Author Topic: Bought any computing stuff today? (Read 130351 times)

tiermat · « **Reply #350 on:** 06 February, 2016, 05:23:29 pm »

Quote from: Kim on 06 February, 2016, 05:10:38 pm

Fair enough, though my approach is to bring the Pi to the screen and keyboard rather than the other way round.

IME once a Raspberry Pi gets to that stage you're re-imaging the card anyway.

It would be mine, but the fileserver has a gert big USB disk that hangs off it, and all the associated cables.

The firewall doesn't have the disk, but does have a rat's nest and is in the hallway, so people have to step over me whilst I am trying to fix issues. I also need to be in reach of the DSL and switches, which also live in the hallway.

TimC · « **Reply #351 on:** 11 February, 2016, 08:30:10 pm »

Anyone bought anything from Novatech by PayPal?

I tried to today, and paid (a little) extra for next day delivery, only to receive an email - too late to deal with it in time to salvage that arrangement - asking for extra proof of address. There is no such requirement in their terms and conditions, and I've never come across anyone treating PayPal payments suspiciously. I've sent them a grink asking why, but has anyone any clue why they do this?

I will probably take the order elsewhere now, and I doubt I'll use them again.

tiermat · « **Reply #352 on:** 20 February, 2016, 08:52:58 pm »

I ordered, on Wednesday, a 6 port USB psu. This is so that I can power both Pis from one power socket and use the last one on the extension lead for the external hard drive that the file server uses. Anyway it arrived today.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #353 on:** 26 February, 2016, 08:12:52 pm »

I appear to have somehow ordered the bits to fit a 512 GB SSD to my older iPod Classic (and if it doesn't work in that it can always go in the laptop instead).

Afasoas · « **Reply #354 on:** 02 March, 2016, 01:23:43 pm »

A cheap SSD to replace the one scavenged out an Intel NUC, although I'm contemplating selling it. If I didn't sell it, I would use it for hosting a development version of my website, rather than making changes to the live site. Which could be useful as I'm contemplating re-writing it in node.js

And a cheap quad-port Intel NIC so that I can virtualise my firewall.

MagnusOpus · « **Reply #355 on:** 02 March, 2016, 01:50:20 pm »

Some powered USB hubs....partly as I got given a CHIP computer and need to connect stuff to it....and partly because my pc has pathetic amounts of power on it's USB bus...I'm always having to unplug stuff to make other stuff work!

tiermat · « **Reply #356 on:** 06 March, 2016, 10:34:44 am »

A Nest, to replace the aged CH thermostat. One more step towards a connected home. Next up, maybe, Philips Hue.

tiermat · « **Reply #357 on:** 17 March, 2016, 07:56:36 am »

Yet another Pi, this time a 3.

Plus a 24" monitor, for it to connect to.

TLD's Python hacking rig!

Dibdib · « **Reply #358 on:** 18 March, 2016, 08:50:21 am »

Quote from: tiermat on 06 March, 2016, 10:34:44 am

A Nest, to replace the aged CH thermostat. One more step towards a connected home. Next up, maybe, Philips Hue.

What do you think? I'm planning on replacing my CH system at some point (the whole lot is pretty knackered) and it seems like a nice idea...

tiermat · « **Reply #359 on:** 18 March, 2016, 09:16:47 am »

Quote from: Dibdib on 18 March, 2016, 08:50:21 am

Quote from: tiermat on 06 March, 2016, 10:34:44 am
A Nest, to replace the aged CH thermostat. One more step towards a connected home. Next up, maybe, Philips Hue.

What do you think? I'm planning on replacing my CH system at some point (the whole lot is pretty knackered) and it seems like a nice idea...

Cool just about covers it (not in the heating sense!)

It works, it is IP enabled, so can turn the heating up as I head home, it is currently learning our home/away patterns and it is a lot more reliable than the old thermostat.

Well worth the money, I would say (if you are replacing your CH, check to see if you can get a deal on a Nest or a Hive, we were told there are deals out there for this kind of thing)

Afasoas · « **Reply #360 on:** 18 March, 2016, 01:29:25 pm »

In the interests of learning and privacy, I'm planning on building my own as a learning exercise. All the bits are there waiting for me to start prototyping it.

Kim · « **Reply #361 on:** 18 March, 2016, 01:48:28 pm »

Quote from: Afasoas on 18 March, 2016, 01:29:25 pm

In the interests of learning and privacy, I'm planning on building my own as a learning exercise. All the bits are there waiting for me to start prototyping it.

Including the tuits?

I think mine (now on its third iteration) probably does a better job than the Nest, as it has more data to work with^[1]. Obviously it's the antithesis of the Google learning-based approach, being an old-fashioned rules-based system. But that works well iff you can collect some data and hand-craft the rules to do the right thing. Being able to log in and give it a kick when you're on your way home is priceless.

It was a long time ago now, but we saw a huge reduction in gas consumption from simply not heating the downstairs when we weren't using it. Of course, you can reasonably achieve that by carrying a modern wireless thermostat around.

_{[1] Off the top of my head: Individual room temperature and occupancy. Whether we're in bed. If there's a guest sleeping downstairs. When the alarm clock's set for. The front door opening. Whether there's food cooking. Probably some other stuff I've forgotten.}

Morat · « **Reply #362 on:** 19 March, 2016, 11:14:09 am »

Those IP enabled thermostats sound pretty good. I'm just waiting for one that will carry the coal and logs in from the shed

Canardly · « **Reply #363 on:** 22 March, 2016, 03:25:20 pm »

Bought a pair of pass through powerline adaptors. Very impressed with ease of set up.

Kim · « **Reply #364 on:** 22 March, 2016, 05:12:51 pm »

There's an iThing lurking downstairs. Fortunately it's a present, so I don't have to install iTunes on anything.

Wombat · « **Reply #365 on:** 22 March, 2016, 06:04:53 pm »

A new Samsung 1TB SSD as additional storage for my PC, as the existing 1TB SSD is nearly full.

I've forgotten, as its not a boot drive, do I have to do anything to it, such as Fdisk, to make a partition, and then format it?

It has a manual, but its entirely focused on installing it as a replacement OS disk, and witters on about data migration, which of course is nonsense in this instance.

fuaran · « **Reply #366 on:** 22 March, 2016, 09:08:53 pm »

Quote from: Wombat on 22 March, 2016, 06:04:53 pm

A new Samsung 1TB SSD as additional storage for my PC, as the existing 1TB SSD is nearly full.

I've forgotten, as its not a boot drive, do I have to do anything to it, such as Fdisk, to make a partition, and then format it?

In Windows, probably easiest to use the Disk Management tool (run diskmgmt.msc). That will let you create partitions, and format it as required, and give it a drive letter.

barakta · « **Reply #367 on:** 22 March, 2016, 11:16:18 pm »

Quote from: Kim on 22 March, 2016, 05:12:51 pm

There's an iThing lurking downstairs. Fortunately it's a present, so I don't have to install iTunes on anything.

Now it's lurking in here. We have to remember to take it with us when we visit the intended recipient. Due to Apple emails I need to give it to recipient then do the sodding config...

Wombat · « **Reply #368 on:** 23 March, 2016, 12:14:26 pm »

Quote from: fuaran on 22 March, 2016, 09:08:53 pm

Quote from: Wombat on 22 March, 2016, 06:04:53 pm
A new Samsung 1TB SSD as additional storage for my PC, as the existing 1TB SSD is nearly full.

I've forgotten, as its not a boot drive, do I have to do anything to it, such as Fdisk, to make a partition, and then format it?
In Windows, probably easiest to use the Disk Management tool (run diskmgmt.msc). That will let you create partitions, and format it as required, and give it a drive letter.

I cheated and used the tools in Acronis True Image, which did the biz. A bit obvious if I'd thought to look earlier, there's a tool called "add new disk"!

Its already got a couple of hundred GB of data on it now... Next dread is dealing with the 3150 photo and video files I got back from Sierra Leone, with. Lightroom, here we come!

Afasoas · « **Reply #369 on:** 23 March, 2016, 02:50:16 pm »

Make sure you keep them backed up. SSDs failure mode tends to be silently corrupting data.

Wombat · « **Reply #370 on:** 23 March, 2016, 08:55:39 pm »

I will!
There's a general PC backup using Acronis, onto one spinny disc, a manual one of critical items such as photos onto another one, and this particular collection is going to be lodged with the British Library under their endangered archives programme. There will also be a copy held in York, and one somewhere in darkest Dorset, and eventually one in Sierra Leone. I hope that should cover it. Not that I'm being over-cautious or anything.

My personal reason for using SSDs is that I'm extremely impatient!

pcolbeck · « **Reply #371 on:** 01 April, 2016, 12:31:41 pm »

A second TP-Link powerline WiFi thing arrived today to replace the dying Linksys running Tomato in the attic. Plugged it in in the lounge/kitchen and shut off teh WiFi in that attic and we now have reliable WiFi again and a lot faster too.
I'm quite sad that all my old WRT54G WiFi routers are now retired as they have served me well for a decade.
Still all modernised now with the BT Home Hub 5 in the office handling WiFi duties there and connecting to broadband with two poweline APs in the main house plus a poweline ethernet adapter in Pcolbeck juniors bedroom for gaming
I also ordered a couple of five port gigabit Ethernet TP-Link today so I can replace the WRT54G in the attic completely (I turned its WiFi off but its still acting as a switch to connect a few Ethernet sockets in the house to the office) and tidy up the wiring in the office.

I cant believe you can buy a green (only powers up used ports and takes into account cable length) wall mountable gigabit switch for £12.50 but according to Mr Amazon you can. Amazing.

Feanor · « **Reply #372 on:** 01 April, 2016, 01:42:06 pm »

I've just retired a couple of trusty old Cisco Aironet 1200 Access Points.
These were running at 802.11g speed ( 54Mbit ).

The new ones are:
http://www.linksys.com/gb/p/P-LAPAC1750/

These do 802.11ac, at silly headline speeds.
My phone is claiming 780Mbps.

You get a lot of bang for your buck these days.
Dual-band concurrently;
Multiple SSIDs per radio;
Full VLAN support ie each SSID can go onto a different VLAN;
Proper WPA2-Enterprise support ( via RADIUS server);
IPv6 support ( for the config pages ).
Cluster management ( One AP acts as the Wireless Access Controller, essentially. )

Kim · « **Reply #373 on:** 01 April, 2016, 02:29:12 pm »

Similarly, I recently retired an old 802.11g Netgear router running DDWRT that had become flaky (presumably a hardware fault).

Replaced it with a Ubiquiti Unifi UAP AC Pro, as the #a&a crowd seem to rate the Unifi stuff highly for its doing what it says on the tin factor (there seem to be a lot of people running point-to-point links with it). I also wanted 802.3af support (I've got enough 48V passive^[1] PoE kit that it seems pointless having an extra wall-wart), and the simultaneous dual-band because this is a student area and the 2.4GHz band is a mess.

Feature list broadly similar to the above. Notably absent is any form of IPv6 support (being a Layer 2 device, it'll happily pass IPv6 packets anyway^[2]), but that's surely coming in a software update at some point.

The Unifi management is via a centralised server, which will run on all the popular OSes (or you can pay them for some cloudy thing, I think). Installing it on Debian Jessie was just a matter of adding the repository and installing via apt-get. This is somewhat overkill for a single access point, admittedly, but it works well enough. Looks like a neat integrated solution if you've got multiple pieces of Unifi hardware (it allows you to manage switches etc via the same interface).

Wireless performance seems okay. One strategically positioned AP covers the whole house, so no need for a second one. We're mostly using it for phones/tablets, so aren't really taxing it at present.

_{[1] My deaf alerting system actually has proper 802.3af support, as do the Snoms for that matter, but I'm using fanless Procurves and passive multi-port injectors rather than proper PoE switches, because I'm cheap and fans are evil. You can generally stick 48V up something that speaks 802.3af and it'll just get on with it.
[2] Unless you enable the AP's "guest mode", which seems to break it. I didn't need that feature anyway.}

Feanor · « **Reply #374 on:** 01 April, 2016, 02:41:27 pm »

The Unifi ones were high on my list, too.
Mostly based on RevK Rants blog, and consequently also on #a&a.

The Linksys also does PoE, but it's a bit power-hungry and needs PoE+, so I have to use external inline injectors as my PoE switch isn't up to the job.

The IPv6 stuff is a bit of a gimmick, because as you say, an AP is primarily a layer 2 device.
So in that respect, *all* APs are IPv6 compatible.

But the web GUI is accessible over IPv6.
Several other features seem to be IPv6 aware.
It doesn't look like it can talk to the RADIUS server over IPv6.