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You are here: Home / Archives for Energy

Thursday

2009/04/02 By staze

 

Maybe I’ll get into posting on Thursday.

So, I just added some nifty ajax to poll the power usage every 20 seconds. While the file is only updated every 60 seconds, I figure every 20 seconds is low enough bandwidth, and often enough to catch and update frequently enough. If I can figure it out, I’ll try to make this only update every minute right after the file gets updated (it gets updated about 2-3 seconds after the minute). I mainly did this for my own benefit since I wanted to be able to watch the power usage without reloading the whole page. Maybe I’ll set up an RSS script so I can subscribe to my energy usage. =P No, no twitter… seems like a waste of twitter’s bandwidth. 

I was up pretty late last night trying to fix OD replication that hasn’t worked right since my 5 hour marathon session prepping for the term. During that marathon, I demoted and re-promoted the OD Master, and apparently when I reset up the replica, it didn’t work right. Changes to passwords, or creation of user accounts weren’t getting replicated. So, I reconfigured stuff. I’m pretty convinced this is the best way to do it:

  1. Demote replica to standalone, reboot.
  2. Remove directory server from Directory Utility, if present. Reboot. If not present, go on.
  3. Check Permissions on replica, if things are clean, go to step 4. Otherwise, reboot again.
  4. Promote to replica. Once replication is complete (by watching Password Replication Log in Server Admin, or in /Library/Logs/PasswordServer/), reboot.
  5. Reboot the OD Master. 
  6. Do a test password change, account disable, something. Watch the replication log on the Master, or Replica to make sure replication takes place (You should see the replication nearly instantly if you have the master set to replicate upon any change). 
  7. Only other thing would be to add the directory info for replica SSL support, and change the slapd.plist to allow SSL. See here: http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20080624005724638 
  8. Optional: Reboot any systems that pointed at the Replica before you started this. There seems to be some directory caching that kept ahold of the “Incorrect Password/Invalid User” responses that the replica was returning when things weren’t working. 

That pretty much fixed it. Bitch is, it took me nearly an hour to do when I thought it would take about 15 minutes. Some of the reboots could probably be removed, but it seems safer this way. Replication now works better than it ever has I think (before, no matter what, replication seemed to happen based on a time period, rather than instantly. Easiest way to check this is to make a change to the Master in WGM or via the command line, then do a “mkpassdb -dump | grep username”. You should get back the password slot for that user, and a change date that corresponds to your change on the master. 

As always, make sure you are using NTP on all the servers/clients (ideally the same NTP server, even if it’s wrong, at least all the clients think it’s the same time), and that DNS is working (“changeip -checkhostname” is your friend). If either of these things are broken, kerberos most likely won’t work, and other things may not work right. DNS not working can cause weird issues, as can time differences (kerberos won’t work AT ALL if the times between client and server are off by more than a few minutes). Thankfully pool.ntp.org exists, as do most campuses and corporations run their own NTP servers (AD has one built in, as does ≥Mac OS 10.4 Server.)

See ya all later.

Filed Under: Energy, Sys Admin Tagged With: ajax, Open Directory

Additions…

2009/03/31 By staze

Okay people, as you can now see, there are some additions on the side bar, and a new theme. The theme, well, it’s okay. It’s better than the default. I’m not a HUGE fan, but at least it’s not 3 column, and it isn’t like reading a newspaper sidebar (like the default). 

The additions are fairly self explanatory.

The one marked “Weather” is actually a webcam image taken from my house with the current weather info superimposed over the top of it. Clicking on it will give you my weather data. 

The one marked “Current Power usage” is also, just that. My power meter is being polled for info every minute, and it’s appending it to a file. This is just the latest record in that file. It’s resolution for power is 10watts, and for time is 1 minute. If I were ajax-y, I could make it auto update. Maybe when I have some time. The “cost” in parenthesis is based on the SUB power rate of $0.0463/KWH. So, assuming I continued to use that same amount of power for an hour, that’s what it would cost. 

In other news, I took the day off today to go to the dentist (perfect exam/teeth, as always), run a few errands, and makes some calls to places that are only open during business hours (TED (to unlock the usb port)). Also called Apple and got my battery replaced on my MacBook Pro since it was faulty (covered under the battery exchange they did a few years back). Gotta give the MacStore credit on this one. Called Apple, they opened a case, I went to the MacStore, they ran Apple Hardware Test (which I have never seen work, except this one time when it told the guy my battery was “BAD”), and they replaced my battery right then and there. Cool. 

Tara and I bought the tile and thinset today. Go 300lbs of tile and thinset. Getting that in and out of the car was “fun”. Also set up the tile saw that we borrowed from Tara’s uncle months ago. So, hopefully, we’ll have the tile down by the end of the week, and grouted by the end of the weekend. Here’s hopin’. 

Talk to you all later!

Filed Under: Energy, Home Ownership Tagged With: KWH, TED, The Mac Store, thinset, tile, weather station

Geeking out…

2009/03/29 By staze

So, I got a weather station last year, and have been using it since then, but it’s always been wireless, and not great. It’s a Lacrosse WS-2316. Over the past 6 months, I’ve been improving the setup. Mounting the rain gauge on a post 3′ high (as per weather collection standards), mounting the anemometer on a mast mounted to the chimney. Then I hardwired the sensor to the base station the other week. So, instead of 120second updates, it’s now 7 second. So, useful! 

Used wview for a while, but it doesn’t really do anything about random errors with the sensor (like the occasional time the sensor says the wind is 125MPH. Umm, no). It’s a known issue, and can be fixed by replacing the anemometer cable with STP. But, until I do that, I decided to go back to a program I used when it was in beta: LWC (Lightsoft Weather Center). It’s pretty nice. Uploads to wunderground, cwop, makes webpages, etc. Sure, wview does all that, but LWC seems to do it better (and has error correction for the anemometer error). I was getting weird dips in the dew point (therefore humidity) that only lasted for a few seconds (one data point on wunderground or cwop), which screwed up my data. So far, they seem better since I replaced the batteries in the base station, and put some clip on ferrites on the uplink cable. Don’t know why the batteries would matter, since it’s hardwired, but… The ferrites might help with interference since the base station is in the office above the garage, and therefore opener, which uses the same 433mhz frequency as the weather station if it were wireless. God knows if Lacrosse was smart enough to disable wireless reception if it detects a hardwire connection. =/

Yesterday, I hooked a webcam up to the system, and it’s now uploading a picture to wunderground, as well as posting it to the weather page hosted here. 

The other geekout I’ve been having is energy usage. I’m a closet stats nerd. I’ve tracked every tank of gas my Prius has gotten, and I’ve been keeping track of my utility usage based on bills since we bought the house (I actually just got the utility company to get me all my usage from the appartments we lived in, so now I have 7 years of that too!). 

I’ve had a kill-a-watt for a while now, and while it’s great, it’s limited by what it can do (you have to plug something into it, it can’t monitor 220v loads, etc). Heck, I even bought a kill-a-watt for my step-father-in-law for christmas year before last since he thought it was so cool when I showed him. But, as I said, it’s limited. So, when I saw my new toy on thinkgeek, I immediately wanted one. It’s called a “TED” or “The Energy Detective”. It “hooks up” to your central power panel, and gives you whole house numbers, second by second. Turn on a lamp, you see the meter increase. Turn on the stove, or heat, you see that too. Woohoo! I can see how much everything in the house uses, as well as see how much I use a day, etc. You put in the power rates, and it’ll tell you how much you’re spending per hour, per day, estimate on your utility bill, etc. It’s awesome. This coming week I’m going to pay the ransom money needed to unlock the USB port so I can start actually logging the data. I have faith that google will support the TED with google powermeter, but, we’ll have to see. 

But, all of this has caused me to make some changes. Previously, I had my main TV set to “soft” standby. So, it powered up nearly instantly. It’s been like this for years. Little did I know it uses about 40W in this state. DOH! So, I put it into “hard” off, and it uses 1W or less. I also have paired down my always on computers. I now have one server, which used to be a dual G4 800mhz quicksilver. It’s now a 15″ G4 Powerbook. ’bout 80-100W savings. Then, geeking out, I bought a brand new 2009 Airport Extreme to replace my old UFO extreme. 802.11n is sweet… about 6x as fast as my old 802.11g connection. I since buying that have replaced my 8 port gig-e switch, router, and former base station with JUST the airport extreme. Since it’s got 3 gig-e LAN ports, and acts as a router and base station… bingo! So, theres another 20-30W of power saved (the former router was a soekris, and switch was a linksys SD2008). Both energy efficient, but total less so than 1 device. 

Anyone need a decent linksys 8 port gig-e switch, or an old Airport Extreme? 

So, more later… 

Links of interest: 
My Wunderground page: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KORSPRIN10
My CWOP page: http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/wxpage.cgi?call=cw9669
TED on thinkgeek: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/b772/
TED website (it’s pretty bad): http://www.theenergydetective.com/
Google Powermeter: http://www.google.org/powermeter/

Once I have the data available, I’ll post a link to show my power usage at home, etc.

Filed Under: Energy Tagged With: KWH, LWC, TED, weather station

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