This guy has a pretty decent solution that seems pretty cheap. Constant power to a smaller board that essentially acts as a timed relay and triggers a shutdown command on the pi. I haven't managed to find his code on github yet though
https://projects-raspberry.com/m3-pi-raspberry-pi-obd-ii-touchscreen-car-computer/
So the logs from "weatherstation" (the name of the pi) show that the fan is doing some rapid cycles - it'll shut down, then fire back up a minute later before eventually shutting down for an extended period. I think this is due to the sensor placement, it's right near the AC unit where fresh air is being pulled in. The fresh air is cool and dry, but as soon as the fan turns off the sensor sees a more average humidity reading. I can compensate for this somewhat by increasing the hysteresis setting (the difference between "turn on" and "turn off", probably me using the term incorrectly) or relocating the sensor. The parts arrived today to make my final version of the unit so I'll look at relocating the sensor as part of that build. But overall it is working well now, with the fan staying off until the heat kicks on and jacks up the humidity. Win!
Parts also arrived for my first commission - a combo Pi-hole and Plex media server with attached storage for a coworker. Shouldn't take long to put together.
Also arrived yesterday - a new 1 GB Pi 4. The GE radio was built with a Pi Zero W because it's just so small and soooo cuuuute. But it had trouble streaming for some reason - it would saturate the WiFi channel so that nothing could get through, and the radio would more or less lock up. Took me a while to find it, I spotted it on a network traffic monitor. I had a bit of trouble with the big Majestic as well, but switching it over to the 5 GHz network solved the problem. The Zero can only do 2.4 GHz.
So I pulled out the $10 Zero and replaced it with a $35 Pi 4. All I did was transfer the Micro SD card over and plug the amp in. Problem solved. I don't know why there was that occasional high traffic and I'll keep looking at it, but the difference in horsepower between the Zero and the 4 is very apparent. Boot-up time on a 4 with a stripped down OS is pretty darn quick.
So now I have a spare Zero. Hmm.
Any tips on setting up the pi hole?
shagles said:Any tips on setting up the pi hole?
Lots of info here:
https://docs.pi-hole.net/
and here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole
Even better is that cookbook I posted earlier: https://learn.adafruit.com/pi-hole-ad-blocker-with-pi-zero-w/overview-adafruit2. Instead of all the info, it has a nice step-by-step.
It's pretty straightforward. Depending on your router, you may be able to tell it to use your Pi as the DNS for the whole network (which means the ad disappearing happens magically) or you may have to tell each device to use it.
Wait wait wait, you can use a Pi as a Plex server now?
I used a Pi Hole for a while but found the blocking to be too strict. It broke a lot of regular websites. Maybe I should dust it off and spend some time fine tuning it.
In reply to Stefan :
In reply to Keith Tanner:
Thanks guys. I completely missed that cookbook Keith
dculberson said:I used a Pi Hole for a while but found the blocking to be too strict. It broke a lot of regular websites. Maybe I should dust it off and spend some time fine tuning it.
The only thing I've seen that's broken is the google ads that are at the top of search results - basically, the "shopping" links. That has not badly affected life yet :) Neither I nor Janel have found any sites that have stopped working, although I'm sure there might be some. It's pretty easy to fine-tune, though. Now I find it annoying when I visit some sites at work because it's REALLY obvious how much advertising there is.
Put this together for a coworker. It's a Plex server with a 2TB drive attached. It can act as an Apple file server so he can easily load new movies on, and it's also a Pi-hole for his network. I added a button so he can gracefully shut down the box if he needs to move it for something. Not exactly "embedded", but he's pretty happy.
I've got one of the e-ink displays hooked up to another box and I'm trying to make it work. I'm having trouble installing the drivers. Not sure what I'll do with it, but something will come up. The little screen on the shop HVAC controller is also blanking out after a while, but the box is continuing to do the work and the shop is both warm and dry.
The big Majestic radio got a lot of use while my Mom was visiting. We just had it playing music all the time because it was so easy. We also streamed some video. I'm really happy with it.
The GE streamlined radio has been tweaked - I changed the lights so they only come on when it's playing music and plugged an iPhone charging cable into it. Now it can work as an alarm clock :)
In reply to Keith Tanner :
That setup for your coworker looks like something i could get some serious use out of. Time to go down a google spiral to make one myself.
To make life easier! I started with a Pi4 with 2GB. The 4 has faster USB and 5GHz WiFi.
Plex: https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-plex-media-server-on-raspberry-pi/
AFP (pick and choose from here): https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-afp/
Pi hole: https://learn.adafruit.com/pi-hole-ad-blocker-with-pi-zero-w
Power button: https://howchoo.com/g/mwnlytk3zmm/how-to-add-a-power-button-to-your-raspberry-pi
The ugliest bit is getting the disk formatted to a Linux friendly EXF4 format and mounted. You can extract what you need from here. https://www.ricmedia.com/build-raspberry-pi3-raid-nas-server/
In the case of this unit, Travis gave me the drive in Mac HFS+ format. I copied the contents over to another drive, reformatted his as EXF4 and copied the files back.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Oh thank you so much. You just saved me hours since i tend to over research everything
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