Category: Personal

Wildlife Training

Been feeding deer someone where on our lot for years. Slowly building a little trust. But herds come and go, restructure, etc. Currently we have a small herd of 3 does, with a 4th attempting to be accepted. We now have a lovely view out our living room windows every day. So thankful.

And I think they are training me. They just sit there staring at the window till I feed them.

BitMiner – failed (Updated)

Saw people using these, figured I’d try one.

Took over a month to arrive, had it put together and working fairly quickly. But it didn’t last. After about a week, I arrived in my office to see it at 80%. Assume it started an update. Let it sit there for a few hours, didn’t move. Rebooted, Bricked.

Tried for hours to look for bin files or software to reflash. None worked. So chalk this up to lesson learned. Will try to turn it into a media player or hacking tool. Will keep you updated.

UPDATE: During a quiet weekend, I was able to sit down and learn more about these bit miners. Unknown to me when I attempt to reflashed the device, I erased my license. A new license costs $3, so it wasn’t a big deal, however it would have been easy to recover license before flashing had a known. SO BEWARE!

Also depending on which unit you purchase, these can be daisy chained, which would be nice if you had more than one (thinking about getting another to up my odds LOL).

The stand/case it comes with isn’t the best, it falls over easily. So I am printing stands now. LOVE the 3d Printers!

OH and 80% means it wasn’t reaching the BitCoin Pool server, seems they changed/rearranged them. Once I learned that it was an easy fix, one that could have be avoided.

Finally, a Garage

After years of yearly winter critter attacks on our autos, one that caused my truck to catch fire. We finally have a garage, we are still waiting for the doors. However at least in present condition it’ll keep snow and ice off the autos.

Added a Simi-finished wall, that contains power and added retractable power and air hoses as well.

Ordered a 24 foot work bench, should be here in a few weeks.

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

Ventage Computers

As you might know, I’ve been working on computers for awhile. And for the most part I never dump old systems unless they stop working. Did do some housecleaning over the summer, found a few systems that had died. Caused by rust and ‘melting’ foam. Over the weekend I dug out my old Atari 800XL and hooked it up. Worked pretty good, it does have sticking keys… What I found interesting was taking the machine apart, this thing was built like a tank, solid and heavy, not like modern computers..

Basically I can take keyboard apart and clean the leads.. Another weekends project.

Finding a TV to connect the computer was more difficult. I needs a old tuner. Lucky for me the flat screen in my office is older and has a turner..

Having worked in a Atari repair center, I had a demo cartridge and test cartridge.

3D Printing, at last.

For years I’ve been trying to find a 3d printer that works reliably and has good support. Started off with a Makerbot kit, which worked well, for awhile. Then Makerbot went crazy with the pricing and went private, so I lost heart in the company.

From there we switched to Solidoodle 3, Supported Solidoodle Press though a kickstarter, took almost two years to receive and NEVER got a good print out of the unit. The unit looked great though. Back and forth with tech support to the point that they wanted me to send back unit for repair. Which I never did, thank goodness. They were out of business weeks later.

A few weeks ago I received notice from Robo, that they were discounting remaining R1+ units, I jumped at it. So far the unit has printed everything I’ve requested, even prints that took 8 hours. A total first.

The units LEDs stopped working, so I contacted Robo, after a few trouble shooting emails, I have new Lights and a have received answers to all my issues quickly and without a lot of template replies. Fantastic printer at low cost.

The Cloud – Really!

Just thinking:

After watching the development of “The Cloud” as a marketing tool for software companies, I’ve decided it is a con, a way for the developer to control the user and milk them for more money.

There are a many ways to utilize “The Cloud” the two major ones are as a personal storage space like DropBox, OneDrive (and its many incarnations) and iCloud, and then there is the way Nest and many many Phone apps developers  store your data on their servers for ‘security reasons’. Which is just a nice way of saying, oh yeah, we will charge you an unnecessary amount each month to use their app. After you have a few of these apps, the monthly charges really add up.

What happened to Individual Cloud storage, putting your own NAS on the internet and using that? (Hint: Most users don’t hold the skills to setup, no offense), or their ISP makes it almost impossible.. So everyone has to pay more for less.