How to Use a Custom Domain as a Bluesky Handle

I’m going to using CPanel so it maybe a little different on your end. Head over to Bluesky and go to Settings and click Change Handle, then I have my own domain. You have two different ways to verify your domain ownership. 

DNS Panel

The first and easiest way (with CPanel at least), providing you have access to DNS settings. Open CPanel and go down to Domains > Zone Editor and then click Manage on the domain you wish to use. Click the little down arrow next to Add Record, and select Add “TXT” Record and fill in your information like so:

No DNS Panel

The other way is to upload a file to .well-known. In CPanel its pretty easy to find, Open Files > File Manager and then you can just search for it in the top left. You either need to search for: 

public_html/.well-known OR .well-known OR yourdomain.com/.well-known


In my case it’s in the public_html folder. It’s usually where you store your websites files. We need to create the file, on windows you can just make a text file on the desktop, name it atproto-did and remove the .txt extension. Right click the file and open with Notepad and paste in the text Bluesky requires. I’m on a Mac, so I used CotEditor to create my atproto-did (just click File > Save and remove the “.txt” part) file and then uploaded it via the CPanel File Manager

Time to Verify

Click either Verify DNS Record or Verify Text File, and you should get a message like below. If it fails, just double check that you’ve not add any spaces in the pasted text and that you are doing it with the correct domain. Feel free to contact me on Bluesky if you get stuck.

BBC micro:bit Creating an EddyStone Beacon

There’s multiple uses for beacons, if you own your own shop you can use a beacon to give special offers, and maybe even vouchers. Small independent art galleries could use beacons to interact with guests to show them a snippet of video on each piece. By using the BBC micro:bit you can easily create your own for not so much money!

Plug in your BBC micro:bit, and head over to Espruino and download the latest micro:bit hex file, or download 1v95 below.

Download “espruino_1v95_microbit.hex” espruino_1v95_microbit.hex – Downloaded 792 times – 680.66 KB

Drag and drop it on your micro:bit to install it.

Next pick yourself up the mbed driver and install it. Next in Chome you need to use Espruino.

Once opened click the little plug icons in the top right and select mbed Serial Port.

You can use this Eddystone URL Generator to direct to your own URL.  Make sure you also shorten your chosen URL too! You can use goo.gl. Here’s mine below using -5 Tx power. Paste your code between eddyStoneData = [ and ];

eddyStoneData = [
 0x03, // Length of Service List
 0x03, // Param: Service List
 0xAA, 0xFE, // Eddystone ID
 0x13, // Length of Service Data
 0x16, // Service Data
 0xAA, 0xFE, // Eddystone ID
 0x10, // Frame type: URL
 0xFB, // Power
 0x03, // https://
 'g',
 'o',
 'o',
 '.',
 'g',
 'l',
 '/',
 'r',
 'W',
 '5',
 'g',
 'U',
 'o',
 ];

NRF.setAdvertising(eddyStoneData, {interval:100});

Click the upload button (in the middle, the chip with the arrow) and you should be done! Check your phone and you should receive a notification like this:

Stuck? Have a question? Feel free to contact me either using the comments below or @imwestm on Twitter.

BBC micro:bit Harry Potter Sorting Hat

We’re going to be recreating the sorting hat from Harry Potter using Microsoft Block Editor. Go ahead and create a new project. First decide which Input function you’d like to use to display the Hogwarts Houses. I’ve used the A Button, but this will work with whatever Input method you like.

Create the following:

Input → on button “A” pressed do
Variables → set “item” to
Maths → pick random 0 to “4”
Logic → if do 
Logic → “0” = “0”
Variables → “item”
Basic → show string “Hello!”

WMp4D

Click “Item” in Set “Item” and select New variable and name it RandomNumber. This variable will allow you to assign each of the Hogwarts Houses a number, along with pick random  0 to “4”, it’ll cycle through the various Hogwarts Houses you assign later.

WMeFS

We’re going to have to change the “4” to 3 because we have four Hogwarts Houses. Sounds a little silly, why 3?! Well 0 counts too!

Ravenclaw 0
Hufflepuff 1
Gryffindor 2
Slytherin 3

WM6Nt

If you press the Gear icon on if do it’ll have a little popup. In this popup you can add more to the if do without creating entire new sections. Drag the else if into the if, do this three times. Click the Gear to remove the popup once you are finished.

WMRgS

You’ll need to either duplicate (saves lots of time!) or recreate the RandomNumber = “0” and add them to else if. Change each of the numbers on the end going from 0 to 3. Same with the show string “Ravenclaw”.

WMUfb

You can compile and upload it your BBC micro:bit and find out which house you’re in!

Download “Harry Potter: The-Sorting-Hat BBC micro:bit hex” Harry-Potter-The-Sorting-Hat.hex – Downloaded 850 times – 567.30 KB