As I mentioned in a previous post, I started using my Raspberry Pi as my “always on” home server. This allowed my to place my other devices into either standby mode or shut down, and power them on using the Pi only when needed. It just so happens that one of the devices was my Plex media server. As I already have an Antenna and a TV tuner (the HDHomeRun Extend), in addition to the “Plex Pass”, I wanted to use my Plex server to record Over The Air (OTA) TV shows, when I ran into the problem that my server was in standby most of the time and would miss its recording schedule.

There has been “mainstream news” recently about how Apple slows down phones using older batteries. I wondered how companies building electronics that have non-user-serviceable batteries should handle this, until I came over an example where a company is not only upfront about it, but integrate it into their marketing and business. The Tile is a small Bluetooth device that would attach to some valuable to make it easier to find if it gets lost.

IKEA floor lamps aren’t bad - as long as your house has sufficient outlets with properly wired and positioned wall switches. Mine doesn’t 😐 and, being a renter, I can’t simply rewire them, so I decided to try the Etekcity RF-controlled outlet kit. For less than CAD$ 60 you get five outlets, which can be turned on and off individually by the two included remotes. Not a bad deal, and sure an improvement from the odd switches (and the built-in ones on the lamps).

I don’t iron clothes. Heck, I don’t even own an iron - quickly folding clothes right when I remove them from the dryer works for most of them (and a steamer does the job when that fails). Problem: my current machine has a very low and short audio warning, so I often miss when it is done, ending up with wrinkled clothes. 😔 I thought it wouldn’t be too hard to build a device that detected when the machine stopped moving and alerted me in a more extravagant way.

Looking at the Raspberry Pi web site, you’d think that this small Linux-based computer is only useful for robotics and STEM activities for kids. And yet, for the past few months I’ve been using it as my home Linux server. I’ve been looking for a long time for a small “embedded” server I could use as a hub for my home appliances, and something that stays on so that I can “phone home” remotely.

The Criticality of Security One of the most discussed issues related to the Internet of Things (IoT) is security. From agriculture to hospitals, from residential smart homes to commercial smart buildings, and from power stations to traffic management systems, IoT systems and technologies will touch many parts of the world we live in. Security breaches in IoT systems could have catastrophic consequences. Bluetooth® mesh networking was designed with security as its number one priority and from the ground up.

Looking at the Raspberry Pi web site, you’d think that this small Linux-based computer is only useful for robotics and STEM activities for kids. And yet, for the past few months I’ve been using it as my home Linux server. I’ve been looking for a long time for a small “embedded” server I could use as a hub for my home appliances, and something that stays on so that I can “phone home” remotely.

A quick post to mention that this site should be available on IPv6. Its IP address is 2604:180::e8e3:93ef and it has an AAAA record for benad.me. My old Apple AirPort Extreme can only use Tunnel IPv6 mode with PPPoE, but still the following curl command worked: curl -s6 "https://benad.me/" --verbose > /dev/null. You can also enter https://[2604:180::e8e3:93ef]/ in your web browser, if you ignore the certificate warnings.