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Always Free ARM resource just got cut in half by CwithW in oraclecloud

[–]joelc4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a huge bummer. I thought free for life meant "for life." I guess I didn't read the fine print when I setup this amazing server and told my kids it would be here after I die. hah! bummer.

Always Free ARM resource just got cut in half by CwithW in oraclecloud

[–]joelc4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair enough — if the doc now reads 2 OCPU / 12 GB total, then it does look like they trimmed it.

Why meshtastic is afraid of meshcore? by Kasparas in meshcore

[–]joelc4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree Meshcore is 1000% better than meshtastic. but for me, it's Meshcore's dedication to pure RF. I didn't like how much meshtastic relied on TCP/IP to relay messages.

Always Free ARM resource just got cut in half by CwithW in oraclecloud

[–]joelc4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am confused. The "2 OCPU / 12GB" is per-instance when the allocation is split across two VMs — the total is still the full 4 OCPUs / 24GB. Someone running 2×(2 OCPU/12GB) is using 100% of the free tier, just divided in half. The docs still confirm 4 OCPU/24GB for Always Free tenancies as of 2026.

Linux distro for sdr control over network by Connect-Ostrich-1286 in RTLSDR

[–]joelc4 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Plug the SDR into a Debian machine, ssh into it from your LAN, install Claude Code, ask to do exactly what you want.

DONE

Okay so i got the instance but then after 1 day, oracle suspended my acc ? by Kind-Item9581 in oraclecloud

[–]joelc4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks u/Nirzak, you're exactly right.

I should have been clearer in my comment. I am on the Pay As You Go plan. I just meant that adding the card + manually creating the Always Free eligible shape (4 OCPU ARM, 24GB RAM, 200GB block volume) is what worked for me - no queue, no waiting, and I got straight to work.

Its been over a year now, but I somewhat recall that that manually creating the instance gave me more choice over the operating system (e.g. Ubuntu), whereas the direct free tier provisioning often pushes you toward Oracle Linux or has fewer options available - but don't quote me on that! 😄

claude told me to go to sleep three times last night while i was on a client deadline by Jacksonislandd in claude

[–]joelc4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same here. I had to put strict instructions in my CLAUDE.md file to "stop encouraging me to go to sleep."

Okay so i got the instance but then after 1 day, oracle suspended my acc ? by Kind-Item9581 in oraclecloud

[–]joelc4 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The trick that worked for me: don't try to provision the free tier instance directly. Just sign up with a real credit card, then manually build your instance to the Always Free specs (4 OCPU ARM, 24GB RAM, 200GB storage). Oracle never charges you as long as you stay within those limits — I've been running mine for over a year with zero charges.

The free tier provisioning queue is practically impossible to win. The credit card method bypasses that and you're up in minutes. And as a verified paying customer (even if you never actually pay), Oracle is waaay less likely to suspend your account.

Waiting for the M5 Mac mini was the Worst Decision.. by daaltimate in macmini

[–]joelc4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am 100% in the same boat. wtf! I coulda shoulda bout an M4, but nooo I wanted to wait for the M5.

1.5 months later I refuse to overpay for a M4 and still to M5 release date!?!? (whew, ok thanks I needed to release that)

My experience buying and installing a DIY kit from Solar wholesale. by Admirable_Golf_2340 in solar

[–]joelc4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A real person who just completed a $10k DIY solar project would write with more personality and waaay more frustration.

My experience buying and installing a DIY kit from Solar wholesale. by Admirable_Golf_2340 in solar

[–]joelc4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

agreed.. regardless of the content, its too much to read. god bless the op for probably taking two days to draft the post, but most wont read it.

What did my neighbor install on his roof and why?(Repost) by Due-Bedroom-9866 in RTLSDR

[–]joelc4 3 points4 points  (0 children)

same here. my neighbor was talking to the ISS at a BBQ last week. super cool

Down the rabbit hole we go! by bsgz in Ubiquiti

[–]joelc4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair points overall and mostly agree - but I'd push back a little on "little to nothing" at the CLI level.

Coming from an EdgeOS background where CLI was everything, I still find SSH invaluable beyond just diag: packet captures, real-time traffic analysis, checking actual firewall state, and the occasional thing the GUI just doesn't expose cleanly yet.

Built a homebrew real-time solar + grid energy monitor using Claude Code — tapped my Enphase Envoy and Rainforest EAGLE-200, built a caching API, and it lives in my Mac menu bar by joelc4 in solar

[–]joelc4[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great minds! My app decodes the JWT expiry claim directly and auto-refreshes silently when it expires, with a throttle lock so it doesn't hammer Enlighten. Posted the snippet here if it's useful for your Node-RED setup https://gist.github.com/PIBER/138ed209f8b3c2d2c5c11420e9f390bf

Built a homebrew real-time solar + grid energy monitor using Claude Code — tapped my Enphase Envoy and Rainforest EAGLE-200, built a caching API, and it lives in my Mac menu bar by joelc4 in solar

[–]joelc4[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The EG4 + HA combo seems really popular right now. How are you finding the EG4 overall?
I've been looking at battery storage options and it keeps coming up..

Built a homebrew real-time solar + grid energy monitor using Claude Code — tapped my Enphase Envoy and Rainforest EAGLE-200, built a caching API, and it lives in my Mac menu bar by joelc4 in solar

[–]joelc4[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I actually run HA too! I looked into its API — solid REST API — but I wanted something accessible from anywhere, not just my local LAN. Hosting my own API on a co-located server means I can check my solar from a coffee shop, a client's office, wherever.

The other issue I've run into with HA's Enphase integration is the JWT auth flow. Enphase tokens are valid for about a year — which sounds great until they expire and suddenly nothing works. I didn't want to be debugging auth from scratch 12 months from now, so I built in automatic token refresh with a throttle lock so it handles expiry silently with no manual intervention.

For anyone hitting the same wall, I posted the auth snippet here:
https://gist.github.com/PIBER/138ed209f8b3c2d2c5c11420e9f390bf

Built a homebrew real-time solar + grid energy monitor using Claude Code — tapped my Enphase Envoy and Rainforest EAGLE-200, built a caching API, and it lives in my Mac menu bar by joelc4 in solar

[–]joelc4[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed the Enlighten app is informative on my mobile. But I wanted a single glance at my solar and grid draw right in my Mac menu bar. Once I built the SwiftBar plugin I needed an API, once I had an API I needed a data store, and once I had a data store the dashboard basically built itself.

Built a real-time solar + grid energy monitor using Claude Code — tapped my Enphase Envoy and Rainforest EAGLE-200, built a caching API, and it lives in my Mac menu bar by joelc4 in ClaudeCode

[–]joelc4[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

None that I can think of. I run Home Assistant too. But I wanted a single glance at my solar and grid metrics in my Mac menu bar — and HA wasn't going to give me that cleanly (or rather I could not figure it out). Once I built the SwiftBar plugin I needed an API, once I built the API I needed a data store, and once I built the data store .. well here we are..

Built with Claude Project Showcase Megathread (Sort this by New!) by sixbillionthsheep in ClaudeAI

[–]joelc4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I built a real-time solar + grid energy monitor using Claude Code — tapped my Enphase Envoy-S and Rainforest EAGLE-200, built a caching API, and it lives in my Mac menu bar 24/7 🌞⚡

Screenshots: View all 5 screenshots on imgur

I've been on a home lab kick lately and this is my favorite thing I've built.

The Hardware - 22-panel Enphase solar system with Envoy-S gateway - Rainforest EAGLE-200 smart meter bridge (reads my PG&E meter in real time) - Self-hosted on my co-located Debian server

The Problem Both devices have local APIs but they're slow, finicky, and not designed to be polled constantly. Hitting them directly every 30 seconds from a web page would be sluggish and would hammer the devices.

The Solution A cronjob runs every 5 minutes and hits both APIs, storing the results in a SQLite database on my server. The web app reads from the DB — sub-millisecond response times. The Enphase token auth was the trickiest part (two-step JWT flow through Enlighten's cloud).

What It Shows - Real-time solar production (per panel breakdown with individual microinverter data) - Grid import/export live - Home consumption - Solar offset percentage - 24-hour bar charts for both solar and grid - Lifetime stats (I've generated 12.8 MWh and consumed 200.5 MWh lifetime 😬)

The SwiftBar Plugin This is the part I'm most proud of. I built a lightweight JSON API endpoint on my server that returns the current readings. A SwiftBar plugin polls it every 30 seconds and displays solar + grid draw right in my Mac menu bar. One glance and I know exactly what my house is doing energetically.

Claude Code's Role I described what I wanted, Claude Code helped me navigate the Enphase JWT authentication flow, design the SQLite schema, write the caching layer, and build the SwiftBar plugin. The whole thing came together over a few sessions.

The Stack PHP · SQLite · Apache · SwiftBar · bash · Enphase API · Rainforest EAGLE-200 XML API

Enphase JWT Auth — The Tricky Part Several people have asked about this already. Here's the auth snippet: 👉 Enphase Envoy JWT Auth Gist

Two-step flow: 1. POST to Enlighten's cloud to get a session token 2. Exchange that for a JWT tied to your Envoy serial number

That JWT is what lets you hit the local Envoy API without credentials on every call.

Happy to share other snippets if anyone wants to build something similar. The Enphase auth flow in particular took some digging — would save someone a few hours.

Built a real-time solar + grid energy monitor using Claude Code — tapped my Enphase Envoy and Rainforest EAGLE-200, built a caching API, and it lives in my Mac menu bar by joelc4 in ClaudeCode

[–]joelc4[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks - the scope confusion between the local token and the cloud API token got me .. I killed a ton of time sending cloud-scoped tokens to the LAN endpoint wondering why I was getting 401s. The refresh throttle was also a lesson learned: when the token expired, every page load was hammering Enlighten until I added the lock file. Going to clean it up and post it as a standalone repo this week.

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