As 2015 wraps up, I took a look at baldengineer.com’s traffic for the past year. Here’s some of the most popular stuff from my blog, in case you missed it.

Everyone with a blog looks at their traffic numbers. For me, traffic data provides feedback on what tutorials or posts are helping people most. Each year, the traffic to my blog grows at ridiculous numbers. As someone with both an engineering and marketing background, I find the numbers impossible to believe.

Thank you to everyone who reads, shares, and comments the stuff I create. Those of you on the mailing list, I appreciate the interaction we have there, please keep writing in!

Check out these posts if you didn’t catch them the first time.

Top 5 Overall for 2015

The first are the top 5 overall posts, which doesn’t change much from 2014. Not a surprise, 3 of these have been around since 2011.

  1. Arduino Multitasking with Millis
  2. How do you reset Millis?
  3. How does Arduino’s Serial.flush() work?
  4. Receiving more than one character over serial.
  5. The Basics of LEDs

My Arduino posts continue to rank near the top. Each has been receiving constant updates over the past year. The new surprise is one that a few eBooks reference. My LED Basics tutorial (#5) continues to grow in popularity.

Top 5 Posts from 2015

Slight variation from the previous 5. These are the top five posts, posted in 2015, by popularity. My write-up on how to create a PCB in KiCad and then engrave it with an X-Carve is the newest, but came in 2nd!

  1. PCB Checklist
  2. Getting PCBs from KiCad to X-Carve
  3. Can a 1µF capacitor be too much?
  4. 5 Electrical Engineering Podcasts to follow
  5. P-Channel MOSFETs with only Positive Voltages

Top 5 Reviews

When I write reviews, it is almost always because of something I like. So I don’t have many “bad reviews.” Life is too short. I’d rather share the good stuff with you guys. If I don’t like something, I won’t talk about it.

Based on popularity, here are the five most visited reviews. The Art of Electronics (#3) was from 2014; the rest were all from this year. Hmmm, a pattern?

  1. X-Carve Review
  2. Virtual Bench Review
  3. Art of Electronics (2nd Edition)
  4. EMSL’s XL741
  5. Circuit Trading Cards

For a little bit of perspective, the X-Carve Review (#1) is #1 by far. If you combine the views for #2 through #5, the X-Carve write-up still received over 2X more traffic. Noted.

My Favorite Posts

Here’s a list of my favorite topics. I know it’s a subjective list. It’s my blog. 😀

  1. Andrew Retallack’s Isolated Engineer [Guest Post]
  2. My Modular Soldering Station
  3. Energia and MSP430: Arduino Alternative
  4. Blink without delay(), explained line by line
  5. FleaFPGA Introduction

While I’m fond of all 5 in this list for one reason or another, Andrew Retallack of Crash-Bang Prototypes did an outstanding job with “The Isolated Engineer.” It really is worth a read, or two.

[shareable]The hidden gem of my 2015 posts is ‘The Isolated Engineer’ from @CrashBang_Proto[/shareable]

Looking forward to 2016

This year I consistently posted a new tutorial, review, or article each week. Going into 2016 that frequency will continue.

When you signup for my email list, I ask three questions. One of them is, what people want to see. Based on those responses, I’ve started to fill-up my content calendar around these topics.

  • KiCad
  • X-Carve / CNC (Electronics Related)
  • Reviews
  • IoT Related projects
  • And More…

My current bench project is a collaboration to create some ZigBee and WiFi based IoT modules for home automation. My piece is the hardware while the software stack is my collaborator’s focus. So if you’re thinking about accessing your lights from the internet, stay tuned.

There are also a couple of other private projects I’m involved in that will yield a tutorial here and there. I’m always open to consulting projects, drop me a line for details.

How you can help

Posting high-quality content each week is demanding. However, I enjoy doing it. Carving out time to write and work on projects is difficult. That’s where you can help.

I’d love to feature some guest posts. It’s pretty easy, write-up something and I’ll promote it as a featured post. Whether you’re offering a unique product, getting your blog started, or just want to share an experience, it’s an excellent way to get your stuff other there. (Wherever there is.)

Drop me an email (easiest to use the Olark Chat box) with your ideas.

2016 is going to be a great year, let’s go make something awesome.

What’s a new skill you learned this year? For me, it was Python… what’s yours?

P.S. My favorite statistic of all? Visitors came from over 200 countries in 2015! Amazing.

Author

Fan of making things beep, blink and fly. Created AddOhms. Stream on Twitch. Video Host on element14 Presents and writing for Hackster.IO. Call sign KN6FGY.

2 Comments

  1. Bill Coghill Reply

    “Receiving more than one character over serial” link on both this page and in the email Directs to the article on flush buffer.

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