Fixing Your Own Appliances

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I am a HUGE advocate for buying appliances that are easy to maintain, without computer chips and boards, and that have an abundance of readily available spare parts.

I have a washer dryer combo I purchased in 2003 which is still going strong.  In 16 years I have only changed the pump on the washer (about $20) and replaced the belt on the dryer as far as general wear and tear goes.   When I moved back from Japan the movers crushed the top of the washer and dryer and broke the timer switch on the washer and some plastic brackets.  I negotiated a settlement and fixed all that stuff up like new as well.

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Good Swiss Army Knife Find

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I have a thing for Swiss Army knives and I’m a somewhat sporadic collector and sometimes modifier of them, and by that I mean changing the appearance of the scales.

The Swiss Army Knife has been around for quite some time and when a company has been making a product with robust sales for over 100 years you have to figure they are doing something right.   Over all those years there are some knives that are a bit more collectible than others.

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Making Your Refrigerator SMART

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I have an old refrigerator in my garage which I suspected was a power hog.  I bought a Sonoff S31 Power Monitoring outlet and flashed it with custom firmware (Tasmota) and blogged about that here.

I’ve since figured out you can do a WHOLE LOT MORE with a Tasmota flashed Sonoff S31. I figure there are two important things you’d want to know about an old refrigerator.

  1. Is it running?
  2. Has the door been left open?

Both answers can be tackled with home automation.  I use the EXCELLENT program HomeAssistant.  So let’s get to it, shall we?

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Using A Laptop As A TV – Old School Stuff

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So sometimes a really good technology just never really takes off.  A USB TV Tuner is just one such technology.

It should have taken off.  Just about everyone who has a laptop should have one of these.  I have three.

So what would you use it for?  In my case I live in a Hurricane zone and in fact got blasted by Hurricane Florence last year and had no power for several days.  (Actually I had power because I have a full house generator). Anyway, due to a concern for the amount of fuel I had on hand I shut down at times and THIS is how I got my news during those times.

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AirSpyHF+ Spyserver on Raspberry Pi

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AirSpyHF+ on Spyserver on Raspberry Pi

What is a Spyserver and why do you NEED one?  A spyserver takes an RTL-SDR software radio and allows it to be used over the network or controlled from the internet if you allow.

 

For this project I’m using the AirSpyHF+ ($199 USD).  The AirSpyHF+ is probably the BEST HF SDR radio you can get.  This project will let us operate from about 9kHz to about 31 MHz where AM radio, and Short Wave Radio reside.

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Reading Other People’s Pager Traffic And Shit

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Did you know a lot of people still used pagers? I had no clue. Did you know that all that pager traffic and all those messages are sent unencrypted and can be easily decoded? All you need for hardware is a $10 USB SDR radio stick with a cheap indoor whip antenna.

NOTE: Reading pager traffic is NOT against the law, however retransmitting it or acting on any information you learn from it is. Decode for good. Not evil.

And much like any other Linux techie project I’ve ever done following the directions somewhere else DIDN’T WORK. Oh, it mostly worked but something is always missing. This page is for the first timer trying to figure this out. And for me to recreate this once I screw it up or my computer dies.

Doing this on Windows is easiest and the directions I found here DID WORK. This will be a tutorial on Ubuntu (Or LinuxMint) Again most everything worked but the actual decoding process didn’t until I changed a thing or two. Also one major step was left out that almost caused this to epic fail for me. YMMV. Depends on the Decoder your system is using.

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How To Keep RTL_433 Alive For Your Home Automation Using Supervisor

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I run RTL_433 to push data from several sensors and a motion detector to an MQTT server for home automation.  For some reason as of late it is just not that stable. Could even be a hardware failure with the dongle….I dunno.  I generally just run the program command inside a terminal on the raspberry pi it is installed on and just walk away.  When it crashes I have to log back in the Pi and re-run the command.   Un-cool.

The command I use specifically is this:

rtl_433 -F json -M utc | mosquitto_pub -t home/rtl_433 -l

Again, that pushes data found on 433.920 MHz devices to publish a topic on my MQTT server called “home/rtl_433”.

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Flash Outlets with LED Ring With Tasmota

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Found these cool little outlets on Amazon and verified they can be flashed with Tasmota Over The Air (OTA).  They are technically called “Home Awesome Breathing Light Smart Light.

They are also sold under the name TMRLife Plug

They are another made in China device that is controlled via phone app and I generally don’t trust such things.  Flashing the device with Open Source firmware is MUCH better for securities sake.

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How To Fix Your Refrigerator or Freezer Quickly and Cheaply

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So you bought a cheap fridge or freezer at WalMart, did ya?  Or maybe your old fridge or freezer  conked out.  The first thing that comes to mind is “THE COMPRESSOR IS OUT”!  A scary thought indeed.  And you think that because you don’t hear the compressor noise and nothing is cooling anymore.

Compressors are pretty robust devices.  They do fail, they sure do, but many times one of the components that connect to the compressor fail causing the compressor not to start.   There are three components hooked up to a common refrigerator or freezer compressor.

  • Motor Starting Relay
  • Starting Capacitor (and possibly a run capacitor)
  • Overload Protector

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Power Monitoring To Find What’s Costing You Money!

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In the interest of being good stewards of the planet AND saving money it’s a good idea to keep an eye on energy consumption.  But how?  You’ve probably seen commercials for Sense Energy Monitors but that seems kind of extreme to me. Also it has a learning algorithm that takes MONTHS to work and some items never get properly identified.

I’m taking the ONE AT A TIME approach by using simple outlets that can be used for single applications.   Introducing the Sonoff S31

Very cool and also reasonably inexpensive. These work right out of the box and link to an app called EWELink.

Just for the record I think EWELink is CRAP.

Also this is Cloud based and the Cloud lands in China somewhere which really doesn’t appeal to me at all.  So we’re going to flash this device with Tasmota firmware and no more talky talky to China.

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