Gave up on trying to revive old project and programs on the Mac, decided to work with micro controllers, Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Will say, once again, Apple is showing its true colors.
Using an Intel iMac 27″, 500 gb hard drive. Problem is drive is filling, and because iCloud put my home folder in the cloud, Arduino IDE doesn’t work. It appears since the libraries are really stored in the cloud and the Arduino IDE doesn’t like that. Tried to change permissions and security settings, but still no luck.. HOWEVER, everything works fine on OLD Windows 10 machines.
Sorry, this is just getting silly.
Category: macOS
macOS Apple’s downfall
Having been a big Apple supporter since the early 90’s, I am quickly loosing all love I had for the system. They basically made their machines into a pretty short term, but expensive machine, with many equally expensive and pretty add-ons. But the computer is becoming useless for anyone that does really anything with a computer.
Its lost PHP, Server features (even as a add-on), upgradeability, parts swapping for repairs. And the list goes on.
Starting to think the PHP and server functions were cast off due to its relationship with one of it major shareholders, Microsoft. And I assume with Apple’s need to have something to show its customers every year, new faster than anything out there processors. There are customers that can really use those functions, but nowhere near the numbers that will keep Apple alive.
The bad thing about killing off features, like PHP, is they go out of their way to kill it. Even third party groups that TRY to breath live into ageing machines are getting fustrated.
Personally I won’t be buy any NEW Apples ever again. Maybe second hand have a fraction of their original price (Mac Pro Trashcan, orginally $3k, purchased for $300).
Apple Watch exploded, nothing dramic like bursting into flames, just popped the case apart. Making it worthly. Just months after the warranty expired.
I have Xserves, Flower Pot G4s, Cubes, all still work, but no way to upgrade the OS beyond what they currently have. So no browser updates, no security updates. My friends say “install Linux on them”. Which is possible, but then that causes all sorts of other interconnection issues.
Apple is after the money and short term customer satisfaction. Personally I got into computers because they were fun.
Finally Posting Data from 433mhz
Would not believe the hoops I had jumped thru to get the data where I wanted it. First 433mhz posts to MQTT, then I have a web page running in a loop, on an old Xserve that reads the data from MQTT. After reading data, it parses the data into CSV files, one for each device. Another web page then uses CSV data to create data blocks.
Could not use CSV directly from MQTT because it would just stop working after the file got so big (32mb I think).. JSON has the same issue, but a bit larger 64mb.
Data is not 100% real time, but it is only, at most 2 minutes or so old for each sensor. Each sensors sends data at its own rate. The receiver, caches and process the data, in batches every 10 seconds. Guess if data comes in during that time it is possible it could get lost, but I don’t think so.
Enjoyed working on this. Really hope to add more sensors and make the data look more sci-fi’ish. But that is for a later date.
UPDATE: In this post, we were using FEEDS by Weaver’s Space, in RapidWeaver. Turned out not to be the best solution for the problem
MQTT – How simple …
Was able to add MQTT server using Mosquitto, as simple as they attempt to make it sound to setup and operate, it isn’t.
Using BREW to installed sounded simple, but never worked as all the instructions I could find. Doing a mix install using Brew and other installers I was able to get it working. You couldn’t just start and stop the service thru Brew you had to Force Quit using Activity Monitor, then use:
/usr/local/sbin/mosquitto -c /usr/local/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf to restart.
Adding users was confusing but after a few tries I got it working.
mosquitto_passwd -b passwordfile admin mqttadmin1
Monitoring the server was make very easy using MQTT Explorer, thought understanding the data was a bit more of a challenge. Couldn’t tell when of of my devices was online or not, till about the 15th try. The it just showed up and started working.
My first device was a weather station by Pimoroni:
Having purchased the sensors a few years ago from SparkFun. When I finally saw the sweet data appear I was overjoyed.
{
“device”: “nature-weather”,
“pressure”: 951.99,
“temperature”: 25.8,
“humidity”: 42.61,
“wind_direction”: 90,
“light”: 334.98,
“rain”: 0,
“timestamp”: “2022-08-21 15:51:03”,
“wind_speed”: 0
}
My next project is using Red-node to display the data as it is published to my broker (Can’t understand why they don’t just call it a server).
OH a note about Red-Note, don’t attempt to use Safari on a Mac, it doesn’t work. (See Photo Below) Wasted half an hour thinking i needed to install Modulars or something. Tried in chrome and it opened right up. Apple is become a real pain, IMHO.
Server Upgrade (sic)
The OLD Xserves we were using were starting to be difficult to upgrade. We tried to upgrade the OS, no go. Tried to upgrade services, no go. Mostly because the hardware was no longer supported, which caused the upgrades to state that hardware wasn’t supported. Even minor upgrades were becoming major headaches. SO we upgraded, from 10.6 to 10.12 Sierra. LOL. Not the end all but so far it has paid off. Also the hardware had to be upgraded, xserves, ALL of them, gotta go. Now we are using MacMinis, must admit is is quieter.
The effects kinda snow balled. Hard drives format weren’t readable, services needed to be upgraded, some things don’t work. Trying to find workarounds is the biggest pain. Jabber/Messages is a big one, however now there is something called MQTT. We are trying.
On a positive note our Raspberry Pico W’s have started to arrive. Weather station conversion finished and posting data. We are working on another one that’ll be mobile.
Server Upgrade
After running non-stop since 2007, we are finally replacing our Apple Xserver, which has acted as our in house web and develop server. We were getting to the point that we just could upgrade/update it, and application were suffering. So we finally started the move. First we tried other computers we had laying around, MacMini DualCore i5 running Lion Server, failure. Even tried using a MacMini i7 running Catalina, also a failure. So we have upgraded to an i7 running Monterey, moving away from the Apple Server totally (since they forced us) and trying new systems. Hopefully we will be able to start it up in a week or so.. Crossing fingers..
Apple Server Repair
It has been a while since I got to play with our Snow Leopard server. We were trying to upgrade the jabber server, and ended up totally trashing it. Attempted to use Time Machine Restore, but that failed.
Ended up booting on an Mountain Lion thumb drive purchased from Apple. Was then able to do a recovery from a Time Machine Backup and restart server back to it existing condition. No data lost. SWEET.
We are trying to integrate our Windows boxes into the Jabber network. We are able to get Windows 10 and Windows 98 working. Not the greatest, but it works. Now just want to see if I can get a DOS 6.22 box sending messages. Any ideas?
First Opinion Mojave MacOS 10.14
Honestly, I’ve just started downloading the new OS, and I am hearing people love ‘Dark Mode’. Really!? People that are ‘color challenged’ or ‘color blind’ do NOT like it. Can’t see a thing, melts into the background. Useless!
Just saying. Not a very useful FEATURE..