Extreme Pi Boot Optimization
Sunday, September 01, 2024 in Blog
Motivation A while ago, the SolarCamPi project, a off-grid solar-powered WiFi camera, was built. In this project, a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is being booted into Linux, a picture is taken, WiFi connectivity is established and the Pi is shut down again …
WiFi auth with OsmoHLR/SIM cards
Saturday, August 31, 2024 in Blog
Why? Wireless networks can authenticate clients using a surprising number of different mechanisms. The typically used and most well known is WPA(2)-PSK (also called -Personal), which is the “classic” mechanism with a known passphrase. …
Windows 11 tweaks & usability improvements
Tuesday, August 20, 2024 in Blog
Why? Sometimes using Windows is inevitable. Windows 11 has gotten pretty annoying with loads of weird default settings, ads, tracking and a general infantilization of users. This is my personal collection of registry tweaks, which I apply to fresh …
Using custom domains as a Fediverse redirect
Tuesday, May 28, 2024 in Blog
Why? Many people already use custom domains for their blog, e-mail, etc. As the format of e-mail and fediverse accounts is basically identical, it would be ideal to be able to find Fedi users via their “normal” username@domain.tld …
25GBit/s on macOS & iOS
Friday, May 17, 2024 in Blog
macOS speed test Your browser does not support the video tag. iOS speed test Your browser does not support the video tag. Background info Modern versions of macOS and iOS (starting with macOS Ventura/13) ship with NVIDIA/Mellanox ConnectX network …
Manage RDP certificates on Windows using SSH
Friday, December 15, 2023 in Blog
Windows can use normal TLS certificates to authenticate RDP sessions. This gets rid of the annoying RDP certificate warnings: Using real, signed certificates for RDP offers a way to enhance security (preventing man-in-the-middle attacks) and reduce …
Reviving a dead Gigabyte MJ11-EC1 mainboard
Thursday, November 16, 2023 in Blog
Used Gigabyte MJ11-EC1 mainboards are available for low prices on ebay and at other hardware vendors. After buying a couple of MJ11-EC1 boards for a homelab cluster project, I ended up with a dead board. The server would turn on, BMC was reachable …
Dead TROTEC PAC2000S air conditioner
Wednesday, August 24, 2022 in Blog
Safety note The A/C is being powered by a ST VIPER12A switch mode supply. This type of supply is not mains-isolated, so all voltages (even the low voltages) are referenced to mains voltage. Don’t work on this device while plugged in without …
PlutoSDR standalone ADS-B FR24 feeder
Wednesday, December 01, 2021 in Blog
PlutoSDR (or ADALM-PLUTO) is an inexpensive SDR (software-defined radio) platform by Analog Devices. It uses a Xilinx Zynq Z-7010 FPGA, which integrates an 32bit ARMv7 core together with the FPGA functionality. This 32bit ARMv7 CPU runs Linux and is …
Micro8088 build log
Thursday, October 29, 2020 in Blog
Overview This is a build log of an IBM XT-compatible system called “Micro 8088”, designed by Sergey Kiselev. micro8088 CPU card specifications: NEC V20 CPU (4.77 MHz, 7.16 MHz and 9.54 MHz CPU frequencies) Faraday FE2010A chipset 640 KiB …