Blog – Page 7 – Systems Lab

April 10, 2023February 12, 2023

InkScape and LightBurn

Unable to Perform Path Operations

If you can’t do boolean operations in InkScape, you may have to un-group the paths. It can’t do path operations on groups, and sometimes InkScape will put a single object into a group. You can combine paths and do boolean operations on them that way, but that is using the path combine tool, you just cannot use the grouping feature.

LightBurn Limitations

You can’t use object operations on it for LightBurn to understand it. No use of object clip or mask should be used when creating files for use in LightBurn. You can make use of path difference or intersection to make changes to similar effect when avoiding the object tools.

April 3, 2023November 2, 2023

EspDeck Generation 3: Simplify!

With the latest iteration of EspHome bringing in matrix keypad support, and the parts ready for a third espdeck build, I decided to redesign it yet again to try and optimize things further.

March 27, 2023February 12, 2023

Cleaning up the docker registry

Working on my docker swarm recently I noticed that my storage was running low. After investigation, I found I had 17GB of usage by my docker registry. I have no need to have that many versions of my custom built containers on hand, so I went through the process of cleaning it up.

March 20, 2023February 17, 2023

Home Assistant Wall Tablet Display with a Fire HD8

I have wanted to add a tablet to control home assistant from for a while. I originally started by using my Nexus 7 2012 as the machine, got WallPanel installed, and found out that the embedded browser in that version of Android was too out of date and crippled to run the home assistant webui. So I decided to pick up an Amazon fire tablet for cheap to try using. I figured if I liked using it, I could use a better tablet in the future (or go through the effort of rooting the tablet and installing regular Android on it).

March 13, 2023February 17, 2023

The Indoor Air Quality (UK) HACS Integration and Sensor

Now that I have a number of AirGradient sensors around my house, I have all sorts of data I can make use of about the air quality inside it. I now have to figure out how to make use of all that data. Creating a single unified data point for general air quality based on the AirGradient data is the first thing I’m going to do. To do this, I’ll make use of the IAQUK HACS integration.

March 6, 2023February 17, 2023

Adding TVOC to the AirGradient

Once I had my baseline AirGradient sensors built and configured, I wanted to add a few more sensors to it. One of the sensors to be added is an SGP30 TVOC sensor (Total Volatile Organic Compounds).

February 27, 2023February 17, 2023

Home Assistant Picture-Elements Card

I’ve seen the picture elements cards in home assistant dashboard screenshots from time to time and was always interested into how they did it. Digging into it, as with most things home assistant, it’s pretty easy to do, and of course can be as complex as you see fit. Here I’ll be setting up a simple picture elements card for my air quality sensors.

February 17, 2023February 17, 2023

Adding an LPS22 to AirGradient and Building a Custom Sensor in EspHome

I picked up some extra sensors for my AirGradient DIY kits and didn’t realize at the time that they’re not officially supported in EspHome. So with that I went on the journey of adding my own custom sensor code to EspHome to run them.

February 17, 2023February 17, 2023

Making the AirGradient DIY

I’ve been working on getting air quality measurements going in and out of my house, however there are a lot of cloud connected sensors out there. I wanted these to be all local, though I wouldn’t mind adding to the public datasets for air quality. I ended up coming to AirGradient as the option that I decided to use, these use all open hardware and can be flashed with the custom AirGradient firmware, or with EspHome. I went the DIY route as well to save some money (and I’ll be customizing them a bit too).

February 13, 2023February 12, 2023

Setting up Giscus Comments on WordPress

This blog was setup originally in 2016 and has never had a really useful comments section. There was a time when the only thing showing up were trackbacks to malicious websites. This wasn’t exactly a positive addition, so I disabled trackbacks and commenting to prevent any misleading comments. I decided to try and get a comments section back and operational as a part of my overhaul of my webserver (and having recently learned of Giscus for using GitHub accounts and backend for commenting). So here we have a guide for setting up Giscus comments on WordPress.