Something like a raspberry pi or equivalent, and use reverse SSH set up to connect to a server with a known address on your end.
This means that ports don't need to be opened on their end.
Also if you go with a gateway host, shift SSH to a randomised port like 37465, and install fail2ban.
Coincidentally I've been in Tampere for 6 months for work, going back to Brisbane on Monday. Being in a "short stay" apartment means that sauna power bills aren't my problem 😎
You can get smart meters in Aus now with time of use metering. What needs to happen now is that those meters get a simple, non-cloud-connected way to let your appliances know when is a good time to start up.
So for hard wired devices like your hot water heater or your pool pump you could have a simple relay-like device in your fusebox that can be set to "turn on below X cents per kWh" and it will switch them as needed.
Your air conditioner could have a linked IR remote that turns it on early in the day of power is cheap and chills the house for the afternoon heat or runs it a bit cooler than usual if it is already running.
Your fridge or freezer could have an "extra chill" setting.
Your washing machine and dryer could have simple "start now" "pause now" interfaces and they could just operate during the day whenever.
All this could be done with some newer version of the X10 protocol, and it would be great to get something like that standardised and widespread.
Microsoft is shit. Windows, is shit. Windows 11 is a privacy goddamn nightmare.
But in the end of the day, it just fucking works, those damn bastards ensure that. And even when something doesn't work, it seems, for some unknown reason, most of the online solutions do fix the issue.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
(Pause for breath)
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
Only if you count "most of the online solutions" as "run SFC /SCANNOW and if that doesn't work, just reinstall your OS".
The effects of modern high density construction make blast zones and lethal distances a bit unknown.
500ft above St Paul's cathedral nowadays would mean that several million tons of concrete and steel would block the radiation pulse and mitigate the blast to quite some extent for those in the outer radius.
I want a music playing alarm app that's permanently locked to Sonny and Cher's , "I got you babe".
What I'm asking is how tf did text messages and whatever in the walkie talkies ignite a spark strong enough to ignite the PETN?
Pager with firmware that activates an output on date/time X/Y and triggers an ignition signal. That signal is sent o an actual detonator in the device, which sets off the explosive.
Radio with DTMF receiver that activates an output when, for example, touchtone 4 is received over the air, or alternatively if the radio has GPS, another date/time activation via firmware.
Both of these things are relatively trivial for a nation-state to pull off.
So yes, in both cases it's possible that faulty devices are still around. However, if all the rest of your group has had exploding pagers and radios, most people in the same group would have dropped their still-working pager or radio into a bucket of water by now. There's probably a few, and they're probably being carefully taken apart right now to see how it was done.
Afaik such an idea was nonsense previously.
It's not nonsense, it just takes planning and resources. And now that people know it is possible, buying and using any sort of equipment for your group without having the nagging concern there might be a bomb in it is impossible. And that's a pretty powerful limiter.
That's easy. Just fly somewhere and bring it in your carry-on, airport security will let you know.
There's a lot to be said for "http://yourISP.com/~username" being available 24/7 at no particular effort to you.
As if the software was as permanent as the hardware lol
There's no guarantee that the software will ever be updated to something that the user finds usable though.
Google could just one day go "meh, we don't think folding displays are where we want to be right now", and - ta-da! - you're left with a folding doorstop and Google's got yet another entry on the "killed by Google" list.
As another poster has mentioned, M-Discs are written using a Blu-ray writer and are good for a few hundred years, in theory.
Hi all,
In an effort to liven up this community, I'll post this project I'm working on.
I'm building a solar hot water controller for my house. The collector is on the roof of a three-storey building, it is linked to a storage tank on the ground floor. A circulating pump passes water from the tank to the collectors and back again when a temperature sensor on the outlet of the collector registers a warm enough temperature.
The current controller does not understand that there is 15 metres of copper piping to pump water through and cycles the circulating pump in short bursts, resulting in the hot water at the collector cooling considerably by the time it reaches the tank (even though the pipes are insulated). The goal of my project is to read the sensor and drive the pump in a way to minimise these heat losses. Basically instead of trying to maintain a consistent collector output temp with slow constant pulsed operation of the pump, I'll first try pumping the entire volume of moderately hot water from the top half of the collector in one go back to the tank and then waiting until the temperature rises again.
I am using an Adafruit PyPortal Titano as the controller, running circuitpython. For I/O I am using a generic ebay PCF8591 board, which provides 4 analog input and a single analog output over an I2C bus. This is inserted into a motherboard that provides pullup resistors for the analog inputs and an optocoupled zero crossing SCR driver + SCR to drive the (thankfully low power) circulating pump. Board design is my own, design is rather critical as mains supply in my country is 240V.
The original sensors are simple NTC thermistors, one at the bottom of the tank, and one at the top of the collector. I have also added 4 other Dallas 1-wire sensors to measure temperatures at the top of tank, ambient, tank inlet and collector pump inlet which is 1/3rd of the way up the tank. I have a duplicate of the onewire sensors already on the hot water tank using a different adafruit board and circuitpython. Their readings are currently uploaded to my own IOT server and I can plot the current system's performance, and I intend to do the same thing with this board.
The current performance is fairly dismal, a very small bump of perhaps 0.5 - 1 deg C in the normally 55 degree C tank temperature around 12pm to 1pm, and this is in Australia in hot spring weather of 28-32 degrees C.(There's some inaccuracy of the tank temperatures, the sensors aren't really bonded to the tank in any meaningful way, so tank temp is probably a little warmer than this. But I'm looking for relative temperature increases anyway)
Right now , the hardware is all together and functional, and is driving a 13W LED downlight as a test, and I can read the onewire temp sensors, read an analog voltage on the PCF8591 board (which will go to the NTC sensors), and I'm pulsing the pump output proportionally from 0-100 percent drive on a 30 second duty cycle, so that a pump drive function can simply say "run the pump at 70 percent" and you'll get 21 seconds on, 9 seconds off. Duty cycle time is adjustable, so I might lower it a bit to 15 or 10 seconds.
The next step is to try it on the circulating pump (which is quite an inductive load, even if it is only 20 watts), and start working on an algorithm that reads the sensors and maximises water temperature back to the tank. There are a few safety features that I'll put in there, such as a "fault mode" to drive the pump at a fixed rate if there is a sensor failure, and a "night cool" mode if the hot water tank is severely over temperature to circulate hot water to the collector at night to cool it. There are the usual overtemp/overpressure relief valves in the system already.
All this is going in a case with a clear hinged cover on the front so I can open it and poke the Titano's touchscreen to do some things.
Right now I am away from home from work, so my replies might be a bit sporadic, but I'll try to get back to any questions soon-ish.
A few photos for your viewing pleasure:
The I/O and mainboard plus a 5V power supply mounted up:
The front of the panel, showing the Pyportal:
Thingsboard display showing readings from the current system:
Mainboard PCB design and construction via EasyEDA:
Been seeing quite a few advertisements lately that are basically, "Gas is used for stuff". Companies trying to make sure that governments (and the people who vote from them) keep gas infrastructure around for them, I guess.