Fixing my satellite dish
My satellite dish is mounted on an arm. That arm hooks into a pole mounted to the side of the attic space doorway. The arm is free to move, so I MacGuyvered a rough system of bits of old clothes hanger.
It was fairly stable when the wind blew in its normal westly direction as that would push the dish towards the end of its travel, so it wouldn't move. But in squalls and wind from the other direction, the dish would move out of alignment. So I'd need to get the long-arm thing and push the dish back until it stopped.
That's what I tried to do yesterday. Only the dish kept on swinging around until it hit the wall. That wasn't right! There must have been a huge gust of wind to dislodge the coat-hanger bits.
So I did what any self-respecting Rick would do in the pouring rain and gale winds as the side of Storm Éowyn blew through.
Yup, I grabbed a ladder and went up to look at what had gone wrong. I set my receiver to ITV 1 Meridian South as that's one of the weaker channels, and then I pointed my security camera at the screen and watched that to lock in the tuning. It was pretty lousy because the camera insisted on firing up its array of intra-red LEDs, but it was enough to see some movement of the picture and also to hear the audio being relayed.
Using a security camera to check the tuning.
Once that the dish was pointing in the right direction, all that was needed was one carefully placed jubilee clip.
The hairy way my dish is supported.
A future project
Sometimes I look at the security camera out front to see if somebody has delivered something to my letterbox. On calm days, I can simply call up the recording timeline to see if any post has come - it is usually delivered to me around 1.50pm.
Post has been delivered.
The problem is that on breezy sunny days, the trees dance and the camera detects the shifting shadows as movement. And on windy days? The camera itself might shake slightly in the gusts, which also are interpreted as movement. This makes it harder to tell when the post may have come. To put this into context, you can see exactly when storm Éowyn blew through...
Composite chart showing when movement recordings were made.
Which leads me to think of alternatives.
Let's see, I have a number of inexpensive ESP32 devices around the place. The IDE built into my phone (which doesn't seem to be developed any more?) seems incapable of making working camera firmware - it starts up correctly but tells me that my camera module couldn't be initialised. It seems that there were changes made to the camera API and it's a bit of a mess on the Arduino IDE, so an IDE-alike on Android would probably suffer more. Which is a shame as the IDE that I'm using actually compiles the firmware really rather rapidly, not like the forever that it takes my PC.
Now an ESP32 is a somewhat souped-up microcontroller. Things are a little bit complicated with the ESP32-CAM modules as most of the GPIO is already taken with the camera interface, SD card, and PSRAM. But there are one or two GPIO pins that are available and don't serve a boot-time purpose.
The plan is simple. Hook a small switch to the letterbox flap. Wire that in series with a switch to the letterbox door (so I can detect if either is opened). Both switches will be in normally-closed configuration, and will break when opened. An ESP32 will monitor this, and will use WiFi to communicate somehow - it'll probably fetch a certain page on my main server that will record this to give a timestamp of when the letterbox was opened.
I ordered this from Amazon yesterday. It arrived this morning.
Bits ordered from Amazon.
I purchased twenty five microswitches for €8,99. They are useful things to have around. I already have a load of various sizes of micro button switches (like for fixing mice and such) but I didn't have anything with levers. I got the ones with the silly-long (55mm) lever for two reasons. Firstly, oddly, it was cheaper. And secondly, if I need a 30mm lever, I can just use the wire cutters or pliers to cut the lever to the desired size. I can always make it shorter, I can't make it longer.
The search was then on for some inexpensive lightweight multicore cable. Amazon kept offering me shockingly expensive mains cable, which would be cool if I wanted to move into my letterbox and install a radiator. But since I'm looking at either 5V for USB or 3.3V for the switch circuit (depending on where I want to put the ESP32), it would be overkill.
That's when I had a brainwave. What's the cheapest ethernet cable that I can find that's about ten metres long?
That cable that you see claims to be Cat 5e but since it's unshielded I wouldn't imagine it'll have a stunning transfer speed. It "claims" 1Gbps, but then it claims that thanks to the RJ45 it's also compatible with Cat 6, 6A, 7, and 8. The thing is this is bollocks.
I'm not going to get into the voodoo that is ethernet link speeds. Cat 5e is intended for 100MHz operation which implies 1Gbps in perfect conditions, but then being unshielded it won't be subject to perfect conditions, but then it's not a particularly long cable, but then not all cables are made alike. It might offer 600Mbps flat out, or it might happily connect a 2.5Gbit link. I don't have the equipment to test, but I know what I feel is most likely, especially considering the price.
Cat 7... is something else. It's not an official IEEE standard and it uses an enhanced connector that is like RJ45 but different.
If I wanted it in black, it's a tenner. In yellow? Twenty five euros. But boring grey and it's yours for €2,49. No, that's not a typo. Two euros forty nine. The cable says "DIGITUS CAT5E U/UTP ISO/IEC 11801 & ANSI/TIA-568-C.2 26AWG CE Assman Electronic GmbH Auf dem Schüffel 3 58513 Lüdenscheid Germany 04/26/24 C" and it appears to be wired to TIA 568B (orange and brown as the outer pairs). It's disappointing that a German company is stamping broken American dates onto their cables...
Anyway, it's either for a signal or USB power, so I have ten metres of eight core cable for the price of some crappy lukewarm chips at the burger flinger of choice. Not bad.
Sod off Google
I was sent a message that an account that I forgot that even existed was liable to be discarded soon if I didn't log in to it. It was used years ago with Google Groups for looking at Usenet, in the days before I gave up on comp.sys.acorn.*. Given that Google killed that off ages ago, I'm sure you can understand why I had forgotten about it.
So I selected the account, I provided the password, and I even responded with a secret code that was mailed to the registered email address. Google then prompted with this.
Tactless data pillaging.
Sending a code by email "proves" that it is me about as well as is possible within the constraints of me and only me having access to that mailbox within a given period of time.
Asking for a phone number for sending me a code proves absolutely nothing. You don't have a contact number so you are asking for one. Which means I can put in anything here, such as 202-456-1111 (that's the White House!). Since I'm supposed to be supplying the number of the phone in my pocket, all this does is associate a phone number with the account. It absolutely does not provide any form of verification that I am actually me, because if I was trying to break into this account, I'd just give the number of a burner phone to receive the text. A cheap SIM-only thing, newly installed, to get the code and then ditch before I have to bother proving who I am to the MNVO.
What this is really about isn't security, it's about collecting yet more personal information from people (which may not be GDPR compliant, but then since when has Google paid much attention to that?). Obviously I backed out as I'm not giving Google my mobile number. Technically they should have it through the account my mobile phones are registered to, but if they're so arse-backward that their left hand doesn't even know the right one exists, that's not my problem.
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| jgh, 26th January 2025, 20:39 |
When I got back from Japan, one of the many absolute utter shutipImbusypissoff! things I did was go to the toilet. And snapped off the handle. :(
A few days ago I got around to fitting the replacement handle I'd bought. As it's a high level cistern it was top-of-step-ladder fiddly, so I'd been putting it off.
Amazingly, just by replacing the handle, it now flushes even betterer than it ever has, absolutely *throwing* a tankful of water into the bowl. The handle must have been gradually deteriorating and not pulling a proper flush for years .
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| Rob, 27th January 2025, 18:51 |
There are free Web services out there that give you a phone number and show you the texts they receive. Not very secure, as the numbers are shared, but handy for validating a throwaway account. |
(Felicity? Marte? Find out!)
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