IoT Pool Thermometer
At our community pool it is a popular destination for kids and adults who live in our neighborhood. Sometimes the water is just a tad colder than we’d like, or in the middle of summer, it might be like bath water, and not refreshing at all. What if there was a way to know the […]
Read MoreA Time Dashboard
Many ham radio operators typically have one or more clocks in their radio room (also known as a Ham Shack). These clocks are used to log contacts, time nets, or help the operator be aware of times in different timezones around the world. These clocks can take many forms, from one or more simple analog […]
Read MoreWiFi Time Machine – An Internet Connected Clock
Why? Because I can! I love building things with purpose. There are millions of clock kits out there, but I just had to do my own. The goals for this project were: Parts List To put this clock together, only a few parts are required. They are: If you don’t wish to source all of […]
Read MoreOrangePi Zero 3 Internet Radio Player
For about $30USD you can build this network controlled internet radio player. I built this because it was dirt cheap and with the prices of raspberry pi boards still being much higher, for $30 you can’t go wrong with this project. Preparing The Board & OS I installed the Ubuntu (server, not desktop) image from […]
Read MoreWeatherflow Tempest & HomeAssistant
Integrating the Tempest into HomeAssistant (HA) using NodeRed Having a private weather station is a nice resource for providing data to a home automation system or alerting neighbors when hazardous conditions may arise. I already had setup a weather watchdog for alerting neighbors, displaying it on my home brew weather tube, and now I wanted […]
Read MoreChinese Domain Blocklist
Why Did I Create It? As of late, China has become a real threat to our national interests and security. You may have heard how Congress has real and valid concerns about TikTok, what it’s doing to our culture, data harvesting, and more importantly, how that company is manipulating the minds of our young people. […]
Read MoreUsing NodeRED To Create A Weather Watchdog
If you own a Tempest weather station by Weatherflow You can use NodeRED to create customized alerts and send them to any destination you like. I had created python scripts to do this, but though it worked ok, it was not ideal. I hadn’t used NodeRED before and I always wanted to learn how I […]
Read MoreSangean CL-100 – A Review As Emergency Alert Source
Background We live 4 miles from a nuclear power plant, and we also have a GMRS repeater station that we use for Community Watch in our neighborhood. We also live in an area that tends to have severe thunderstorms and sometimes tornado warnings. I was looking for a way to pipe automated emergency warnings (nuclear, […]
Read MoreHow To Build A Linux Terminal Server
Background A “terminal server” or centralized shared desktop server has obvious benefits. Here are just a few: Central application management Securely access home automation or BMS systems remotely Use cheap thin clients or even older machines that are now too slow Cross platform – this works with Windows, Mac, and Linux machines Remotely accessible from […]
Read MoreUbuntu With Read Only OverlayFS
Background I had a need to create a shared desktop Ubuntu machine that would be used by more than one person, but I wanted it to function more like an internet kiosk, and not be changeable by the end user. After playing with Raspbian OS for other projects, I knew about the overlayfs method of […]
Read More