Dismal Wizard (DW) was having difficulty finding TV programs to watch although we had multiple program sources. DW decided to try Plex Media Service. Plex needed hardware support so he bought a ZimaBoard, a small X86-64 computer. DW had a go setting it up to run Plex. This post summarizes our experiences with ZimaBoard and and its CasaOS Docker working environment. There was a learning curve but nothing experimentation couldn’t conquer.
Why a view of the dog’s observation post (back porch)? On the railing columns are two battery powered video cameras whose batteries can no longer be charged. These cameras are to be replaced. But with what? What did the original cameras do? What should the new ones do? What should I purchase? Read on to learn what Dismal Wizard did.
I’ve been a user of APC small computer UPS products for 20+ years. It seems that whenever one is needed, the battery is flat. As yet another round of battery replacements started, I decided to switch to portable power station products for the UPS role in my home network. But which one?
With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and changed utility tariffs, it is attractive for Virginia home owners to install residential photovoltaic generation systems. Most owners are likely electing a roof lease scheme where the solar company owns, maintains, and operates the equipment paying the home owner for use of the roof, net metered power from Dominion, and a receives a piece of the action on the generation in excess of needs. Panel coverage varies from what is needed for local use to the whole roof of east-west roofs.
Solar generation peaks in mid-afternoon and starts to fall off rapidly in the late afternoon and supper hour. Dominion’s residential time of use tariff reflects this fact and the peak that results from migration from work to home. The time of day rate is high peak from 3 PM to 6 PM.
Over night, Dominion is running its most fuel-efficient paid-for units to meet base load demand. Rates are lowest from midnight to 5 AM. During the summer, a day rate is used between base rate and peak rate periods.
So, when should we set our thermostats back? Read on to learn what Dismal Manor does. Implementation is specific to the Ecobee 3 Lite and EcoBee 4 models. What we are talking about here applies to electric power used for heating and cooling.
For many years (2017 or so), Dismal Manor’s Roon Server has run in a virtual machine on a TrueNAS Mini or home-brew storage server. To do this Dave installed a BHYVE virtual machine, added a System76 POP_OS guest, and installed Roon IA64 Linux edition. It worked but TrueNAS had its own agenda. That got old so Dave opened his purse. Read on to learn about the Roon ROCK experience.
This post grows out of some remarks exchanged with a UK household. UK folk (like US folk) are notorious for overriding their home heating automatic controls, generally a waste of energy. In this post, we’ll examine the economics of Dominion’s Time of Use home electric tariff supplying energy for our dual fuel heat pump plus gas furnace home heating. This analysis will examine energy use of two strategies, burn natural gas myself or let Dominion Electric Power burn gas and deliver electricity.
Of necessity, this is a somewhat complex topic that is influenced by local climate, the local utility, and the scheming of the local legislature. In the US, a mix of Federal and State law govern electric power but building codes are local. Here in Virginia, our winter climate is similar to that in much of the UK (0C to 10C daily swing).
In this analysis we looked only at utility steam-electric power as the best home heating and cooling options for our region are electrically operated. Home photovoltaic power is becoming increasingly common in our region but its use for home heating and cooling would require high-end equipment with storage.
The Ubiquity UniFi Protect cameras went missing from Apple HomeKit Secure Video. Some updates and some reconfiguration were needed to revive them.
Just the usual DIY bit rot and acts of Apple. There is nothing hard here but it took some effort to gather together the needed instructions and to locate the Home Bridge reset procedure. To save others this leg work, I’ve gathered together the work flow and primary references.
In the spring of 2022, we discovered that the Nest Learning Thermostat was not operating the reversing valve. It had been fine in the fall. The Nest energizes the reversing valve to cool. Come May and time to cool it wasn’t. Oh, and the fall update stomped on the heat pump lockout setting. So the proprietor fired Nest and hired Ecobee.
Church uses a large number of Ecobee 3 Lite devices with extra area sensors and has found them to work well. So Dismal Dave bought one and installed it. It set up easily enough for heat pump operation with automatically configured staging and automatic heat pump lockout and easy configuration of the associated gas furnace. But we had some drama anyway.
QingPing Air Monitor Lite images courtesy of HomeKit Reviews.
The QingPing Air Monitor Lite has been here a couple of days. I had expected I would have a particulate problem. In reality, the house is sufficiently tight that it retains emissions from internal sources like breathing mammals and greyhound butts. What the trend curves are showing is that, with the house closed up, CO2 accumulates. Since Dismal Manor is small, this is detectable in the bedroom when all 3 of us are in the lounge. After the break, I review the findings and
Dismal Dave suffers from rhinitis, a general non-specific rhinitis brought on by particulates more so than a specific allergen. Cooking smoke, Diesel smoke, jet smoke, the Great Dismal Swamp Fire smoke, pollen, and other things make the sinuses angry. To get a better feeling for what it might be correlated with, I decided to add an air quality monitor to our Apple HomeKit rig.
The bits and pieces needed to make one are inexpensive and can be ordered as a kit with a PCB. A number of DIY websites describe air quality monitor projects. But if you want a case, and there is software to write, …
There are only a few HomeKit capable residential air quality monitor finished products with the QingPing Air Quality Lite being regarded the best value of the lot. Most of the products out there are portable monitors designed for work-place safety applications.
After the break, I’ll explain my initial motivation, selection criteria, intended application, and initial experience.
Dismal Manor Dispatches 
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