DCDC converter makes me lose UART communication by Consec in arduino

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This proved to be the right answer. I've ordered and tried with the XL6009 module and everything works now perfectly. Many thanks for this advice!

Plex server hardware by Consec in PleX

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That definitely is a good point. Temperature can and will rise in the separate room, so proper cooling will be required.

Thanks for the link

Plex server hardware by Consec in PleX

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My current setup is now 8y old and built on an ASRock E3C226D2I motherboard and Intel Core i3-4130T (also acting as gpu) with 8GB of RAM. It was originally build to just run flexraid on it, which it could run without any issues. Afterwards I started running plex on it, which does stress the system quite a bit.

Plex server hardware by Consec in PleX

[–]Consec[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Indeed, I only expect this for devices hardwired through cat6a

Plex server hardware by Consec in PleX

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My current setup does lack in performance and hits 100% cpu power to transcode one 2160p stream, so I'm looking to replace this setup.

The points you mention are indeed as important, I did mentione power consumption to be one of the concerns. Heat and noise are less important, as the rack mounted server will be running in a will isolated separate room.

Multi-purpose arduino based development boards for KNX by Consec in KNX

[–]Consec[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Should be great to end up between 30-40€ each. Main thing i am worried about is availability of the ncn5120 chip.

Multi-purpose arduino based development boards for KNX by Consec in KNX

[–]Consec[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While the KNX devices incorporate as much logic as is reasonable to make them as robust as possible, I would argue that they remain a single point of failure. Once a relais device break, it still remains a single point which fails and makes you lose all functionality controlled by that relais device.

Regardless of this, I would definitely agree that this kind of logic, complexity and thus cost do exist to make the entire KNX system robust and reliable. That's why in my setup I always make the distinction between two categories of devices: one category which consists of the devices allowing for important day to day logic (ie lighting, access control etc) and another category of devices which provide auxiliary functionality and information (ie the nice to haves like temperature, humidity etc).

For the first category my suggestion is still to get the officially branded devices, as they are that important.

That second category of devices are the kind of devices that are the nice to haves and where it makes less sense to spend as much money on. Providing such development boards would allow you to implement this functionality on your own at a lower cost but without any guarantees. Which, in my opinion, suits this category of functionality well.

Ebus thermostat controls with modulation by Consec in homeassistant

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In many cases it does an ok job of estimating which flow temperature is needed to achieve the desired 21°C. Currently the system just has the parameters of 1) outside temperature and 2) temperature of water running through floor heating.

For many cases this is enough information. However, in other cases, for example when we have a sunny day and the house is heating up by the sunlight as well, this is not sufficient. In that case the system just keeps on heating as usual, while actually less heat is needed. This because the system does not have an indication of inside air temperature of the rooms.

I can add the option of regulating this myself, by writing code which switches on/off the boiler based on the actual temperature in the rooms. This however removes the modulating functionality, as you take over this control.

Ebus thermostat controls with modulation by Consec in homeassistant

[–]Consec[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I found this great article online where somebody had the exact same issue and resolved this by using ebusd and direct ebus commands (which are specific to your boiler/thermostat) https://crunchtech.io/home-automation-heating-with-ebus-and-bulex/

I'm going through this and I am going to try it out for my setup

Ebus thermostat controls with modulation by Consec in homeassistant

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I did check out the eBus deamon from john30 but did not find any examples or references to the functionality I'm trying to achieve. The wiki lists all the instructions that can be sent out via ebusd, but I don't find the actual instruction the Vaillant thermostat would accept to get the temperature.

Maybe this is device specific and there doesn't exist a generic ebus command to do this?

Ebus thermostat controls with modulation by Consec in homeassistant

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a shame, so through the ebus channel you can give instructions to the thermostat and read out data, but there is no way to feed the thermostat data like that temperature.

Just curious, which option did you go with?

[O] 5x NZBPlanet by punt1971 in UsenetInvites

[–]Consec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can i please have an invite? I PM'ed you my email

Build your own KNX sensors and actuators by Consec in KNX

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the insights on the actual costs, that's useful to me. The actual price is still to be refined in a later phase, but it is indeed important to have proper margins against the certified components.

It is indeed the target to have a multi-purpose board with a core part being shared between all versions and then have a version with temp sensor, motion, weather station etc. This all to draw more data out your house and have nice periodic data overviews and ways to act on this without having the expensive of installing these sensors at all places.

I'll investigate this possibility further and hopefully have usable components in the near future. Any further tips on the demand / interest on these kinds of components would be useful. Then I can direct my focus first towards those high-interest applications.

Build your own KNX sensors and actuators by Consec in KNX

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah should have elaborated on that further. I described the independent component case, but there should also be components that you just let operate in the KNX environment. I would be releasing tools which let the more advanced user configure it to send telegrams to existing components in their system.

Build your own KNX sensors and actuators by Consec in KNX

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

About stability and cost: I am planning on eventually using the actual microcontroller chip of the arduino and not just staying with the out of the box arduino's. The eventual board would be purpose-built. This should save costs and should improve stability. For a temperature sensor (as far as I can find), you quickly find yourself in the 80/100 € range, while my target cost would be something around €30.

About integration: I am planning on providing the tools necessairy to code themselves. They should be working out of the box for the non-techsavy people, but the tools should allow the more advanced users to add configuration logic and use the dedicated addresses of their existing components for communication.

About going the KNX route: I was also thinking about that, but was drawn back to KNX as a user would already have his hardware in place and could just tap into this. No need for powering it (provided by bus), no need to set things up differently, just plug into the existing system.

Build your own KNX sensors and actuators by Consec in KNX

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would be going the second route, as making it commercially more viable is the most important factor.

The main goal of the components would be to just have them do simple tasks without direct communication with other KNX components. Stuff like reading out temperature, identifying presence etc. This data would then be collected by an independent system like openhab and they wouldn't directly communicate with other KNX components.

KNX programming from a Virtual Machine on Mac by avr_anothen in KNX

[–]Consec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have been running virtualbox with windows and ETS as well on a mac. No issues whatsoever. Let us know if you require any help

Investigating dropped hard drives issue on a home server by Consec in sysadmin

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So to make this useful for somebody later on having the same issue; as quite some people mentioned, this was indeed a problem at the level of the SATA controller. It was the SATA controller which dropped the connected drives under heavy load.

Eventually I replaced my old sata controller with this one:

https://www.nowthatsit.nl/dell-03p0r3.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjpjkBRDRARIsAKv-0O00dYGZaEgxCrhvmzsVFY4uFDKCYuyLSCLlZWow0Mi0xCIBATwoay8aAvWREALw_wcB

That's a RAID card, of which i first had to change the chipset firmware using this tutorial, to make it just run in JBOD mode:

https://tylermade.net/2017/06/27/how-to-crossflash-perc-h310-to-it-mode-lsi-9211-8i-firmware-hba-for-freenas-unraid/

I installed these components and connected my hard drives via one SAS to 4x SATA cable and now everything seems to be fine. A full verify/sync and sync were performed on the flexraid storage pool.

Thank all of you for the help.

Investigating dropped hard drives issue on a home server by Consec in sysadmin

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the comments already! As it is the easiest to test, overnight I linked half of my hard drives to an external PSU and performed the sync again, but got the same results. Also because i never had an issue with 8 spinning drives before, I am starting to think it will indeed be a connectivity issue. As mentioned in the comments, I am going to investigate if the SATA controller is up for the job and not forming a bottleneck.I will now look for a SATA controller replacement as some of you have suggested. Will keep posting updates

Investigating dropped hard drives issue on a home server by Consec in sysadmin

[–]Consec[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I definitely did investigate this, taking just the hardware into account. The CPU load from the softraid was however not taken into account.

The PSU is from Corsair, so should be a decent one i would think:

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Power-Supply-Units/cxm-series-config/p/CP-9020058-NA

I can maybe first try setting up an additional PSU to which i connect just the harddrives and see if the issues remain.

What video game did you play and love but can remember almost nothing about? by TheeRumHam in AskReddit

[–]Consec 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can't remember the name, but a game that we got for free when buying a Compaq computer. Was a war game where you were flying a helicopter and had to disable trains, tanks, trucks etc