Bad battery choice
Shelly sells a smarthome sensor called Door/Window2. It works well, use wifi, is very configurable and can be used locally, without cloud. Unfortunately they’ve chosen a weird, expensive battery option, CR123A. It can cost around 70 NOK (~10 USD), and does not exist as a rechargable option. And you need two of them! So what do you do if you only have one left?
Solar panel to DC heater
In Norway electricity is the most popular form of heating for households at 96% (source). Pure 230V AC is a very high-level energy, and we don’t really need that precision for heating.
This is a project to see if easy, not-perfect, locally generated energy can be used to lower the heating bill.
Disclamer: this is mostly for fun. A more economic aproach would be insulation, heat pump, put on a sweater, etc.
OpenWRT on Altibox VLAN
An ISP in Norway, Altibox, serves up VLANs for VoIP, IPTV and internet. The included router gives no control or options for LAN management. I only use the internet service, so I replaced it with a generic router running OpenWRT. I found no straight forward answer to how to configure it, so here it is.
BlueDo - Bluetooth proximity automation
Lock your desktop, mute music or run any other command when leaving your PC. There are dozens of apps like this. This one just aims to make it beautiful, modern and easy.
Check Commander - Curses interface for Checkmk
A curses interface for checkmk. I named it Checkmk Commander, but Check Commander is easier to say.
Checkmk Plugins, part 1
Some of my checkmk plugins, Webchecks, Blacklist and SQL Dump. Easy deployments.
Non-invasive graphing of energy usage
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
Reducing energy usage is hard if you can’t see it. Here’s a cheap way to graph home or office energy usage.
By reading data from the energy meter, one can get super accurate, real-time usage data.
Graphing X Aircontrol from Trox Technik
Modern buildings have advanced HVAC systems, but they keep the data for themselves. Let’s fight that. =)
Argos, GNOME Shell extensions
Argos is a free GNOME version of BitBar. Both lets you run any script to create an icon in the panel (or Mac OS X Menu Bar). You can see lots of plugins here: BitBar plugins.
VEML7700 in ESPHome
I have a VEML7700 digital light level sensor, which is not supported by ESPHome, but can be used as a custom i2c component. This is how:
Nordlux lamp. Incompetence or planned obsolescence?
I got this lamp from Nordlux, model 6315. It came with unreplacable LEDs, meaning you have to throw it away when they run out. Apparently the LEDs are rated for 30.000 hours, but will they last that long?
ZFS on laptop with encrypted /home
With Ubuntu 19.10 it’s simple to get a workstation with boot and root on ZFS. But what’s missing from the install is encryption. This is how I did it.
I suggest you first have:
- basic zfs knowledge
- good linux knowledge
- no important data on the target system
- more than 4 GB RAM
- SSD or better
Ninjabox
Overview
Untrickable laser alarm, with an easy-to-knock-out fusebox.
A tribute to (the alarms in) Mark of the Ninja.
Car-logger - part 3
Overview
A self-hosted, real-time, inexpensive open source car tracker built with Raspberry Pi Zero W, Nextcloud, and optionally Home Assistant.
RadiOS part 2
Overview
See RadiOS part 1.
So I started making a prototype to figure out if I could “sense” both selections with GPIO pins, while the designer started modeling and rendering suggestions for the physical design. The solution chosen was to first set all volume control pins to high, and check which channel control points registered as on, then reverse (control points high, check volumes).
Weather via finger, an update
Overview
I meant to write this post in Febuary, but never had the time.
Something exploded at Tuesday 2016-02-16.
I created the finger weather service in 2012, and announced it at Reddit. It got some mentions in Norwegian blogs, and i gathered a few regular users. See old stats in previous post.
I’m no fan of social media, and try to stay away. But apparently someone recently noticed the service and tweeted about it. Then blogs. Since I have regularly received “thank you” mails due to one of the random messages at the bottom (Mail a “thank you” to finger@falkp.no if you like the service.).
Using finger service the wrong way
Overview
If you’re doing this, you’re doing it wrong…
2016-05-31 10:19:45.493314 Client 92.x.x.192 hamburg, germany/hamburg/hamburg
2016-05-31 10:19:48.443380 Client 74.x.x.189 greensboro, united_states/north_carolina/greensboro
2016-05-31 10:19:56.733260 Client 50.x.x.50 beaverton, united_states/oregon/beaverton
2016-05-31 10:19:56.745653 Client 50.x.x.50 beaverton, united_states/oregon/beaverton
2016-05-31 10:19:56.759656 Client 50.x.x.50 beaverton, united_states/oregon/beaverton
2016-05-31 10:19:56.819283 Client 50.x.x.50 beaverton, united_states/oregon/beaverton
2016-05-31 10:20:16.287744 Client 5.x.x.13 kaiserslautern, germany/rhineland-palatinate/kaiserslautern
2016-05-31 10:20:35.182942 Client 85.x.x.140 katowice, poland/silesia/katowice
2016-05-31 10:20:47.029550 Client 193.x.x.226 oslo, norway/oslo/oslo/oslo
Your own Ruter.no realtime monitor
Overview
By request, a quick how-to on setting up your own realtime monitor for ruter.no, Oslos public transit.
