I decided to reorganize my home assistant dashboards which culminated in adding a new dashboard and moving a number of views from other dashboards to it. What I didn’t realize was that this wasn’t as easy as going into the UI and hitting copy on the view, though it wasn’t hard to do in the end (basically one more step and then hitting copy).
Continue reading “Moving a View between two Home Assistant Dashboards”Updating the Webserver to Ubuntu 24.04
I upgraded my webserver to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS recently and ran into an odd little issue. Apache2 refused to start up due to a PHP plugin failing to load. This was specifically PHP 8.1 failing to load as it was replaced in the repos with 8.3. This ended up having a quick fix to get things in order.
All I needed to do was disable the old PHP mod and enable the new one. I used this reference for which versions would be supported in 24.04 to enable the correct version. Overall a nice quick fix and my webserver was back operational
> sudo a2dismod php8.1
> sudo systemctl restart apache2
> sudo a2enmod php8.3
> sudo systemctl restart apache2
BME680 and ESP
I’ve been trying to add some BME680 sensors to my IKEA air quality sensors. My goal was to add a bit more environmental sensors around my house to keep track of temperature, humidity, etc. In doing this I also ran into some odd problems with my D1 minis to work through.
Continue reading “BME680 and ESP”Putty Serial Connections to ESP Devices
While working on debugging an ESP32, I needed to get the log for the unit when WiFi was down. To do this I need a serial connection, which can be done using putty. Since this was the first time I used putty to connect to a serial device, I figured I’d give a short how to connect to an ESP32 using it.
Continue reading “Putty Serial Connections to ESP Devices”Finding Stuck Automations
I run into a case from time to time when I’m developing new automations where they end up hanging and stop responding. Since most of my automations are set to only allow one to run, this ends up causing future calls to it to fail since the hung iteration is still out there.
Continue reading “Finding Stuck Automations”ESPDeck 3 + LED Backlighting
Ever since I integrated per key LEDs in the NFC Deck, I have wanted to update the ESP Deck design to incorporate them (and update some of my keypads to include them too). I finally got around to both of these, swapping the switches for clear switches on one of my ESP Decks and integrating in the LED lighting.
Continue reading “ESPDeck 3 + LED Backlighting”Flashing the ESP32 DevKit V1
On occasion, dealing with embedded hardware can be a bit of a pain. Flashing ESPs is a bit of guess and check from time to time. We’ll be flashing an ESP32 DevKit V2 today. We first need to install the drivers from here: CP210x USB to UART Bridge VCP Drivers – Silicon Labs (silabs.com)
With those installed, plug the USB connection for the controller into your PC (Close out of CURA too!), and from ESPHome web, connect to the COM port for the device. After that, hold down the boot button while selecting “Prepare for First Boot” in the ESPHome web interface, and keep holding it until you see the install begin running (getting the percentage complete, etc). Once that shows up, you can release the button and wait for it to finish flashing.
Tl-Dr
- Install Driver
- Plug in USB
- Connect to COM Port from ESPHome Web
- Hold Boot button while starting the install
Fixing the WordPress App Connection to my site
It started out with the WordPress app stopping working for me on my phone. This happened a few months back as well and it stayed broken for a few months before it started working again. This time around I was rather very annoyed and wanted to figure out what was going wrong and fix it. In the end it came down to XML-RPC and an “optional” package in the WordPress health check.
Continue reading “Fixing the WordPress App Connection to my site”Backing up Git Repositories
We all rely quite a bit on cloud services that are hosted by faceless corporations, these are generally stable services, but if Google’s actions over the years have shown anything, it’s that these services can disappear overnight without warning. So I try to do cloud backups from time to time for the various services I rely on.
Continue reading “Backing up Git Repositories”Removing Passwords from Git Repos
For those who have accidentally committed passwords, api keys, etc to a guy repo, we have a great tool available to take care of it, BFG. BFG will remove those secrets from the entire git repository’s history, not just the most recent commit.
bfg --replace-text passwords.txt
git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive
Passwords.txt is just a line delimited list of passwords. Just don’t commit this to your repo