In an effort to reduce the level of superflous stock I have in the workshop, I’ve set up a new store to sell off some of these parts & modules. It can be found over at store.experimental-engineering.co.uk. I’m still building the inventory, and new items are being added all the
On my home network I have a system running PiHole – a DNS server that blocks all unwanted traffic, such as ads. Since I have an official Pi LCD with a broken touch panel, I decided to use the bare LCD as a status display for PiHole. This requires some
Continue readingPiHole Status Display – Official Raspberry Pi LCD
Trolley Propulsion System: Wheelchair Motor Units So it’s time to get the propulsion system underway for the trolley, a pair of wheelchair motors were sourced for this, from HacMan. Since I don’t know how many hours are on these units, or how they’ve been treated in the past, I’m going
Continue readingWheelchair Motor Service Part 1: Teardown & Inspection
A few months ago I did a teardown on this Anker PowerPort Speed 5 USB charger, but I didn’t get round to detailing the conversion to 12v I had to do, so I’ll get to that now I’ve got a couple more to convert over. Here’s the internals of the
It’s been a bit quiet around here for a couple of weeks, as it’s the run-up to Download Festival here in the UK, so I’ve been busy sorting everything out for that. Just in time a new order has come in! Due to a small accident with the old Maplin
Since I’ve discovered some nice high power PSUs in the form of Playstation 3 PSUs, it’s time to get a new Bench PSU Build underway! I’ve gone for the APS-227 version as it’s got the 32A rail. This makes things slightly beefier overall, as the loading will never be anywhere
Here’s the CRT circuitry from a tossed STVG-502 Karaoke Machine, which got a good soaking in Manchester’s brilliantly wet weather before I managed to get hold of it: I didn’t do a full teardown of this unit, since it was soaking wet & smelled rather badly of sour milk, so
Since the batteries on board the boat are located in the cabin, I’ve noticed something rather odd with the Carbon Monoxide detectors: when the batteries are being charged, the CO alarms are triggering on the H² that’s being released. Since the last thing we need is hydrogen building up to
After I did the voltage mod on the APS-231 PSU power supply, I did some reading online & discovered there’s a more powerful PS3 supply – the APS-227. This beast has a 32A +12v rail, with a 3A +5v standby rail. As far as I can tell, these are used
Since I’ve been working on the backend servers a lot over the past few days, I’ve decided it was time to get some broken things on the blog fixed. Firstly, the radiation monitor graphs. Originally I was using a Raspberry Pi to grab the data from the local monitor, and
This was originally going to be part of another post, but it ended up getting more complex than I originally intended so it’s been given it’s own. I go into into many of my personal security practices, on both my public facing servers & personal machines. Since the intertubes are
Continue readingSecuring The New Server & Security In General
Since Sentora is still stuck on an old version of PHP, this script will update the system to the newer v5.6, via the Remi repository, as most things are deprecating support for older PHP versions at this point. Suhosin will also be recompiled for the new PHP version.
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#!/bin/bash echo "Upgrading PHP to version 5.6. Please Wait..." wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm sudo rpm -Uvh remi-release-7*.rpm yum update yum --enablerepo=remi,remi-php56 update yum --enablerepo=remi,remi-php56 upgrade echo "Recompiling Suhosin for PHP 5.7..." cd /tmp wget -nv -O suhosin.zip https://github.com/stefanesser/suhosin/archive/suhosin-0.9.37.zip unzip -q suhosin.zip rm -f suhosin.zip cd suhosin-suhosin-0.9.37 phpize &> /dev/null ./configure &> /dev/null make &> /dev/null make install cd .. rm -rf suhosin-suhosin-0.9.37 echo "Restarting Web Server Services..." systemctl restart httpd |
The
Continue readingCentOS 7 Sentora 1.0.3 PHP5.6 Upgrade Script
I’m making some changes to my hosting services, I’ve been testing Sentora, as it’s much more user friendly, if a little more limited in what it’s capable of doing, vs my go-to admin panel over the past 6+ years, Virtualmin. I noticed that SpamAssassin isn’t set up on a Sentora
Continue readingSentora 1.0.3 SpamAssassin Setup & Training Scripts
I posted a while back a teardown of the VM Superhub 2 router, as VM has “upgraded” to a rebranded Arris TG2492S/CE CM. Alas Virgin Media in their wisdom have decided that simple router features like being able to change the LAN subnet & DHCP server range are far too
This is a little bit of kit I got to talk to the Webasto TT-V I salvaged from a scrap Jaguar S-Type, and converts USB-RS232 to the standard car diagnostic ODB connector. (These are a much cheaper option at £4 than the official Webasto diagnostic adaptor & loom which is
As I mentioned in the previous post, these heaters have a standard interface that’s used for control & diagnostics, the W-Bus. This is transmitted over the K-Line of the vehicle bus, and all heaters, regardless of firmware modifications done by the various car manufacturers respond to this interface. Official Webasto
Continue readingJaguar S-Type Aux Heater / Webasto Thermo Top V Part 2 – W-Bus Diagnostics
Here’s another Diesel-fired heater related project – these Webasto heaters are fitted to Jaguar S-Type cars as auxiliary heaters, since (according to the Jag manual), the modern fuel-efficient diesels produce so little waste heat that extra help is required to run the car’s climate control system. (Although this seems to
Continue readingJaguar S-Type Aux Heater / Webasto Thermo Top V Part 1 – Teardown & Cleaning
It’s been 4 months since I did a rejig of my storage server, installing a new 16-port SATA HBA to support the disk drives. I mentioned the factory fan the card came with in my previous post, and I didn’t have many hopes of it surviving long. The heatsink card
I wrote a few weeks ago about replacing the hot water circulating pump on the boat with a new one, and mentioned that we’d been through several pumps over the years. After every replacement, autopsy of the pump has revealed the failure mode: the first pump failed due to old
Continue readingnb Tanya Louise Heating System – Oxide Sludge
Some time ago I did a couple of posts on cheapening up the maintenance of Eberspacher hot air heaters by making the glow plug screens myself. Now one of my pieces of stainless mesh has been in the heater for nearly a year, and the heater is starting to get
Continue readingDIY Eberspacher Glowplug Screens: The Test Of Time
Here the pipework feeding the matrix of the blower unit has been tapped into the heating circuit, the first radiator on the loop is just out of shot to the right, this is all tucked away under the bed in one of the cabins. The pipestat is attached to
Continue readingnb Tanya Louise Heating Upgrades – Matrix Install
With the installation of the new diesel fired heater we’ve noticed a small problem – since the only heat source in the saloon is the stove, even with the diesel heater fired up the temperature doesn’t really change much, as the heat from the radiators in the both the cabins
Continue readingnb Tanya Louise Heating Upgrades – Saloon Heating
With some recent upgrades to the boat’s heating system, the hot water circulation pumps we’ve been using are becoming far too small for the job. After the original Johnson Marine circulation pump died of old age (the brushes wore down so far the springs ate the commutator) some time
Continue readingnb Tanya Louise Heating Upgrades – The Pumps
In a word, no they aren’t any good. As usual, cheap doesn’t equal good, and in this case the cheapo clones are a total waste of money. Read on for the details! I’ve been looking into using a cheap Chinese clone Honda GX35 engine to drive an automotive alternator as
I’ve been running my own VPN so I can access my home-based servers from anywhere with an internet connection (not to mention, in this day & age of Government snooping – personal privacy & increased security). I’m on a pretty quick connection from Virgin Media here in the UK, currently