Writing tagged "esp32"
Post mortem: vendor-agnostic non-invasive washing machine monitoring
The washing machine ETA is a lie.
Everyone agrees, nobody has solutions. No, a washing machine that needs WiFi to do its work is not a solution, just a larger collection of points of failure.
I wanted something that works with any basic, repairable washing machine, and doesn’t void the warranty. So, attaching to traces on the PCB wasn’t an option.
In the end, the computer vision route worked pretty well until the ESPCam I used for it died. That’s why this is a post mortem.
Reinventing my rack cooling solution
Most of my computers have been sitting in a noise-insulated 19“ rack for 6 years or so. Although I’ve been administrating real servers for more than a decade, I still get a kick out of cosplaying as sysadmin with machines that I can actually touch, rather than being located in some rented data hundreds of kilometers away.
The rack I bought came with a temperature-controlled fan that pulled air through the whole box (just tall enough to fit under a desk), but could only run at 0% and 100% speed, because the temperature control was just a binary switch. That kinda defeated the point of the rack being noise-insulated, because even Noctua fans make some noise at 100% speed.