I noticed this Instructable the other day and had to try it since I had an old USB web cam laying around. I found that the instructions contained some inaccuracies, here are my steps: sudo apt-get install motion sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf Locate…
pChart-ing emoncms data
pChart is a neat PHP charting tool, I have been using prior to switching to emoncms. Emoncms has multigraphs available, that are much more interactive, but they are slow too. I also have had some issues with certain feeds that…
New laptop
I got myself Santa brought me a new laptop couple days ago, an Asus K56CM. I am no brand slave, I just pick one that fits the budget I set aside and what covers my basic requirements. I prefer not to spend…
Solar water heating in the winter
I now have my evacuated tube solar water heater disconnected from the house’s plumbing system and in ‘winter mode’ meaning that I am crossing fingers it doesn’t freeze and break the tubes :). It does have electric heater element inside,…
Bird Feeder
Having breakfast this morning, we found that we have some old bread left that was about to be thrown to the trash.. or maybe not. Since it is winter now, birds are having hard time finding food, why not build…
Low power receiver options
There is quite some buzz in the RFM12B community recently on low power remote receiver nodes, these are remote, battery-operated nodes that would listen for incoming commands and react to them. The challenge is that keeping the RFM12B powered on all the…
Using a cheap digital thermometer’s LCD display
I have one of the cheap DX digital thermometers laying around with the thermistor removed and used in another project. So I got an idea to try: use the LCD screen for visualizing data. The unit is driven by a thermistor: a…