Web Page Visitor Counter Part 1 - Using Google Sheets

Buoyed with my recent success with my IoT Weather Station, I figured that I should try and up my game, so to speak, and try something a bit more challenging in the IoT arena.

Since I am always curious about what the traffic is on this very site that you are visiting now, I figured that some sort of device that would monitor the pageviews on the site and display the current view count would be a perfect next project on my IoT journey.

Doing some research, I found that it was fairly easy to display view counts for certain sites like YouTube or Instructables.com since those particular sites offer custom API (Application Programming Interface) services that make obtaining that data a relatively simple matter of one or 2 lines of software code on your IoT device.

While on the surface it did seem that making a device to display the page view counts of the website, I quickly discovered that while it is pretty easy to use API calls for those web sites, there are no API's out there that will work for ANY website. 

So clearly I needed to find a way to have my IoT device talk to my website in order to tell me how many visitors.

Quick Tip - Making Wood Corners Look Seamless

When trying to build something that is intended to be "nice" - be it a piece of furniture, or a potential heirloom piece, I try to take as much care as possible when I am building them, making sure that each cut is exact, and every part fits together as tightly as possible.

In spite of my diligence, I do seem to have a bit of a problem when it comes to cutting 45-degree corners.

Building an Inexpensive Desk Part 5 - Assembling the Desk

Over the past few weeks I've been building this desk as a series  of separate and distinct modules.

The time for the big payoff is here - I can finally assemble those modules together into an actual desk.


The person that I am making  of this desk had just asked me when they would be getting it - so I better get cracking and get this done...

Building an Inexpensive Desk Part 4 - Building Desk Drawers

The last time I worked on the desk, I had just completed the construction of the cabinet that I will be using to house the drawers. 

As I mentioned in my last post, the drawers basically just a bunch of smaller boxes that will be fitting into the bigger box that is the drawer cabinet. 

While it may sound simple, there is a fair bit of finagling to be involved in order to make this all work. 

Building an Inexpensive Desk Part 3 - Making the Drawer Cabinet

In my last couple of posts, I went through the construction of the top and body of my desk. 

If I chose, I could have just joined the 2 pieces together at this point and I would have had a nice, simple functional desk.

However, as with anything that is made to order, the recipient for this particular desk had a need to have someplace to store their "stuff" so that it wouldn't be cluttering up the top of their desk, or even worse, sitting in a box beside the desk. 

More specifically, they wanted the desk to have drawers. 

In of itself, building drawers for the desk is a fairly straight forward concept. It's basically a matter of building a bunch of small boxes that would fit into a bigger box. 

The deceiving part in all this is that getting the small boxes to fit properly can take quite a bit of fiddling, but I am getting ahead of myself. 

For this post, the focus will be on the construction of the "big" box, or the cabinet that will eventually house the drawers.