There’s been a lot made of ChatGPT lately, and I haven’t really kept up with the details but have seen the sensationalist/click-bait headlines. I decided to check it out and see what it is about.
Continue reading →Tag / raspberry
Raspberry Pi 4B Case
My recent foray into the latest Raspberry Pi project had me shopping for a case. Previous cases for my Raspberries have been 3D printed or plastic molded, which were okay. Pi’s run hot, and adding fans on these cases provided a good solution to the thermal issue.
Browsing cases lately I discovered the JUN-ELECTRON, and so I ordered it to try it out.
Continue reading →ADS-B Update
The weather cooperated enough for me to mount the 1090mhz antenna onto the side of the house and run the cable up through the soffit into the garage attic. I previously swapped the light fixture in the garage for a 6-plug outlet to run the work lights, so I was able to connect into that for the power.
I’ll be interested to see how this FlightFeeder Orange Box operates in the garage attic during the summer here in Texas. It’s passively cooled for now, but I might have to setup a temp-controlled fan for the hottest days. We’ll see.
Initial results are definitely better than when I was testing it with the antenna in the upstairs window. I’m picking up aircraft over 150NM away – in Dallas.
ADS-B
Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast – the service used by aircraft to provide real-time information about their location, speed, and altitude to Air Traffic Control and other aircraft operating nearby. You may have seen maps showing the various airplanes flying around and wondered where that data came from? It’s ADS-B.
Continue reading →PiVPN + Wireguard
When Chris at Crosstalk Solutions posted a video on how to setup a VPN on a Raspberry Pi, I knew what my unused Pi was going to be used for.
This post isn’t going into the details, Chris’ video covers that, but I did have a chance to use the VPN while traveling over the Easter holiday. We were visiting relatives in South Carolina and I took the opportunity to connect via my MBP with the Wireguard client installed. As expected, I was on my home network and able to access everything I had previously setup access to. The connection was fast, as well.
December 2021 Tech Projects/Gadgets
A quick rundown of my current personal projects and gadgets I’ve been toying around with.
- Reolink – These cameras are surprisingly good quality for low prices. I’ve got a RLC-520 (Amazon, $50) mounted viewing the back drive, and a RLC-410W (Amazon, $68) temporarily positioned viewing the side patio and yard. The app integrates all of the cameras and presents the feeds in a nicely done UI/UX. My cousin setup a Reolink GO on the site that their new lake house is being built on, and even on a 4G cellular connection the stream is really good. Incidentally, the Synology has an NVR application that supports the Reolink cameras, which made for a bonus feature of the system. If Reolink came out with a doorbell, I’d be very tempted to ditch the Ring and consolidate on the Reolink platform altogether. Sample pics at the end of this post.
- TeslaUSB – This open source project uses the Raspberry Pi Zero platform, and Tesla’s open API, to connect your Tesla vehicle to a network and easily transfer any Sentry Cam videos off the car, and sync music files to the car. On Tesla’s, you can mount an SSD and have video automatically recorded and stored from the various cameras mounted around the car. Unfortunately, there’s no real easy way to move those videos off the car short of unplugging the SSD and using sneakernet to transfer them to another location. In place of the SSD, you plug the Raspberry Pi Zero in and when you pull into the garage the Pi connects to your home network and offloads any new videos. It also will sync .mp3’s from a configured location to the car, for accessing and playing from the entertainment system. The only downside I’ve experienced with this is that it renders the in-car Sentry Cam viewer useless, as accessing the stored videos while in the car painfully slow. (I’ve just purchased the newer model Rasperry Pi Zero 2 W to see if this downside is remedied.) And yes, the videos are automatically syncing to the Synology NAS.
- Apple 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max – After many years of wandering in the desert of bad features, Apply finally released a great update to their MBP’s, so I jumped at the chance to upgrade my mid-2015 MBP. I’ve had the laptop for about a week now, and it’s great. This screen is amazing. Do I need all of this horsepower? Not really, but I opted for the lower config of the M1 Max as a way of future-proofing. I was really surprised at how the old laptop held up, so I think I’m going to try and do the same with this model and keep it for 5+ years. I missed out on the Touchbar era, and I can’t say if that was a feature I’d be negative or positive on, but missing out on the butterfly keyboard is a good thing. I had heard reviews that the speakers and sound on this laptop was really good, but I was shocked at how good. Sure they’re still laptop speakers, but the bass and fidelity are really surprising. Already I can see how great the battery life is, but I’m also coming from a laptop where the battery was in dire need of replacing. All in all I’m very happy with this laptop.
Reolink RLC-520:
Reolink RLC-410W:
Cheers! 