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.
Continue reading “Cleaning up the docker registry”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.
Continue reading “Home Assistant Picture-Elements Card”Adding WLED Previews to Home Assistant Dashboards
I found out recently about the webpage card in home assistant and how it can be used to add a WLED live view to your home assistant dashboard. Not only that, but its pretty simple to do as well!
Continue reading “Adding WLED Previews to Home Assistant Dashboards”Converting STL to STEP
Catia is my CAD of choice for most things, mostly because it’s what I know best. It however doesn’t have great support for STL files. We’ll be using FreeCAD to convert them to STEP files which Catia supports well. First we want to open our STL file with FreeCAD.
Continue reading “Converting STL to STEP”Updating my IOT Devices
Keeping IOT devices up to date is a hard task, since they come in all sorts of different ecosystems, software projects, companies, etc. I run all FOSS IOT devices in order to avoid the problem with proprietary software and companies going out of business. In this, I’ll go over how I’m keeping my 3 types of devices up to date (ESPHome, WLED, and Tasmota).
Continue reading “Updating my IOT Devices”Renaming ESP Devices in ESPHome
I recently started trying out the ESPHome Add-On in home assistant. With this, I was able to add and upgrade some ESP devices, however I soon realized after adding one of them, that the auto-generated name may not be wanted (or if you’re moving a device around and want a new name). So I did some research and worked out the process for renaming the device in ESPHome.
Continue reading “Renaming ESP Devices in ESPHome”Joplin Failed to Fetch Due to Certificate Expiration
Recently I ran into an error when trying to update Joplin (hooked up to WebDAV on NextCloud).
Last error: FetchError: request to https://nextcloud.rapternet.us/remote.php/dav/files/sbachhub/Documents/Joplin/info.json failed, reason: certificate has expired
I checked the SSL cert with FireFox and everything looked good there. Finally I decided to try updating the application, on a wild attempt to fix it in a simple way, and… it worked. It might have just needed a reboot, but the update worked in this case.
The VLANs Strike Back
I recently re-did my entire network, changing out switch locations, what ports were plugged into where, and so on. This wasn’t too bad, except I didn’t make note of one thing: which ports were VLAN tagged. This became quite the struggle as I tried to figure out why my WiFi couldn’t access the internet, and why all my servers were inaccessible. I even changed what port the Unifi AP was plugged into to try and kick that VLAN possibility out of the running. Little did I know that BOTH ports I tried to plug the AP into were tagged, so neither could reach the internet. I ended up plugging my RT-N16 back into the modem to see that I had internet, and then moved the switch port the access point was into one more time to find a port that wasn’t tagged. Once I had that, I swapped what port my servers were plugged into to find a non-tagged port, that would get my Unifi controller back up so I could go and clean up the rest and get things back into an operational state.
TLDR: Label or remove VLANs before re-architecting things
Enabling the Home Assistant API
The home assistant API can be used to build external tools to manipulate information in home assistant and control elements in it. This can be useful for triggering automations with custom code. It can even be triggered using curl on linux, allowing for simple scripts executing home assistant actions.
Continue reading “Enabling the Home Assistant API”Amazon Fire Tablet Rant
I wouldn’t normally go into this, but boy does this product tell me that I’m the product being sold here, not the tablet. Starting with purchasing the tablet, Amazon asked if I wanted my account preloaded and I am glad I said no, or else they would’ve probably subscribed me to every fee possible.
When going through the initial setup, there were multiple pages of “do you want to sign up for this monthly service for $xx/month”, each of which moved the accept and deny buttons, often swapping them from the previous page, so don’t just click quickly through or you’ll have a new monthly bill.
On top of that there was the same situation with permissions, do you want maps to be able to use your permission (oh and allow Amazon to track your permission too, can’t do one and not the other). This really liked like they saw the windows 10 and Google privacy settings and said “we can do worse, much worse”.
One final insult Amazon gave us through this tablet is how it handles its lock screen ads, when the tablet is asleep. It will wake up the screen to play ads, this is just…. one great big slap to the face. Pros: cheap, Cons: Software, now to work on rooting and installing lineage OS, if its possible.