We’re looking for a cloud architect…

  • Post category:cloud

Okay, this question is starting to annoy me. Up until recently every company had its own computer infrastructure to maintain. There were people employed for that. And they did a great job, so the software I cooked up was hosted, logged and debuggable. Thank you for that!

Nowadays it seems that every company is looking for a software & cloud architect. Apparently someone decided somewhere that full stack development suddenly needs to include hardware as well.

People…

Friends…

I’m still a software engineer / architect. Just because companies decide to scrap their own hardware and roll it out onto someone else’s, doesn’t suddenly make it my job. We have (had?) people for that, and that specialty hasn’t changed, only the location of the hardware has. The fact that we moved software development and hosting closer together, infrastructure as code, only means we can and should work more closely together. Which is good.

(more…)

Continue ReadingWe’re looking for a cloud architect…

The correcting case of the closed-off cloud

That title sounds like one from a boy’s book, a Tintin (Kuifje) or Spike and Suzy (Suske en Wiske) comic, but this blog is about Tesla, cloud computing, and hexagons.

In the middle of September 2020 Tesla suddenly blocked all network traffic originating from any of the major cloud providers, like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. A number of of third party Tesla apps were suddenly in big problems because of this, including my TeslaTasks. A lot of developers had to scram to work around that unexpected situation.

(more…)

Continue ReadingThe correcting case of the closed-off cloud

Scheduling things on a Tesla using Azure pt. 3; the Tesla API

In the previous post we took a look at how the initial just-for-my-own-car implementation was refactored into a version that supported many cars using a database instead of hardcoded values. It also showed that the LogicApp based implementation lost its merrits, and everything was moved into Java code. In this part we’ll take a look at the Tesla API that is used to make the car do things.

(more…)

Continue ReadingScheduling things on a Tesla using Azure pt. 3; the Tesla API

Going electric; scheduling the AC on a Tesla

The last few blogs had a “not my usual content” text here, but this one is about software development. As it turns out Tesla is missing a -for me- very critical piece of functionality; being able to start the airconditioning (AC) system at a certain time. It is possible to turn on the AC immediately via the app using the fan icon (see the image below), but not automatically at 06:00, while I’m still counting sheep in my bed.

TeslaAppFirstScreen

But to my amazement, every Tesla car is accessible via the internet through a REST API. This API is what the Tesla app uses to access the vehicle. Using this API is not officially supported, but Tesla does not seem to mind people accessing it.

Okay! That is interesting! I’m a software engineer, I can handle a REST API…

(more…)

Continue ReadingGoing electric; scheduling the AC on a Tesla