Category: How to

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NextCloud “Maintenance” Mode Error Resolution

For a while my NextCloud server decided to stop allowing my phone or desktop to upload to it due to it being in “maintenance mode”, however I could log into the webui with no problems, and nothing in the logs showed it being in maintenance mode. This started to frustrate me as I could find nothing to signify why my clients thought the server couldn’t be used. I tried a number of things:

  • Clearing out the file locks table (there were 600,000 entries in it, and I’m the only user on the server)
  • occ db:add-missing-columns
  • occ db:add-missing-indices
  • occ db:add-missing-primary-keys
    What finally worked:
  • occ files:scan –all

Finally with the files:scan –all it started working again and my app was able to start uploading to the server. If you have a NextCloud server and have been running into “maintenance mode” errors when your server is not in maintenance mode, this is certainly worth trying.

Some GitHub Issues worth checking:

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Time Lapse 3d print

I wanted to create a time lapse of a 3D print however I wasn’t sure the best way to do this. I’ve made time lapses using octoprint before, but for that to work, octoprint needed to be the machine driving the printer. I tend to prefer running my Ultimaker from the SD card as I’ve forgotten what all my previous octoprint settings were to get it running as smoothly as the Cura settings from the card. I also wanted to work on a more generic way to create a time lapse.

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BlueIris and the No Signal Camera

I recently setup a few new cameras on my BlueIris box, however one camera in particular was giving me problems. I tried a few different configurations and each time I got a no signal error. I could change the IP to another camera and all was well, but this one in particular was angry at me. I could log into the web interface and view the feeds, so I knew it was working, it just had something up in the configuration. I ended up looking at the Blue Iris status UI to see that I was getting about 1.5FPS through with a slightly lower bitrate than the camera was configured to at the time. I updated the camera config to drop the bitrate and voila, signal, smooth video.

The root cause is something in the cable, either too much interference from AC wiring, or an end isn’t as well crimped as it could be. Either way, I got my camera up in my Blue Iris instance and things worked fine after that.

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Apt Key Expired in Ubuntu

I was updating my boxes as usual when I encountered an error when trying to run updates on my unifi controller. This lives on a slightly older box (I tried upgrading it at one point and not all the dependencies were supported yet on the newer version), and I ran into an error when running the apt commands. One of the keys was expired for a component needed by the controller. So lets figure out how to update that key so we can update the box once more.

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Calling HASS API from Various Shells

While working on making my macro pad trigger Home Assistant automations, I found the API would be the easiest way to integrate the systems. Here’s some of my experimenting with the API and how to call it from Linux curl and PowerShell Invoke-WebRequest

Linux Curl

Using the Linux curl command is pretty straight forward.

curl -X POST http://hass.local:8123/api/services/switch/toggle -H 'Authorization: Bearer ABCDEF' -d '{"entity_id": "switch.testsubject_test_subject"}'

PowerShell Invoke-WebRequest

PowerShell is a bit more annoying to get everything right, as Invoke-WebRequest is a bit pickier on its input arguments.

Invoke-WebRequest -Method POST -Uri "http://hass.local:8123/api/services/switch/toggle" -H @{"Authorization"="Bearer ABCDEF"} -Body '{"entity_id": "switch.testsubject_test_subject"}'

Apparently windows has a build of the official Unix curl and tar commands, but my PowerShell prompts all had curl as an alias to Invoke-WebRequest. I did find that if i call curl.exe, it would run the official curl command.

Conclusion

Do be careful when copying and pasting between shells, I found that copying out of the PowerShell prompt and back in would yield an invalid token. This was also encountered in the WSL terminal as well.

The API is pretty straight forward after a little bit of trying things out. The documentation covers the capability but doesn’t have as many examples as I would have liked otherwise.

Resources

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WLED Automation for Roku in Home Assistant

I was able to get WLED going on a light strip but I do have a lack of ideas on how to make use of it. I finally decided to go with the tried and true movie lighting. So my goal is to setup automations so that when my Roku begins playing something, the WLED strip dims and sets to a specific color (we’ll go with red), and when I pause or stop playing, it will turn to max brightness white light. This will give lower lighting while watching and brighter lights if something is paused (and I have to go get something). I’m still not entirely sure if I will end up making use of this in the end, but it will give me some ideas on what I can do and how to do it.

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NextCloud File Lock Error in Joplin

I encountered a problem recently on the Joplin desktop app where it couldn’t synchronize due to a file lock being stuck in NextCloud. It uses a file in the jopline data directories to determine sync status and lock status on files being edited, and this file was stuck locked in NextCloud with no way to delete it. I performed some searching, finding some blog posts on the subject and found this on how to solve it. I’ll be going through the manual solution to this problem and updating the process with my experience.

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WLED with ESP8266

I found a guide for running WLED on an ESP8266 micro controller to drive individually addressable RGB cables. I thought this would be a fun little project after working with the smart plugs and home assistant automations. Since WLED is another FOSS and cloud-free project, this still fits with my whole fully self hosted smart home ideal. Since no project is fool proof and I have run into small problems when working on the project.

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Adding a Current Month Numeric Sensor to Home Assistant

I have a number of Christmas light strands in various windows around my house. These get turned on once a year when we remember they exist and its around Christmas time. I decided that these would be a good use for home assistant to add some Christmas lighting during November and December.

To do this, I wanted an automation that would turn on the lights during specific months, and not during others. Thus I needed the current month available as a condition for my automation. I quickly found out that Home Assistant does not have this type of data built in, but can have it added relatively easily. I didn’t know how most of this was supposed to go together, so after a little bit of guess and check, here is what I ended up with.

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