I started programming a in 2020 during the pandemic. I caught covid19 and had some time off work so I decided to try and learn how to program. I started out with the MIMO app on IOS which then led me to Tech With Tim on YouTube where I started being able to write some simple programs on my own in python.

First Project - MagicMirror: I decided to make my girlfriend a Christmas present with these new found skills and settled on a smart mirror. I ended up using the MagicMirror opensource code for this. This presented me with a new language, JavaScript. I edited the code for my use case and added some custom modules to really make it my own. I then learned about bash scripting since I wanted the mirror to double as a digital photo frame when not actively being used for the smart mirror functionality. I added a motion sensor to the mirror and wrote a bash script to handle the input of the sensor. This allowed for the MagicMirror app to auto-start, display screensaver after 5 minutes of no input on the motion detector, and wake when motion detector pin went high.

Continuing Development - Power Automate and PVA: Since those early days I have started using power automate for work stuff. I automated several repetitive administrative tasks and even built a chatbot with PVA to serve as a resource to my fellow field technicians at work. The chatbot connects users with qualified colleagues for tech support, provides a safety contact timer for high risk scenarios, looks up parts in the field, provides the user with their personal inventory manifest, provides user's with relevant contract snippets for accounts they may be servicing, allows users to get links to various company resources, and a few other things as well.

Training Aid-Dual EOL Resistor Simulator: I've also written a training aid program for technicians that acts as a simulator for double resistor (Dual EOL) alarm circuits. I built this using python and the pygame library. It is a fully self-contained program that the user downloads as an exe.

Going Full Stack-Heat Map Generator: My only full stack web application is a "Heat map generator" that allows supervisors at my company to input the name of a customer (institution, commercial business), city, and state to get a kmz file downloaded to their computer for viewing in google earth. It's a website hosted in Azure and utilizes a Google Places API. The front end is html/css/and JavaScript where as the backend is python utilizing Flask and several other libraries.

I'm still just doing this in my spare time as more of a hobby than anything, but I would love to go full time one day once my skill level has advanced enough to do so.