What did you do today?

[Soul_Est]

I had to work on a Saturday to redo a patch rack at one of our sites. Took me about 8,5 hours and it was 50-60 patches.

The biggest time waste was doing the patch panels correctly, 1U = 1U, not 1.3U to 2.3U and the next 2.6U to 3.6U.
It's a rack that has cage nuts that slide inside rails and you can only insert them from the top. The also don't slide smoothly, they irregularly and annoyingly get caught on the tabs that are inside that rail. Some external technician thought it was a good idea to use self-tapping screws instead of doing the cage nuts correctly, making them even more susceptible for getting stuck when sliding down.

But now my OCD demons have receeded in tormenting me and I can get some rest. It's not fun standing that long in one spot...

Finally bit the bullet and bled the brake system. Unfortunately it's a 1st gen linked braking system, which means 100% analog hydraulics rather than electronic control. Highlights include:
- At least two bleed nipples per caliper due to multiple hydraulic loops
- Surprise secret proportion valve bleed nipple hiding under the seat
- Have to bleed in a precise arcane order to avoid introducing an air-lock in a caliper, master cylinder, or one of two flow control mixer/delay valves
- One front caliper needs to be removed, inverted, and wedged open due to it having it's own master cylinder, actuated by the caliper physically moving forward when the front brake is applied as it clamps the moving disc
- To bleed to rear caliper, the caliper needs to be removed, flipped around to expose the bleed nipples, then reinstalled on the disc. Which requires removing the rear wheel.

Which is probably why the previous owner had left the ancient waterlogged fluid in there in the first place.

You both had it rough today. Hope you all got some good rest or did something interesting afterwards.

I cleaned up my room a bit, started doing inventory on stuff to sell (look out for a sell thread in the coming weeks), and looked into buying a new mouse (Logitech G602 or Havit HV-MS735? Hmmm...) to get back into Blender and FreeCAD.

 

[jtd871]

Stayed home to view the solar eclipse from my backyard. ~92% here. Between the moon and increasing cloud cover, temps have dropped about 5-6F since the "start" of the eclipse.

 

[ChainedHope]

Finished my convention off with 3 pints and smashing broken computers (we arent allowed to sell them and they were beyond repair with how Alienware puts these things together). I'd say it was a fun time.

 

[TheHig]

Added a Corsair H100i v2 to my Ryzen build.

Is CerbX out yet?!

 

[BirdofPrey]

I just realized we don't have a "Post your ghetto rig" thread.

That said, I do kinda like the idea of a motherboard screwed into an actual board.

 

[TheHig]

We so need a ghetto rig thead around here. I wonder if it should be exclusive to sff for no.

Thoughts?

As for mine it started as me just messing around with scrap wood and things I have in my work area. I have yet to purchase any materials for it and have mined my wood pile, boxes of screws, old pc case remains and such. Pretty fun really!

Edit: I haven't cut anything to size either. All found objects as it were. I think paint or stain would add too much class so not happening. Lol.
Also. I am considering taking this concept seriously and choosing a nice wood to work with. Scratch build another and maybe add stain for the wood and a glass cover. Could be nice.

 

[Soul_Est]

Tried again to fix that bug that my employer is experiencing. The software is still the issue. Hooray for no comments! I'll just have to edit the data in the database table manually before the next part of the software is run on it. I hung out with a friend of mine later on. I just ordered a couple mice to test on my design workflow in FreeCAD (the loser gets returned), and a book for helping me with my perspective drawing.

 

[jtd871]

Wow. You can return test mice?

 

[Soul_Est]

Do not worry as I will not be experimenting on them. Not sure why the sellers listed each of them as a "MMO Gaming Mouse". Kind of an odd thing to train mice to play MMORPGs.

 

[VegetableStu]

Got back with the Riotoro CR1080. Small and light while still in the box.
First looks are... Why the hell are the case cables so freaking long?!?!?!

Gonna build it out by the end of the week

 

[TheHig]

Got back with the Riotoro CR1080. Small and light while still in the box.
First looks are... Why the hell are the case cables so freaking long?!?!?!

Gonna build it out by the end of the week

Would like to see what you think of the CR1080. I short listed it on my "waiting for CerbX " list.

 

[Soul_Est]

Received my order from Amazon, helped a friend with their computer setup, and tested the mice (impressions to come).

 

[Soul_Est]

Contacted the receptionist at my workplace to inform them of a workaround for the software issue that we're experiencing. Basically, they will input the data, I will update the table to include the data that the software deigns to insert, and they will then continue working with software from that point on. I added to my short story. Made plans to hangout with a friend later today but I scrapped them. I will instead be with another friend who is at a low point in their life right now.

 

[Curiosity]

Is anyone else at or coming to quakecon this weekend?
I'm at B16-3 with my customod if anyone wants to swing by.

Also got interviewed after playing robo recall at the alienware booth while wearing my sffn shirt.
Hopefully that's in frame.

 

[Soul_Est]

Is anyone else at or coming to quakecon this weekend?
I'm at B16-3 with my customod if anyone wants to swing by.

Also got interviewed after playing robo recall at the alienware booth while wearing my sffn shirt.
Hopefully that's in frame.

Splendid! Rep'n SFFN wherever you go!

===================================

I wasted the day.

• Yes, I completed the bottom tray of RSC (TBP).
• Yes, I troubleshooted my previous modem alongside my ISP's Technical Support, exchanged modems, and now have one with a (hopefully) stable Gigabit Ethernet switch.
• Yes, I have decided which help me in creation and in game (TBP).

However, expectations were not met.

• The friend who I promised to visit today, woke up late and was not up to meeting up. (That's alright. I wake up very late given the chance.)
• In waiting for the aforementioned friend to let me know when they awoke, I did not go to the meetup that my other friend and I had originally planned. (They were very understanding of the situation.)
• It took nearly an hour to exchange the modem and the service was severely lacking (even accounting for a trainee). (Having worked in retail, I cannot stand such things.)

So I missed out on hanging out with either of my two friends and had to deal with crappy customer service on top of a long wait time. I was not happy.

 

[Phuncz]

I bought an WiFi OBDII reader a while ago because the nerd that I am, I want to have much more information about my car's workings than most people. Since the hybrid car I have doesn't display an RPM gauge and I'd like to have one, the easiest way was through OBDII and a mobile device like my phone.

I bought the reader, got the app, set it up and with some fidgeting I had an RPM gauge. But using my phone for this was going to be a lot of hassle so I started looking at other devices I could repurpose for this. An iPad Mini 2 popped up and ofcourse just using a random mount isn't going to cut it, but more on that at a later time.

(not my pic)

Anyway, something that bothered me, being a security-paranoid nerd, is the unprotected and unencrypted WiFi connection. But those cheap China-sourced OBDII readers obviously don't come with a manual or any documentation whatsoever. So I started at the basic networking level: the gateway IP (192.168.0.10). To my surprise, it actually has a web-interface ! Although prompting me for a username and a password. Since I'm proefficient in enterprise and consumer hardware with a web interface, my first guess of admin / admin was successful, although only partially: 404 Page Not Found

After googling a little, I came across this page: http://forscan.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16

It was basically a how-to for fixing the delay on the WiFi OBDII ELM327 (generic and popular chip) adapters, but on that forum a user was told this was normal because most likely the developers of the adapter I have choose to remove the web interface. Though one page did work: iweb.html which is used to update the firmware. Not much use since I didn't seem able to do much even after using it.

But someone linked a way to configure it to use WPA2 without a web-interface: https://www.sqrt.io/blog/2016/04/obd2-wifi-adapter-absichern/

It allowed to change some settings like SSID and WPA2PSK mode with AES encryption. So some fidgeting later I was where I needed to be: have a secure WiFi connection from a device connected to my car's ECU.

 

[Soul_Est]

That is awesome @Phuncz ! Wonderful sleuthing followed by terrific execution! (pun intended)

 

[VegetableStu]

Built out the CR1080 (@TheHig, @MarcParis to compare notes).
First: unboxing


Now: the album with the sticking points:


Other than that, it's considerably small (although not the smallest for ATX), and if anyone's going for eATX and also smaller this is probably a good contender in terms of size alone.
Definitely a build and forget case. Part swapping or rebuilds won't be fun

Related video from Hardware Canucks

Bonus album:

 

[ignsvn]

Boring stuff: almost finished setting up Jenkins for AngularJS projects..

 

[MarcParis]

I like mainly your mode on fan psu...my sx800-lti fan, if ever it failed, i know now that i can replace it with one of my noctua nf-a12x15..

How fan speed is managed? Fixed one?