Assorted Stuff #7

Life has been a bit scrappy of late, so lots of scraps to rant about vs anything actually of substance.... Doesn't that intro just make ya wanna keep reading?

Miss Linn

Seems Dan (and Gary) got a bit confused about the 7 inch tire test. Before the test they seemed to think that the tread pattern was the same on the 7's ie, just like the 8's, when I said they were smoother / low rolling resistance, the difference in the battery discharge curve seemed to make more sense to them.

Here is a photo of the wide 8, all purpose 8's and the 7s.

I still want to try the 9's and might save up for them over the winter so I can get some in about Feb next year. Got a strong feeling they might become my go-to's for pretty much everything except long rides in lose gravel / dirt where I will use the wide 8's.

Wardrving

There has been an uptick in folks getting into wardriving for some reason. (Sadly, some can be laid at the feet of finding Flock cameras). Most of it slipped by me, but a few folks reached out and asked that I test some new hardware and the new Android app.
I've added my findings and thoughts to my already too long wardriving brain dump blog, which I think has done nothing but make it even more too long.

The tl;dr of it all is that the hardware (ESP32C5 micro controller) is meh on its own, but responds well to a good quality antenna and paired with a low noise amplifier seems to pull in the WiFi in a meaningful way. The trick is to run at least 8 of them, better would be 12. The app driving them splits the WiFi channels between them all, so what you lose in deafness you pick up in scan speed.

The Android app is an odd duck. It does not do that much better on its own than the Wigle app, but where it blows everything out of the water is that you can plug ONE of a very limited number of USB network adapters into an OTG cable and it loads the driver up in the app.

I put 3 adapters in different project boxes with lots of hot glue plus magnets and got 2 on Bluey and 1 on the son-in-laws work truck and the numbers are promising. I've ordered another two amplifiers as I really think they would go better if they had more yelling going into their ears.

Photos of that mess to come I guess (the LNAs arrive on Sept 9th 2026).

ACARS

The rot started to set in just after the site went viral during the Afghanistan extraction. Prior to that the site was fun to work on, we had all the stuff that me and the few folks using it were interested in. Not just aircraft, but earthquakes, satellites and weather data and more.
After the the extraction mess, people started actually using the site for serious research and they primarily used it to 'track the military'.
I have always and still have less than zero interest in military stuff.
I added military info pages against my personal will and it was a big effort to try and help folks that wanted more and more military centric features.
In hindsight, March 2022 when the server caught fire and I lost everything, I should have given up and walked away then.
For some reason I felt I could turn the site if I rebuilt it, but I was wrong. V2 of the site just became more and more military focused.
The situation with Iran has only made the site even more mil focused. (If that was possible).
Moving up north and having my dish trashed by the storms, snow and ice sort of added 'cant be bothered' to the list - why would I work so hard to add more feeds to something I don't like?
The last few straws then came mid 2026.
The only other real ACARS site developer has gone MIA. I now no longer have anyone I can bounce ideas around and keep each other engaged.

AI bots. I have 10,000 to 1 more bots than humans hitting the site. I spend hours and hours every single week for the past year trying to beat off the bots as they bog down the site performance for the humans (that are using the site to track military aircraft - I think you can see where this is going).
No one sees this effort and time. The site still runs and everything looks like I've just given up where in reality I am spending untold frustrating hours and hours working keeping the site going for no tangible benefit other than making it run smoothly for the next AI bot that will be arrogantly spun up and pointed at it.
I still have a few ideas for the site, but I am spending my time swatting bots vs being creative and adding new pages.

Lastly, our guy on the East Coast has hit a rough patch in his life and needs to shut down his C-Band feed. That just leaves us with UK / Euro and APAC C-Band feeds at the moment.
The global C-Band ADSC oceanic coverage is what made my site so unique. I was (and partly still am) the only guy in the world, thanks to some amazing folks that I consider friends who spend THEIR time feeding the site, that together results in global coverage to an ACARS website.

But now the reality is that more and more people just want to steal the data vs spin up a feeder and contribute.

Its not like I can just hand the site code over to someone that wants to pick it up and run it. 10% of the site is the Node-RED web server, the bulk of the site are the feeds.
I'm the only person that has worked so hard with others of like mind to build and configure their ACARS feeds for themselves and for AI bots to steal. (And in some cases they are wrapping our data in their vibe coded apps and are selling it at a monthly fee).

So, I am finding myself on a razors edge.
Shut it down or try and keep it going.
Give up on my C-Band dish feed, or push and get it running again.
Let the bots take over the site and pound it in the ground, or keep spending the pointless hours swatting them.
Try and find new folks that can host a satellite dish and help them get it running, or point folks at the other ACARS site, shut mine down, and get on with my life.

Solar Panels

This summer is done. Still no panels on the roof. Part of the delay is that Freddy does not want me putting them on the shop roof where I want I put them. (She does not want me up a ladder servicing them as I get older).
She wants them on the house roof where the vent pipes are in the way.
We sort of settled on the patio cover, but she wants to replace it soon, so I am sort of dead in the water where I am going to mount them.
According to the NWS the winter up here will have less snow than last year, but I bet we still get some storms and power glitches, so I really need to get the computers moved over to the battery inverter system, but only if I keep the ACARS site running. If I shut the site down, I can shut 90% of my computers down and save a ton of money and power glitch stress.

AI

AI website scraping bots created by clueless humans aside, the whole topic of AI is becoming more and more of a concern.
There is the cybersecurity side of it. My job is strongly impacted by how horrible people can do disproportionately greater and greater damage to society when they are empowered by AI.
Its now clearly a question of when, not if, your life will be upended by an AI hack.
It could be your bank, your hospital, your car, your photo collection, your emails - some part of your personal life will be impacted in a horrible and devastating way soon.
Someone very close me has had a run-in with AI that came close to crushing their spirit. They are unsure which way to turn in life as a result of being a victim of AI abuse.

This has caused me to try and reconcile in my mind how I work with computers and tech, not just at work, but also at home.
AI has, up to this point, been something that is somewhat cute and off in the distance - something you could chose to ignore and 'live and let live', but Sept 2026 with the chatGPT release of Astra to the world at large has changed that. Humans are now in grave danger. The cat is out of the bag, the horse is out of the barn, the human marbles are scattered.

3D Printer

I've needed to make a few things and so when the chance of a 3D printer being offered with the only provisional cost of "If I need anything printed, please do your best to make it happen in a timely manner", I accepted.

I did the included test print of a rabbit, then things fell apart.

The printer is a "Creality CR-5 Pro" and its only a few years old, but Creality do not include it their splicer software, so I cant create new prints or download any from the web and print them.
I have a boat anchor that can print little rabbits and nothing more.... For the moment.
Terry is a bit busy with a big work project, but at the end of the month we might get some alignment time and he can take a look with me how to get it working.

Update. Just as this blog was about to go live I pushed myself and got OctoPi loaded on an SD card, got a USB-B cable hooked up to the printer, found the archived version of the Creality vintage software and used it to convert the .3mf downloaded file from the web to GCODE for the printer... If none of that makes sense to you, no worries, I have no idea either.
The printer is about 30 minutes into a 9 hour print... What could possibly go wrong?
I think the very next - like now now next - thing I need to do is get a webcam hooked up so I can see it remotely - even from the basement would be helpful.
Its not a super fast modem printer, which is fine, I just need to not waste time on a print that ends up going wrong for any of a zillion reasons.

So far, the Octo Pi software seems really useful.
Here is the graph of the bed and nozzle heating up. You can also see the time remaining and other stuff.
It supports the camera for a time-lapse which might be fun.