An old Dell XPS M1330 laptop has been collecting dust around here for ages. It’s one of those “yes… I am sure that laptop will come in handy some day…” machines, and I finally took the time to set it up as test machine for Windows 8 and Linux.
Got a new toy the other day… After using the same ERSA MS 6000 soldering station for the past 20 (!) years or so, it was time to upgrade. Nothing wrong with the old one really, except that it was hard to get new tips and that heating it up took
Well – given current exchange rate, AU 2.59 = USD 2.33.. So it’s not quite a two dollar product, but pretty close. And “2.33 dollar fan controller” did not make for a nice subject line… After the earlier post about variable 12V fan controllers, it might be worth
Comparing Fritzing, circuits.io and Eagle in a real-life design scenario.
Let's take a look at how low-cost fan controllers work. Can they even be built from parts in the junk drawer? Sure, no problem!
These days I am all in on the Intel Atom based Netgear NAS products, using a RN312. Very nice NAS, so far. The previous NAS in the server rack was a dual disk QNAP TS-219. Lower spec:ed with 512 MB RAM and an ARM based CPU. Still, it
The 2GB of RAM that is standard in the RN300 series of NAS from NetGear might seem like a lot to begin with, but if you install additional applications such as media servers or backup software (see this post for instructions how to install CrashPlan), memory might become a scarce
The default Monitorix installation (see previous post) puts the log and database files in /var/lib/monitorix/, which is part of the root partition. This partition is only 4 GB in size, and when it is 80% full the NAS sends an email to the admin email address: System volume
Edit: Some additional configuration turned out to be necessary to achieve stable operation, see this post. The built-in monitoring of the RN312 is ok for basic purposes, but still pretty limited. I am really heading towards a Zabbix setup (I think at least, having tested it in a VM
For some years now I have tried to improve my Linux skills. I just don’t have the time to do Linux deep dives at work, so I figured I would set up a physical Linux box here, in addition to the VMs I use from time to time. Anyway,
After creating a few new users on the RN312, using the web interface provided with the device, I noted that none of the users could ssh into the NAS. Turns out the new users are created without a default shell, resulting in a successful ssh login, followed by a terminated
I recently got the chance to evaluate the Anaren AIR CC2530 BoosterPack Kit, which is a ZigBee eval platform for TI’s LaunchPad products, i.e MSP430 and Stellaris. Kudos to the good folks at element14 for providing the kit as part of their RoadTest program. The review is found