Notes

RSS

Work-in-progress updates, quick findings, and photos. Things I’m actively building, breaking, or testing. For longer write-ups, see posts.

DIN rails have been moved to better accommodate the new setup. Previously, there was lots of space at the bottom for the battery, but it has now been moved into a dedicated cabinet. There are lots of terminal blocks at the top for incoming cables.

I made a simple DIN-mountable PCB holder out of a 3.2 mm sheet of polystyrene for the #Arduino and I/O boards. I’m reusing the old board for testing.

Permalink →

Out with the old, to make room for the new. The firmware for the #Arduino Mega has reached a point where it’s time to give it a try. The last piece was the ability to store user PIN and RFID tags.

The system is currently operational, but only with wireless sensors and no outputs. Time to wire up some outputs and do a proper test — and figure out an optimal placement for the new cabinet content.

Permalink →

OK, so my scope may have exploded a bit. I am now working on:

  • Zone/output types and attributes
  • Zone expander (RS485) support (Arduino Nano)
  • RS232 coms with power monitor (Arduino Nano)
  • Alarm types: fault, tamper, water, intruder, panic, fire (with escalation)
  • Ready LED with multiple flash patterns
  • Many other things…

Using 21% RAM and 6.2% flash on the Arduino Mega.

Source here: https://forge.cavelab.dev/diy-alarm/core

Permalink →

The notes implementation is now complete; it even has Mastodon-style media support. In addition, I’ve revamped the computers, projects, and tag term lists.

I’ve started tinkering with dedicated video pages to make it easier to share and embed videos both in notes and on Mastodon. Still a work in progress.

Permalink →

I am testing the alt support on note images — here are some birds eating.

Permalink →

For about 10 days, while I’ve been distracted by fun implementations on my website, this #Arduino Mega board has been running the new alarm code. Constantly communicating with the Python application that will run on the #RaspberryPi — receiving 16 #Zigbee zones and responding accordingly. Not a single communication or checksum error has been logged.

I’d say this is a pretty good start 😀 Time to start building some IO interface boards…

Permalink →

We rented a boom lift recently, to paint part of the house. I used the opportunity to mount an outdoor siren.

Now all I need is a control cable from the alarm cabinet to the attic, and I can get this thing wired up.

To prevent annoying the neighbours too much — this thing will only go off if there is a manually triggered panic alarm, or intrusion with more than one zone in alarm.

Permalink →

After some trial and error I’m ready to try out the notes section on my Hugo blog. I’ve been thinking about this for a while — and this time it might just work. More changes than anticipated were needed to allow for no title — lists, RSS, OG image…

I like how @kev@fosstodon.org is doing his notes, and my implementation is inspired by that.

My goal is to reduce friction when posting a project update, while still using my own website.

Permalink →