Mac NeoPixel notification light 2.0

I wrote Make a Mac ‘Task Done’ NeoPixel notification light just over four years ago. Not long after the post was penned, macOS’ security provisions became tighter and so the unsigned third-party kernel extensions used to drive the NeoPixel were no longer available.

That was that. I marked the post as ‘no longer working’ and put the project aside.

Make a Mac ‘Task Done’ NeoPixel notification light

Update There’s now a new post containing revised, working instructions for this project.

Note This article was written some time ago, and the libraries used do not work with recent versions of macOS.

I regularly back-up my Raspberry Pi storage card because it’s so easy to damage the card with an improper shutdown or some such. I back up to a Mac, and you can read how I do it here. This wasn’t much of a chore in the early days when I was working with 4GB cards, but now I use 16GB Micro SDs and I know of folks who have much, much larger storage capacities thanks to never-cheaper cards. All this means the back-up takes a long time. So I wondered if I could create a gadget to tell me the task was done, allowing me to get on with other jobs in the meantime.

Review: Slice, the Pi Compute Module-based media player

Updated My original idea was to review the Raspberry Pi Compute Module. But the thing about the Compute Module is that it’s not an end-user product: it was designed for manufacturers looking for an ARM-based platform on which they can build devices they can sell. Unlike the Raspberry Pi itself, the Compute Module is not intended for makers or for computing hobbyists. To evaluate the Compute Module what I really needed to look at was a product based upon it.

So I waited for one…