Category: all

  • An automatic hallway light the complex way: zigbee + wifi + python + google translate

    So we’ve had a long standing problem here at home. The upstairs landing is lit by a large chandelier, 12 x 100W bulbs. Its on a dimmer, but it can use a ton of power. When i first moved in, i installed a 3-way dimmer so you could control it from the top and bottom…

  • How to securely run multiple external services in your single public IP home

    Many of us have this challenge. We want to run multiple services (web sites) and access them remotely. It might be plex, homeassistant, a blog, etc. The traditional way to to this is to use 1 IP per server. The traditional method to do this in a NAT/home environment is port-forwards, and just remember http://myhouse:80…

  • Automating a garage door

    Automating a garage door

    Imagine a typical residential garage door system, it looks like below: There is a ceiling, a pair of tracks, and a door which pulls up through those tracks parallel to the ceiling. Now, imagine that this garage door is controlled by three methods today: Manual override pull chain A doorbell-type button A key-code switch outside…

  • Flashlight repair

    Flashlight repair

    Recently I bought a usb-charged lithium-powered keychain flashlight. Ostensibly its by Nitecore, but i’m a bit suspicious it might be counterfeit. OK, it comes, it charges, it works, its bright. Great. Hand it off to Sonya, it can inhabit her keychain w/ the thousands of other things. 1 day later, dead. Sigh. Small Philips screwdriver,…

  • Enabling TLS1.3

    TLS 1.3. Its new, its shiny, its much better.And its supported by nginx 1.13 which is part of the backend of this blog. It was a bit of work to get a perfect score on ssllabs test (as below), and here’s how I did it. First, the server supports a bunch of different ‘sites’ (each…