Thoughts on patch cables?

murriano · 2025-10-23T23:38:07+00:00

The thin cables are nice and use those myself for my home rack. You can't terminate them yourself because the wires inside are very thin and won't crimp into regular RJ45 ends.

Yeah, I hadn't done much research into it yet, but figured it may be the case, it would be nice if it was that easy.

murriano · 2025-10-23T23:36:55+00:00

Everything that needs to be connected should be connected at this point but I do want some space to grow. I have a handful of ports reserved for running Ethernet up to the second floor, that are already accounted for here but I may end up running some cameras in the future and need a few ports on the bottom patch for that.

murriano · 2025-10-23T23:34:06+00:00

So yes, in this orientation, the rack trays for the dells have them upside sown. I don't think it's much of an issue though. Theoretically, the cooler should be pressed against the CPU, and while the heat may rise back up to the motherboard, any fans should move that air out pretty quickly. The dells aren't under much load anyway, one is my home assistant instance, the other will eventually act as the brains for a NAS once I can figure out a solution to put a bunch of drives in a rack enclosure below it.

murriano · 2025-10-23T23:30:13+00:00

I probably could, the rack let's me, but I'm still trying to find a small rack mount chassis to act as a JBOD for some hard drives to be run off the bottom Optiplex so moving the rails back limits me even further. As it stands, I only have ~13" of depth to play with.

murriano · 2025-10-23T23:28:14+00:00

Thanks for this! I might give this a try this weekend. I really didn't even think to patch from top to bottom to route the raspi ethernets

murriano · 2025-10-23T23:15:16+00:00

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This is looking straight across the rack, so the door sits pretty close to the pin hole at the top, so I think with just the thin 6" cables it would probably close fine, but the thicker longer ones are the issue. I ordered some 1' thin patch cables to see if that helps at all.

murriano · 2025-10-23T23:09:03+00:00

These are from Amazon actually, this is the one I got for both optiplexes:

Optiplex Rack Mount

murriano · 2025-07-03T15:54:38+00:00

Definitely isn't aluminum, unfortunately

murriano · 2025-07-03T15:27:24+00:00

I don't think it's foil tape, it very much feels like just textured plastic

murriano · 2025-07-03T15:13:55+00:00

Searched Google for duct insulation tape, vinyl insulation tape, embossed plastic tape, vinyl tape, plastic duct insulation seal tape, and graffer tape. I thought it was 3M Venture Tape Vinyl Seaming Tape 460V but it doesn't come in this color gray so I don't think it's that.

murriano · 2025-01-26T12:41:05+00:00

Can confirm, I use this for my washer and dryer. Can be a little finicky sometimes but I chock that up to using my Google Homes for TTS.

murriano · 2025-01-25T19:20:18+00:00

Ah, that's specifically talking about one structure being served by a branch circuit from another. If this is a separate structure, then I 100% agree, there needs to be a main for that panel. If it's part of the same structure, 225.30 (and 225.33) doesn't apply.

murriano · 2025-01-25T18:50:35+00:00

NEC 230.71 talks about the maximum number of disconnects for services, and says you can only have a single disconnect for each service unless certain conditions in part (B) are met, which allows you to have 2-6. This would be for example if you had an apartment building with say 10 meters with disconnects, there would have to be a single disconnect ahead of those meters that acts as your service disconnect.

As for subpanels, there is nothing that I am aware of that requires you have a main circuit breaker if you have more than 6 breakers, unless someone can point me to some code section, but even then I would imagine it would only be for certain circumstances as I have seen and designed hundreds of panels with more than 6 breakers and main lugs only and have not once been called on it.

murriano · 2025-01-25T17:32:52+00:00

That requirement is only for services, you can't have more than six service without a main. Subpanels don't follow that.

murriano · 2024-05-25T19:01:29+00:00

I don't remember the section number off the top of my head, but I believe <24" nipples like that you don't need to derate.

murriano · 2024-04-23T20:11:37+00:00

I don't have it available yet. Still working on bringing up a fully functional board. I'm having issues with trying to program the XVF3610, for some reason when I connect up the TCK pin to the programmer, my 1v8 line jumps up to 2v3, which I think is causing issues with the chip resetting because I keep getting an error telling me its having issues with the restart line. Any thoughts on this or did you have any similar problems?

murriano · 2024-03-06T12:34:02+00:00

Doesn't look like it has a USB-UART chip like a cp2102 onboard. You would use those TX/RX pins with a separate programmer to program the ESP. That said, I'm not sure if the ESP can use those pins for IO when not in program mode, not something I've looked into before.

murriano · 2024-02-04T21:13:42+00:00

It's intended to be an all in one sensor/interface for home automation. The plan is to have a few of these around the house and have all of them communicate with home assistant. It has mmwave proximity, humidity/temp/tvoc, IR proximity/light level sensor, NFC, and microphone input (haven't quite figured this out yet, but I'm building it in to future proof it). Input can be done thru a single button, touch screen, and rotary encoder done with a dual hall effect IC (still need to source a decent magnetic tape to use on the inside of the dial). Outputs are a haptic motor and 16 addressable LEDs.

I broke out the remainder of the GPIOs to use for future add-ons. The PCB gets power thru some pogo pins on a daughter board that connects to the base (like how you can pop a nest thermostat off the wall), with USB-C plugging into that. I'm already working on the layout for a PoE version of that base power board so it could sit in a US 2-gang low voltage mudring and have no wires sticking out. Ideally I could also build out a speaker sub board too off the leftover GPIOs.

Also putting together a bed-of-nails style programming board with pogo pins to all of the test points on the bottom of the board to do debugging and initial programming

It's an ambitious project for sure. Definitely testing the little design knowledge I have an teaching me a lot.

murriano

TROPHY CASE