• Category Archives Computers

  • Imagine a life with no computers……ahhhh……bliss…..

  • Mesh Wifi

    Posted on by beno Comment

    I am not totally thrilled with the Wifi coverage in my house.
    I am not the only one having this issue. Seems houses over here (in California) are built, then covered in chicken wire, then sprayed with cement. The net result of which is that WiFi coverage in two story houses is terrible.
    My router is upstairs and we mostly live downstairs.

    Added to this is the fact that we (Terry and I) fly (well, test hover – and in Terry’s case, move the little guys around a little bit – its not that big of a park, but its super convenient and fun) our drones in the park over the back of the house, and its a dead spot, both for my personal WiFi and for cell phone coverage. So when we want to post pictures or videos it’s often a case of standing on the park benches and sticking out your tongue and looking for the best wind direction to get a signal.

    Dan and I tried to do some tweaking years ago, but it resulted in poor through put and the usual problem where the phone will hang on to a low signal level access point in favor of the high signal strength access point you are standing next to.

    Thus, I am always on the look out for a solution too all the above problems……
    Is this it?

    https://betanews.com/2017/08/06/amplifi-mesh-wifi-system-review/

    Not only does the AmpliFi HD Mesh Wi-Fi System sort of look like an AirPort router, but it promised an easy app-based setup. What really sweetens the pot, however, is that the 802.11ac system uses “mesh” technology, allowing several access points to work together. Oh, and let’s not forget that this home-based product is made by the much-respected Ubiquiti Networks.

    In addition to the router, there are two mesh access points called “AmpliFi MeshPoint HD” that plug directly into a wall outlet. The design here is quite brilliant, as the antennas sit on a magnetic ball joint. You can easily rotate — or remove them — without the need to screw or unscrew anything. They also have a series of LED lights to show you connectivity.

    Answer. No.

    There were some anomalies, however. Sometimes my MacBook Pro on the second floor would connect to the router a floor below rather than the much-closer access point on the same floor. To make matters worse, it would connect on the 2.4GHz band at a slower speed.

    To remedy this, I would turn off the Wi-Fi on my MacBook Pro and then turn it on. It would then connect to the closer mesh access point on the 5GHz band as I wanted. Yes, this actually did matter. When running the Speedtest app on my Mac, I would see a dramatic speed boost when on the closer access point with the 5GHz band. It is worth noting, this “bug” only happened a few times. It has worked as it should ever since.

    Seems they also have not yet solved the signal strength issue either. Bleh.
    Not only, but also, at 350 US bucks, it waaaaay out of my buy and test price range.
    Still… tempting… I really like Ubiquity networking gear. (I currently have a set of their 900mHz radios at Opto to test with our gear).


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • Solar eclipse – online vewing

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Todays the big day if you are State side.
    If you are not stuck in traffic, you might want to take the easy way out and watch the eclipse online.

    Here is a nice write up on some of your options.

    https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/18/how-to-watch-the-eclipse/

    I personally am going to open a few tabs and see which is the least obnoxious. I have a horrible feeling that they will try and make it like a typical USA sporting event and shout every second of the event… Coupled with 1 second cuts to nothing related to the celestial event…..

    Wow. I sound like two grumpy old men.


    Astronomy Computers 📎and tagged

  • Seismograph – Part 4.5

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Just a quick update to say that things are working and that I have added a thermal graph to the data.

    This screenshot is from my groov screen. It is easier for me to add live data to there than this website….. But I try and keep some of it synched.
    Anyway, the point of this is to show that the system picked up a ‘tiny’ M1.27 at my beloved Borrego Springs a few days after I got it in the new vault.
    I like the thermal plot, it shows the amplitude of the frequency of the data. Low bass at the bottom and tops out at 20 Hz at the top.
    Blue is low amplitude and works its way up to red.
    I need to do some more reading about how to read both waveforms, but its nice to have it and let it seep in in the meanwhile.

    I plan to put some 50/50 cement/sand mix around the tub, put a water edge around the edge to help the water run away from the tub and then make a foam top to keep the bugs out.
    Once that is done, we are pretty much done with the physical vault.
    At this point I will turn my attention to the software.

    [Edit – Due to the nature of scheduled blog posts, I tinkered with the software after I made this post, but before I could blog about the changes – whoa, that does not make sense even to me – anyway, I broke the main 12 hour trace graphic. The thermal one is still working, but yeah, everything was working great when I wrote this blog, then I messed with (before this blog was published) and broke it…. Perhaps by the time this blog goes live it will be working again – duno… anyway, time is weird. My names thebaldgeek and Im normal.]


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • Temperature sensing

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    We shot this video first.
    The plan was to do this one first as it was the simplest and use it as a sort of template for the others.
    For the most part it worked.

    Fun fact for this one.
    The groov controlled fish tank is just outside the server room, so when Paul used some audio processing to remove the humm of the servers, you can hear the bubbling of the fish tank.
    We had to find a happy ballance between the two.
    Also I did not move my arm enough when wiring the module, so it gets in the way, we fixed that on the other videos, but figured it was not worth a reshoot.

    That said, we re-shot this entire video 3 times. The first we just did not like internally to Opto. It just did not tell a story.
    The second we played to a group of students. They gave such compelling feedback that we went back to the script and re-wrote the whole thing. Again.
    This is the third go around you see here.


    Computers Opto22 📎and tagged

  • Seismograph – Part 4

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    Made the last physical change to reduce the urban noise this past weekend.
    We did a speed read of the USGS seismic vault construction guideline, you can pull it down and check it out here; https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2002/ofr-02-0144/ofr-02-0144.pdf

    In short, they recomend a bunch of things that I cant come at, either size wise, or cost wise.
    We tried to take the guts of the vault and reproduce it in the backyard.

    One thing to note from the recommendations, we don’t have to worry about the thermal aspects of the vault since the Raspberry Pi seismograph is not adversely affected by temperature changes.

    This is the big picture. We are going to dig a hole, put some cement in the bottom, stick the plastic bucket into the hole – grounding it in the wet cement – then put some more wet cement in the bottom of the bucket, then put a plate (USGS said glass, bit short on that so using some steel) on the cement and that’s hopefully that.

    So, lets get going…..

    Hole dug, and wet cement in the bottom.
    As per the PDF, we put a mound in the middle then pushed the tub down and settled it.

    It probably did not matter much, but we made sure it was level in both directions.
    The USGS said that we should put wet cement around the whole bin, but I was short on cement, so we just left it at the bottom. We could get some more and put it around the whole thing at a latter date, but, well, lets see how things go with just the bottom stuck down.

    Wet cement in the bottom, the plate on top and leveled in both directions.

    The Raspberry Pi setup is the same. I did not feel the need to change anything in this regard.
    The Ethernet brings both network and power. The POE adapter splits it off and routes it to the appropriate port.

    The fake rock is just sitting there for now, but the plan is to dig it in a little around the edge, put some sort of edging around to ‘seal’ the ‘rock’ to the ground and thus tub.
    We are planing a small garden around the corner of the retaining wall, both to ‘hide’ the rock a bit, but also to finish that part of the lawn, the grass never grows all that great, probably due to the grape fruit tree shade.

    The fake rock and tub are not the best, I like the seal on the old bucket better, but it was just too small and shallow. We could not find a longer one with the same seal, so we just have to make do.
    The big issue is bugs. A close second is water/moisture.

    So, the 300 dollar question, how is the urban noise?
    Duno. Its only been in place a few hours Sunday afternoon, we need to watch it for 2-3 days at the very least to get a feel for things.
    Don’t forget that you can view its almost live output here; https://thebaldgeek.net/index.php/seismograph/


    Computers 📎and tagged