An Organized Space for Programming, Writing, and Soldering

Photo 1—This is Anderson’s desk when he is not working on any project. “I store all my ‘gear’ in a big plastic bin with several smaller bins inside, which keeps the mess down. I have a few other smaller storage bins as well hidden here and there,” Anderson explained.

Photo 2—Here is Anderson’s area set up for soldering and running his oscilloscope. “I use a soldering mat to protect my desk surface,” he says. “The biggest issue I have is the power cords from different things getting in my way.”

Al Anderson’s den is the location for a variety of ongoing projects—from programming to writing to soldering. He uses several plastic bins to keep his equipment neatly organized.

Anderson is the IT Director for Salish Kootenai College, a small tribal college based in Pablo, MT. He described some of his workspace features via e-mail:

I work on many different projects. Lately I have been doing more programming. I am getting ready to write a book on the Xojo development system.

Another project I have in the works is using a Raspberry Pi to control my hot tub. The hot tub is about 20 years old, and I want to have better control over what it is doing. Plus I want it to have several features. One feature is a wireless interface that would be accessible from inside the house. The other is a web control of the hot tub so I can turn it on when we are still driving back from skiing to soak my tired old bones.

I am also working on a home yard sprinkler system. I laid some of the pipe last fall and have been working on and off with the controller. This spring I will put in the sprinkler heads and rest of the pipe. I tend to like working with small controllers (e.g., the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoard’s BeagleBone, and Arduino) and I have a lot of those boards in various states.

Anderson’s article about a Raspberry Pi-based monitoring device will appear in Circuit Cellar’s April issue. You can follow him on Twitter at @skcalanderson.