Well, say goodbye to the electric drop 84″ screen and say hello to the 100″ fixed screen and a completely flat black viewing area. The build starts this weekend!
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
My Arduino Parking Sensor is Done! sort of
16
Jun
Well, the microprocessor is in the case and everything is wired. I am waiting on delivery for one more LED indicator for one parking spot. The sensor for the civic works great. The unit is turned on by an Insteon OutletLinc only when the garage door is open, and when the car reaches 42 inches from the sensor (the wall), the light lights up.
I just have to mount the controller box to the wall and clean up the mounts for the light and ultrasonic sensors.
Pre Ordered my iPhone 4
15
Jun
I was one of the lucky ones to be able to pre order my iPhone 4. Should ship to me on June 24. We will see.
Not much new here
07
Jun
Not a whole lot going on here. Just relaxing a bit. Corinne and I watched Avatar (Bluray) and it was amazing. Great movie.
I received the last order of sprinkler system parts (hopefully) to finish the drip irrigation for the front landscaping. I will most likely attempt to install it in the next week or so. Whenever it isnt too hot outside.
My parking sensor is awaiting one more ultrasonic sensor and some brackets. I think its ready to go. I should have it mounted for testing by the end of the week.
I am modifying my homemade router/firewall at home to run Pfsense 2.0 beta on a hard drive instead of a flash card. This will allow me to run squid (http cache proxy), havp (anti-virus scanner), and other network monitoring tools. They cannot be run on a flash card since the card has a finite read/write life.
My Parking Sensor is ready to test
27
May
Finished the code for the parking sensor in about 10 minutes. I am using an arduino duemilanove microcontroller. The Arduino Duemilanove is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega328. It has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button.
I am using a PING))) Ultrasonic sensor, a large red LED, and the arduino. When an object gets within a certain programmed distance (in this case 40 inches), the red LED lights up. The sensor is amazingly accurate down to about 2 cm. Also, the response time in change in distances is within milliseconds.
Moved our site to a new Hosting Provider
24
May
Well, hopefully nobody noticed any down time on the site. I moved the site off Godaddy to a new provider. Costs are about the same, but the new provider seemed to offer more services and better speed that Godaddy. Please let me know if you noticed any problems on the site. I am still trying to tie up a few loose ends.
Migrating data from WHS to unRaid – taking forever!
14
Mar
So i started removing hard drives from my WHS 1 Terrabyte at a time. It is taking forever. WHS first has to move all the data onto the remaining drives before allowing me to remove it. Then I add the drive to the unRaid Server. I will then copy the data (Blu-Rays, Movies, and TV) from the WHS to the unRaid server, which will also take forever. I should have 4 TB of storage ready in the next 2 hours or so. Then I will start a file copy overnight of about 3 TB of data. Hopefully when I wake up everything will have gone smoothly.
Just pre-ordered my Ceton InfiniTV 4.
13
Mar
For you media center enthusiasts out there, i just ordered the Ceton InfiniTV 4. It is set to ship March 31st (fingers crossed). It is a 4 stream CableCard tuner card (internal) that only requires one CableCard. This is to replace my external usb tuners that I have. Here are some specs via cetoncorp.com
The Ceton InfiniTV 4 is the world’s first multi-tuner PC card for watching digital cable TV on the PC, including support for premium cable channels. It enables Media Center PCs to play or record up to four live channels of HDTV at once, and stream live HD channels or recordings to multiple HDTVs throughout the home, all from a single cable connection and a single CableCARD™. Replace your cable set-top boxes and their costly monthly rental fees and enjoy premium cable TV throughout the home, all from a single PC. With the Ceton InfiniTV 4 your Media Center PC becomes a complete entertainment platform for all your media, including premium cable TV.
- Watch and/or record four live channels of standard-definition or high-definition TV simultaneously, including all your favorite premium and encrypted cable channels.
- With Media Center Extenders like the Xbox 360™, your Media Center PC with the Ceton InfiniTV 4 becomes a whole-home entertainment device for digital cable. Watch and record different channels in different rooms, all from one PC, and using the familiar Windows Media Center user interface on all TVs.
Alix board for my firewall is in
09
Mar
My alix board arrived. Waiting on the power supply which should be here tomorrow
New projects. WARNING – NERD ALERT.
08
Mar
My 3 new projects that i have decided to take on are the following:
1. Changing the surveillance camera system to utilize better cameras that are night sensitive.
2. Building my own firewall device including a DHCP server. I will be using an ALIX 2D2 board and pfSense software for the firewall.
3. Migrating some data from my 13TB WHS to an UNRAID solution using a new Atom dual core processor. This will allow better usage of the hard drive space and the atom board will cut power usage by ALOT!
I will post more about each project as they progress.