KWLUG Meeting: Monday, February 3, 2025, 7pm

Home Assistant for Weather Monitoring, Custom Live CDs

Meeting Date

Khalid Baheyeldin will follow up on his November 2024 presentation on internal climate monitoring with a presentation on using Home Assistant to monitor weather conditions outside his house, such as lightning strikes and thunderstorm distances. He will discuss Home Assistant integration with rtl_433 to decode radio transmissions,  with devices such as La Crosse and AcuRite weather stations, and with WeeWX for statistics. 

Spencer Hughes will discuss remastering Live CD distributions. He writes:

I will be discussing creating a project I wrote for creating custom Debian and RHEL-based Live CDs and going over some of the potential uses for customized live CDs.

 

In-Person Social: Wednesday, Jan 22, 2025, 7pm

Dinner at J&B Family Restaurant, Downtown Kitchener

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at J&B Family Restaurant in downtown Kitchener, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Wednesday.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The restaurant is located at 79 Victoria St N in Kitchener, near the corner of Victoria and Duke Here is a map

There is parking in front of the restaurant. The nearest City parking lot is at Hall Lane.

Normally you can probably just show up, but this is our first time at J&B and they are a small place. If you plan to attend please make sure to RSVP to dinner@kwlug.org, so the organizers can make an accurate reservation. If you know what you plan to order from the menu, please include your order as well so the restaurant staff can prepare food in advance.

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, Jan 6, 2025, 7pm

Local DNS, Cool Tools

Meeting Date

Thomas Busch will show us how to set up a local DNS server. He writes: 

Learn how to build and manage a reliable local DNS infrastructure using synchronized AdGuard Home instances. This session will cover practical deployment methods, configuration examples, and best practices for maintaining a private, secure DNS environment.

A number of KWLUG members will show off some cool tools:

  • Jeff Smith will demonstrate mkvmerge and mkvextract
  • Shravan Dwarka will demonstrate some bash scripting.
  • Tim Laurence will demonstrate nmap
  • Andrew Cant will demonstrate using Lua in Neovim

 

File Attachments

Attachment Size
Local DNS with AdGuard Home Slides 591.01 KB
Bash-Scripting.pdf 1.77 MB

In-Person Social: Monday, December 16, 2024, 7pm

Dinner at Crabby Joe's, Downtown Kitchener

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Crabby Joe's in downtown Kitchener, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Monday.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The restaurant is located at 70 King St E in Kitchener, at the corner of King and Frederick St. Here is a map

Parking is free in the Crabby Joe's parking lot with purchase. The waitstaff will scan your ticket when you leave, which will permit you to leave the parking lot for free. In addition, parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots are at 40 Ontario St S, or 5 Charles St E.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org 

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, December 2, 2024, 7pm

WatGPU, Open WebUI

Meeting Date

Lori Paniak will discuss the WatGPU project, which clusters GPUs together for research computation purposes.

Sam Zhang will discuss Open WebUI, a user-friendly AI interface, focusing on using the API for online use, and its unique functionalities.

 

File Attachments

Attachment Size
KWLUG_WATGPU.pdf 619.15 KB
Open-WebUI.pdf 48.77 KB

In-Person Social: Wednesday, Nov 20, 2024, 7pm

Dinner at Ethel's Lounge, Uptown Waterloo

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Ethel's Lounge in Uptown Waterloo, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Wednesday.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The restaurant is located at 114 King Street North in Waterloo, at the corner of King and Young St East. Here is a map

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org 

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, Nov 4, 2024, 7pm

PrivacySafe, HomeAssistant for Indoor Climate Monitoring

Meeting Date

Mikalai Birukou will give us an update on his platform PrivacySafe.

Khalid Baheyeldin will discuss how he uses Home Assistant to monitor the climate inside his home, including humidity, radon VOC, and CO2. The talk will also include details on how Home Assistant integrates with Mosquitto for MQTT, long-term data storage using InfluxDB, and data visualization with Grafana

In-Person Social: Monday, Oct 21, 2024, 7pm

Dinner at Kentucky BBQ, Uptown Waterloo

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Kentucky BBQ in uptown Waterloo, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Monday.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The restaurant is located at 103 King Street North in Waterloo, at the corner of King and Young St East. Here is a map

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org 

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, October 7, 2024, 7pm

Proxmox, Infrastructure as Code

Meeting Date

Colin_ will discuss the virtualization platform Proxmox. He writes:

In this demonstration, I'll show how to set up a Proxmox cluster with High Availability using a stack of older Mac Minis, a Raspberry Pi, and a network switch. The presentation will highlight Proxmox's simplicity and reliability in a simulated home network environment, providing insights into its practical applications and benefits.

Spencer Hughes will talk about infrastructure as code tools. He will give us a high-level discussion on the benefits of using infrastructure as code tools and principles, as well as potential opportunities for implementing infrastructure as code in the home lab.

 

In-Person Social: Wednesday, Sept 25, 2024, 7pm

Dinner at Crabby Joe's, Downtown Kitchener

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Crabby Joe's in downtown Kitchener, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Wednesday.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The restaurant is located at 70 King St E in Kitchener, at the corner of King and Frederick St. Here is a map

You can park in the restaurant parking lot -- staff will give you a voucher for parking. Otherwise, parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots are at 40 Ontario St S, or 5 Charles St E.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org 

Update: Here is a picture of the festivities.

 

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, Sept 9, 2024, 7pm

YouTube Download Tools, Mosquitto

Meeting Date

Sam Zhang will follow up his July presentation on download managers with a discussion about video downloading tools. He will cover the death of youtube-dl, the rise of yt-dlp, as well as commandline usage and configuration for these tools.

Gordon Dey will tell us about his journey of getting a transceiver working with the MQTT publish/subscribe server Mosquitto

 

In-Person Social: Monday, August 26, 2024, 7pm

Dinner at Crabby Joe's, Downtown Kitchener

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Crabby Joe's in downtown Kitchener, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Monday, and that it is being held at the same location as last month's restaurant meetup.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The restaurant is located at 70 King St E in Kitchener, at the corner of King and Frederick St. Here is a map

Parking is free in the Crabby Joe's parking lot with purchase. The waitstaff will scan your ticket when you leave, which will permit you to leave the parking lot for free. In addition, parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots are at 40 Ontario St S, or 5 Charles St E.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org 

 

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, Aug 12, 2024, 7pm

Digital Displays, LibreOffice Macros

Meeting Date

Michael Free will discuss how he put together a digital signage player using common Linux utilities and bash scripts. He will discuss using Debian preseeding for automatic installation, packaging deb files, using Cockpit to manage digital signs, and Ansible for automation.

Mikalai Birukou will tell us about how to automate things using macros in LibreOffice. He writes:

The world is run on spreadsheets. We'll dissect the awesomeness of spreadsheets, making a macro or two in LibreOffice. LibreOffice has a trick for automation, which we'll use for live coding and checking our instructions to the office. Bring a laptop with LibreOffice on it for this hands on session. Macros will be in Basic, and live commands in Python -- you'll have a refresher on the way.                                
                                                                             
I used as a reference a book by Andrew Pitonyak.

In-Person Social: Wednesday, July 24, 2024, 7pm

Dinner at Crabby Joe's, Downtown Kitchener

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Crabby Joe's in downtown Kitchener, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Wednesday.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The restaurant is located at 70 King St E in Kitchener, at the corner of King and Frederick St. Here is a map

You can park in the restaurant parking lot -- staff will give you a voucher for parking. Otherwise, parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots are at 40 Ontario St S, or 5 Charles St E.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org 

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, July 8, 2024, 7pm

Linux Upskill Challenge, Linux Download Tools

Meeting Date

Livia Lima will discuss her educational project Linux Upskill Challenge. She writes:

Linux Upskill Challenge is a month-long course for those who want to learn more about how to operate a Linux server, such as Linux users who aspire to get Linux-related jobs in industry, and Windows server admins who want to expand their knowledge to be able to work with Linux servers. However, many others have happily used the course simply to improve their Linux command  line skills or to learn Linux for the first time - and that's just fine too!  
                                                                             
The course always starts on the first Monday of the month. The material is delivered in 20 bite-sized lessons, one each workday, posted on Reddit, Lemmy and Discord, where other students share experiences and help each other.

Sam Zhang will discuss some download tools he uses for Linux, including wget, curl and aria2.

File Attachments

Attachment Size
Linux Upskill Challenge Slides 479.12 KB

In-Person Social: Monday, June 17, 2024, 7pm

Dinner at Crabby Joe's, Downtown Kitchener

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Crabby Joe's in downtown Kitchener, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Monday, and that it is being held at the same location as last month's restaurant meetup.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The restaurant is located at 70 King St E in Kitchener, at the corner of King and Frederick St. Here is a map

Parking is free in the Crabby Joe's parking lot with purchase. The waitstaff will scan your ticket when you leave, which will permit you to leave the parking lot for free. In addition, parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots are at 40 Ontario St S, or 5 Charles St E.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org 

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, June 3, 2024, 7pm

Matrix, Pioreactor

Meeting Date

Hubert Chathi is a developer for Matrix, a real-time communications protocol that supports end-to-end encrypted decentralized communication. Hubert last told us about Matrix in 2019, and now he will tell about what is new and exciting in the Matrix world.

Cam Davidson-Pilon is the co-founder and CEO of Pioreactor, a local startup that creates low-cost and accessible bioreactors for culturing cells in 20mL vials. He will tell us about how the Pioreactor works from both a biological and hardware perspective, how his company uses Linux and Raspberry Pi devices, and how they design software tools for controlling multiple Pioreactors simultaneously.

In-Person Social: Wednesday, May 22, 2024, 7pm

Dinner at Crabby Joe's, Downtown Kitchener

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Crabby Joe's in downtown Kitchener, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Wednesday.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The restaurant is located at 70 King St E in Kitchener, at the corner of King and Frederick St. Here is a map

Parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots are at 40 Ontario St S, or 5 Charles St E.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org 

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, May 6, 2024, 7pm

Intro to Linux, SQLPage

Meeting Date

Jason Paul will run through a five minute "Introduction to Linux" talk he is preparing. There will be plenty of time for feedback and discussion afterwards.

Anton Avramov and project founder Ophir Lojkine will discuss SQLPage, a web templating engine that allows you to safely define webpages using only SQL queries. Ophir will give us a prerecorded introduction to the software, and then Anton will go through some demonstrations and take questions.

Update: Ophir's introductory presentation can be viewed on Youtube: https://youtu.be/9NJgH_-zXjY

 

 

In-Person Social: Monday, April 15, 2024, 7pm

Dinner at the Duke of Wellington Waterloo

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at The Duke of Wellington Pub in Waterloo, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Monday.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The pub is located at 100 King St S, in Uptown Waterloo. Here is a map. There is parking at Waterloo Town Square or at the Uptown Waterloo Parkade, and easy mass transit access on the ION.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org