LED bulbs suck

Posted on 2012/04/26 by andy

I have a plenty of compact fluorescent light (CFL) at home. While energy saving is quite obvious, the time to warm up is drawback; using CFL in place of frequent toggling is not a good idea. On the other hand light-emitting diodes (LED) become source of even more efficient light with immediate full brightness. Excited with availability of LED bulbs powered directly from mains I jumped into that bandwagon, making a mistake I could not predict. Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Gadgets | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Rainbow glowing ping-pong

Posted on 2012/04/10 by andy

While I was finalizing e-snowflake project, I imagined that single RGB 5050 LED would create nice rainbow effect if placed inside a ball like ping-pong. You can find plenty of such projects on the net, this one was heading to embed everything within ping-pong, battery included. The design challenge was to create PCB small enough to fit into ping-pong, design electronic on/off power switch and to supply LED with forward voltage drop higher than battery voltage. Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Gadgets | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ankara downhill

Posted on 2012/04/06 by andy
Ankara

First impression of Ankara is like this: mix of Zurich, Prague and New York. Located in pass of high mountains surrounding the city, has most of its streets going up and down as you were in any Alpine city. Looking on a thousands red-tiled houses it resembles Prague downtown. Combined with tremendous number of yellow cabs makes a picture complete. Continue reading →

Posted in Places, Skating | Leave a comment

Abu Dhabi on wheels

Posted on 2012/03/31 by andy
Abu Dhabi

Another pinpoint on the map of Arabic world. Neither as much fun and tourist oriented as Dubai, nor as fundamental as Riyadh, yet something else to discover. One of newest mosques, world fastest roller-coaster or beautiful Corniche coastline, just to mention few, and actually to mention all I could see deployed shortly in the capitol of UAE. Continue reading →

Posted in Places, Skating | Leave a comment

City of sand dunes

Posted on 2012/03/27 by andy
Riyadh

Saudi Arabia is not popular target for tourism, especially Riyadh located just in the middle of dusty landscape of sand dunes. I got two flavors of my stay there: I could observe most orthodox enforcement of Islamic law and try to see whatever was worth to see and reachable in time and distance. Continue reading →

Posted in Places | Leave a comment

New York

Posted on 2012/03/10 by andy

New York City. My first time in this iconic city, one of most European cities in the US. Staying in the middle of Manhattan for one week in January I had only a chance to touch the tip of an iceberg. I could taste it like daily rush fast-food more than rich in flavor tasty meal simply because I had effectively only one day and a half to wander around. Find below my experience of this cult city, some (miss)impressions based on couple first-to-visit places. Continue reading →

Posted in Places | Leave a comment

e-snowflake

Posted on 2012/02/07 by andy

Late in December 2011 I almost bet that I am able to design & build myself a blinking serpent of rainbow lights for Christmas tree. I did not want to spend much time on creating cables and lights themselves but I imagined a star shaped thing full of LED lights that would gently shine or glimmer in many ways. Dozen of work-hours and couple weeks later my new DIY project has seen the light of day; on nearly dry and dead tree I hung the electronic snowflake, a tradition breaking techno-gadget. Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

SSH and FTP custom ports firewall redirection in OpenWRT

Posted on 2012/01/24 by andy

Inspecting router log files I discovered occasional but massive login attempts. This is typical observation when SSH port visible from WAN is left on default port 22. Mine was set to custom and configured with firewall port redirection. At least I thought so. In reality custom port was accessible along with default port. Same problem affected FTP configuration. Looking at the UCI firewall commands I spent over hour to spot where the problem was. Continue reading →

Posted in OpenWRT | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

USB power supply mod and 3G for TL-WR1043ND

Posted on 2011/12/26 by andy

Using multiple power-consuming devices in USB hub modded router will exceed limited power of built-in 5V rail of TL-WR1043ND router. In my case connecting both 3G modem and external HDD to led to power drops and root filesystem disconnections. Keeping router self-sufficient I managed to built additional 5V power regulator into the tiny case of router, making mobile internet as backup line for home network. Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, OpenWRT | 3 Comments

Misery loves company

Posted on 2011/12/20 by andy
London

London would be another short distance deployment place where I have been couple times already. Last week however stochastic processes of nature were not working for me. I faced unusual series of funny accidents that made my work week much more colorful.
Continue reading →

Posted in Places | Leave a comment