Year in Review 2017 – Random Nerd Tutorials

Now that we’re reaching the end of the year, we’ve decided to share the most important highlights on Random Nerd Tutorials throughout 2017.

Throughout this Year…

…We’ve Reached 3.8 Million Views!

During 2017 we’ve published a total of 58 new projects/tutorials, and received more than 3 million views on the Random Nerd Tutorials website. That’s a good thing, because that means we’re helping a lot of people learning about electronics and building their own projects.

More Than 116k Followers

Our community is getting bigger. We’ve reached more than 116K followers!

During this year, we’ve noticed that members on our private Facebook group are getting more active, sharing their knowledge, and their projects.

When I first created the Facebook group, it was just members asking questions, and me answering them. Now I’m happy to see that there’s a great community of people helping each other and it’s growing every day.

2017 Most Popular Content

Our most popular content in 2017 includes Arduino, Raspberry Pi, ESP8266, and Node-RED projects. All these subjects are mainly addressed to Home Automation.

We’re getting a lot of requests on tutorials using ESP32, which we’ll be our main focus in 2018.

Throughout 2017, our most popular tutorial was undoubtedly ESP8266 Web Server Tutorial. It’s great to see how people are getting more and more interested in building their own Internet of Things gadgets. If you haven’t read the most popular post in 2017, you can read it here: ESP8266 Web Server Tutorial

Our most popular video in 2017, What is MQTT and How It Works? explains in a simple way how MQTT works and why it is a great communication protocol when it comes to Internet of Things projects. You can watch the video below.

New Courses and Updates

In March 2017 we’ve launched Arduino Step by Step Projects Course, a compilation of 25 Arduino projects. This course is a practical way to get started with the Arduino, while building fun and interactive projects.

We’ve also launched Android Apps for Arduino with MIT App Inventor. MIT App Inventor is a software that provides an easy way to build your own Android apps. With this course you’re able to build applications to control your Arduino remotely via Bluetooth.

Finally, we’ve released the 3rd edition of Home Automation Using ESP8266 course with new IoT projects and more resources. The course is more complete and interesting than ever, where we show you how to get started with the ESP8266, and a lot of cool projects. This is our best seller course, and we’re really happy to teach more and more people about the ESP8266 and the IoT world. Also, we’ve recently made a small update to the Build a Home Automation System course.

We’ve Launched Maker Advisor

We’ve launched Maker Advisor website on October 2017, and we’ve reached an average of 800 daily visitors.

Why we’ve created Maker Advisor? We’ve noticed that our followers often had trouble finding where to buy the parts, and where to find the best price. So, we’ve created a page called Maker Advisor Tools to help electronics hobbyists and makers find the best tools at the best price. We also post deals, buying guides, as well as reviews on tools and gadgets that we think you may like.

At the moment, all Random Nerd Tutorials projects contain links to the Maker Advisor price comparison pages, so that you know exactly where to get your parts from.

So far, the most popular post on Maker Advisor is the Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kits buying guide: Best Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kits. This is great, because people are actually buying a lot of Raspberry Pi kits, which means there are more and more people interested in learning about the Raspberry Pi.

The second most popular post was the DIY Transistor Tester Kit Hiland M12864 Review. This is not surprising, since the Transistor Tester Kit is a great gadget for a very reasonable price.

If you haven’t already, you can subscribe to the Maker Advisor Newsletter to catch upcoming deals and score some extra savings on your favorite gear!

We Wrote a Book For No Starch Press

Me (Rui) and Sara started writing a book about Raspberry Pi projects for No Starch Press a year ago (December 2016). The book features 20 Raspberry Pi projects covering different subjects with the Raspberry Pi. The book intends to be a fun way of learning about the Raspberry Pi, while doing creative and interactive projects.

We’re proud to announce that the book is finished, and we’re waiting for it to be printed and published. It should be released in a couple of weeks (February or March 2018).

Meanwhile, you can get the early access version for 30% off with coupon code EARLYBIRD. We’re looking forward to have the book published and show you some of the projects we’ve made.

We also would like to tell you that the Random Nerd Tutorials followers have a dedicated paragraph on our acknowledgements page.

Other Notable Milestones

With the Random Nerd Tutorials community getting bigger and bigger, I (Rui) couldn’t do everything on my own. Sara has been helping me on Random Nerd Tutorials since 2015, and in August 2017 she quite her job and started working on Random Nerd Tutorials as her full time job.

Another important milestone for me is that I officially finished my Master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Finishing my Master’s degree took me a lot of time and dedication, and sometimes it was difficult to post new projects. But now, I can finally focus on the RNT blog as my full time job.

Wrapping Up

Personally, 2017 was a really good year. I’ve finished my Master’s degree, and now I’m working full time on something that I really like. Additionally, Sara (my girlfriend) is working with me, and we have a lot of fun working together. So, I must say that I’m a really lucky guy. Not everyone has the chance to work on something they like with someone they love. We’ve also wrote the Raspberry Pi book together, which was a great achievement for both of us.

When it comes to Random Nerd Tutorials, more and more people are reaching us to get help building their projects. We try to help and reach as much people as we can, but sometimes it is just impossible to answer all the requests. We also know that we’re not answering the website’s comments in a timely manner. We just don’t have enough time to do everything, and we apologize for that.

Finishing my Master’s degree, and the Raspberry Pi book for No Starch Press took me a lot more time than I anticipated. This means that I couldn’t complete some of the projects I had in mind for this year, like creating tutorials and projects about the ESP32.

We’re currently working on an ESP32 course that should be released earlier next year. We notice there are a lot of people searching about this topic, but there aren’t many resources available. So, we intend to fill this gap.

What About You?

And you? How was your 2017?

Let us know in the comments section below.