, like, obviously, cables running down the robot, and every now and then they would, like, get snagged in the jig or something like that. And, like, they would spot I would say you know what I mean? You'd get a spike and you'd get a little note of location saying, so much not right. So you would gun into the machine oh, sorry. Go into the machine, Open the door, and you'd say that the the harness would be damaged, like, oh, the harness is damaged. And it just meant that instead of fixing instead of replacing an entire harness, You're just sort of fixing, protective snag. You just put another you know, and cover up again. And then if it gets snagged again, it's it survives this time. Because if you didn't fix it last time, it would have snapped the harness.

So it it's it was in CS. So, like like I said, all of this web tech what we see is web technology rid Yeah. In full circle, and it's now literally it's now telling maintenance technicians when the Navy did the machine, and it's it it was huge.

Wow. That's nuts.

Rid It took a long time to get them to believe it. I I I once let a robot feel and, just to see if it worked. Because I was like I was like, like, you know, we're in work for Nissan. They must be an obscene amount of money for all this software and everything. Yeah. I was like, we we don't really know. I personally don't know if it works, and I let one of the robots feel. And I got the the I remember, like, the talk about it. They were, like, did Sensei sort of spot anything. I was like, it's spot it's spotted 6 weeks before I load.

And I was like, oh. I said, well, I need it approved that it would work. I'm sure it'll work. But, yeah, it's the predictive maintenance space is I think that that's a that'll be a Huge space in the future. The guys who who made the, made the Sensei thing, they're called Rob and Simon.

Like, they're really cool. They believe in their product and then all that sort of stuff. You know, it's but it's, it's the whole industry 4 point o Data driven manufacturing and all that sort of stuff. But, you know, I think web dev and web like,

Developers or just JavaScript developers in general, just you're always gonna be in more demand. Where you need it, it'll just get more and more interest and different than, rid You know, man, you'd be building all kinds of things, to be honest. Yeah. You know what? It's funny because we often talk about, like, finding whatever you're interested in. Like, I was interested in motion graphics before. So for me, animation is, like, a big key point when I I move in the web. But, like, based on what you're saying here, there seems like there's just, like, this Huge, tremendous other world that's not even on the visual web as we know it today, but you can utilize so many of these skills and technology. So if you're out there and you're thinking, While this stuff sounds amazing, I think there is a big opportunity and especially one coming to really get in on this stuff and and be rid Be that person because that it seems like this kind of tech is only going to be more prominent in industry positions and only more available in the job market. So

rid A lot of cool opportunities here if if this stuff's, sparking your brain. So, I mean, some of the people who I work with still now, like, you know, we've all eventually moved on from this sort But they've got, like, electrical engineering degrees, not Mhmm. Like, computer science degrees because they wanted to be, like, a controls engineer or, rid Like, the automation engineer, which is still automation engineering is still seen as seen as, like, really physical, like, fitting conveyor belts and robots and stuff like that. In reality, it's probably not gonna be. It's gonna be a lot of software. Mhmm. And it's it's gonna be a lot of code. You know what I mean? It's I think the sort of the node is JavaScript in general is is the best place because somewhat every company, I think, on the planet probably needs a developer. Even if you're just, like, a manufacture a fabrication unit would likely need a developer somewhere. Rid. Yeah. Always been on JavaScript. Right? It's the it's just Yeah.

I I keep I know I keep saying this, but it's it's crazy to me to think that. Like, yeah. Like, we we started seeing, I don't know. 5 or 6 years ago, we started seeing journalists get into code because in order to tell their story as a journalist, they needed to be able to to use code to to graphs and and whatnot. And then Mhmm. You see people who are into, like, data getting it, obviously. Or it's analytics rid. I I follow, like, several hockey people who are, like, talking about Python the other day, and they're like, I don't really know very much about Python, but I needed to Display this data. So I just, like, followed these tutorials, and now I'm building this out in r and whatever. And it's like,

wow. Yeah.

Everything really comes back to code. It's and now it's it's heavy industry. Like, I I remember a couple years ago, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, I was at a a conference with rid. A a guy, I'm like, so where do you work? He's like, I work at a elevator company. And I was like, what? And he's like, yeah. He's like, you we use JavaScript too. Like, the the elevator rid Self is written in, like, c or something like that. But but those are just those are just, like, parts that we buy, and then we communicate with the thing in in JavaScript. But I just never thought about that. Like, yeah, what does it what does an elevator run on? You know? Do you do you wanna hear something funny, Wes, is that my my neighbor

Is in defense contracting, and I don't know where he works, but there's a lot of that out here in Colorado. And he was he was, like, asking me about my job, and he was, like, so Can you tell me everything you know about Kubernetes? And I was just like, oh, boy.

It's like this much. I was actually impressed that he could pronounce Kubernetes. I was like, where did you even learn that word? Out of all the web words you could have thrown at me, Kubernetes.

It's I think that Every all the tech every level of tech as well, like, even sort of my friends who are network engineers, they are starting to learn they're getting into core. There's the whole rid developer movement thing where you're using, like, the law code thing. It it carry all of it. And it's all I think it's all gonna be ignored as well. I know we do the survey on start all the floor of the year, and You see different language, jostling them for position, but it's it's just so accessible. This MPM has everything. And if and someone's always worked on it, you know what I mean? It's rid It's a it's a huge thing to get into. And as well, it's not just, like, them industries that you spoke about. It's, like, energy industry, for example. Like, I've I've done stuff with wind farms.

A bit, like, a little bit in substation sort of stuff.

So it's it's gonna be there as well. And, I mean, renewables as well in particular is only gonna get bigger. Rid Yeah. And and all of all of those big fans and solo arrears, all of them run. Every single one of them has a PLC attached to it, And I've seen them, so if you can do it with 1 thing, you can deal with another.

So it's gonna get it. It's gonna get more. The amount of data you can track and even, like, I was telling Wes a little bit about I have this, like, workout device that can, like, automatically tune your weight, like, mid lift. So if you're, like, halfway through a lift and it recognizes that you're struggling, it will decrease it by fractions of a pound, let alone a pound. And then just enough for you to get over that hump. And it's like, holy cow. The and this is, like, what, 2 years into this product. So You'd imagine once they have more data about the optimal way to do everything anywhere, they could tune that stuff so hyper focused. But the more data you have, The more you're able to, like, totally control that flow. I mean, it's just so endless. It it it's mind blowing. And, you know, You know, there's very little words you can put into place to say, like, well, there's infinite amount of things you could possibly do here. And if you have the mind that's Bright enough to really go down some of those rabbit holes. You could really, really find yourself out in some interesting places. The next level of that, really, is, oh, you You need to drop it by 2 and a half

kilo in in the UK, for example, that lift. Mhmm. But also, you need to cool your air your aircon by 3 degrees, And it just automatically gives it to you because we've got it all attached to the PLC. So Tracking your heart rate, tracking your your form positions, and yeah. You know, it's gonna be wild. Well, Wes is gonna have everything on a node server and see it now, and he said he's he's already taken it off. I see. I I got the zebra printer done. I can get everything printed. I can I have an opening of my doors when I get within 3 meters of your house? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the the very basic thing I'm thinking about now is, at our cottage, we have,

this 1 room that's heated by electric. The rest of the the house is is heated by gas. But there's one that's heated by electric and they they run on these 240 volt Heaters, which is like we don't we don't normally have much stuff that's 240 here in in North America. Yes. And I was like, it's annoying because I rid. The kids can get to the knobs and everything, so I'm like, I wish I had, like, an easier way to turn this on and off. And right now, I just go to the breaker and turn it on and off. And I was like, I need to con If I ever forget this before we leave, then I have to get a neighbor to go turn it off, and it's annoying. I was like, yeah. I need, like, some sort of relay that can handle two forty that is connected to the to the Internet.

It does exist. There there is there are types of things. You know what I mean? You can definitely get them. I wouldn't wouldn't recommend is, like, having, like, a, like, a salatyp hand on a little sort of broom that would just turn the brick over manually. Please get, like, a, Like a real switch that does it, but, yeah, you can get stuff out.

I mean, at the simplest I mean, is it it must be hardwired to the fuse boxes if you've gotta do it by the breaker. It doesn't have, like, a lot of, like, rid because you can just get an eye. Let's see. It's hardwired.

Into the it was an old, like, wood shop, which is the guy just had, like, his own heating for it. And, I don't like I don't like the kids being able to turn it on and off because they could put a stuffed animal in front of it and things like that. So I just turn it on and off myself, so it'd be kind of neat to rid. To hook it up to that. And there's so many things, like our our fireplace, our gas fireplace. I would love to be able to return. I think I'm still not sure rid. About connecting fire to the Internet. Yeah. That's that's where I tap out. Yeah. There's a few things. It's like fire,

blades. Like, I'm not about to get, like, a smart, lawnmower? No. Thank you. Yeah. If it's got anything you can harm me slice it up. Yeah. Yeah.

You're about I think if you I mean, You almost certainly find all of the parts that you need to do. All of these projects, like, on, like, RS, you're gonna end up having to set yourself up, like, a full business account to get, Like electric breakers and all the rest of it. It's a never ending loop of and then you you'll get to a point where, Like, in my house, for example, nothing is IoT at all because Oh. I've spent I've spent that. Yeah. That's a good question.

I've spent, like, rid Like, I remember once I had, like, a 36 hour breakdown, and we we spent it there in the front trying to fix it and recover it and you know what I mean? I just think I just wish it was a normal door handle or it's not connected to Google servers. I just wanna turn my heat on when I'm on.

Yeah. And there's like a home Homebridge. Is that like the the main there's like a yeah. That like the enthusiast. Bridge. No. There's there's one that's, like, enthusiast you can install on the Synology and and, like, really or Raspberry Pi or something. It's like, I would do that, but, like, then that's, like, turning into a full time job to manage manage your work. Explain it, like, explain it to the wife in. You're like, no. No. You don't you don't turn the heat on by this. You've gotta use your phone now and try to Yeah. For the heat. That's my rule of thumb is that everything smart rid. Still must be dumb.

So I don't want I I need regular people to be able to turn on and off the lights, which like, we had 1, like, a security camera that you couldn't turn the switch off. Rid. And we just put a piece of tape over it. It says do not turn off, and people come and turn it off. So, like, I ended up popping the cover off and hardwiring on because you don't ever need to turn it off. But, like, that's really funny that you, who is into this, has nothing rid IoT at your house.

It's it's sort of it's like the behind, like, the smoke and mirrors. Like, once I once I knew this and I've learned it all, and And I've done it, and I've done it on, like, a, like, a decent sized scale. I was, like, it's not that exciting. It wasn't that interesting anymore. Just the idea of, like, getting my laptop out and The little Raspberry Pi and Mhmm. Coordinate and all this. I'm like, I love it. Yeah. Watch the telly and And

To be honest, I still I play, like, mod like Minecraft, and I'll play, like, automation packs in Minecraft. Like, there's something really satisfying about all main things. There's something funny. Like, My my son is 4 years old, and, like, he's discovered Minecraft. He can't really play it, but he loves it. And so because of that, I've had to, like, rediscover Minecraft. And I it is. It's so relaxing.

He and I can actually play and, like, talk about, You know,

the actual things that make it more than just a video game, and it's a little bit educational, but it's also super relaxing and creative and all that stuff. Yeah. I love Minecraft. There's a lot like, we've we've I play with my son sometimes with different mod packs, but, like, all of it, like I said, automation. We play with, like, Factorio and Satisfactory, and And, like, sometimes I have to sort of sort of I'm like, I I used to do this for 11. Like, Yeah. This is programming.

This is programming. Doing this bad time as well.

Rid well, is there anything else before we wrap this up? Anything else you wanna touch on?

We could talk for hours on this. No. You okay. Just one of them things you can go for a minute. If you ever wanna get any advice on any automation projects, just give us a shout, and I'll I'll be happy to get involved with you.

That's awesome.

Alright. Let's move into some sick picks. Sick picks are the section of the show where we pick things that are rid Sick.

I don't know if, you came prepared or not with the sick pick, did you? I've got 1. Alright.

So the obviously, in the in our game, there's just constantly new stuff and articles and all that sort of stuff, and there's a little Chrome extension that I use, And I'll I'll read it every single tier and it's I don't know. You might have said it before, but it's daily.dev.

And it just brings up, like, your little homepage is sorta Just well thought out stories, and you can sort of avoid them and stuff like that. And it's just it's it's saved us from, like, reading rid So just separate websites like dev.2 and all this sort of stuff. It's literally just there for us, and I think I recommend the army team to put it on because it's helpful.

It's pretty good. I use it every day. I'm sure this is great. No.

Yeah. Super into this. Cool. Yeah. I'll check this out.

Rid. My sick pick today is going to be an app, one that you might like, Wes. This is, called an app called Spotless. It's for the Mac.

And what you would do is you set up file automations.

So you can say, like, if this file has been in my downloads folder for more than 7 days, Automatically move it based on its file type or it's Oh, yeah. Or something. There's auto tidying and desktop stuff.

There's automation stuff, but then there's also, like, Just general tasks that can run every once and again.

I I just found that, like, you know, it's funny. I'm moving files over from my old MacBook Pro to this new one, and I'm thinking, man, this new one is so clean and organized. And here I'm dropping in, you know, 200 files into the downloads folder from another downloads folder. That is probably not great. Like, let me just, like do I really need all this stuff? No. So, rid. Yeah. I'm trying out this app, and it's really pretty. I'm just on the demo mode still, so I haven't even paid for it yet or anything. But so far, it seems pretty neat, and

I definitely am need of something like this in my life. So it's called Spotless. I've been liking it for the 3 days that I've been using it, and, it seems pretty neat. I'm going to Sick Pick. I I can't remember if I Sick Pick these or not, but I I really like them especially for little fiddly low voltage products. These are called lever nuts. Rid. So if you're doing any sort of electrical, it's kind of, kinda works well.

In in Canada, at least, The way that people connect wires is via these things called they're called Marrettes in Canada, but they're called wire nuts around the world. And you basically stick your wires in and you rid. Them down, and they they're connected together. And you hope they don't fall off.

Yeah. You hope they they're they're great. They're they're cheap. They they're pretty pretty good.

Rid. The problem is if you're taking stuff apart on and off, on and off, specifically when I was doing the wiring for my low voltage, sprinkler controller, rid. I have to be able to take this thing off every year, and I have to disconnect, like, 9 different wires.

So I use these little things that are called Wago lever nuts. Rid. They're they're rated for, like, 2 20 volt, if if you want to.

There's some on Amazon that are not CSA approved, so please don't wire your house with these. Get the the proper ones. Make sure they're they're code compliant and whatnot. But For low voltage projects, when I'm just doing stuff with batteries or, 24 volt, things like that, these things are awesome because you just basically, you lift up the wire, rid. You strip the wire, you put it in and you snap down. I just snapped it into the microphone.

You snap them down. Rid And it's just such a simple way to to do wiring, especially for things that you're taking on and off frequently. So check it out. The the The industry name for them is called Wago Lever Nuts.

And, again, make sure that they are approved. I haven't done any rid. Any house wiring with them yet just yet because I, but all of my low voltage stuff have been doing it, and it's been great. I've worked with, Wago store before. Have you? Yeah.

That's I I think I remember watching some, like, YouTube videos, and whenever the, English people, they are using them. Is that what You use, or do you use WireNuts over there as well?

Most of the stuff we like, we there is lots of this sort of stuff as well, but, like, generally, it's all, like, dim rail Tim Reel mounted. I can't remember the name of them. Mhmm. They're about 5. And they're like it is like a push fit cable. Oh, yeah. 1 on the bottom, one at the top. Rid

be a push for the cable, and you push it in, yeah, and tighten them down so fast. But, yeah, we got we got loads of different stuff for that. Rid Cool. Yeah. Interesting stuff. Let's move into some shameless plug. I'll shamelessly plug all my web development courses. So, we learned today, JavaScript. You need to learn it regardless of if you want to be turning a motor on or, building a website. So check out, my beginner javascript.com course, that will teach you everything you need to know about using JavaScript.

And you can use the coupon code syntax for an extra $10

off. Cool. I'm gonna shamelessly plug every course on level uptutorials.comleveluptutorialsdot is the perfect place to learn a ton of stuff, web based technology, whether you're building static sites or full on Just interactive sites with Svelte or Vue or React. Check it out. Leveluptutorials.com.

You got a a shameless plug for us? Anything you unplug? Yeah. I've I've plugged my Twitter,

at amp, at Rogan FPS on Twitter. And if you like people swearing about JavaScript on Twitter.

It's probably the pinnacle Twitter to follow.

But, yeah, Rogan FPS on Twitter. Awesome. Well, thank you Thank you so much for coming on. This was super interesting. I my mind is flying with ideas right now as to what I could do. I need to get a little Little setup going just so I can test out these things pretty neat. Yeah. I know. I'm my mind's racing. Thanks so much for, stopping by and sharing some of your knowledge.

It's been it's been a genuine pleasure, lads. Thank you very much. Alright. Thanks again. Talk to you later. Talk to you later. See you later. Peace.

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Rid.