About GREY/WIRED

GREY/WIRED, in a nutshell

I'm Ben, a computer engineer, an old geek and a problem solver with a slight tendency to turn a simple "Hey, that looks cool…" into a project far more complicated than it was ever supposed to be.

GREY/WIRED is my digital workshop.

It's where I keep track of my experiments and share what I build, what I break and, occasionally, what I eventually manage to understand.

It will mostly be about technology, science and DIY: computers, electronics, home automation, 3D printing, AI… but also brewing, dogs and probably a few things that were never part of the plan.

What you'll find here isn't meant to be THE right way to do things. I try, I document, I get things wrong, I learn and I share. And if you know a better way, there's a seat for you at the table.

Oh, right…

There's also a Grey Ghost wandering around here.

It's a long story.

Actually, that's exactly what you'll find just below.

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Still here?

Then we might as well make proper introductions.

Who's behind GREY/WIRED?

I started seriously tinkering with computers in the '90s. But the problem probably started long before that.

I've always needed to understand how things work. And when you're a kid, "understanding" often starts with taking things apart. As for putting them back together, let's just say the results were sometimes… a little more variable.

That need to understand never really left me. It comes with another slightly strange reflex: whenever I see someone making something, I immediately want to try making it myself. Not necessarily because I need it. Not necessarily because it's reasonable. Simply because it looks interesting.

That combination of curiosity and the urge to experiment is probably what led me to study electronics and computer engineering, and then into a career in IT that has now lasted around thirty years.

I don't really think of myself as a creative person. I'm more of a problem solver. In my work, what I enjoy is starting with a need or a problem, analysing it, understanding the constraints and trying to build the solution that fits best. And that solution isn't necessarily the fashionable one, or the industry standard everyone seems to love. If something different is better suited to the problem, that's usually the path that interests me.

And then there are the personal projects.

They usually start innocently enough. I see something and a tiny spark appears:

"Hey… that looks cool. I could try that!"

That spark occasionally turns into a minor catastrophe involving far too many hours, a few orders for components, a 3D printer running in the middle of the night and the inevitable question: "Why did I even start this thing?"

And yet, once it's finished, there's almost always another one waiting.

That's probably the "old geek" behind GREY/WIRED: thirty years of professional experience, a fair part of the road already travelled… and still the feeling that there are far too many interesting things left to try.

Why GREY/WIRED?

It all started with an electricity meter.

Well… this time, anyway.

A few months ago, someone came to install a smart meter at my house. A perfectly ordinary event that probably should have ended there. Except, of course, I started wondering how I could monitor my electricity consumption more closely.

One thing led to another, and I started taking a closer look at home automation. I'd been following the subject for quite a while without ever really diving in: it seemed like a fairly expensive rabbit hole and, more importantly, I already had more than enough projects underway.

A few weeks later, home automation had obviously spawned a multitude of new projects, some more serious — and more useful — than others.

That's pretty much how things work around here.

Projects shape my life and often end up becoming indistinguishable from passions. When one of them really grabs me, I enter a sort of space-time tunnel capable of absorbing a rather unreasonable amount of my time. I'm also perfectly aware that the people around me must occasionally wonder how much longer the current obsession is going to last.

Lately, some of these projects have taken me into areas where I couldn't necessarily find a ready-made solution. I had to research, experiment, repurpose things and sometimes come up with my own solutions.

Adding AI to my toolbox certainly hasn't helped: it has allowed me to learn faster, explore areas I knew less about… and, incidentally, multiply the number of projects I have underway.

And then another spark appeared:

"What if I built a website to tell people about all this?"

That's how GREY/WIRED was born.

A place where I can keep track of my experiments, document my projects and share what I've discovered along the way. But also a pretty good excuse to open a few old boxes and dig out forgotten projects.

Because it won't all be about computers.

I've spent time brewing my own beer. I 3D-print things, sometimes functional, sometimes simply because I feel like making them. I also occasionally paint them, despite absolutely not considering myself an artist.

And that's precisely something I'd like to show: with a little curiosity, patience and the willingness to try, you can achieve results you're genuinely proud of.

There's something particularly satisfying about showing an object to friends and saying "I made that", or letting them taste a beer you brewed two months earlier.

And there may be another reason — one I'm discovering while building this site.

Bringing a little order to all of this.

When ideas and projects have a tendency to multiply, taking the time to document them also forces me to stop for a moment: explain what I was trying to do, why I chose a particular direction, where I am now and what I ultimately learned from it.

GREY/WIRED may also become a way of giving a little structure to this wonderful chaos.

Connecting experiments to one another, rediscovering projects that have been sleeping for a while and, who knows, perhaps even finishing a few of them.

Well…

I'd rather not make any promises about that last part.

I don't have many illusions about the size of GREY/WIRED's audience. This site may remain perfectly obscure.

And that's fine.

If something documented here one day helps someone solve a problem, gives them an idea or simply makes them want to try something themselves, that will already count as a success.

And if a few people stop by and take the time to tell me "you got that wrong", "I tried it another way" or "you might want to look into this", even better.

Because sharing works both ways, and there are still an enormous number of things I have left to learn.

And if nobody comes?

I'll still have built a place that feels like me and kept a record of all these experiments.

At its core, GREY/WIRED's purpose can be summed up in just a few words:

Share and keep track.

And if I stumble across all this again in ten years, I imagine my first reaction will probably be:

"What the hell had you been up to this time?!"

Things I build, break & occasionally understand

GREY/WIRED's tagline sums up the way I learn rather well.

I try things.

Sometimes I build something. Sometimes it even works exactly as intended. Sometimes I break something else along the way — without necessarily managing to fix it.

But either way, I learn something from it.

Reading, understanding the theory and seeing how other people do things is essential, but there always comes a point when I need to try it myself.

And trying also means accepting that you'll get things wrong.

So not everything that appears on GREY/WIRED will necessarily be a success story. There will be good ideas, bad ones, elegant solutions, questionable hacks and probably a few projects that end up in a box with the mental label "I'll get back to that later."

Failures are part of it.

Because something that doesn't work, but eventually teaches you why it doesn't work, isn't a complete failure after all.

BUILD → BREAK → UNDERSTAND → REPEAT

Well… occasionally understand.

What's GREY/WIRED about?

Mostly my experiments.

A lot of them revolve around technology, computers, electronics, home automation, 3D printing or AI.

But certainly not exclusively.

There'll also be science, DIY, things made with my own hands, probably a few old experiments dug out of boxes and even brewing — because brewing is a science.

What am I saying…

It's an art.

And every now and then, I may simply feel like talking about something that interests me, puzzles me, amuses me or annoys me.

I don't really want to put boundaries around any of this.

After all, GREY/WIRED is mostly about the world around us, the things I feel like trying and whatever I manage to understand about them.

Life, basically.

Well… my view of life.

Projects, Articles & Shorts

Since I have a slight tendency to go off in every possible direction, I still needed some way to organise all of this.

GREY/WIRED is therefore built around three types of content.

Projects

Projects are the long-running stories.

Automating a house, brewing beer or any other obsession likely to keep me occupied for a few months… or a few years.

A project can evolve, stop, go dormant and eventually be declared finished.

But "finished" is a rather relative concept around here.

Sometimes all it takes is opening an old file for everything to start again.

Articles

Articles are more self-contained.

They cover an experiment or explore a subject with an objective and, normally, a somewhat more predictable ending: installing a smart lock, building a Thread Border Router, testing a new component or documenting a particular solution.

They can stand on their own, but they can also be part of a larger story. Installing a smart lock is an article in its own right, while also being one small piece of a much larger project: automating the house.

A Project can therefore become the thread connecting a whole series of articles and experiments over time.

Shorts

And then there are the Shorts.

A discovery, a tip, a piece of information worth sharing, a passing thought… or sometimes simply a rant.

More spontaneous and probably more ephemeral things that don't necessarily deserve a full article but that I still feel like leaving somewhere.

Ultimately, these three formats are mostly an attempt to make all this wonderful mess a little easier to digest.

Attempt.

A workshop, not a textbook

I'll try to make what you find here reproducible whenever possible.

That doesn't mean the solution I propose will be perfect. I'll probably sometimes choose an unnecessarily complicated route, reinvent something that already existed or, with hindsight, realise that my original idea was frankly stupid.

That's part of the game.

Wrong turns will therefore be part of GREY/WIRED too. When an approach doesn't work, I'll try to make that clear, but more importantly, I'll try to explain why it wasn't the right path.

Because knowing that something doesn't work is useful.

Understanding why is even more useful.

Some of the content here will also grow old.

And I don't necessarily want it to disappear.

A solution can be perfectly relevant today and completely obsolete a few years from now. A technology can evolve, another can replace it, and a choice that once seemed obvious may no longer make sense at all.

I actually find it interesting to be able to look back and understand how things were done at a particular point in time, how they evolved and why.

And evolution doesn't necessarily mean improvement.

Keeping that history also helps us understand the path that brought us to where we are.

Rather than rewriting the past, I'd rather be able to say: this is what I was doing at the time, this is what's changed since, and this is what I think about it today.

Finally, everything published here remains open to discussion.

If someone points out an error, suggests a better solution or simply proposes another way of doing something, my first instinct will be, whenever possible, to try it myself.

If it adds something useful, I'll then try to integrate it into the content so that the information doesn't remain buried at the bottom of a discussion.

And I'll probably allow myself to give my opinion on it.

An opinion worth exactly what it's worth.

GREY/WIRED isn't meant to be a textbook explaining the right way to do things.

It's more like an open workshop where I document what I've tried, what worked, what failed and what I understood from it.

At a particular point in time.

Because tomorrow, I may discover I was wrong.

A seat at the table

If five people were sitting around a table in my workshop discussing one of my projects, I'd want the atmosphere to be simple.

We'd look at what was done, ask questions, exchange ideas, talk about our own experiences and, inevitably, throw in a few silly jokes along the way.

No pressure.

And above all, nobody should be afraid to ask a question that might sound stupid or suggest an idea for fear of being judged by someone who thinks they know better.

I'm convinced you can learn from anyone.

From someone who's mastered a subject for twenty years just as much as from someone who's only just discovered it and asks the question nobody else thinks to ask anymore.

Over time, I've also realised that passions and projects are probably my most natural way of connecting with other people.

I can have a hard time sitting around a table exchanging small talk. But start discussing something that interests me — technology, energy, electric cars, dogs, society or pretty much anything that gives us something to think about — and the problem can very quickly become the exact opposite.

I enjoy hearing opinions different from my own, trying to understand what motivates them and discovering a way of looking at things that hadn't occurred to me.

Some of my best encounters and experiences with other people have happened exactly like that: around a shared passion, an activity, a problem to solve or simply something we wanted to understand together.

That's the kind of atmosphere I'd like to find in the discussions on GREY/WIRED too.

I'll share what I know. You can share what you know. We'll probably get things wrong from time to time and, with a little luck, someone around the table will eventually figure it out.

The point isn't to decide who's right.

The point is to share. No pressure.

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And what about that Grey Ghost?

We had to talk about him eventually.

The Grey Ghost wandering around GREY/WIRED is a Weimaraner.

I'm not going to give you a detailed introduction to the breed here.

He's a dog.

Well… in theory.

He's not my first dog, and I'd been warned. But I don't think you're ever truly prepared to live with a Weimaraner.

They're described as intelligent, curious, particularly good at problem-solving and capable of surprisingly human-like expressions. So much so that you'll regularly come across a rather telling description of the breed:

"The dog with the human brain."

I can confirm that he thinks.

I cannot confirm that he always puts that ability to good use.

Mine isn't particularly destructive. On the other hand, I must have rubbed off on him rather badly: he's intensely curious and apparently feels an overwhelming need to participate in absolutely everything I do.

Building something? He's there.

Opening a box? It needs inspecting.

Unpacking something new? Clearly, this concerns him.

Trying to get some work done in peace? What a strange idea.

And then there's that nickname: the Grey Ghost.

Officially, it comes in part from the Weimaraner's distinctive grey coat and its ability to seemingly blend into its surroundings.

Personally, I have another theory.

This dog is capable of becoming invisible, teleporting from one room to another and then, a few seconds later, becoming ULTRA visible.

And above all, you should never try to ignore him.

So naturally, after sticking his nose into pretty much everything I do, he eventually found his way here too.

The Grey Ghost has become part of GREY/WIRED. You'll come across him in illustrations, probably in a few unexpected places, and perhaps even whenever he has something to BARK about.

But behind the mascot and the jokes, there's something much simpler.

Dogs are part of my life.

I can't really explain why. It's not a passion in the same way as computers, electronics or all the other things I talk about here.

It's more of a need.

They bring something into my life that I find difficult to put into words.

I simply hope I give him as much as he gives me.