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Samsung Smart Aircon and MRTG

We’ve had 4 Samsung Smart air conditioners for a few years and every once and a while I revisit trying to automate them using scripts and a like. This time I was successfull using perl scripts written/edited by Daniel (CloCkWeRX) and Shannon (freman) to deal with the transmission protocol and token management – I personally would’ve never been able to work it out – so thanks and full credit to them. To start with, you have to discover then register the aircons to get a token for each, to discover them you can use this script get_samsung.pl, which was obtained then slightly modified from here. That script output: perl get_samsung.pl Waiting for responses $VAR1 = { ‘modelcode’ => ‘SAMSUNG_DEVICE’, ‘mac_addr’ => ”, ‘cache_control’ => ‘max-age=60’, ‘decoded_nickname’ => ‘Office’, ‘spec_ver’ => ‘MSpec-1.00’, ‘notify * http/1.1’ =>… Read More »Samsung Smart Aircon and MRTG

Domain transferal

Yeah it’s that time again, I’ve had to change domain hosting companies again, please bare with me, it’s complete, although DNS is still flapping from the old to the new provider every couple of seconds – so results may be mixed. UPDATE DNS has been working fine for a few weeks – Transfer complete! To my old provider – your helpdesk is shamefully un-trained. UPDATE 16-12-2015 It appears that there are a few files that didn’t transfer during the last backup I made before migrating servers – mostly zip files, so some attachments may be missing. I’ll be updating these tonight, apologies. Cheers  

Smoker/Kettle BBQ Controller

After tasting some awesome BBQ offered in the US, I wanted to try making it myself. I’ve tried to use a gas BBQ, but it always turned out dry and tough. I moved to a charcoal kettle grill and wanted to be able to have more control of the temperature. Options: manual control – Continuously checking the temperature on the gauge that came with the BBQ. Buying a professional smoker – big $$. Make my own controller – When researching I found a professional BBQ team that used a controller that adjusted the temperature using a fan and temperature probes. I was kindly given a European Outdoorchef BBQ (cheers Chris), and I’ve been using it to smoke a few cuts of meat, the largest and latest was a 4kg pork leg roast. When I get… Read More »Smoker/Kettle BBQ Controller

Bakelite Internet Radio

NOTE: If your a vintage radio purest you may want to look away now, as I never had any intention of restoring the radio back to its original glory due to the damage of the insides and the custom speaker. I wanted to give it a fresh lease of life while hopefully doing it justice. The radio is a Stromberg Carlson Ovaltone (model number:5A29), manufactured around 1949. I was unable to find much information on it, and I’d guessed the model number by comparing it against other online pictures. What I’m going to do is make it into an internet radio powered with a raspberry pi, using WiFi, a small powered amp, 2 rotary encoders, LCD, and stereo speakers. If you’d like to split hairs, technically WiFi is digitally encrypted ‘radio’ waves… So it’s kind… Read More »Bakelite Internet Radio

Netgear EX6200

I went against my hatred for Netgear and bought an EX6200 as a replacement for the wireless access points I’ve been using. Having not bought any wireless gear for a while, I figured might as well check out 802.11AC equipment. After the purchase, I found the hardware to be well over spec: dual core 800Mhz processor, 128MB RAM, but the firmware was crippled by rubbish “end-user friendly” features, and only allowed external connections from the existing LAN via wireless sources. To Netgears credit, it does state the following in the manual: “Can I plug it directly to my main wireless router using ethernet? No…” After 40 minutes of stubbornly trying to get it to connect to my LAN using ethernet, I gave up and found this post: Transform the NETGEAR EX6200 into a Wi-Fi Router… Read More »Netgear EX6200

Prusa Mendel i2 to CNC Engraver Conversion – In progress

I’ve been checking out parts lists and prices for DIY CNC routers. After some research, I’ve decided to convert my Prusa Mendel i2 to a small, very cheap CNC engraver, So I could get a feel for them and work out if it would be worth making a full size one. Below is what I had to work with. You may notice the extra braces on the top corners – the green parts. There is other extra supports on the board it’s screwed on to, to make it more ridged than usual. I found a few mounts on thingyverse, but I have an old Ozito rotary tool. The flexi shaft has different dimensions than the Dremel, so I created my own mount for it: Ozito_FlexMount I did a test print @ 20% fill and 1… Read More »Prusa Mendel i2 to CNC Engraver Conversion – In progress

Cheap Pickups – Box of Server Parts

Found a shoe box sized box of random PC parts for $10. I wasn’t able to see the entire contents, but was assured it was all related. I’m always looking for cheap cables and assortment. Cut the tape on the box when I got home and found: 1x Supermicro X7SBE motherboard. 8GB of DDR2/677mhz ECC RAM (2GB sticks). 1x  Dedicated IPMI card for the board. 1x Quad core Xeon X3360 @ 2.83GHz. 1x rear Double USB motherboard extender. I also bought from the same seller for an extra $10:  Low profile dual 36pin SAS card – cant find the model number yet, but compared it to images online and I think It’s an LSI MegaRAID 9261-8i. I assume the model is under the battery pack. Plugged it all (except the SAS controller) in and found… Read More »Cheap Pickups – Box of Server Parts

LCD TV Table – Inprogress

Having a coffee table with a TV screen in it doesn’t serve any real purpose, but if you have an unused, trashed, coffee table and 80cm LCD TV, it cant hurt to merge the two. The table is a brown Ikea coffee table from the Markor range. I haven’t got any product links for it. I’m assuming it’s discontinued. The TV/monitor is an Panasonic 80cm LCD with 2x HDMI inputs. The media player is a 512MB Raspberry Pi running Openelec (Kodi). The table was in the Mancave for a while and had oil and glue over it. It was roughly sanded with a belt sander (quickest option). Next I took measurements of the bottom inner space under the table to correctly center the TV screen to table top. Beige: Area available for the TV on… Read More »LCD TV Table – Inprogress

Wireless Touchscreen LED Strip Controller

For Christmas I installed 20M (4 x 5M) of RGB LED strips, and 1 RGB spotlight under our patio, I then used the WIFI to 2.4GHz bridge (V4) (same used here) to connect them to the network in 2 groups. Now they can be turned on using our phones, etc… But I don’t carry my phone with me everywhere so this seemed fun but short sighted… With the ESP8266, a Touch screen, and 3.3v Arduino mini pro, I was able to create a wireless touch screen controller for the Christmas lights. Note: There is one caveat; it’s slow. This is due to the long delays I’ve had to add to the code to make sure the ESP8266 module actually does what it’s told to do, rather than replying “busy s…”. When it’s finally finished loading,… Read More »Wireless Touchscreen LED Strip Controller

2.4″ 240×320 SPI Touch ILI9341 3.3V

This is a notes post for future reference Description: Cheap eBay color LCD display Resolution: 240×320 Size: 2.4″ Driver: ILI9341 (Display), ads7843 compatible (Touch). Colors: 16bit Voltage: 3.3v or 5v (only tried 3.3) Libraries: SPI, Adafruit_ILI9341 (Display), UTouch (Touch). CODE: #include “SPI.h” #include “Adafruit_GFX.h” #include “Adafruit_ILI9341.h” #include <UTouch.h> #define TFT_CS 10 #define TFT_DC 9 Adafruit_ILI9341 tft = Adafruit_ILI9341(TFT_CS, TFT_DC); UTouch  myTouch( 6, 5, 4, 3, 2); … void setup() { … tft.begin(); tft.setRotation(1); myTouch.InitTouch(); myTouch.setPrecision(PREC_MEDIUM); … Pins: Touch T_IRQ – pin 2 T_DO – pin 3 T_DIN – pin 4 T_CS – pin 5 T_CLK – pin 6 Display SDO(MISO) – Pin 12 LED – 3.3V SCK – Pin 13 SDI(MOSI) – Pin 11 D/C – Pin 9 RESET – RST CS – Pin 10 GND – GND VCC – 3.3V