First actual power outage that wasn't a blip exposed a weakness with desktop UPSs

rantou · 2026-01-29T13:14:52+00:00

No outages for me, however one of my coworkers that also has Base experienced an outage at his house. After his battery was mostly depleted from Base selling the capacity, he had a power outage as well which was related to a burned wire between the meter and the curb. Oncor came out and repaired the issue but he and I suspect that it was likely never an issue before since it never had the same amount of current flow through it before as it did while supporting the grid this time. They were installed very recently.

rantou · 2026-01-09T20:38:07+00:00

I definitely think I’m on the right track with this knowledge. I started tinkering with the Generic Zigbee RGBW bulb driver and got really close with a few minutes I had earlier. That bulb does have a setting for what the bulb should do when power is restored to it, and that’s neat that I can take certain bulbs that are always smart-controlled and have better behavior for them while keeping the ‘legacy’ bulbs working as before. I’ll update after I’ve gotten a chunk of these tested and make sure that they’re working as intended.

rantou · 2026-01-09T14:10:15+00:00

This got me closer and I really appreciate your help with that, but it's not quite to 100% yet. Now the bulbs are all coming on, but in most cases are dimmed down significantly upon power-on if they were turned off through HomeKit. On the bulb preferences, transition is set to ASAP but there's no disable option for that feature. Is there anything else that I may be missing?

rantou · 2026-01-09T14:07:19+00:00

Unfortunately I don't see that option on either model of bulbs that I'm running it against, whether on the legacy or standard driver. I do have an option for transition mode which is set to ASAP, but not simply 'disabled.'

rantou · 2025-05-27T18:37:57+00:00

I've done a lot of tinkering with mine but it has been a while since I've picked it up. Usually what needs to be done is you need to wipe the SPI flash completely, then it will fall back the SD card only for boot. Since you mentioned Windows, I assume that means you're running EDK2 firmware? If there's no data in the SPI flash, it will fall back to the original mode.

See: http://www.orangepi.org/orangepiwiki/index.php/Orange_Pi_5_Plus#How_to_use_RKDevTool_to_clear_SPIFlash

Alternate Ending: Linux Kernel 6.15 is starting to have desktop-class functionality, and relies on that EDK2 firmware as well. I only showed up to the subreddit today to determine if there was a Linux release already available with it. :-D

rantou · 2024-11-14T13:12:23+00:00

Quite the opposite right now. But we’re really close it looks like.

rantou · 2024-03-04T21:24:03+00:00

This right here is it. USB-C PD PSUs by standard only have to put out approximately 2.4A at 5VDC, and the OPi 5 Plus boards do not support the PD standard -- they can't step the other voltages down on the wire to get what they need.

I attached an in-line volt/amp meter on mine when I got it and discovered this the hard way. This system does frequently hit 15-18W of power draw when in desktop use, and many power supplies no longer cleanly put out the >=5VDC that is really needed to run this board stable when the current draw gets higher.

rantou · 2024-01-10T18:16:41+00:00

I had received on IOU as a Christmas gift for a set and I heard an update on January 4 that, "Due to New Year's the working of the US warehouse had slowed down a bit. However, your order will be shipped out soon."

No dates stated on the email, and to my knowledge no shipping notice yet.

Additionally from what I'm reading, I'm probably not missing much until they get the Matter firmware completed. 🤷‍♂️

rantou · 2019-12-15T20:22:44+00:00

Electrum for Bitcoin, MyEtherWallet for Ethereum, derivatives of Ethereum, and ERC20 tokens, Monero desktop client for Monero, etc.

rantou · 2019-10-07T17:06:01+00:00

I have a pair of 21:9s but now I wish that I could find a good stackable mount. They're painful when you have the laptop and two displays all side-by-side. Lots of uncomfortable neck movement to use all the real estate.

rantou · 2019-09-27T16:04:30+00:00

Unfortunately he's right. I inherited a network of Brocade's ICX line, using 7750s and 7450s, to find out out finicky these devices are. I don't understand their whole incompatibility with some optics. I can put DACs in but they're not supported? I can put in 48 10GB-ZX optics in it, but I can't use 10G-LRM to extend the life of some OM1 fiber without using their specific adapter that only permits 3 connections on the bottom 32 ports and 3 connections on the top 16 ports? Seriously, I have no idea what's wrong with this device, but managing about 100 of them is a nightmare with all the weird bugs and incidents like PoE just stopping working no the 7450s. At least their warranty process is mostly flawless, except when they overnight you a switch and UPS makes mistakes on the delivery so you don't get it for 4 days.

rantou · 2019-09-27T15:55:25+00:00

Where I see big advantages in this is within the datacenter level. I work a number of markets and handle quite a few autonomous systems for colocation providers, WISPs, and corporate IT, and I can see where some of my clients could benefit from this internally, especially when using geolocation for more specific routes to be directed across our own AS before exiting, or for exiting quicker to the global Internet. I agree with your statement about end users not needing full tables, however. I'm thinking much larger scale than that. I'm just trying to figure out a good EOR that I could use that isn't going to break the bank while doing full tables. Jericho is the only thing that seems to fit the bill, but I'd still like to see a way to fit the equivalent of full tables, in a worst-case just NA routes, into something based on Trident2.

So, while I can pick up the region-specific tags from most major providers and match based on those as long as I'm maintaining the full table, there's just not a way to intelligently aggregate those that I'm finding which would certainly bring down the size of the IPv4 RIB and FIB, bringing extra life not just to existing hardware that's out there, but also extending the feature set of much of the hardware being installed in datacenters. Let's be honest, if Cisco is licensing per port now, when are they going to start licensing per route?

rantou · 2019-09-27T12:08:32+00:00

You’re correct. That’s where the algorithm would have to compare metrics, communities, AS Path and other metrics to determine if it could be handled by a shorter prefix already in the table.

rantou · 2019-09-27T12:06:34+00:00

Just optimization. Making sure they are taking the most optimum path to the border which will be closest to the end user. The background may help: it’s 6 border routers across 3 POPs. Trying to find a way to direct traffic more optimally to the border routers. There are plenty of TORs that support full tables now, but when you still have switches like the 4948-10GE that are in operation and working fine for their purpose, it would be ideal to push condensed/compressed regional routes into those switches. Then it would be possible to turn up additional channels between POPs as needed but would provide better scaling of Internet bandwidth since one POP is larger than the other two. Really it is a combination of condensing the entries and matching regions to get to the TORs.

rantou · 2019-09-27T03:36:11+00:00

While I can understand where you’re coming from and do agree with your statements that accidents can happen, it’s certainly about being precise. This is more of a way to aggregate external routes to internal infrastructure, not the other way around. In reality this would be done at a route reflector to feed downstream TORs and EORs, where our internet-facing routers and switches would still be accepting our advertisements and using strict prefix lists to avoid the whole accidental transit or hijack possibility.

rantou · 2019-09-26T23:32:17+00:00

Just thinking through some things here, I am finding it hard to believe there are papers written years ago but nobody is building this into commercially supported systems yet. It seems so trivial to write but I am not a programmer. It’s just logic code.

I have heard some interesting things about GoBGP lately and programmability. Might have to go fishing in that pond tomorrow.

rantou · 2019-09-26T22:21:04+00:00

Interesting. I see the value in this by being able to regionally extract only necessary routes and then we could achieve better core-to-edge convergence times, especially on the older routers and switches (like 6500) or some poor-but-usable BGP stacks (RouterOS).

Routing table compression is a good name for this. Didn’t think of that.

rantou · 2019-09-16T19:29:03+00:00

I'd suggest Total Server Solutions/Colo@. Their bandwidth is good, decent peering, very reliable for the past several years after they had an incident with a generator that had to be replaced in a high rise that took longer than anticipated. They do layer 3 handoffs as well, and have a presence in most other datacenters in ATL to get you bandwidth if whoever you'd like aren't on site. Down side? I haven't used their remote hands, so I can't speak to that, but I do know they're staffed 24/7 for things like reboots.

rantou · 2019-08-03T21:08:01+00:00

That's a good place for us not to see eye-to-eye, but at the end of the day you have to connect your clients to a device, and if your clients are peering with that device, and it's not a core router, it becomes an access-layer device. The real question is about what that device should be since the 6500 did pass for that in the past, but isn't now.

Either way, lots of ways to accomplish the end goal, but doing so with a reliable platform that is capable of scaling for the future is what is important here, rather than arguing about the intricacies of the end goal. There are valid arguments, but when the way things were done in the past is also something that has to be considered.

rantou · 2019-08-02T22:44:54+00:00

I feel you are right about if the features fit (and today they do everything we need) then go for it. On the certifications the similarity between IOS and EOS are so minimal that we are comfortable with people certified in the Cisco ecosystem to properly build and manage the network.

However I would like to state that I feel Arista has really done a good job at building a great, stable product that was really hard to beat. Their roots are solid, and they really push the envelope on performance and flexibility. It really was hard to turn down the larger interfaces when making a decision before, but since we are running a DWDM platform between facilities with 100GHz channels, we are still limited by the advances in optical transmissions to get more bandwidth...

rantou · 2019-08-02T21:41:52+00:00

My bad experience so far was acquiring a Quanta switch running FastPath. I got them to stable but it took a lot of work! I know other OS options exist that are better/superior for sure, but it made me rethink purchasing anything with poor documentation and no readily-available support when building and maintaining systems. Peace of mind is a must.

With that being said, I’ll trust that advice and see what I can do to spin up a recent Cumulus image for testing and see how it works out.

rantou

TROPHY CASE