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how to prevent fire with every item in your house on one circuit or power outlet - here is how I did it
23 April, 2008 21:14
Here is a list of items on one circuit:
26" CRT Television
575 watt stereo receiver
75 watt stereo sub-woofer
computer 1: AMD 64 3.0GHz 2 core, one SATA HD, 2GB DDR2
19" widescreen LCD monitor
two additionial PCI cards
USB mouse RF receiver
computer 2: Intel 2.6GHz Celeron, one SATA HD, one two IDE HD's 1GB DDR400
15 USB ports on 11 controllers (built in & PCI cards)
USB powered audio in/out to RJ-11 with carrier signals
17" CRT
19" CRT
computer 3: cobalt RAQ (low power consumption), 40GB IDE HD
network equipment:
250MHz router
5 port 1000mbit switch
dsl modem
NAS with a 200GB IDE HD
ML-1740 laser printer
document scanner
microwave oven
toaster oven
All other items, lights, etc, are on a separate circuit. This are are the power devices in which allows me to still be living:
1625 watt 500 50-70Hz volt transient power protector:
"A transient voltage suppressor or TVS is a general
classification of an array of devices that are designed to react to
sudden or momentary overvoltage conditions. One such common device used
for this purpose is known as the transient voltage suppression diode that is simply a zener diode designed to protect electronics against overvoltages. Another design alternative applies a family of products that are known as metal-oxide varistor (MOV) that protect electronic circuits and electrical equipment.
The characteristic of a TVS requires that it respond to overvoltages
faster than other common overvoltage protection components such as varistors or gas discharge tubes. This makes TVS devices or components useful for protection against very fast and often damaging voltage spikes.
These fast overvoltage spikes are present on all distribution networks
and can be caused by either internal or external events, such as
lightning or motor arcing.
Applications of transient voltage suppression diodes are used for unidirectional or bidirectional electrostatic discharge
protection of transmission or data lines in electronic circuits. MOV
based TVS's are utilized to protect home electronics, distribution
systems and may accommodate industrial level power distribution
disturbances saving downtime and damage to equipment. The level of
energy in a transient overvoltage can be equated to energy measured in joules or related to amperage
when devices are rated for various applications. These bursts of
overvoltage can be measured with specialized electronic meters that are
capable of showing power disturbances of a high amplitude, thousands of
volts, that last for very short time periods, even nanoseconds." - en.wikipedia.org
My power regulator that can handle - 20% voltage step-up which connects to the transient voltable regulator. Connected to the transient voltage device are items [1-4]. The transient device has industrial source power cord (biggest power cable I have seen, about double the size of a computer power cable), extended with another industrial rated power cord (also larger than a normal computer power cable). Obviously I don't know my AWG specs.
The extension hooks into my power regulator: (110V, 115V, 120V or 220V, 230V,240V) +/-20% Input Voltage. The voltage regulator powers devices [5-9] in which an outlet extends to the transient voltage regulator that powers items [1-4].
Another extension of the power regulator is a universal power supply:Input Voltage 100/110/120V or 220/230/240V.
Connected to the UPS are items: 7.[1-4] on the battery backup outlets. Their is a cordless phone receiver also connected that transforms back to the power regulator.
The primary source for all items listed above is one power outlet.
The microwave oven, small, 800 watts and the toaster oven are connected to separate outlets.
When either the microwave or toaster is in use, the house starts beeping as the power regulator goes into up-step conversion, connected to the transient power regulator, and UPS thus allowing my life to continue while living in a small appartment.
Right off the bat, this post is indeed not to technically in depth - In relation to [this post] and the UPS battery backup device I purchased, I experienced some troubling and at first nerve-racking boot errors when needing to reboot the computer after installing the provided linux applications on CD with the UPS.
I will tell you right away, I ended up getting it to administrate the UPS, but not after it copied my inittab file to inittab.dn* (forget the exact file name), and replaced inittab itself with run-level configuration that I would think would not work on Debian based system of any kind.
The new inittab does contain the path to the binaries to be run at boot, but why in inittab, I do not understand.
I needed to edit the new run-level file and remove the dnpowerd related variables, and copy it back over to inittab. I did this while running in recovery mode, remounting the drive rw.
I then placed the applications referenced in the run level file, and placed them in /etc/rc.local. I then starts a web server on port 9982 with a default login of admin and a password of 1234.
All important information is piped through /dev/console along with the http web interface.
You are able to change event variables, however you need a current windows controller application to change specifications like output watts, and other, more technical information.
The linux service is able to send out network broadcasts of power status, and SNMP connectivity to remote hosts. It can also alert you by e-mail, or page you through a modem.
laser guided squirrel trap with the event taken by a camera
17 April, 2008 10:04
"Got a bit of a pest problem? [Chad] built a better squirrel/rabbit/thing trap
using a soekris box, a laser pointer, serial controlled relay and a
small motor. When the laser beam is broken, the Soekris activates the
relay, pulling the door pins. Then it take a picture with a webcam and
send him a page." -- Will O'Brien, Hack a Day
Bruce Sterling's HACKER CRACKDOWN - Voiced By Cory Doctorow
15 April, 2008 11:51
I have taken each part and re-encoded
the audio in mp3 format at 16kHz, 16kbits mono - about 1/8th the size
of the below source audio, and just as enjoyable I want to add.
If you are unfamiliar with this book, here is part 1 with the preface:
"Since last June, I've been podcasting a weekly reading from Bruce Sterling's 1992 classic journalistic history of the founding of the online civil liberties movement, The Hacker Crackdown, which chronicles the events that led to the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
my former employer. Hacker Crackdown was the first book I ever read
electronically, the first piece of "literary freeware" I ever met. It's
a fantastic book and it was a fantastic read.
Yes, I'm done. It took 28 installments, and included some of the strangest stuff I ever read aloud (for example, a mind-bogglingly bureaucratic phone company document
around which a great deal of controversy once swirled). Now that I've
finished it, I've put together an XML feed for all 28 parts, as well as
direct MP3 and Ogg download links -- it's all under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. I hope someone'll
download all the parts, normalize 'em, trim out the intros, and piece
them together into a single file.
I need to thank Bruce Sterling here for his gracious permission
in allowing me to read this aloud. Reading Hacker Crackdown back in
1992 -- actually, 1991, since I got hold of an advance copy through
Bakka, the bookstore I worked at in Toronto -- absolutely and
permanently transformed my life. Reading it again has made me revisit
more than a decade's worth of striving, writing, imaginging, working
and agitating. This book's an education and a half.
(110V, 115V, 120V or 220V, 230V,240V) +/-20% - (110V, 115V, 120V or 220V, 230V, 240V)+/-7%
Along with the voltage regulator, I picked up a UPS for my networking device and NAS in case my nighttime backups were to be disturbed by night time lightning. The specs suck, but it will not be powering a computer nor a monitor, just a router, switch, and DSL modem along with the NAS drive in which the HD is usually sleeping at any given time. I could probably get 15 to 30 minutes out of the 3 minute specification. I don't feel like doing the math, so I will leave it with that estimate.
Full load runtime 1.5 Minutes (375VA), Half load runtime 7.2 Minutes (200VA), <4 Hours to 90% charge
The UPS comes with a serial cable and is Linux compatible, so I am thinking about picking one up for hamper, my trusty dirty server of mine. A lot of data goes through the hard drive bus consistently, and a clean shut-down would be nice.
The power regulator has kicked in 3 times for step-up inversion when heating up my toaster oven continuing the flow of clean and consistent power. I hope the step-down and breaker works as well as the up-step does.
Total cost after shipping: $79.58 Shipping kills good things in this world...
Linden Lab Man earns the suffix "Man" - streaming second life through a null modem cable to an Apple IIC computer
15 April, 2008 00:39
Joshua Linden was able to create a custom bootstrap application for streaming a windows computer desktop to an Apple IIC computer.
With no optimization, he was able to achieve just over 1 frame per second through the serial port with the output of Second Life, of course. The Apple IIC uses 1 bit encoding making colors, shades, and textures a little shaggy.
I remember playing with the Apple II-C with vertical shaped objects to interact with when playing games or using applications. This is quite exciting and I didn't realize this machine was capable of any higher level communication than what I used it for at the time.
For more information and technical conversations about the methods used, head over to Usenet: comp.sys.apple2.programmer
We all know about archive.org, various torrent sites for live music, direct download sources - however, Demonoid has never let me down when I am trying to explore new music. Such a database of legal music available, incredible - that other archive sites do not have available.
They were taken down for a while, and their come-back was uncertain. However, certain to come back it now is! Welcome back Demonoid.com!
It happens that Franciscan Skemp, a large hospital System here where I live considers my content (myspew.com) an adult only website.
To prove a point I browsed to several porn sites, and then called their IT department.
They did appologize, told me to fill out a form, but my intention was only to find out what filtering systems they utilize. I can only wonder where else the spew may fail.
Right off the bat, this post is indeed not to technically in depth - In relation to [
"Got a bit of a pest problem? [Chad] built a 
"Since last June, I've been 
My apartment was absolutely nerve racking to live in with all my power drinking electronics.
We all know about archive.org, various torrent sites for live music, direct download sources - however, Demonoid has never let me down when I am trying to explore new music. Such a database of legal music available, incredible - that other archive sites do not have available.
