LISTENING TO P25 RADIOS WITH A RASPBERRY PI AND TRUNK RECORDER
A few months back, I set up an ADS-B plane tracker to watch airplanes that were in the area. So far that has seen a few really neat things, including aerobatic competitions and a few emergency landings. In my quest to be even nosier, I wanted to also listen in on the local P25 radio system, and used the hardware design from before to accomplish this. The software, though, is a bit more complicated.
Read moreA SIMPLE WAY TO ORGANIZE STACKS OF CABLES
If you’re like me you have a problem with keeping nearly every cable you come across. From patch cables that ship with new devices, to old phone chargers that still work and have a micro USB slot, to your stash of new USB-C cables, you’ve accumulated several boxes worth. Once your collection passes a dozen or so cables, you’ll inevitably run into a few issues: namely that the cables will always be a tangled mess and finding what you need will be nearly impossible.
Read moreFIXING INFINITE SHUTDOWNS IN NUT
I recently figured out a solution to a problem I’ve long been battling. When rebooting a server after it’s forced to shutdown to losing power and the UPS battery running low, it’d enter a cycle of starting, starting the NUT service, then immediately shutting down. Symptoms There were a few clues that you may see on your environment as well: The issue manifested as nodes powering off as soon as they start after a power outage.
Read moreMAKING AN ADS-B AIRPLANE TRACKER
This is the first hardware based project I’ve shared, but this is how I built my ADS-B Tracker. What’s ADS-B and Why Track It Most (not all) airplanes are required to broadcast their position as they fly around. This is intended for ATC and other planes primarily, and is another data point in a complex system used to keep these things from running into each other. These signals can be received on the ground, though, and are what power a number of different flight tracking sites to let you track specific planes, activity around an airport, neat or interesting aircraft you might want to go spot, etc.
Read moreRAMBLINGS ON SHITTY CONSUMER INTERNET
This is a post that’s largely going to be me complaining about shitty cable internet that I’ve lived with since its inception. Making the change myself, and now seeing others complain in forums has really soured me to most of the connectivity options out there. I won’t name the specific company, but a lot of this complaining will be focused around my experience with them and the myriad of issues I faced, both technical and non-technical.
Read moreOPNSENSE MONITORING WITH ZABBIX
One thing that is a key asset in any environment is reliable, thorough monitoring. Once as you add more redundant layers to your infrastructure, automated monitoring is frequently the only way to tell if something has failed, short of manual checking. When setting up monitoring for my OPNSense routers, though, I wasn’t super thrilled with the default options. There’s an SNMP template available in Zabbix, but SNMP set up on OPNSense didn’t seem straightforward, and I especially didn’t want to risk exposing this data to untrusted networks my router may sit on.
Read moreUSING UNIFI PROTECT ACROSS VLANS AND VPNS
After Ubiquiti’s recent security faux pas, I started to question the best way to access my Unifi Protect cameras. By default, the Unifi Protect uses your Ubiquti account to log in, and disabling remote access breaks this. This can be bypassed with a little work, and if you’re using OPNSense, it’s pretty easy. Motivation I won’t comment on the recent security issues Ubiquiti had with their Unifi services, which includes the protect line of gear.
Read moreCLEANING UP FIREWALL RULES
One project I recently invented for myself is cleaning up my jumbled mess of firewall rules. The issue is that as time has gone on, I’ve created more VLANS, which has led to more rules that I’ve never really formally organized. It finally reached a tipping point, and after some experimentation, I found a new system that improves my security and makes things much more simple. My Problem The main issue here is that I have a lot of VLANs in my network.
Read morePREPARING FOR YOU HOMELAB'S DEMISE
Trigger Warning: This post talks generally about human mortality and loss of your home. One ting I’ve recently started considering is how my Homelab can survive if I’m not around. At first, everything in the lab was pretty low value so losing things wasn’t a huge deal. Recently though, I’ve started archiving family photos and other important things that need to survive after me. I’ll outline the considerations and situations I took into account, then I’ll share some of the tools I used to plan.
Read moreUSING HTTPS IN YOUR HOMELAB, AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
When you have a homelab, you’re going to start having a number of internal websites and services you use. You’ll learn to live with HTTPS warnings when navigating to these sites, but these warnings can still be a problem. What if we wanted to have valid HTTPS everywhere? HTTPS Primer HTTPS encrypts your traffic so things that intercept it (routers, attackers, etc) can’t decode it, and it does this even with an invalid or self-signed certificate.
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