Technology Casserole

While using an excellent network monitoring utility from MikroTik called The Dude I discovered I’d been missing something very basic from my arsenal of geeky software tools, SNMP. Simple Network Management Protocol has been around for a long time and can provide some useful insight into what’s happening with the servers, workstations, printers, switches and routers on your network. Want to keep an eye on the CPU load of a VMWare host? See how much bandwidth is being used on the 10 Gigabit link to your fileserver? SNMP can do it.

Here I am going to look at read-only SNMP monitoring with the barebones setup needed to see what use the information may be to you. I’m not going to try and explain how SNMP works or even consider that exposing all the MIB’s could hog resources on the machines that are being monitored. Sorting all that can come later.

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Do you spend a lot of time using your smartphone more for it’s “smarts” than it’s “phone”? Are you Qik streaming a concert, or trying to check in to every single shop on the Boardwalk with Foursquare? Taking Google Tracks on an all-day hike? Then you need some serious battery power.

Facing these very issues, this is what I assembled. It’s called the Minty Boost and it’s available in kit form from Adafruit Industries. If you’ve soldered before (and have an Altoids gum tin to re-purpose) you could have it together in under an hour. The website has all the details for tweaks you can do to the kit as well as a description of how it was developed.

My experience using it with my Nexus One has been positive. It seems to be able to put about 50% charge into the phone from the rechargeable batteries I have been using.

Things to note:

• The discharge profile ends with the batteries getting quite warm as the regulator sucks every last electron to maintain 5V on the USB header.
• So far I have only used NiMH, but alkaline calls are also compatible and should do in a pinch.
• You do need to have a cable for your device (this is where the standardization on micro USB for cell phones will be handy).

The only concern is keeping an eye on the charge status since, on my Nexus One and my G1 at least, it will still think it’s charging after the batteries are drained past the point of providing power (after it’s gone all hot, as mentioned above). At that point I imagine it would be best to unplug the Minty Boost.

So go build yourself one! Or maybe try one of the other projects at Adafruit.

A few weeks ago, the seasonal solar lighting merchandise showed up at the IKEA store here in Orlando. It’s all priced quite well for outdoor solar-powered gear so I went and picked up a few things to play with. I then promptly disassembled my new lights and here is what I found.

This is the inside of the power module for the 3 uplight kit. (It’s the same module and batteries that are found in the 8 globe light chain – I got one of those from the as-is section last weekend.)

Four screws later and you can see the two 1000mAh NiMH batteries that are mentioned on the package, presumably that’s all the panel could charge in one day since that’s very little capacity for a AA rechargeable. It will run the 3 banks of 3 LED’s all night if they fully charge, however. The standard size battery means they can easily be replaced after daily charging cycles deplete the capacity.

The problem is, when they are mostly-discharged the lights will start to flash on and off as the battery circuit loads and unloads. Depending on how well the LED driver is designed that could greatly shorten their lifespan. A low-voltage cutoff or adding a small amount of hysteresis through current feedback should prevent this and I plan to experiment on my light chain’s power module to see if there is a simple solution.

In the interim I am quite happy with my lights, and so are the palm trees. I am trying to find an excuse to get some of the totally self-contained dome-shaped units as well – I just need somewhere to put them…

Thanks to the article on IKEAfans for piquing my interest.

So, new Daleks were revealed today. Bigger, brighter, colorful. Really?

I know I’m biased. I have been watching the traditional silver, black and gold ones for 26 years. That’s longer than most of my Doctor Who friends have been alive. Daleks are supposed to be terrifying machines, not iPods. There is a tactical advantage to looking alike too – you don’t want to identify the troops on your battlefield! Maybe the new Daleks need to go play a few games of Stratego and think this through.

Even made out of fudge I can’t understate the horror they induce. Now they remind me more of my KitchenAid Stand Mixer, which isn’t remotely menacing – I mean it makes me cookie dough. Daleks of old are scary even when they are offering you tea and biscuits.

I suppose we will all get used to the revised look of our salt-and-pepper shaker monsters, but I don’t want them to start changing things just because they feel like they have to.

Daleks are the oldest Doctor Who monster dating back to the second storyline in 1963. There’s a lot of history to step on if you don’t tread carefully.