Sonoff S31 - Low Cost Energy Monitoring
Everyone wants to monitor energy consumption. Everyone wants to automate their home.
The Sonoff S31, is a pretty low-cost way of doing this.
Technology¶
Home Assistant - Split Sensor into Negative and Positive
This is a very quick post on how to take a sensor- such as sensor.grid_power and split it into sensor.grid_power_in and sensor.grid_power_out.
This can be handy if you need a separate sensor for energy/power in, and energy/power out.
For this short post, I will be splitting sensor.battery_power into sensor.battery_power_in and sensor.battery_power_out
Home Assistant - Energy Flow Diagram
This is a quite guide on creating a real-time sankey diagram to show your current energy usage.
ConnectX-3 Set Port Mode to ETH/IB
I just swapped my TrueNAS from a Dell R720XD over to a Dell r730XD. During this migration, I moved over my NVMe drives, NICs, and everything else relevant.
However, after firing up TrueNAS on the new hardware, I noticed my 40G NIC was not listed in the list of devices!
After once again googling how to change the mode over, I figured I would just quickly write some documentation incase this happens again in the future.
How to identify and resolve network performance problems
Last week, I added a 10G Unifi aggregation switch to my network.
I noticed a few potential performance issues, and decided to track them down.
This is a simple guide, with a few methods you can leverage to troubleshoot network performance issues.
How to configure ConnectX-3 via Linux
A quick guide on how to set common options with the ConnectX-3, via linux, without using the OFED driver.
This guide is specific to ethernet mode, but, may or may not work with infiniband mode.
Death of my r720XD
My r720XD took its last breath earlier this week...
This is just a short post about its troubleshooting, and.... what will replace it.
Using Kasa HS300 powerstrip as a PDU.
Using a Tp-link kasa HS300 as a low-cost switchable PDU. This product has features for per-outlet power monitoring as well.
TrueNAS Scale - How to re-enable apt-get
A quick guide on re-enabling the apt-get functionality.
TrueNAS Scale - VM/Containers cannot access host.
How to address Virtual Machines and/or containers not being able to access the TrueNAS Scale server hosting them.
TrueNAS – iSCSI – GPT Protective partition
While migrating from TrueNAS Scale to Core, I ran into an issue when remounting my existing iSCSI shares.
After getting everything configured, windows showed the status of, “Healthy (GPT Protective partition)”
Hidden door sensors
The default directions for installing doors sensors, involves using the included double-sized tape directly stick the sensor to doors and windows.
I personally, wanted these sensors to be out of sight, and out of mind. So, I decided to recess them into the doors themselves.
Home Assistant Alarm
So, you want to have an alarm for your house. But, you don’t want to give your money to ADT/Ring/SimpliSafe/etc… and you want to build it yourself, with components you can easily service and replace, right? If so, this is the article for you.
Set Custom NTP for Reolink Cameras
I have a few Reolink cameras. Recently, I noticed the time of many of the cameras was not set correctly.
Since, I keep all of my IOT and Security devices isolated from the internet, they are not able to communicate with the pre-defined external NTP server. However, I do have a NTP server running on my opnsense firewall which they do have access to.
But, it appears the ability to set a custom NTP server no longer exists in the reolink’s configuration page.
Home Assistant – Programmable Thermostat GUI – Part 2
A while back, after converting my primary thermostat over to z-wave, I found a creative way of managing my thermostat’s schedules using the scheduler-card.
Well, I recently installed a new mini-split for my bedroom/office, and needed to integrate and maintain my schedules via home assistant. So, I decided to redo my schedules a bit.
I found the scheduler-card has a “make-scheme” button, which is far more intuitive for creating schedules then what I put together in PART 1. In hindsight, this feature existed then as well…
40Gb Ethernet Cost and Benchmarks
A while back, you may have seen my post for my 10/40GBe Network Upgrade. However, you were likely disappointed like myself, due to the lack of any actual 40GBe test results.
Well, today, I have managed to get 40Gbit point to point connectivity from my PC, to my Server, and I have prepared test results!
Adding "Bifurcation" to a Dell R720XD
Wait, the R720XD doesn’t support bifurcation?
And- you would be correct by saying that.
However- There are special PCIe cards you can acquire, which will perform the bifurcation.
Credit for this idea goes to THIS POST which was brought to my attention by a fellow redditor. (I couldn’t find the comment from a month ago..)
As a note- this isn't specific to the R720XD, this guide/hardware should work in any hardware with the proper PCIe slots, which does not support bifurcation out of the box.
TrueNAS Scale - Use Vanilla Docker
How to enable and leverage the vanilla docker built into TrueNAS Scale.
Unraid Vs TrueNAS SCALE 2021
Often, I see a bunch of posts where someone is having a tough time considering between Unraid, or TrueNAS. so, I am going to write a quick summary based on my experiences, and recommendations.
Rack em up - Adding a proper rack
I have a few pieces of enterprise gear for my home network. I have my server, a few 10/40G POE switches, and some other odds and ends. So far, its been stacked on boxes and buckets inside of my spare bedroom’s closet.
So, over the last two weeks, I started a project to clean everything up a little bit.