Posts

Homemade 120 Watt Peltier Thermoelectric Cooler 12vdc Mobile Refrigerator

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 This was an old project I made a few years back, just never put it on my geeky page.   Modified it today, could never find a good reliable high current plug for it and my car.  I had a "high current" heavy duty cigarette adapter plug on the cooler but it melted lol.     Finally decided just to order some of these PowerCon plugs, really nice plugs actually. I started using them on many other projects after testing them with 20A DC for extended times..        Anyway I bought this Yeti knock off cooler from tractor supply.  Really nice cooler by its self, kept ice in it for like 4 days in the summer..    Then while surfing the great net, I found this Peltier Thermoelectric cooler, it was much larger than the low wattage ones found in commercial coolers...   I impulse bought this thing, with the mindset, if the the cooler I have can keep ice from melting after 4 hot days I can probably make a decent iceless coo...

Modified myxfitness Touchscreen to run Ubuntu, Android, GoogleTv Whatever!

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The myxfitness (aka Openfit) bike is an exercise bike similar to a Peloton or similar.  It's a well built exercise bike but with an added, large, touchscreen (usually Android) device attached.   This is what makes these bikes "cool" right now.  You can do workouts, and bike rides with others on video for a bit more motivation.   The bike is already expensive, then they charge an additional monthly fee for the touchscreen service.  One thing they do not tell you is that the android touch screen is LOCKED DOWN with MDM (mobile device management)  the same management your company phone may have on it.   So basically if you cancel their monthly service you are stuck with a brick, you can't even listen to music on it if you wanted to.   This to me is BS, I paid good money for the hardware if I want to stop your monthly service I should still be able to use the device for basic, video, music, something for when I work ...

Old Photos, Home Fire, Lost everything - Saved my data... Barely....

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I was just digging through some of my old photos today, and I wanted to share a story from 2013.   Hint, this story ends with Backblaze. Kind of ironic, backup... my home went aBlaze...    Me and my now wife, had bought and were living in a 3 story condominium, our unit was on the top floor.   You already know I'm a bit of a Geek, so I had quite a bit of tech in this condo, automated lights, security cameras, my own media server with multiple raid arrays, you know the usual geeky stuff.  I don't know about you guys but I like to keep all of my important info in digital format, 2FA stuff, important document scans, and passwords go into encrypted zip files, everything else like all of my DVD's and digital movie copies,  ripped CD's and other purchased mp3 files, all stored on my trusty home server with dual disk redundancy raid!    I was safe and protected from a drive loss...  Most of this data was stored on a drobo drive array....

What to look for when choosing a Signum Mining Pool (Crypto)

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Hi guys!   I'm going to go over a few quick things to look for when choosing a mining pool.  Let me start off by saying it's no secret I am a fan of using the nam SIGNA pool ( https://SIGNApool.notallmine.net ) I'm a bit biased here...  😏   I really really like the nam pool. What is Signum/Signa?   If you landed here and have no clue what Signum, SIGNA, or mining even is, check out this link here on the project:  Signum.Network What makes a good pool?    Well you want to make lots of whatever coin you are mining, period. That's most likely your main goal.  So most people think the larger the pool the better, as in more miners, and more total pool capacity.  This is only partially true and very deceiving (I'll go over that in a second).   What else makes for a good pool?  I look for things like uptime, owner integrity, cool features, cool community members, any offerings like bonuses - low or no fees - small...

Fix your noisy EGO Z6 Zero-Turn mower deck rattle

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Those of you that bought one of the EGO Z6 Zero turn mowers, you may have noticed when cutting and hitting bumps you hear a lot of rattling.    Two things are happening here.. One, the obvious, you do not have a gasoline engine to drown out those noises like you may have had on a standard mower, so they stand out a bit more and can seem like something is wrong.   Two, the one I'll try to address here, EGO seems to have some loose tolerances when assembling their mowers at the factory.  This first video will address the loudest rattling, from the front cutting deck supports.   In a later video I'll address the rear raise/lower mechanicals and how to quiet them down a bit. I can include a bunch of pictures and how-to text.. But I'll just throw a video on here for now, with a few additional notes below.       NOTE: In this video I only do one side of the mower deck adjustments, you need to do both sides evenly.  Measure your deck ...

OpenEVSE ChargePoint EVSE (CT2000) Conversion

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  For this project I wanted to convert a commercial dual port ChargePoint EV charger into something I had full control over.    With ChargePoint pushing its clients to upgrade to the CT4000 (the large LCD screen model) lots of people are tearing out the CT2000 series chargers and either scrapping them or selling them.   I found mine on Facebook Market place for a couple hundred bucks.  These chargers are built really well, with extruded aluminum cases, aluminum component modules that slide out for easy replacement, they are just really nicely built chargers made to take abuse from people and weather. I use the word "Charger" a lot in this post, I'm well aware that the actual battery charger for the vehicle is actually mounted internal to the vehicle..  Each EV has its own on-board charger that can accept various AC voltages, convert to DC and charge your car battery. The external "charging stations" really just provide AC to those existing charge...