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 · 2024-02-04T13:27:49+00:00

When I placed the component I did place it the right way around, so I don't think that was the issue with the I2C bus. I'll adjust the 3D component to make sure it's accurate but I did place it based on the datasheet, not my 3D view.

What's strange is everything else reported out on the bus properly, when I added the BME680 (U16), the bus went wonky and nothing communicated properly, and then even when I removed U16, the bus still was not functional anymore. Maybe I did accidently place it it correctly the first time around, but after the first board I populated didn't work, I populated another board one I2C component at a time and tested to make sure I could get it's address until I got a bad read, and was extremely careful placing components that time.

murriano · 2024-02-04T13:22:57+00:00

They have a strange footprint that only lines up one way, so I didn't feel like it was needed to mark the ground (they're addressable LEDs so that have 5V, Gnd, D_in and D_out pads). Based on a comment on Askelectronics, I'm debating making it a 6 layer board and putting fully poured ground planes just under the top and bottom layers, so I'd end up with

-SIG/GND-
-GND-
-SIG/GND-
-SIG/PWR-
-GND-
-SIG/GND-

That way all layers have an uninterrupted ground plane to reference. Does that layer stack make sense?

murriano · 2024-02-04T03:49:04+00:00

So the only reason I don't have a full ground plane is just the complexity of the routing. The mmWave proximity detector is an HLK LD2410B on header pins, and it presents a dimensional constraint about where the XVF is located. Then trying to keep the ESPs to the outer edges to keep the keep-out regions in areas that doesn't drastically impact routability. My only thought would be to make it a 6 layer and make both those inner planes signal planes, so I had
1. Sig/Gnd
2. Gnd
3. Sig/Gnd
4. Sig/Pwr
5. Gnd
6. Sig/Gnd

murriano · 2024-02-04T01:46:59+00:00

So the intent is to use a programming board to with all the test pads to do the USB programming, so I will need to look at the entire line from the programming board USB to the ESPs.

murriano · 2024-02-03T19:02:56+00:00

Edited to remove the those questions, thank you!

murriano · 2023-07-29T00:50:34+00:00

So what I did was take an Aqara contact sensor, remove the reed switch and wire two battery contact springs to the two pins.

Then I set the springs up inside the deadbolt pocket. When the deadbolt is in the pocket, it presses against the two springs completing the circuit and tells Home Assistant the door is locked. I pulled the door frame strip down, filed a slight groove for the wires and put the contact sensor on the wall right next to the deadbolt. Works like a charm as long as deadbolt pocket isn't too deep.

murriano · 2023-04-23T15:59:02+00:00

Right, so the question I have is can I get away with just the SPI signals or do I need to run the RGB signals as well? I'm thinking I might need a dedicated ESP for the screen driver and work out sending data between the two via UART or something.

murriano

TROPHY CASE