The Urgent and Important Work of DevOps

    I just released a blog post on the Daugherty blog, titled "The Urgent and Important Work of DevOps." It can be read here.…


    Amazon Echo and EV3 pt 3 - The EV3 Control Application

    This is part 3 of a 3 part series on controlling a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 using an Amazon Echo. Part 1 is available here. In earlier blog posts, I presented the overall architecture for controlling a Lego EV3 with an Amazon Echo (Alexa) device, and I detailed the Amazon and…


    Amazon Echo and EV3 pt 2 - The Amazon Components

    This is part 2 of a 3 part series on controlling a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 using an Amazon Echo. Part 1 is available here. In the last article, I outlined the overall architecture of the Amazon Echo to EV3 interface. As noted in the high-level diagram below, a large percentage…


    Controlling a Mindstorms EV3 with Amazon Echo

    This past Christmas my oldest son received a LEGO Mindstorms set as one of his gifts. Mindstorms is a fantastic platform for teaching kids about programming and robotics. With his set he can build color-sensing rovers, "seeing" robots that can navigate through a room, and all kinds of other devices…


    Welcome to my blog

    Welcome to my little slice of the Internet. I've had the jimdrewes.com domain since 2002, and this blog represents my current professional progression. Early on, jimdrewes.com was little more than a pre-Facebook way for my college buddies and I to post random messages, links, and pictures to one…