After Google killed XMPP support for Google Voice, I no longer had a house phone. I was using my Google Voice number as a home phone and for the gate info our building. This lead to the whole system being ignored and neglected. By the time the SD card gave up the ghost, even the backups were in poor shape. I rebuilt the whole system fresh from the latest RasPBX dist and it’s working better then ever. Bought a real DID so i could continue to use Google Voice on our handsets at home. It’s great to have my Asterisk back.
Category: hardware
More then printing out, I’m printing up! Experiments with my first 3D printer!
When a colleague offered me a great price to buy his barely used Monoprice Maker Select V2 , I was instantly transported into the future. No more waiting for amazon deliveries, now i can download things straight into reality from the inerwebz! Well, that’s almost what happened.
The learning curve was not as steep as i expected. my 3rd print was actually perfect; or would have been if i hadn’t run out of filament. Funny story… i inherited with the printer a 1Kg spool of PLA. Unfortunately, the Monoprice Maker Select’s included spool holder doesn’t support large spools like this one. So I had to maintain the slack on the spool or break off pieces for prints. That is no way to live. The very next pint was of course was Maker Select V2 Spool Holder Mod by toastedsilicon
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art, Culture, hardware, Internet, Raspberry Pi, Recreation, retro, revolution, Science, Security, Software, technology, Travel, Wi-Fi
Back to reality after another amazing DEFCON!
I met a pile of incredible people. Bought some amazing toys (for science), some i’ve even got working. Saw some talks and demos. Talked to some of my heroes and listened to even more. I saw Ladar Levison talk about epoxying your ports and adding thermite to your hard drives. I played with the ECU of a fake car! now i just have finish building the DarkNet Badge! enjoy my pictures. The hat data is still being analyzed. I’ll try to build something out of it eventually.
Introducing DEFCam or how i made a hat for DEFCON!
This is a silly project that i have spent probably too much time on. First I thought, why not time-lapse my upcoming defcon trip. Then i thought, why not live stream it. So… I started with a Pi Zero and a Pi Camera v1. Wired some pins to the GPIO for power. Made a custom wire and hot glued it into the hat. Done!
My first purchase from a KeyMe kiosk and I have notes!
I have used MinuteKEY in the past to easily bypass DO NOT COPY keys. Today’s errand was more about a quick solution then a security bypass. I was just copying normal keys today. Here is what i learned. With MinuteKEY, you could only make batch copies of the same key. In fact, the MinuteKEY kiosk locked your key into the machine until all the copying is done. There were zero protections against DO NOT COPY keys. They do however print keys right there in a variety of styles and colors.
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Adding the new 3 B+ to my raspberry pi family!
Bringing more performance then ever with this $35 board! i’m excited that they finally upgraded the USB/network controller chip that created frustrating bottlenecks. This is finally the Pi for reasonable network performance and USB io. what’s on your pi?
It’s finally fixed!
As you can see, it did turn out to be hardware, a GPU and CPU (ouch!). The flash storage was not it, but I figured that out eventually. This has been an issue since October! With many fixes attempted. It was a bit of a blow to my pride eventually having to turn to Apple, but they stepped up and got it done with only mild frustration on my part. Plus, they picked up the tab as my warranty is certainly expired. There comes a time when you realize that a fix would require more parts then you had at hand. I have been enjoying my functional desktop again, just in time for the new iMac Pro to make it obsolete.
New Toys – Myo Armband & Leap Motion interface devices!
Trading technology with my friends left me with some exciting new toys. Now with a bit more time since these devices were introduced there are lots of interesting demos for each. Though similar, these are very different devices and not intended to be used together. I am excited to see what they are capable of. Anything to replace the flat pointer driven systems we seem to be stuck with. I think I’ll integrate my Leap Motion with the Oculus i have on loan. So far, it’s hard to type without triggering my Myo Constantly.
One more time! Now with new hardware!
Lots of clues point to boot media as the source of at least some of my recent Mac Pro problems. Thanks again to my friends at Mac Enthusiasts, I’ve got a new “hard drive” to try. 🤞
UPDATE: Nope, that is not it either. Turns out, it’s GPU! (more to come)
My favorite products play well together!
Ubiquity’s Amplifi wifi mesh system is awesome and incredibly easy to setup. It also looks great next to Synology’s DiskStation product line. Together they make the most amazing Time Capsule replacement. The functionality doesn’t stop there. The DiskStation does so much more then just backup. As a backup however, it allows you to mirror the disks for extra protection as well as synchronize between other servers, DiskStations, cloud storage, or even AWS S3! Getting nearly 200Mbit everywhere! Already backing up three computers. What other services should I add to the Synology?