bibutahseen/beer-machine

The Great Ethereum Beer Machine

For the next few sessions of our Toronto Ethereum Developers Meetup Group we are going to build an Ethereum-enabled Beer Machine. Why? Because Beer! And fun. And coding practice. Yay! Each step will be well-documented and will serve as an instructional resource for building an application and all of its components from conception to completion.

On 14 October 2016 we had a group meeting to outline a high-level breakdown of the project's development needs. The sections are as follows:

1. Front-end (UI/UX).

• Team leads: Chelsea
• Main features: link to eth.contract, display price, display QR code and payment info, display number of beers remaining, and perhaps info about whether beer is currently being displensed; error handling; UI design.

2. Ethereum contract

• Team Leads: Richard Moore and Nick Dodson. The coding for this section will be done in the main group session every 2nd Friday.
• Main desired features: Set dynamic price, payment events, send funds upon payment to keg and delivery costs account, pay devs automatic percentage, manage frequent beer drinking points / subscription plan

3. Python code interfaced with Hardware.

• Team Leads: Anastasia and Michael
• Main features: payment watching loop, send signal to machine to start/stop pouring, display "beer remaining" info on LED.

4. Hardware

• Team Leads: Nelia and Spiro
• Hardware, at minimum, a Raspberry Pi and Beer Machine (including a valve attachment that can be controlled by the RPi).
• Desired: LED displaying beer remaining; an overfill sensor, a sensor for determining if cup is properly placed (and not pour if cup either not present or improperly placed)
• Will need to work closely with Python team

Group communication and management/organization will occur primarily on the Blockchain Canada slack group, and the #dev-ethereum and #dev-beer-machine channels in that group. Here is the slack invite if you aren't a member already. See you there!

BackGround Resources

I'll start adding educational and background resources as we progress.

Ethereum Basics

Background information that one should read.

• Ethereum.org: The main Ethereum foundation site.
• Ethereum Homestead Docs
• What is Ethereum, in brief

Learning Solidity

• Solidity: Read the Docs. For coding smart contracts, read this guide.

• Learn Solidity in Y minutes: Excellent resource.

• Browser Solidity: Easy way to compile and inject soldity code.

• How to start developing on Ethereum: for web developers

• Gitter.im/ethereum/solidity: Get information from the source -- Solidity devs themselves.

Ether Wallets (some have solidity compiler integration)

• Mist -- Ethereum Wallet: Use this if you want to create an ether wallet and start using Ether, trade tokens, watch tokens, or watch contracts. It's build by the Ethereum Foundation, and is in a constant state of improvement and development.
• MyEtherWallet: An in-browser wallet generator
• Ethers.io: An in-browser wallet with a solidity code compiler; it's also adding support for applications (dApps)
• Metamask.io: A chrome extension ethereum wallet with a good user interface. Useful in conjunction with Browser Solidity to inject contracts into the blockchain.

Learning to Code

Courses

• Harvard CS50: Awesome course; so many great lectures, quizzes, and reading material.

JavaScript

• Eloquent Javascript: Highly regarded free ebook

Python

• Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
• Derek Banas: Learn to Program: A great place to start. Learn how to code using Python.

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi: Main Site

Git -- Helpful guides for managing and posting your code

• Git Cheatsheet
• Markdown CheatSheet

Literature Resources

Books

• Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies. A free draft is also available.
• Mastering Bitcoin (Antonopoulos, 2015).
• Age of Cryptocurrencies (Vigna and Casey, 2015).

Must Read books on programming and design in general, according to Jeff Atwood (Stack Exchange)

1. Code Complete (Steve McConnell)
2. Don't Make me Think (Steve Krug)
3. Peopleware
4. The Pragmattic Programmer
5. Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

Misc Coding Links and Info and Philosophies

• Computational Thinking
• Unix Philosophy and Introduction to Unix Philosophy. First rule: Make each program do one thing well. Rule2: Expect the output of every program to become the input to another.

Advice

Jeff Atwood(Creator of Stack Exchange), from an ITworld article. See his Reddit AMA as well:

1. Learn by Doing real projects. "Build stuff. In the process of building something, if you need a new tool, learn it then"
2. Aim to be dumbest person in the room
3. Have a coding buddy

Adding to that, we should include:

4. Start as soon as you can. Start yesterday. This reminds of another good article on the important habit of just starting

• Don't Call yourself a programmer -- Kalzumeus

Blogs

• Hacking Distributed
• Hacker News