Last Updated 2/26/2017 Table of Contents: Method 1: Configure the ObserverIP destination hostname using telnet Method 2: Redirect traffic using a router and iptables Accepting the data on your server Creating a socket for use with weewx Undoing your changes and returning back to defaults How I use this data to run my own website! Recently I received an Ambient Weather WS-1200-IP weather station. It’s a great unit and very easy to use and setup! There is an outdoor unit which does temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, UV and solar radiation. There’s also an indoor unit which has a barometer sensor. The 2 sensors talk to an ObserverIP unit. This unit plugs directly into your router and has a little webpage [Read More…]
Using Nagios to monitor your power outlets
I’m a huge fan of Nagios. I’ve installed it at work and it provides us simple up/down information, as well as detailed service information. Being able to customize the level of monitoring detail has been a huge benefit. Nagios doesn’t just stop at the workplace — I run it at home too. I’m monitoring my weather station, Raspberry Pis, SmartThings hub, IoT WiFi devices, my small lab Asterisk PBX and websites I’ve created for businesses, family and friends. It’s important to me that I run a healthy environment — whether it’s in my house or not. I had a situation recently where the GFCI outlet that my air conditioner’s condensate pump was plugged into had popped it’s breaker and turned [Read More…]
TornadoChannel.com Launched!
When Mike Olbinski asked for some help with a WordPress plugin to display a map with his live GPS position on it, I knew I could do it. I also knew there was an opportunity for something bigger here. Enter TornadoChannel.com! TornadoChannel.com was created and developed by me with a lot of input from Mike on features. As more storm chasers start streaming their chase to YouTube, it’s becoming difficult for viewers to find new chasers to subscribe to. Enter TornadoChannel. It is not a streaming platform but instead a centralized location for viewers to watch and chat. In the past, people looking on YouTube for live storm streams would have to bookmark individual channels of chasers. Now they can find them all [Read More…]
Setup a Raspberry Pi Kiosk with Chromium
I’ve setup my Raspberry Pi 3 to be a digital signage kiosk. I’ve installed the Adafruit 3.5″ PiTFT Plus touch screen, and am using it to show my weather station data in real time. This is done by having the Raspberry Pi auto log in and run Chromium to open a webpage. I’ve shared how I’ve setup a full digital signage system using Ubuntu and Chromium for Kiosk mode. This post will repeat a lot of the same in that article, but tailor it to the Raspberry Pi. Here’s how I did it: Setup Raspbian The first step is to get Raspbian Jesse installed, perform sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade and if you have the Adafruit 3.5″ touchscreen installed, run through their [Read More…]
Setup a Kiosk with Ubuntu and Chromium
Recently I’ve had the need to setup 2 kiosk stations to display an array of data on a digital signage screen which has no keyboard or mouse attached to it. The idea in this post is to explain how I did it. I installed Ubuntu with the Unity desktop, set some auto-login tasks and run Chromium in kiosk mode. Then using xdotool to cycle through the Chrome tabs at a set interval. Lastly, the unclutter package will remove the mouse cursor from the screen, giving a clean automated look. I also show how I’ve set this up for a Raspberry Pi. It’s mostly the same, but a few things are different. Check it out if you have a Raspberry Pi [Read More…]
Using grep on live active log files
I had a need recently to where I needed to grep an Apache httpd log file to see if a certain web subfolder was accessed. I wanted to grep the access log file which has historical and live data coming into it, and found this to be a great solution. Sharing it here in case it helps someone in the future! In this example, dd87946d06c23e was the name of the folder I was looking to see was accessed. tail -f -n 5000 /var/log/httpd/access_log | grep –line-buffered dd87946d06c23e
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The purpose of this site is for me to share my DIY technical experiences as a place to document them publicly. Hopefully somewhere along the way they are helpful for you.
