nanode built!

One successful evening of soldering, and lo, I have a working nanode. Started off nice n basic with the resistors, but overall a pretty simple pcb to assemble:

Plugged it in, and lo, blinky LED. Have since flashed with the EtherShield Drivers and its happily getting an IP address. now for some pachube / twitter / other integration...

Orange VoIP woes

Our livebox2 repeatedly used to lose the VoIP service (somewhat annoying as we don't have a 'physical' pots line, just ADSL signal on the copper pair)

however there's now a subtle hint on the config pages NOT to change the DNS servers from the automatic setting (we used to use opendns for content filtering)

So, anyone know what hard-coded voodoo sagem/orange were up to?

Electronic components

Vigilant readers (ha, who am I kidding) will have noticed I've been starting on some ATmega hackery, but I'd like to prototype up without needing to but an arduino (clone) card for each one. So, off to the electronics equivalent Laminated Book Of Dreams (ie, farnell) to stock up on core components.

Discussions have come up with something like the following list, but what else should be added?

* LEDs - Was going to get both a selection single and a couple of RGB ones
* pile of resistors
* capacitors - elecrolytic and ceramic
* Diodes - signal. power, zener
* Voltage regulators
* 2n7000 mosfets
* generic transistors
* couple of atmega chips, crystals etc (core componets of arduinos)
* battery holders
* reset switches
* hookup wire
* breadboard (one decent and one small)

More specific bits I also want are
* rf12 boards
* opto isolator for telemetry input
* moar jeenodes :-)

EDF metering and 'Tele-Info'

Just discovered via some google-fu that we have a Sagem C1000 series meter in the house, which includes

* Interface de télé-information client permettant le raccordement à un système de gestion d'énergie

so, with a bit more googling I discovered that it's 1200 baud, 7 bits one stop. and lo - there's even an arduino shield already made for it!

--- update ---
Have discovered that there are many hacks around to parse this teleinfo - some of which need a licence fee (!!!) and do fancy things like export to bdpv.fr

Sample of the data stream is at http://www.planete-domotique.com/blog/2010/03/30/la-teleinformation-edf

Hardware Hackery

I've just purchased a nanode to be the main part of the energy monitoring in the new house. More details about it are at http://wiki.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/Project:Nanode - I plan to use the nanode as the head unit, perhaps with a somple lcd display, talking to slave nodes (jeenodes or emontx boards) which do the data logging.

more info and construction details when it arrives.

Nasa TV on PS3

Since there's no european satellite stream of Nasa TV it means you have to watch a streamed version over here.

Also I'd like to watch it *on the TV* when there's something interesting, rather than a PC. so, with a bit of hackery http://smudge.elwell.org.uk/nasa.html contains just the swf embed object (no extra junk) scaled to 720p size.

Opening the link in the PS3 web browser and clicking the 'fullscreen' bottom RH corner means you get a nice fullscreen flash stream on your TV :-)

share and enjoy.

email clients

Came across this posting recently. Oh that the following recommendations were actually implemented somewhere...

But let me suggest a few pop-up windows I would like to see
mail-programs implement whenever people send or reply to email
to the lists they want me to subscribe to:

 +------------------------------------------------------------+
 | Your email is about to be sent to several hundred thousand |
 | people, who will have to spend at least 10 seconds reading |
 | it before they can decide if it is interesting.  At least  |
 | two man-weeks will be spent reading your email.  Many of   |
 | the recipients will have to pay to download your email.    |
 |                                                            |
 | Are you absolutely sure that your email is of sufficient   |
 | importance to bother all these people ?                    |
 |                                                            |
 |                  [YES]  [REVISE]  [CANCEL]                 |
 +------------------------------------------------------------+

 +------------------------------------------------------------+
 | Warning:  You have not read all emails in this thread yet. |
 | Somebody else may already have said what you are about to  |
 | say in your reply.  Please read the entire thread before   |
 | replying to any email in it.                               |
 |                                                            |
 |                         [CANCEL]                           |
 +------------------------------------------------------------+

 +------------------------------------------------------------+
 | Warning:  Your mail program have not even shown you the    |
 | entire message yet.  Logically it follows that you cannot  |
 | possibly have read it all and understood it.               |
 |                                                            |
 | It is not polite to reply to an email until you have       |
 | read it all and thought about it.                          |
 |                                                            |
 | A cool off timer for this thread will prevent you from     |
 | replying to any email in this thread for the next one hour |
 |                                                            |
 |                         [Cancel]                           |
 +------------------------------------------------------------+

 +------------------------------------------------------------+
 | You composed this email at a rate of more than N.NN cps    |
 | It is generally not possible to think and type at a rate   |
 | faster than A.AA cps, and therefore you reply is likely to |
 | incoherent, badly thought out and/or emotional.            |
 |                                                            |
 | A cool off timer will prevent you from sending any email   |
 | for the next one hour.                                     |
 |                                                            |
 |                         [Cancel]                           |
 +------------------------------------------------------------+