Am I the only one who gets thoroughly confused when seeing DIN connector pin diagrams, having no idea which end of the connector you’re looking at? This is particularly bothersome when connectors don’t have the pin numbers indicated on the connector. I’ve put together some foolproof images to remind me the next time I find myself in such a pickle.
Continue reading DIN connector pin numbering
Renewing LAN based SSL certificates and installing them to a Synology NAS and RouterOS device was a bit of a hullabaloo, so want it documented for when it breaks in three years, by which time I will have forgotten how it was configured.
Continue reading Updating LAN SSL certificates
In trying to consolidate my phone numbers, something broke, and the formatting of my numbers ended up broken. Augh. SQL Server to the rescue!
In keeping with the idea of documenting those obscure (relatively) CLI commands that I only use once in a blue moon and forget if not written down, this one archives the photo’s from the Mac Photos application to our NAS.
Continue reading Archiving the mac photo library to a network share
By default the AllMon installation with VKNode is not encrypted. What does this mean? If you have your AllMon page publicly accessible, you are sending your admin username and password over the internet in plan text, in the open. That’s bad. Really bad.
This post will detail the steps required to secure your install so that all communication between your node and browser is encrypted.
Using Finder’s copy and paste is a bit daft. There’s nothing nuanced in its operations, or if it is, it’s not user friendly enough for me to have noticed.
All I wanted to do was copy a large number of files to a network drive (around 150 GB worth). This should have been a lot easier than it was.
Continue reading MacOS, pain and copying large numbers of files
Running my simplex node on 146.550, I thought it would be nice to see what sort of coverage I achieve with a 1/4 wave ground plane vertical antenna. Just in case Dick Tracy ever asks.
There’s a great tool being hosted by VK2BE at www.ve2dbe.com which lets you generate an RF coverage map easily.
Continue reading Splat. RF Network coverage for my simplex node
I’ve been debugging a frustrating issue with a remote server rejecting some credentials from a Raspberry Pi based system on my network. While I’ve used WireShark in the past, it’s generally debugging traffic to or from my computer. Being a man in the middle is a pain as I need to set up proxies to route traffic through my network.
Enter the wonders of adding a Mikrotik router into the mix, and life is bliss!
Continue reading Sniffing your network with WireShark and Mikrotik routers
This post came about because the official documentation can be confusing, and hasn’t kept pace with developments in some areas. There is plenty of old information that is no longer relevant which further confuses matters.
Additionally, for those that simply want to configure a simplex node, it can get confusing if you’ve not done it before. So I’ve created some template configuration files that have most of the work taken care of for you.
For those unfamiliar with VKLink project, it’s an AllStar derivative enabling linking of amateur radio stations and repeaters over the internet. A great summary of the enhancements over AllStar can be found in this post on the forums. Think IRLP and EchoLink but crystal clear audio and a lot more flexible.
The process documented below will set up a simplex node with an access tone of 123.0 Hz.
My VKLink node uses a PRM80 for the RF gateway, and needed a wiring harness to connect it to the Raspberry Pi.