Jul 7 2020
I just got a Roav SmartCharge F2 for my car since a mounting kit for the Bluetooth stereo I have is a nice $200 (damn Driver Information Center built into the factory radio). Although not perfect, it does work and at least in my car people can hear me fine talking over it so that is nice. The main complaint I have is that the audio quality isn’t perfect, but it does fine for what I need so I’m happy with it.
Nov 14 2019
Wife and I subscribed to Disney+ yesterday. For the kiddos of course…..
So today I plan to start watching the Marvel movies in chronological order. I’ll use strikethrough when I’m done watching one.
Jul 29 2019
Just a quick update on my home server. I finally got a chance to try out the replacement KCMA-D8 board I got. Sadly it does not have working video. Thankfully the seller is shipping me another one. I also talked to my wife and she agrees that we can mount it on the wall in the mechanical room to reduce the temperature in the crawlspace under the stairs. While not an ideal location, it is better than where it sites now since the mechanical room is always open (litter boxes for the cats). I am hoping it won’t get too hot in there in the winter with the server, the water heater & the furnace in there.
Jul 29 2019
I’m planning on starting to make some 433MHz temperature & humidity sensors based on this Instructable. I will also have to build a programmer, based on this Instructable.
Parts list for the programmer (Amazon works best for me) is as follows.
The parts list for the sensors is as follows
As you can see, I made some substitutes to work with what I can find on Amazon but for the most part it is the same component.s
By Shaun • computers, networking, smart house, tech • 0
Jul 13 2019
Well,
Last night I moved my home server from an old crappy tower case to a Rosewill RSV-L4500 4U rackmount case. No rack to put it in so it sits on its side but oh well. So much room in it, plenty of room for my ASUS KCMA-D8 motherboard. Will be really nice when I get the replacement board so I can use both CPU sockets and have 16 true cores and hopefully 128GB of RAM. If not, I’ll have either 64GB (like I do now) or 96GB of RAM. Both of which are a huge improvement over the 24GB I had before.
By Shaun • Server, smart house, tech • 0
Jun 19 2019
I’ve decided that I really have no reason to have Windows on my laptop since I don’t use it all that often so tonight I’m going to embark on installing funtoo Linux on it. It will most definitely be an interesting time but given the age of my laptop shouldn’t have to many surprises.
May 7 2019
My wife loves her crocheting. No big deal and not that weird. Me being the good husband I am however decided to write an app that will allow her to quickly generate a temperature blanket pattern. For those that don’t know, a temperature blanket is where you assign a color to a temp or range of temps and then track the high or low temp for a year. You use that to determine what color each day will be. Also means that even with the same color mapping, each year would be a different pattern. I am close to done and I cannot wait to have her use it.
Mar 8 2019
Well, due to Meraki not supporting IPv6 on their MX appliances I have removed it from my network. I am now back to running a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter, specifically the EdgeRouter X SFP. With a 1Gbe Fiber link between it and my Meraki MS220-8P just because I can (everything purchased from http://fs.com and working great). I have also replaced my Meraki MR33 AP with a Cambium e410 AP that I got for free. While it is still a cloud managed AP (for now at least as I have yet to get the on-premise controller working in KVM) there is no license fee which is nice. Although the cnMaestro software is a little harder to navigate than Meraki’s, I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it.
On the home server front, right now I have unRAID running on an Intel Core i7-4770 in a ASRock H97M Pro4 motherboard with 24GB of RAM. This will soon be upgraded to dual AMD Opteron 4280s in an ASUS KCMA-D8 motherboard with 128GB of RAM. I got gifted the motherboard, and the processors and RAM were very cheap. Just waiting on the adapters to be able to mount Socket AM3 HSFs on the board, the HSFs themselves & a new PSU as my current 500w one will not be big enough to power everything. The i7, its motherboard & RAM will go into our gaming desktop, giving it a nice upgrade from an i5-2500 & 8GB of RAM.
Nov 8 2018
Well,
I have come to the conclusion that I am in need of a new home server. My combination of a HP N40L for storage, a HP Laptop for Plex and a Raspberry Pi 3 as a Home Assistant machine just isn’t working well anymore. Of course, I can’t afford to go out and buy brand new gear (for the most part). I am considering “old” LGA 1356 Intel E5-2670 Xeons (around $80 each), a motherboard to support two of them, rackmount case (new Norco RPC-5224 and probably the most expensive part of the build), new PSU, an additional SAS/SATA controller so I can use the case properly, etc. Just need to determine if I want to do Ubuntu with ZOL & root on ZFS or if I want to go with FreeBSD and a beta install of Docker. I’ll run as much as I can outside of Docker containers, but some will need to be containers. I’m also thinking of putting the server in the garage, although I have no clue how hot it gets in there in the summer which worries me. I would love to be able to run two fiber runs out there to do a connection between my current Meraki MS220-8P and my old Dell PowerConnect 2724 (LAG between them just because I can), would also give me the ability to upgrade to 10Gig at some point in the future.
By Shaun • smart house, tech • 0
Jul 16 2020
Bluetooth
Well, the Roav Smart Charger F2 was a bust, as was the F3. They worked fine for streaming music, but not for calls. The next attempt is the Mpow Pro Trucker Bluetooth Headset. Hopefully, it works well. Won’t be able to stream music but at least I’ll be able to talk while driving.
By Shaun • cars, phones, tech • 0