18 November 2021

Vindriktning air quality sensor

I have a Home Assistant server setup so I thought I would make an wireless air quality sensor using Ikea's Vindriktning and an ESP that so it can be monitored. But I ordered a few ESP32-C3 which is at the moment bleeding edge tecnology and isn't compleatly implimented in ESPHome. So.. at the moment this project is on hold.

05 November 2021

Ikea Billy short bookcase

Okay so I have a wall with some bookcases on it and  clearly I need more shelves but I also want to keep the short bookcase in the middle as kind of a display area. Also I would love for them to all look the same.

The problem is, I do not have room for 3 bookcases without covering up a light switch. If I just had an extra 4 inches I could squeeze them all in. Now Ikea does sell a slimmer one but... (I often wonder what's the point, I mean I am sure it has its place but 15 inches is just not big enough.) Anyway I think it would just look odd.

So the plan is to make the short full width bookcase that Ikea sells a little skinnier. But after purchasing it I wonder why I didn't just buy a full size and only fill the bottom half with shelves. I would still have to make it skinnier but for the price and future movability it would have been the smarter move. Always second guessing things after it is done and cannot be returned! Or maybe It will just have to be version 2, oh well. Better luck next time 🤨? This is why I never get anything done!

But I digress, back to the plan! After measuring and then sitting on it for a day or two I measured again and realized I was off by almost 2 inches. Thankfully I had not made any cuts yet, but now I am mostly absolutely positive maybe that I need to take about 4 inches off the width of the bookcase. Maths is hard! Oh that made me remember the book I read Humble Pi, It's good and funny.

Yeah so... back to it... again. This is where I am currently with the project but I'll update this post and maybe add some pictures of the process once I'm done.

===== Update 6/??/2024 =====

So it's finnaly done! I finish the bookcase months ago but it has a wonkyness to it I'm sure one of my angles are off by a fraction of a degree causing it to skew just right jutting out one of the top corners by about a quarter to half an inch. I know not a big deal, but it is; it could be better. The second issue was the getting the shelves to fit right and drilling the holes for the Ikea shelf "pegs" on the shorter shelf planks. Which is what took so long, as I wanted to make sure they were square (eventhough the bookcase is awry) and I didn't have the equipment to do it and apparently I was having a difficult time asking a "friend" to use their table saw (I swear I don't have social issues). Anyway it's done, I wish I had done things differently, but I guess we can't know everything before we start a project.

03 November 2021

SDR HD Radio

This was saved as an unfinished daft from a few years ago... figured I would post it anyway.

I just spent a ton of hours getting nrsc5 installed on my macOS without using ports or brew. The question is was it worth it?

Dependencies
- git
- cmake
- autoconf
- libtool
  - help2man
  - xz
  - automake
- libao
- libfftw3
    ./configure --enable-threads && make -j8 && sudo make install
    ./configure --enable-float --enable-threads && make -j8 && sudo make install
- librtlsdr
  - libusb
  - pkg-config
      ./configure --with-internal-glib
  edit CMakeLists.txt
    cmake_policy(SET CMP0075 NEW)
    set(CMAKE_MACOSX_RPATH 1)


nrsc5
edit CMakeLists.txt
  -check_symbol_exists (_Imaginary_I complex.h HAVE_IMAGINARY_I)
  -check_symbol_exists (_Complex_I complex.h HAVE_COMPLEX_I)
  +check_symbol_exists (I complex.h HAVE_IMAGINARY_I)
  +check_symbol_exists (complex complex.h HAVE_COMPLEX_I)
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/libtoolize /usr/local/bin/glibtoolize
cmake -DUSE_COLOR=ON ..
make -j8
sudo make install

and it works...

Would I do it again? Probably, but only now that I have this info on what I needed and what to change for it to work. Heck you could almost make a script out of it...

WHY

Soo… it's been awhile, and well right now things are tough. Simple things that most of the population seem to have no issues with tend to bog me down and imobilize me. Nothing gets done, nothing progresses, and it sucks! It's not like I don't want to do things I just don't want to do anything. For example I have a few projects that would be great if they were done, meaning that I would personally enjoy them being done, but every time I look at them I just feel overwhelmed and give up. I don't even try! And it feels pathetic, I feel like I'm pathetic and not worth anything. And I know that's the shame talking but it still takes it toll. It's buggy that what should modivate just overwhelms me and pushes me further down. Perfection is a hinderence and struggling doing a first draft, a failed run, just seems wrong. I know… well I understand that failure is one of the ways we learn but school taught me that failling is bad and I'm bad for doing it. WHY? Why does living have to be so hard? What's the point? Simple daily tasks like getting out of bed, finding food, or showering shouldn't be this difficult! And it is, it is…

13 March 2017

RPI Blank/Black Screen

While trying out the latest Raspbian with PIXEL on Raspberry Pi using the Window Manager I noticed that the screen would only go blank/black and never went into standby mode. Now I don't know if this has to do with my cabling setup but I am using an HDMI from the RPi with a converter to DVI into the monitor. After searching for a while I came across a few different suggestions. The following is what I feel is the simplest and most reliable mix of my findings.

The simplest and cleanest way to get the monitor in and out of standby is by using the commands below.

$ vcgencmd display_power 0
$ vcgencmd display_power 1

xscreensaver has a watch option for checking when it blanks, locks, or unblanks the screen.

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $blanked = 0;
open (IN, "xscreensaver-command -watch |");
while () {
    if (m/^(BLANK|LOCK)/) {
        if (!$blanked) {
            system "vcgencmd display_power 0";
            $blanked = 1;
        }
    } elsif (m/^UNBLANK/) {
        system "vcgencmd display_power 1";
        $blanked = 0;
    }
}

Now I'm sure there is a way to get this working at startup, but I'm not that skilled, and as this was just to tryout and temporarily play with that's as far as bothered with.

Enjoy!

wpa_supplicant.conf

Reference info for wpa_supplicant.conf:

I got tired of looking through pages of documents to find the information I mostly use for setting up wpa_supplicant.conf on my Raspberry Pi devices. So, I'm putting it here.

If you are looking for a way to setup DHCP or Static settings for your networks follow the example under ### Other Options ###.

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

#
# home network; allow all valid ciphers
network={
    ssid="home"
    scan_ssid=1
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
    psk="very secret passphrase"
    priority=5
}

# This will connect to any open wifi connection
# if no other connection is available.
network={
    key_mgmt=NONE
    priority=-1
}

### Other Options ###
network={
    ssid="SCHOOLS NETWORK NAME"
    psk="SCHOOLS PASSWORD"
    id_str="school"
}

network={
    ssid="HOME NETWORK NAME"
    psk="HOME PASSWORD"
    id_str="home"
}

The following is part of the ### Other Options ### setup. Edit /etc/network/interfaces with iface school inet static and iface home inet dhcp in it so it looks something like this:

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual
wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

iface school inet static
address 192.0.2.7
gateway 192.0.2.254
netmask 255.255.255.0

iface home inet dhcp

06 February 2016

Sep165

This was a hard week. I'm not sure when it started to go down hill but I know by Wednesday evening I was out of it mentally and physically. I know I wasn't sleeping well and I guess the added stress of the divorce paperwork put me over the edge. I had lost all vitality and mentally I became easily distract.. Squirrel! Hm? Oh right, Anyway if you're wondering what it's like to deal with depression there is a TED talk which describes it well.


So, what got me out of the funk you ask? Well Wednesday night I prayed, something I had gotten out of the habit of doing. I basically said that I'm really struggling and asked for a lifeline –someone to talk to because I didn't know who to contact (I blame this on the mental mush, I've had a number of friends tell me I can call and chat any time)– and I guess I also wanted someway to know that God was really listening.