This week we have been given the opportunity to conduct our work placement for I.T VET at 2pi Software. Within these days we have been able to set up a small web server running an Odroid as the master system, which had a load balancer installed, using Nginx, to evenly spread the traffic from incoming requests.
A load balancer is a device that evenly distributes incoming traffic between nodes. This increases the amount of requests and will increase the reliability of the server, which is critical for a company’s efficiency for their online presence. A company that uses load balancing is Google, which would have a massive load of requests being sent to the servers, which will then have to be evenly distributed across all their servers.
The requests were then distributed across 3 different Raspberry Pi systems, low cost, high availability micro computers that allow users to achieve goals such as learning basic coding to more experienced projects like creating a mini arcade machine.
These were then benchmarked to see how much stress the server will be able to take when under a heavy load of requests. We recorded our results and then compared the data to make sure the nodes were running at the same efficiency.
Also during the week we were given the task of making a MySQL database which was hosted on the Odroid to observe how the web server could handle the load of running a MySQL database with PHP.
Setup
Our setup looks like this:

Our load balancing system

Odroid on top of the switch

The 3 Raspberry Pi’s
Results
We ran multiple tests using different types of media, these include:
- Static HTML
- Static HTML with an image
- PHP
- PHP and MySQL
The results we collected are below, where data presented ranges from the 50th to 100th percentile. The number on the right of the percentage indicates the response time in milliseconds.
Odroid w/PHP & MySQL (3 nodes)
|
Odroid w/ static HTML
|
Odroid w/ PHP
|
Odroid w/ image HTML
|
50% 1510
66% 1546
75% 1563
80% 1573
90% 1597
95% 1619
98% 2139
99% 2387
100% 2690 (longest request)
|
50% 211
66% 245
75% 301
80% 322
90% 358
95% 394
98% 453
99% 528
100% 1493 (longest
|
50% 962
66% 1031
75% 1069
80% 1092
90% 1150
95% 1193
98% 1235
99% 1306
100% 2288 (longest request)
|
50% 214
66% 239
75% 275
80% 304
90% 339
95% 403
98% 651
99% 1201
100% 1273 (longest request)
|
These results show that using more complex web tools will slow down the web server significantly. This is shown in the odroid with PHP & mySQL which has results that are double of the static HTML.
Amazon Web Services Educator Leader Puay San – Alexa skills project
/in Events, In the News /by Chris BatemanALEXA SKILL COMP!
Hey everyone, we have a big announcement! Next Thursday 28th June from 4: 30 pm until 5: 00 pm we have Puay San from Amazon arrive at 2pi Software CoWs (Co-working Space). She is a leader in the Amazon Web services (AWS) Educator program, she’ll be here to teach us and the students more about AWS, Alexa and help out with any of the team of students ideas for a skill in the Alexa Skill Competition.
The competition, held by Amazon and 2pi Software, is about the Artificially Intelligent VUI (Voice User Interface) “Amazon Alexa”! We are getting as many Students as we can to gather teams.
A presentation was held by myself, Jorden Dakis, and local student Hunter De Jong, at the last Code Night at CoWs about the details of the competition as well as introductory information on Alexa Skills. The competition is focussed on building an agricultural themed application for the Alexa using the Alexa developer and other Amazon Web Services to create a skill over the next 3 months. The skill can be created in teams of 3 or less. We encourage any High School student who is interested to contact us at 2pi Software to get involved and get their team together! A great opportunity! Whoever develops the most creative skill wins an accommodated trip to Canberra’s AWS summit, and other prizes yet to be announced.
Here at 2pi Software and CoWS Near The Coast Bega, we will be holding a support session every Friday from 3: 00 pm until 5: 00 pm where we can help out the students competing with any problems or with their ideas for the Alexa as well as interest them in what we have created. The first session is held this Friday the 22nd of June! Anyone is welcome to come so bring all your mates! Again 3: 00pm to 5: 00pm! Can’t wait to see everyone and help with their ideas. This Friday is a good chance to get stuck into it so we can all be prepared for Thursday 28th of June when Puay San is here.
So form a team! Come to CoWs this Friday 22nd of June! Learn from Puay San next Thursday 28th of June! Win Prizes!! Can’t wait to see you all and what you can create!
I’ll be back to write about Puay San’s visit and what the students learned.
Thank you, Jorden Dakis 2pi Software.
How I became A coder in a rural town.
/in Learning Code in a rural town /by LiamThis Blog series will follow my journey to became a coder in a small town called Bega.
My name is Jorden Dakis, I finished school in 2013 and at that time I didn’t have a clue on what I wanted to do! So I decided to get a job and save some money and give myself some time to think about what direction I wanted to take – 5 years on and I’ve discovered a path that will help me work towards what it is I want to do and that path was to learn Coding/web-site development.
Coding really interests me, I have always had skills with computers but never tried to hone in on those skills or considered them a potential avenue of employment. If I was to do this I could use these skills in the future for my own business and to help me gain a valuable skillset!
The most daunting part is…just on 4 weeks ago I quit my very stable job. But I needed to do something else. With no job to go to and only a vague idea of where to start, I quit, despite being advised it was potentially a bad idea – I decided to take a leap of faith and set out on an unknown journey to create a more fulfilling and valuable life for myself!
After around 4 days of unemployment I received a message from Adam Buckley, who is a coder himself at 2pi Software in Bega asking if I wanted to come in and have a chat. So the next day I made my way to the CoWs Near The Coast (co-working space) to talk to Adam, it was an awesome conversation and ended with being told that I was welcome to study at CoWs and eventually possibly a job! A week after I had a chance to speak with Liam O’Duibhir (co founder of 2Pi Software) and Jason Badham (web-developer/designer at 2pi software), another pleasant conversation, I was told that I could have potential work there once I have learned enough which was amazing!
It’s been amazing so far spending time there, meeting everyone, receiving so much advice and knowledge. I’ve started to learn the basics of front end coding; starting with HTML, CSS and Javascript. I’m using the site FreeCodeCamp as well as other sources recomnended to me by the staff at 2pi Software. So far I’ve made a draft webpage and have started on my portfolio which is very exciting and interesting. I am excited about developing my skills further and learning how I can apply these skills in a meaningful way within a business environment!
The biggest lesson I have learned so far is that if you put yourself out there, oppurtunities will come to you.
Thanks for reading, till next month! Jorden Dakis.
Upcoming Event – Bega AgTech Days
/in Events /by James ThompsonHey everyone, we here at CoWS are exicted to be part of the Bega AgTech Days event beginning on the 28th of march in Bega. The event is being held by intoIT a local non-profit organisation focused on linking professionals with an interest in technology together.
The event runs for two days and covers the following themes:
Head over to begaagtech.com.au to learn more and register for any of these captivating talks.
Sydney Business School Co-Working Report features CoWS Near The Coast
/in Uncategorized /by LiamPHD Researcher, and regular visitor to the Bega Valley, Tim Mahlberg (https://au.linkedin.com/in/timmahlberg), has co-authored a compelling ‘state of the nation’ report on coworking in this country entitled ‘Coworking Spaces Australia’.
The document is available to the public here (http://sbi.sydney.edu.au/coworking-spaces-australia/)
The report is choc full of data-based determinations, anecdotes, insights and commentary on the diverse range of coworking spaces that have been springing up all over Australia for almost a decade now.
The team at CoWS Near The Coast are deeply honoured that Tim and his co-author, Kai Riemer, saw fit to feature CoWS as an archetype of ‘genus’ Townhall Terminal. They sum up one of the chief drivers behind our space very well when they say ‘ the locals are fiercely proud of what this space stands for: taking the local economy into their own hands and not waiting for government or corporates to lead the way’.
As the very first ‘hand-cranker in chief’ of the high profile NAB Village in Melbourne Docklands, Tim Mahlberg is one of the most qualified people in Australia to chronicle and comment on Coworking in this country. His strong links to the activator community, those poor burdened souls who do much of the heavy lifting to create the spaces, makes him a popular figure, keynote speaker, and frequent panellist at coworking events and activities in both regional and metropolitan areas nationwide.
Thanks Tim and Kai for the acknowledgement of CoWS Near The Coast, one of the first ever regional co-working spaces to be set up in Australia. We wish you every success in your future endeavours.
Regional Pitchfest Information Night at CoWS – Thurs April 27th at 6:30PM
/in Uncategorized /by LiamCoWS Breakfast Event “The Twelve Skills of Christmas” (compered by Brendan Yell)
/in Uncategorized /by Liam10:15 AM Quick break to refill people’s coffees?
Brendan Yell
Director, Community Development, SoftLayer
Founder, ShopFree.com
Mentor @ Muru-D, Amcomm Upstart, Slingshot, Jumpstart, TechBeach
Intro to the SoftLayer Catalyst Startup Program
Who qualifies?
What credits can I apply for?
How does the mentoring work?
Leveraging the global network
Bega High School Work Experience – A Load Balanced Web Server
/in Uncategorized /by LiamThis week we have been given the opportunity to conduct our work placement for I.T VET at 2pi Software. Within these days we have been able to set up a small web server running an Odroid as the master system, which had a load balancer installed, using Nginx, to evenly spread the traffic from incoming requests.
A load balancer is a device that evenly distributes incoming traffic between nodes. This increases the amount of requests and will increase the reliability of the server, which is critical for a company’s efficiency for their online presence. A company that uses load balancing is Google, which would have a massive load of requests being sent to the servers, which will then have to be evenly distributed across all their servers.
The requests were then distributed across 3 different Raspberry Pi systems, low cost, high availability micro computers that allow users to achieve goals such as learning basic coding to more experienced projects like creating a mini arcade machine.
These were then benchmarked to see how much stress the server will be able to take when under a heavy load of requests. We recorded our results and then compared the data to make sure the nodes were running at the same efficiency.
Also during the week we were given the task of making a MySQL database which was hosted on the Odroid to observe how the web server could handle the load of running a MySQL database with PHP.
Setup
Our setup looks like this:
Our load balancing system
Odroid on top of the switch
The 3 Raspberry Pi’s
Results
We ran multiple tests using different types of media, these include:
The results we collected are below, where data presented ranges from the 50th to 100th percentile. The number on the right of the percentage indicates the response time in milliseconds.
Odroid w/PHP & MySQL (3 nodes)
Odroid w/ static HTML
Odroid w/ PHP
Odroid w/ image HTML
50% 1510
66% 1546
75% 1563
80% 1573
90% 1597
95% 1619
98% 2139
99% 2387
100% 2690 (longest request)
50% 211
66% 245
75% 301
80% 322
90% 358
95% 394
98% 453
99% 528
100% 1493 (longest
50% 962
66% 1031
75% 1069
80% 1092
90% 1150
95% 1193
98% 1235
99% 1306
100% 2288 (longest request)
50% 214
66% 239
75% 275
80% 304
90% 339
95% 403
98% 651
99% 1201
100% 1273 (longest request)
These results show that using more complex web tools will slow down the web server significantly. This is shown in the odroid with PHP & mySQL which has results that are double of the static HTML.
Cool Digital Music Demo and Project at upcoming coding night (Thurs 7th May)
/in Uncategorized /by LiamThe centrepiece of this upcoming coding night is an exciting project…and will be delivered by Steve Ryan. Please read Steve’s description below…it’s a terrific project….
Hey all,
so having met Scratch for drag and drop programming I wanted an easy way to enter longer pieces of music as Scratch blocks so I could integrate animations with the music.
http://abc2scratch.2pihosting.com/ is a javascript app (https://github.com/syntithenai/abc2scratch) to help by taking abc notation, rendering as music notation and offering export to scratch blocks.
http://abcnotation.com/ describes the text based ABC format for writing music and provides heaps of examples.
I’m running a demo next coding night taking an ABC tune from the web, adding parts and animating it in Scratch.
I’ve recently aquired a Lego EV3 and I’d love to connect scratch and coreograph dancing robots. I’m having trouble getting s2bot working to extend Scratch to provide EV3 blocks. Any experience out there?
Having had trouble with quicktime playback of midi, I’ve included a pure javascript midi playback solution using soundfont files. (currently broken but I have had it working – pull request on git anyone?). Scratch seems to do timing well when playing generated notes but not so well on the timing of playing back recorded sounds. Any experience ?
If anyone is interested I’d like to arrange a Scratch band by combining a bunch of musical sprites into a composition. To get the ball rolling I’m calling for musical sprites
For those with skills in music notation, another project could be a 12 bar blues.
C C C C
F F C C
G F C C
cheers
Steve
NSW Governor His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (Ret’d) – visits CoWS Near The Coast Digital Co-Working Space
/in Uncategorized /by LiamThe NSW Governor, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (Ret’d), popped in to visit CoWS Near The Coast Digital Co-Working Space on Friday the 20th of Feb 2015.
Look inside CoWS – thanks to Google’s ‘See Inside’
/in Uncategorized /by LiamIn another first for the Sapphire Coast, the team behind CoWS Near The Coast are delighted to be chosen as the first site in the region to benefit from the Google Inside treatment.
Thanks to Chris Sheedy from Reflexe Content for his drive and energy in pushing this forward.
Check it out :-