Server chronicles - another repair

 The entropy can only increase, so after some time I had the server shut down, when I restarted something went wrong.
I didn't notice any problem until I did walk close to it.
I did see the Red LED blinking, indicating a problem.

HA - HomeSeer - connect UPS via APCUPSD

It is very useful to have the hub (HomeSeer in this case) connected to an UPS.

Small outages will not disrupt the normal working and in case of long blackout will be possible to safely shut down the system.

Plus will be possible to create events to inform about an outtage, like sending an email.
This article uses the plugin APCUPSD that is not free and is based on the apc utilities.

HA - HomeSeer - connecting to an UPS via NUT

It is very useful to have the hub (HomeSeer in this case) connected to an UPS.

Small blackout will not disrupt the normal working and in case of long blackout will be possible to safely shut down the system.

Plus will be possible to create events to inform about an outtage, like sending an email.

My Meshstastic - what for ?

So .. Meshstastic is nice, I'm starting to acquire HW for different nodes and experimenting but is also time to plan what to do with it, on the long term.

There are many possibilities but in the end my goal would like to be :

• set up a private network to stay in contact with family/extended family
• have a way to stay in direct contact for activities like hiking
• have access to some environmental data
• have access to the HA system remotely
• routing

Server chronicles - testing fan proposal

The HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8 has 8 fans to cool down the two CPUs and other hardware.

These fans are high speed PWM controlled and are prone to fail over time.

The only thing to do is to replace the defective fan with a new one, but it would be nice to understand exactly what the problem is and check if the replacement fan is working before to open the server.

Home Assistant - evaluation

Recently I started to experience problems with HomeSeer.
My Homeseer HomeTroller (basically a Raspberry Pi) started to experience constant crashes.

In the end is the mono environment very critical, a plugin with problems, a service below not working properly, and mono crashes.

So I started to search for alternatives to HomeSeer, because spending more money on a platform that anyway is faulted, doesn't make any sense.

Evaluating a device

I love to go to antique mall and flea market and look to find pieces of technology to play with.

In one of my tour I did find in very good conditions an Anviz FacePass Pro 7, a clock-in face recognition device for few $.

Let discover what it is, if is working and how I could use it !

Repairing an electric curtain

Once again, I did find in a flea market for few $$ something that interested me : an electric curtain.

It was still sealed (apparently) and everything supposed to be in it, it was.

But of course ... it was .. it is, broken.

Let see if it can be fixed. If not ... well, is a very good source of interesting components !

My Meshstastic - Wifi Heltec LoRa 32 V3 ESP32

This is the second module I'm playing for my Meshstatisc experiments

Let see in more details this module and what to do with it.

My Meshstastic - LILYGO® TTGO LoRa32 V2.1_1.6 Version

This is the first module I did buy (see my previous article).

Let see in more details this module and what to do with it.

My Meshstastic

I'm always curious and so time ago I found out about Meshstastic browsing around.
For a while I said "meh, OK, cool, no time, no resources, no ...." yeah.

Then I did try for a while a kind of equivalent service based only on smartphone : Bitchat 

I like the idea of both, but of course finding somebody on Bitchat is like to win a lottery ticket .. so everything went back on the back back back burner.

Then one day I decided to try to do something with Meshstastic and here we are 

HA - HomeSeer - Introduction

After long time I decided to start to work again on some Home Automation projects.
Mainly because a specific need, but I'm starting to see possible side projects along the way.

I already have some "pieces" of HA around, my glorious and ancient X10 system, an integration with Amazon Echo for the archaic X10, but it was time to start to play with ZigBee or Z-Wave.

So I had to choose and pick up an hub for them.

Fitbit Wellness Report

One of the reason to pay for Fitbit Premium was the possibility to generate a 30 days Wellness Report.

I did use that every time before to go to a doctor, it is a nice way to report some physical data.
Since last year, Fitbit (or better Google who did buy Fitbit) decided to remove the possibility to have the Wellness Report.

Why ? Who knows.

EcoFlow Delta-2 MAX - reading device via API

The EcoFlow Delta-2 MAX has an Android application that can monitor and handle the generator.

It can show the battery charge and the instant load/discharge, enable/disable outputs, etc.

Hover one thing is missing : create and show a graph reporting the loading/discharge of the battery, to see for example how much the solar panel contribute to the charge and similar info.

3D Printing - Octoprint renewal - part 1

Basically since the beginning I did use Octoprint to control my glorious Ender 3.

OctoPrint has to run somewhere, so I did use a Raspberry Pi 3B to run it but all things age and I did reach the moment to update it.

Eton American Red Cross SOLARLINK Portable Radio ARC FR600

On an antique mall I did find this nice radio, little bit dirty but otherwise in good shape.

Some cleaning notes.

Emergency power system - logistic

Sometime the power can goes off in the area.

I decided to buy an EF ECOFLOW Solar Generator DELTA 2 Max 2048Wh with 400 W solar panel to charge the Solar generator for long outages.

DreamQuest Pro+ N150 - a review

Once in  while the main PC I use need to be upgraded or fixed.

Normally I'm going on eBay looking for old server to rebuild the main PC, this time I decided to try to buy a new computer, where "new" means recently built.

Browsing around I found this little guy and somehow I was intrigued.

Cooling the server area - Peltier way - the idea

Time ago I did buy a Peltier unit cooling contraption.

There are many different types on the market, I think mine is a 50W unit already assembled with 3 fans, two for cooling down the
hot" side, and one to push the cold air.

Phoronix Test Suite

Sometime there is the need to determine if a computer is "fast" and thus capable to run specific operations.

Is not easy to set up, run and interpret results of tests.
There are many way to do tests on machines, this one is open source, covers Linux, MacOs and Windows, is based on PHP so is highly portable and is quite complex to master just because is HUGE !