Dryers have long-standardized designs. They have slightly different motors and brains but the mechanics are all very similar and have been for a long time. Almost any dryer with a top-cover lint trap will come apart almost exactly like this one. Dryers with a lint trap inside the door are slightly different but also standardized, […]
Packet routing along transit routes Fresh Data Our arrival signs will need a way to get — well everything they show riders. They need schedules and route information and delay reports and the current time and information about their peer signs. They need to get updates to that information as they run so that they […]
An important component in getting bus arrival signs working is bus tracking, otherwise they’re just expensive schedule displays. I’ve spent the last few weeks researching options for tracking (and transmitting data about) buses One data feed we will need is One Bus Away. OBA is an open-source transit tracking tool used in Puget Sound — […]
Modern Ethernet cables are made up of 8 wires terminated with 8P8C connectors. The wires are twisted together in pairs to reduce crosstalk and to make it easier for transceivers on either end to reject common mode noise. Longer and higher speed cables may also use shielding to protect the entire cable and/or each individual […]
I have started gathering pieces for a bus sign prototype, and for the radio base station that will be needed to send updates to them over the air. Here you see a pair of microchip modules that each include RISC processors as well as LoRa and WiFi radios, plus antennas for both kinds of radio […]
I’m working on some improvements to our local transit system. I don’t have a car and take the bus/train everywhere, which is not always easy in a car-centric place like ours, and it’s even harder on the south end where our transit stops and facilities don’t get the same sort of attention they do in […]
The pre-unlock state of the host should contain no secrets used during regular operation. But it must contain some secrets, both so that we can unlock it and so that it supports as much redundancy as possible even when locked We want SSH access to the locked system so that we can unlock it manually, […]
I currently run my cloud hosts in a manual-intervention-required configuration for storage. Even the VPNs can’t come up until someone connects and provides a key to the hypervisor to unlock storage and start services This is a configuration I intend to continue when setting up redundant community hosting. But I’d like to design something that […]
The Meikee RGB LED is a weatherproof RGB LED light bar. It includes a 433 MHz radio reciever and an AC zero-crossing sensor, in addition the 3 PWM LED outputs. It’s easy to hook up to all the internal hardware, the RGB outputs are labeled on the board, there’s enough physical space to hide a board behind […]
The Vornado Transom fan is a blower fan designed to mount across the bottom of a hung window. I like the fan hardware. It includes an IR remote, runs at 4 discrete speeds, can be reversed electronically, physically closes when off, and includes a thermostatic function. I do not like the UI. It spends several seconds doing […]