Random

"Having unpredictable outcomes and, in the ideal case, all outcomes equally probable."

This is random posts, anything that I want to share with the world and which don't fit into the other categories. It can be anything from pre-experiment tests to one-off ideas that I probably won't do more work on.

I have a handful of cheap ESP32 development boards, and some expensive, that all sometimes gives me the error A fatal error occurred: Could not open COM6, the port doesn't exist. But I have found a workaround. The simplest way I found is to start with opening the Serial Monitor (in Arduino IDE) to see the status of the com-port easily. Then unplug the USB cable from the dev-board, hold down the EN / reset switch while plugging it in again. If it worked (which it does 9/10 times) the yellow bar [...]

My home server runs Truenas Core, a natural choice since I've been partial towards BSD since I accidentally overwrote my main disk with OpenBSD back in the 90s. To get some ease of mind I want to back up photos and other important files and CrashPlan is (was when I looked last time) the only cloud backup service that ran on Linux and mounted disks it is what I use. Mouse not working in BHyve I found this guide Setting up TrueNAS with Crashplan Pro Backup that very clearly explains the process of [...]

For quite a while I have been annoyed that I didn't have a phone stand for my phone that would charge it wireless. But then I remembered that I had an old wireless charger that I didn't use any more. The evolution of the stand The first crude version had a design flaw, I had not accounted for the precise positioning needed for the wireless charger in relation to the phone. So I quickly printed a half-moon shaped "bodge-spacer" to test it out. When I had the first version I realized that I wanted [...]

I have a water radiator on my top floor mounted in a small niche, so small that there is only about 1cm of space between the air-valve and the wall. The problem has been that I since I moved here 10 years ago have been looking for something that would fit so I could air out the radiator. But it seems like the closest I found was some image of one. The last couple of weeks we have had quite cold weather and the need for getting the radiators up to max performance was needed more than ever. So after [...]

I have a Raspberry PI in the boot of my car, and it can get quite warm during the summer months, so it needed some cooling. The problem is that it features a PiJuice, to be able to handle the power being cut as soon as the car is turned off. But I couldn't find any cases that had place for both a fan and pijuice, even if i Googled for at least 30s. So I designed and printed a simple case for it with a 5V 4010 fan. The fan is connected to PiJuice and a small python script that uses the temperature [...]

I have a handful servers where I login regularly and started to created separate ssh-keys for each client-server pair instead of the standard practice of just one ssh-key per client. The basic idea If you only have one ssh-key and it get accidentally (or intentionally by your nemesis) it's quite a chore to hunt down all the places where you used that key to change it and check for unauthorized access. Instead we create one ssh-key for each client-server pair. In theory Say you have a client and [...]

This summer me and some of my friends continued the tradition of over 20 years now to go to Netherlands and visit the hacker festival known under new name each event. This iteration was called May Contain Hackers or MCH2022. This was the first time we didn't sleep in a tent on the campgrounds but instead lived in the lovely hotel across the canal and took the ferry over each morning and evening. A new find this event was the excellent Gulf station just by the harbor from where we each morning [...]

While designing my own PCB I created some prototypes. To test my designs and the capabilities of JLCPCB. I wanted to test the newly created footprints, colours and silk-screen prints among other things. So here are a small gallery of those prototypes. The first, mainly footprint test The 2nd & 3rd, more footprints The 4th, different sized holes The fifth, more footprints, RGB and misc shenanigans [...]

I got a small vacuum pump to use with my projects using resin, and ofcourse me and the kids first task was to test to put different kinds of candy in it. https://youtu.be/jGdmLLrSNV8 https://youtube.com/shorts/ObA4UA7Tq50?feature=share https://youtu.be/4kXskGUJrmk https://youtu.be/fhccxxpRgLM https://youtube.com/shorts/4K-97uQMPw0?feature=share https://youtube.com/shorts/zyk3E-ICmgw?feature=share [...]

For many years I've enjoyed creating timelapses. The earliest i still have is from Dreamhack 2002. Since then there I've takes a lot more timelapses, mainly sunsets and stars. https://www.youtube.com/embed/4PJjDDDmT3s Dreamhack 2002 The 2002 Dreamhack one used my parents old VHS camcorder as a video device connected to an old dual pentium 200. After that I've used my Canon EOS 40D with a adapter to use power from the wall instead of battery. Now I mainly use my Canon EOS 5D with Magic Lantern or [...]