Category Archives: #Layer8

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My Saturday Afternoon project

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Yesterday I took on a task that was in the wing for months.  I moved my storage shed from the main lawn of my apartment to the septic tank concrete slab.  All this in in 6 hours !

Before

{ IMAG0377IMAG0378

 

After

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Quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

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Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three “laws” of prediction:

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

Techlab power usage to Facebook

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This project was thought up as way to keep an eye of my power usage and let the world know when I am working.

The system uses the following

Setup

  1. Connect Wattsup Pro to whatever equpment you want to monitor
  2. Connect the supplied USB cable to your PC
  3. Setup new account
    1. Gmail
    2. Posterous
      • Configure account with new Gmail account
      • Configure Autopost feature to update Profile
        • Facebook
        • Twitter
        • Etc.
  4. Install Wattsup Linux Utility
  5. Write Perl/Shell Scripts to do the following
    1. Poll Wattsup via the USB Port to test
    2. Email results to post@posterous.com
  6. Configure Crontab Job to run scripts every day at noon

 

Scripts

:::::::::::::: historylog.sh ::::::::::::::

#!/bin/sh cat
‘/home/vitech/logs/currentusage.txt’ >> /home/vitech/logs/usage.txt

 

:::::::::::::: watts2fb.sh ::::::::::::::

#!/bin/sh

/home/vitech/scripts/watts2fb.pl > /home/vitech/logs/snapshottusage.txt

/home/vitech/scripts/smtp-cli –verbose –from=XXX@gmail.com –to post@XX.posterous.com –data /home/vitech/logs/snapshottusage.txt

 

:::::::::::::: wattslog.sh ::::::::::::::

#!/bin/sh date > /home/vitech/logs/currentusage.txt

/usr/local/bin/wattsup -c 1 ttyUSB0 watts >> /home/vitech/logs/currentusage.txt /home/vitech/scripts/historylog.sh

 

:::::::::::::: watts2fb.pl ::::::::::::::

#!/usr/bin/perl

open FILE, “/home/vitech/logs/currentusage.txt” or die $!;

$i=0;

while ()

{ @line = split (/ /,$_); chomp $line[5];

if ( $i == 0 )

{

$tstamp=$line[1]. ‘ ‘ . $line[2] . ‘ ‘. $line[5]. ‘ ‘ . $line[3] ;

}

if ( $i == 1 )

{

$watts = $line[0];

}

$i++;

}

$send = $tstamp . ‘ ‘ . $watts;

print “Subject : Watts used $wattsn”;

print “@line watts”;

 

 

My resources

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Here is where I list my tools of the trade :

 

 

  • Hardware
    • Lenovo S10 Netbook
    • Mobile Phones
      • AT&T Backflip Android
      • Verizon Droid
      • Sprint Palm with Windows Mobile 6.1
    • Moleskin Notbooks
  • Software
    • Windows 
      • XP Professional
      • 7  Professional
      • 2003 Server
    • Linux 
      • CENTOS 5.4
      • SuSE
    • FreeBSD
    • Evernote
    • Firefox Browser
    • Synegy
    • Microsoft Office 2003/2007
    • Angry IP Scan
    • RealVNC
    • PuTTY/WinSCP
  • Services
    • Google Apps

 

As always more to come.