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Quorten Blog 1

First blog for all Quorten's blog-like writings

Libre software friendly hardware on 802.11ac?

quorten

2018-08-26

Categories: home-network   random-software   raspberry-pi  
Tags: home-network   random-software   raspberry-pi  

Is there libre software friendly hardware for Wi-fi on 802.11ac? The short answer: it looks like there isn’t. There is the ath10k driver available for Linux that provides 802.11ac support, but it requires a firmware blob to be loaded, unlike the ath9k driver that only provides support up to 802.11n. So, unfortunately, if you want to stick to only blob-less libre-friendly Wi-Fi hardware, you’ve got to stick to 802.11n.

20180826/https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom
20180826/https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usb
20180826/https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-w-external-antenna-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usbl
20180826/https://tehnoetic.com/tehnoetic-wireless-adapter-gnu-linux-libre-tet-n150
20180826/DuckDuckGo linux libre 802.11ac
20180826/https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/7vj621/why_no_opensource_80211ac_wifi_adapters/
20180826/https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/linux-libre/
20180826/DuckDuckGo linux libre 802.11ac ath10k
20180826/https://www.linux.com/news/qualcomm-publishes-new-ath10k-80211ac-driver
20180826/https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM4MzE

More info on broadcast TV on a computer network

quorten

2018-08-26

Categories: home-network   media-prog   reiterate  
Tags: home-network   media-prog   reiterate  

Okay, so more about the idea of having a single high-quality broadcast television antenna and sharing it out across the computer network. It is feasible, but of course with limits: such devices are coined as multi-tuner, the limit of course being the number of tuners that the device has.

Again, I reiterate, because this is important! Also, keep in mind that the average entertainment-focused consumer does not care to setup these devices due to the fact that it requires “more technical skill.” So, for sure this is a minority idea for techies only.

So there are multi-tuner devices out there for over-the-air (OTA) broadcast television. So far the largest number of tuners in such a device I read are 4. In practice, such devices tend to be embedded in a DVR that uses an interactive electronic program guide as a means to select which programs to record. Particularly noteworthy is that the modern interactive electronic program guides typically come as a subscription service with a monthly fee. Also, note that you can get some multi-tuner boxes separately from a purpose-built DVR, as is the case with HDHomeRun.

Oh, and apparently TiVo was in fact the first DVR.

Read on →

Repair broken tab on Ethernet jack

quorten

2018-08-26

Categories: home-network  
Tags: home-network  

How do you repair a broken tab on an Ethernet jack? Here’s how.

First way, my recommendation. Buy some RJCLIPs to use in place of your broken tabs.

Second way, older trick: Use appropriately sized zip ties to make your own jack. Make sure you select zip ties of the appropriate width, else it won’t work. 4.3mm head width is what you are targeting.

Third way: Glue the broken head into a coupler or extension to get a good head back.

20180826/DuckDuckGo repair ethernet jack tab broken off
20180826/https://www.instructables.com/id/Repair-a-Broken-Ethernet-Plug/

Make your own tab protector for an Ethernet cable with a non-broken, non-protected tab.

20180826/http://www.instructables.com/id/Sugru-Ethernet-RJ45-Plug-Protector/
20180826/https://superuser.com/questions/710215/the-locking-clip-tab-on-my-ethernet-cables-plug-is-broken-how-can-i-fix-it
20180826/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_tie
20180826/https://hackaday.com/2010/06/08/simple-way-to-fix-that-broken-ethernet-cable/
20180826/DuckDuckGo RJCLIP
20180826/http://www.rjclip.com/collections/rjclips
20180826/https://www.amazon.com/RJCLIP-Network-Repair-Pieces-Silver/product-reviews/B0131L07RA

Raspberry Pi B+ with SDXC cards?

quorten

2018-08-26

Categories: raspberry-pi  
Tags: raspberry-pi  

Can you use SDXC cards with Raspberry Pi B+? Indeed, you can. Now, here’s the lowdown on the situation. SDHC and SDXC apparently only differ by the recommended filesystem used to format the card. So, there is no hardware reason why SDXC cards wouldn’t work with the Raspberry Pi B+.

However, the boot firmware of Raspberry Pi B+ only works with the FAT32 filesystem. So, this means you have a little bit of a more complicated time setting up the install image, but that’s it. Make sure there is a FAT32 partition on your SDXC card when copying boot files for NOOBS, and NOOBS can handle the rest.

Now, the next step after this is to build SDXC cards without NOOBS, using your own OS image. I have yet to try that out, but the point in hand is that I can buy the hardware without worrying about not being able to use my extended storage.

20180826/DuckDuckGo raspberry pi b+ sdxc
20180826/https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/1yutlz/can_we_use_the_new_sandisk_ultra_128gb_with_the/
20180826/DuckDuckGo raspberry pi supported sd cards

Bingo! This is the documentation you were looking for.

20180826/https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/sd-cards.md
20180826/https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/sdxc_formatting.md

Fake Apple power supplies, Raspberry Pi, and Raspberry Pi 3 B+ PoE Ethernet inside

quorten

2018-08-25

Categories: raspberry-pi  
Tags: raspberry-pi  

Interesting. When searching around for power supplies for the Raspberry Pi, I found this Hackaday article about fake Apple power supplies causing Raspberry Pi board failures. Watch out. As it seems, virtually every single hardware component involved in the smartphone supply chain has a higher risk of fakes and counterfeits than electronics used in other applications. Of course, because smartphones are the biggest market: if the con artists are going to steal from people, they might as well steal from the biggest market.

That being said, if you have a colleague with a spare Apple 5W power supply sitting around on their desk unused, make sure you go for those first before you try buying. Chances are you’ll get higher quality out of that than buying off the Internet. Or, try to find one of those doodads in a local store like Walmart.

20180825/DuckDuckGo raspberry pi fake power supply hackaday
20180825/https://hackaday.com/2012/10/10/raspberry-pi-foundation-looks-a-counterfeit-apple-power-supplies/

Also, I found this interesting article about the internals of the Raspberry Pi PoE Ethernet jack. It has integrated transformers that can be repurposed for radio transmission circuits. Keep that in mind if you have old Ethernet devices around.

20180825/https://hackaday.com/2018/06/01/raspberry-pis-power-over-ethernet-hardware-sparks-false-spying-hubub/

Fire sprinklers

quorten

2018-08-25

Categories: home-network  
Tags: home-network  

Fire sprinklers you ask? For what kinds of buildings does code mandate them for? Generally, you can say that fire sprinklers are not mandated for buildings, but the kinds of buildings they appear in are generally factories, office buildings,

Interestingly, fire sprinklers were around for a long time, since the early 1800s, but a long-standing problem in adoption was their cost. So, the way to get adoption moving forward among customers was to work with insurance companies to have the fire sprinkler system installed in exchange for a reduction in insurance premiums.

20180825/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_sprinkler
20180825/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grinnell_automatic_sprinkler_advertisement.png

Multi-licensing on GitHub, and how to increase the polling rate of your mouse, and TiVo

quorten

2018-08-25

Categories: license   random-software   home-network  
Tags: license   random-software   home-network  

Multi-licensing you ask? What is the most elegant way to do this? Answer: Use “SPDX notation” in your README file to specify that any one of multiple licenses may be chosen, and only that license needs be carried over into a duplicate repository. In regard to whether there is a specific notation that is well-recognized on GitHub, apparently there isn’t, but do use the SPDX notation as your next best alternative.

20180824/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-licensing
20180824/DuckDuckGo github multi-licensing
20180824/https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/304874/declaring-multiple-licences-in-a-github-project
20180824/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Package_Data_Exchange
20180824/https://spdx.org/

No explicit mention of “public domain” as an indicator of its own, just the corresponding dedication + fallback licenses.

20180824/https://spdx.org/licenses/
20180824/https://www.gnu.org/licenses/identify-licenses-clearly.html

Read on →

More on Redis Kubernetes Operators and Golang

quorten

2018-08-24

Categories: ansible   kubernetes   reiterate  
Tags: ansible   kubernetes   reiterate  

Looking into more detail on that one Redis Kubernetes Operator. Now I’m having trouble using it, so I try compiling it, but then I have trouble there too.

20180824/https://github.com/AmadeusITGroup/Redis-Operator
20180824/https://github.com/AmadeusITGroup/Redis-Operator/blob/master/pkg/client/client.go

So, what’s the hold-up? When go build is used and CGO_ENABLED=0, then Golang will try to cross-compile rebuild the standard libraries. If you have your Golang installation in a root directory and you are but a lowly user account, the recompile of the system libraries will fail. So, what I found doing that got me past this issue was to simply make my Golang installation writable by my user account, and that allowed the compile to continue smoothly without issue. What didn’t work: upgrading Golang. Nope, this is not actually a problem that is magically fixed in the newer versions.

Read on →

Generate command lines in Ansible, read YAML data from `kubectl`

quorten

2018-08-24

Categories: ansible   kubernetes  
Tags: ansible   kubernetes  

So, how do you generate a command line from a list variable in Ansible? Look around here for the solution.

20180824/DuckDuckGo ansible create command line from list
20180824/DuckDuckGo ansible create command line from list variable
20180824/DuckDuckGo ansible generate command arguments from list variable
20180824/https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30846813/ansible-variable-length-command-line-options#30851649
20180824/DuckDuckGo jinja2 join filter
20180824/https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24041885/conditionally-join-a-list-of-strings-in-jinja#24042287

Read on →