Automated Cat Deterrent with Frigate, ESPHome, and Home Assistant
I made a small Home Assistant system that detects cats in the backyard with Frigate and turns on a sprinkler for 30 seconds.
Stephen Tierney
Lecturer, data scientist and software engineer in Sydney, Australia.
Latest posts
ESPHome HW211 Component
I published an ESPHome external component for HW211-family heat pump controllers, generating local Modbus sensors and optional controls for Home Assistant.
Heat Pump Hot Water Wi-Fi Adapter
I replaced the proprietary Wi-Fi module in my heat pump hot water system with a local ESPHome adapter built using a Waveshare ESP32-S3-RS485-CAN module.
Cloud-Free PETKIT Feeder
I converted a PETKIT Fresh Element Mini dry food dispenser to run locally with ESPHome, removing the need for a cloud connection.
Disk Shelf Fan Controller
I added an ESPHome fan controller to my disk shelf, using a DS18B20 temperature probe, PWM fan control, and a small script to log HDD temperatures.
Room Controllers
I turned my ESPHome LVGL light touchpads into reusable room controllers for lamps, weather, screen sleep, and per-room aircon control.
ESPHome Weekly Roundup: 4th May
ESPHome weekly roundup for 4 May: Maxi1134's highly suspicious bed presence project using 16 load cells, HX711 sensors, and Home Assistant.
SydPy: Taking Back the Streets
I spoke at SydPy about open navigation, NaviLens, and using Python to build a free alternative for resolving navigation tags in public spaces.
Teaching at Scale - UNSW Seminar
Alison Wong and I gave a UNSW seminar on teaching at scale, sharing strategies for active learning, tutorial support, marking, and programming education.
ESPHome Weekly Roundup: 27th April
ESPHome weekly-ish roundup from Discord: BLE MIDI Remote for ESPHome, SnapSpot, and RealDeco's Sendspin Headphones.
ESPHome Weekly Roundup: 18th April
ESPHome weekly roundup for 18 April: a tiny Sendspin speaker amplifier, ESPControl for smart home touch pads, and esphome-zerocode.
Evening Lights with Ambient Lux
I updated my Home Assistant evening lights automation to use the ambient light sensor from my Ecowitt weather station, so the lamps turn on when it is actually dark.
Ecowitt Weather Station
I set up an Ecowitt weather station locally with WSView Plus and Home Assistant, then mounted the WS69 sensor array above the greenhouse.
Rocket Lamp
I converted a strange looking mains powered lamp to be USB-C powered and programmable using ESPHome.
Smart Soy Light
I converted a Heliograf soy sauce lamp into a Home Assistant controlled smart light using ESPHome.
Single Image Blind Parameter Recovery
I developed a selection procedure for image formation and solver hyperparameters for image restoration tasks, which removes the need for hand tuning. I provide a proof that the estimator is unbiased and derive estimator variance, confidence bounds and provide guidance on practical usage.
ASCILITE Innovation Award and Allan Christie Innovation Award
Alison Wong and I were awarded both the Innovation Award and Allan Christie Innovation Award at ASCILITE 2025 for our Karel initiative.
Empowering women to code: Playful learning with Karel
This paper presented at ASCILITE 2025 discusses how our Karel initiative is empowering women in programming.
Taking Back the Streets: NaviLens and the Fight for Open Navigation
I presented at the Data and AI track of PyCon AU 2025 about the potential problems of NaviLens. Video here.
wyoming-whisper-intel
I assembled a docker container or wyoming and whisper on intel GPUs. It is built on the intel/oneapi-basekit container.
Rathole Maintainer
I became a maintainer of the rathole project, which is a secure, stable and high-performance reverse proxy for NAT traversal, written in Rust.
caddy-hostnames
I released caddy-hostnames, which automatically publishes .local hostnames from Docker containers via mDNS using Caddy-Docker-Proxy .
freelens
This project provides a reference implementation of NaviLens and ddTag for educational or personal use.
Enhancing Programming Ability with Playful Learning and Karel
Alison Wong and I presented at the Education track of PyCon AU 2024 about our use of Karel to increase in confidence, interest and ultimately ability in programming. Video here.
Wayne Lonergan Award for Outstanding Leadership in Teaching
Alison Wong and I were awarded the University of Sydney Business School (USBS) Wayne Lonergan Award, which is the most competitive teaching award in the school and is accompanied with a $10,000 AUD prize. We were awarded for leading significant initiatives in modernising programming education, which has impacted over 10,000 enrolments in courses we have coordinated and over 7,000 enrolments in…
Update: Visualisations and Generalisations for Two Candles, One Cake
I've updated a previous post on the Two Candles, One Cake problem by providing new visualisations and generalisation ability.
Update: Too Many Guns
I've updated the Too Many Guns site to use MapLibre and partial property updates. The later change removes the need for client side callbacks.
Playful Extra-Curricular Learning In Programming Education
Alison Wong and I presented at the University of Sydney Business School Learning and Teaching Forum about our project using Karel to help students visualise code execution and encourage students to practise programming.
Playful Extra-Curricular Learning In Programming Education
I spoke at a Business Analytics 'Brown Bag' with Alison Wong about our project using Karel to o help students visualise code execution and encourage students to practise and develop their programming skills.
2023 Educational Innovation Award
I received the Educational Innovation Award in the category 'Transform assessment and feedback practices' for my feed-forward assessment design in QBUS5010 Introduction to Dashboarding.
Assurance of Learning Through Testing
Alison Wong and I presented at the Education track of PyCon AU 2023 about our approach to assurance of learning for automatically marked assessments.
Collaborative Programming in the Classroom: Approaches and Insights
Alison Wong and I presented at the Education track of PyCon AU 2023 about realtime collaborative programming in a university education context.
Winner: Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant
Alison Wong and I were awarded a Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant to the value of $5000 for the support the design, deployment, and evaluation of a games-based, playful, or simulated learning intervention.
Engaging Students as Collaborative Partners: A Reflective Approach to Topic Selection
I co-presented at the University of Sydney Business School Learning and Teaching Forum about a reflective approach to students as partners that was developed for QBUS5010 Intro to Dashboarding and Data Visualisation. The approach was designed and deployed by Andrew Cram, Enosh Yeboah, Alison Casey and myself.
Academic of the Year - Beta Gamma Sigma Honour Society
The University of Sydney Business School's honour society, Beta Gamma Sigma recognises academic staff and business professionals through the Chapter Honouree Award. The student who nominated me wrote: Dr. Tierney is very passionate about the subjects he teaches, especially in area of coding. He was the unit coordinator for Qbus5010 and Buss6002, in which he was very supportive. Especially in Ed…
Working Together: The Benefits of Providing Choice in Topic Selection
I co-authored a blog post about a reflective approach to students as partners that was developed for QBUS5010 Intro to Dashboarding and Data Visualisation. The approach was designed and deployed by Andrew Cram, Enosh Yeboah, Alison Casey and myself.
Promoted to Senior Lecturer
I was promoted from Lecturer to Senior Lecturer in the 2022 promotions round. The position is equivalent to Associate Professor in the US.
Toolbox & Innovator Award
As a team, Alison Wong , Priyanka Cheema and myself were awarded the University of Sydney Business School (USBS) Toolbox & Innovator Award, which recognises high quality, novel teaching practices and exceptional contributions to the USBS teaching community.
Detecting and Reducing Academic Misconduct in Programming Assessments
Priyanka Cheema and I presented at the University of Sydney Business School Learning and Teaching Forum about detecting and reducing academic misconduct in an introductory programming unit.
Dynamic Pictures for Greater Information Engagement
I co-presented at the University of Sydney Business School Learning and Teaching Forum about embedding dynamic and interactive visualisations in learning material using plotly.
QBUS5010: Intro to Dashboarding and Data Visualisation
I designed and developed this introductory dashboarding unit with assistance from Ardi Mirzaei . Students learn how dashboards systems work, how they are built and to analyse dashboard designs using principles of visual analytics. The students use plotly Dash to implement their dashboards.
Frame Game Solver
I wrote a proof of concept solver for John Siracusa's Frame Game . I created an interactive dashboard and wrote an overview of how it works .
Two Candles, One Cake
I solved the 'Two Candles, One Cake' problem using Python. Symbolic, numeric and simulation solutions are provided.
Dynamic Pictures to Support Learning in Business Analytics
Co-authored blog post on interactive elements of BUSS6002.
Optimal Diagnosis Strategies: Lessons from Wordle
I spoke at a Business Analytics 'Brown Bag' seminar on wordle strategies and the broader applications for diagnoses and sequential experimental design.
Wordle Solver
I wrote a fast solver for wordle written in Python. This package offers multiple solving strategies and empirical comparison of each.
At the Turn of the Tide – Teaching Python in Real-Time at Scale
Alison Wong and I presented at the University of Sydney Business School Learning and Teaching Forum about our innovative approach to teaching online.
LTR390 Support in ESPHome
I added support for the LTR390 UV and ambient light sensor to ESPHome. Pull request on Github .
SCD4X Support in ESPHome
I added support for the SCD4X CO2 sensor to ESPHome. Pull request on Github .
Top teachers should have a 50 per cent pay rise, expert says
This Sydney Morning Herald article uses visualiations from my 'Teacher Pay Comparison' dashboard.