2006/01/28 Hard drives here raid shared two 300G to give me some peace on mind about not loosing my files FTP server on line PW and USER ID required. Power consumption now 35W.  If you wish to explore try emailing me I may be feeling generous.

2006/01/30

2006/02/15 Web Cam up and running.

2006/02/18 More interesting stuff to read

2006/02/25 As Basil Fawlty's Spanish waiter would say Keh?

2008/02/07 Moved this lot from my own server to here. All but the CGI's that talk to my solar power control stuff. The whole deal (unlimited everything) inc DNS just over a tenner for two years.

The Motor controller is finished and tracking the sun (must update the web page) reworking the Solar panel power conditioner my I wish I had not started that one. I have also started the larger CHP project this has started with the purchase of an old mini engine that I am experimenting building my own ECU. There are some pictures on here somewhere.

2008/11/08 Server working now for a week with one 300GB HDD is not enough space really, but I will buy a bigger HDD when the 1TB prices come down. I have already bought a very neat IDE->SATA (bi directional) adaptor for about £4 from dealexstream. Power consumption is down Dramatically to 20W with new PSU and 1 HDD. But 300GB not enough space when prices fall a bit I will get a 1TB drive and that should do for a while... There were some unexpected problems moving the data from one drive to one another. I have a very useful util. by Maxdor that copies the whole drive boot sector the lot so you do not have to reinstall and rebuild the system disk just copy it. BUT it seems MySQL is not at all happy when you do this. The user name passwords must be hashed in some way that is affected by the move because none of them worked after the move not even the root login. I had to uninstall it delete all the files (but not the databases) and reinstall it. the recreate the users with the same passwords before UT-BBS etc would work...

2008/12/31 Not done a lot more in the workshop only fitted the timber for dry lining 2 of the three walls and put in the insulation. The Ceiling still not sealed and plasterboarded, don't like the cold brrrr. However on a warmer note the living room log stove was in and working for Christmas which was nice and in fact it is burning away behind me as I type. I lit it as I was feeling a tad nesh due to the fact I have just got over a 4 day bout of man flu. See if you can spot the day it was installed on the indoor temperature graph. And I guess there is the small matter that one lady driver drove into the side of my prize 1994 Toyota Corolla estate with only 146,000 miles on the clock (and STILL going strong) that I have had since it was 3 years old and converted it to scrap metal. I was gutted. I have been unable to make up my mind what I fancy next (may be a Mitsubishi shogun) the sawn off shogun (three door) but who knows but for the time being I have a 1993 Ford mondeo (89,000 miles) for a mere £250. MOT 6 month Tax 2 - bargain. AND this car has electric windows and an interior light that works. Thanks Graham, he found it on ebay and it was local.

2010/06/21 Drive shafts are here, excellent service from the supplier. Wheel bearings (complete struts) taken to local garage to be done they have the tools and I don't... that lot was £200 in all.

2010/07/11 Last night, with some help from a friend via skype I finally spent some time reading the system log and analysing the com's timeout problems that have plagued the system for months. We spotted a few thing that gave pointers and as I woke early (05:00) this morning I went out with me trusty scope, a USB to 485 adaptor and laptop to watch what happens in real time for a while. On the scope I noticed the computer would send it's next poll request packet, quickly after receipt of a good response. Sometimes very quick and there would be no response to that quick packet. I have now introduced a delay between receipt of a good packet and tx of next request and I have not seen a time out for a while now. Looks like the PIC chips can now keep up. Further investigation and careful scope watching shows in fact the problem to be in the pic chip s/w. It releases the buss too soon i.e. before the tx has reached the idle state. So if another packet starts quickly after it the Rx end gets confused. More work needed...

2010-08-09 Yesterday I scraped everything i had written for the EEP saves using interrupts and went back to an old idea. I.e.dump the EEPAddrs and Data to a HnT buffer and check in main program loop if data to go then start it leaving interrupts to do the rest. I originally rejected it as it used two bytes of buffer for EVERY byte of data to be written. But it is simple lays the data down in the correct order and is now running. I think it may need a little tweaking (disable interrupts during load of data then enable again to prevent data loss) but does seem to work ok.

2010-12-21 Well I found out why the server was locking up Haupage do produce some really SHITE S/W so I have uninstalled the USB TV recorder and things are a lot better. It turns out Get-iPlayer is not much better but that is free and I don't have to leave it running so I am not gonna whinge about that. I still think however I will still go back to XP service pack 2 When I get the chance. I never had any shit with that... it is on the cards to go LINUX on the server but that means a complete re-write of my server S/W complete with a web interface. I will need a long time to get that going before I switch

2010-12-22 I was supposed to be alone for a few days this week (I'm Off till after Crimbly) and I was going to switch everything off. No Power No gas. No I'm not a masochist. I wanted to see how the batteries, log stove etc all held up under poor conditions when i could just switch it all back on if I not like it. Much better than finding out when your stuffed and can do sod all about it. As there is 4inches of snow out side and driving conditions are not good. Em has come to stay a while (easier to get to work) and Rob has been snowed off for his job erecting seats in the smoke. So I have NOT been alone so I have not been able to kill the power. The batteries will never survive the kids TV's Lights play stations etc etc for longer that 2 days. So I have just turned the heating down to 10C (it's not come on for two days the log stove has kept it warm enough)

2011-01-05 29 years today since i went to work for BT... As mentioned above the C/H has been turned down to 10C. I am now back at work after Crimbly and so the log fire has not been lit for 3days. There is no-one else home Rob is off working and Em is back in her flat now the snow has gone. So I have let the temperature settle at 10C. Today will be the first stable day and should give me a good indication as to how much gas will be used to maintain that temperature. 'tis Bloody chilly getting out of the bath take it from me...

2011-01-18 Not replaced the FET/commutation diodes yet but i have up graded the s/w on all units to 38400B and deployed the finished Generic controller as an energy monitor. It work fine had a little fine tuning of the s/w to do to get the counter multiplier and offsets correct under the guise of energy monitor vice G/C but all good now. The meter reader chap will be amazed how tidy the meter box now looks LOL. I will probably do the FET/DIODES replacement tomorrow after I check data is being recorded correctly.

2011-03-05 I have had a look at the micro switch Limit arrangement on the PV Az drive. Everything checks out ok electrically. The only thing I can see wrong is the chain drive is a tad loose and i guess this has allowed the pin to miss/jump over the micro switch. It does not look like it could, but I guess must have. So when I have some spare time I will install a Hardware Limit, tighten the chain up and test it all again...

2011-06-05 I believe I have discovered the main reason for the Az trips there is definitely an error in the software that means if the motor drives past the target it does not realise it has to go stop and go back the other way. Chuffing thought I'd done that but must have been drinking or something. This combined with a stop tolerance of +/-2 pulses is the main reason it trips. I have temporarily widened the tolerance and will have to re-write that section of code.

Since the last entry 2011-03-24 I have started replacing the fascia and guttering on the workshop and sheds along with repainting the exterior wood work. I have completed about half of it so far. Whilst doing that I had to replace one of the roof support that had gone rotten. I replaced it with a steel support and bolted timber to the steel to provide something to screw the doors to. This new guttering dumps it's water to a 2200Ltr collection system that has a pumped output to the garden watering taps. This switches the pump on when water is called for this is all plumbed in and working. The collection system fill level is monitored by the Computer System and is available on the web.

I have also started extending the canopy by 1.2m in length. this was started by repairing and raising a wall. what with rotovating and planting the Veg. garden weeding and hedge cutting I have been rather busy and it does not look like letting up for a while. A high tide period in the sea of shit to do...

2011-06-30 It is certain that the main reason for the tripping was the small stop window and the s/w in the tracking unit not checking the direction. There are however other minor issues that require looking into as well.

I have after a few month of development finally got a tipping bucket rain gauge built that actually works quite well. It is now operational and the results are available on the web. I must have made at least 4 different versions trying to get the damn thing to behave the way it should and be reliable. The spec is 3ml per tip with a 200mm diameter funnel. Giving about 0.1mm rain sensitivity

The sheds fascia and guttering is now all replaced and connected properly to the water collection system whose IBC's are now mostly painted black to exclude the light and prevent the growth of algae and turning the water green. I am try to empty the system so i can Paint the backs of the IBC's So this system is pretty much complete and working. At least for the moment, I am considering connecting the downstairs toilet to it. to help use the water collected the garden simply does not require enough of it so far this year anyway. The weather is set to improve so this may change.

If your interested I water the Veg. garden automatically every 2 days 150L over and area 6m x 5m 30m^2 that is about 5mm Rain (equivalent) every two days. This happens even if it is raining at the time.

2011-07-17 It looks like my two weeks off is going to be one week off as I have cover. The world at work is not what it was and frankly has not been for a very long time. Three of the older chaps (out of fifteen working shift) have decided "early release scheme" or not (and in these cases NOT) they have had a tit full and they're off . They have handed their notice in and are retiring before our employer completely fucks up the pension. Those in charge are frantically trying to recruited. But, not that many are interested. I wonder why. This of course was seen coming and no preparation was done. To be fair as with ALL big companies the local management have absolutely NO power whatsoever and those that have the power don't care... Why employ a manager and not allow him to manage... Ok OK I'll get off my soap box... I'm only jealous that I cannot afford to leave yet...

Any way back to my week off I am hoping (Wx permitting) to complete the canopy extension. After that I have a shed load of wood to log for next winter. I have (I am now fairly sure) stopped the Az drive tripping so I may actually be able to get back to my engine and do some more there.

2011-12-31 I thought it best to do an equalisation charge on the batteries as I had not done one for at least 12 months and I did not want any of them collapsing. Things you wish you had not done. The system is a tad upset now. It basically relies on the AH reading and voltage of the batteries to judge how charged it is. The equalisation pushed the AH reading higher than normal. Fictitiously high so waiting for the AH figure to fall to a point where the batteries would require topping up off the mains has taken them much lower in Ah than normal. They have sat around 23.5 Volts for the last week. The system is not sorting it self out so Today I have intervened and dropped the AH reading by 150AH to 1450. in the hope they will come back up. With hindsight I should have done this after the equalisation charge. It could be of course one of the cells has collapsed and is dragging the others down. I am hoping this is not the case.

2012-01-02 The PV Tracking system has not moved for the last couple of days I left it a while incase it was an end of the year issue with software but no change this morning. But when I went to find out it seems that last light at midnight the com's stopped and I had to shut everything down and start it again. This lost  any data  that  may have told WTF had gone wrong before ARSE.

2012-04-08 Got the Irrigation System S/W working the way it should. It still needs to be checked that I can adjust all the variables. I also wrote the web display stuff the web page and the CGI stuff. I have left it running to see if it does what i think it should. The solenoid valve is not here yet so it is not actually putting any water anywhere.

2012-04-14 The Solenoid Valve arrived today so I fitted it and checked there was no leaks and that it worked. It did and it has been left operational set to a 10mm required rain fall over 7 days. The current last 7 days adds up to 23mm including the 2.7mm irrigation test I did today. The garden looks soaked. I have left the system set to irrigate for 5 mins (about 50Lt) if the tanks fill this stops the overflow water going down the drain and wasting.

2012-05-08 I wrote the s/w to dump the water on the garden when the tanks full, it worked fine. Alas it not such a good idea under current conditions as the garden was drenched by the equivalent of 2 inches of rain in 6 hrs oops not good. Then solenoid Valve died instead of taking 100mA it now takes 900mA so the volt drop stops it working. It has to go back as faulty. To China I am NOT happy That'll teach me to buy cheap. Well maybe not...

2012-05-10 Still on nights. I am making some small headway to some kind of an operating system for the engine. Similar to what is in the rest of the units but for this new chip. Coms are up and running ADC are sampling and averaging and EEPROM background saves are close. I have started defining the Crank timing state machine and will hopefully start coding that soon.

2012-06-12 0518 At work first night after two weeks off. Went to Porthcawl in a caravan weather was rough to say the least but it was fun never the less. Huge waves over the harbour wall spray and foam everywhere but no noticeable damage. So was good to see. There was even a firework display it was almost like being a kid again LOL.

2012-06-22 It seems my boiler is playing up it sometime fails to light when the shower is turned on. It is probably the pressure differential i/p to o/p not high enough. I will have to investigate as I know sod all about this boiler.

2012-12-03 It's the end of my two weeks off. I am pleased to say the central heating has not yet gone on, however the log stove gad had a fair bit of use. I decided a while back I'd try not to use the c/h this year and see how I get on would be interesting to know what it would be like. so far it has but just as cosy. I am using a bit more wood and if someone stays then the fan heater is used to warm their room upstairs so a little more electric but no where near the gas is being used that would have been...

2013-02-24 Well, I have not been on here for a while then. The rat has gone the poison worked never did smell him though must have died in the wall cavity. We did have one at work that could not be found though he was decidedly unpleasant for about 2-3 weeks while he went through the JUICY stage of decomposition. Well I assume it was a rat, could of been as a result of the staff cuts.

2013-04-14 I have spent most of my week off sodding about doing stuff off other peoples shit to do list. I'm not bitter honest. Any way my second week off is going to be just as productive as I have to work. I have 5 12hr days of cover. The OT will be good the attending will not.. Any way I have collected a few more logs for the stove done a few more graphs. some yearly ones. The one totally astounding thing I have discovered is that the gas energy use in 2010 was 9.5MW/h The kids where home and I basically set the thermostat to 18C and walked away for the winter. I lit the fire in the living room to warm it up a bit when sat watching TV and that was that. The begriming of 2011 was much the same. By the end of 2011 the kids had gone and I changed my approach. I set the thermostat lower between 10C and 16C used the fire more often. the gas use reduced and by end of 2011 I had used about 4MWh. I did not pay a lot of attention again at the begriming of 2012 till I realised I was still using gas to HEAT in APRIL. I have now got even squeakier. I have turned the Central heating down to 5C and it stays there unless I have visitors (some stayed over Xmas 2012-2013) or I if have not lit the fire for days as I have been at work and the place has got below 8C the rest of the time I light the fire. I use a fan heater to heat the bath room when I have a shower 10C when yet wet is chuffin' chilly. I cannot be sure yet as a year has not passed but I predict a small extra saving in gas use maybe 500kWh have to wait and see. I guess i should add that the wood for the fire comes from the farm and costs me the time, effort, transport and maintenance of tools etc. I have a mate that buys his from a chap at £140 for a load and that is about 2m^3. I think that is about the going rate if not a good price. Either way I at least have the satisfaction of knowing one of my major energy sources has mostly transferred from Long Term Carbon Cycle to Short Term.

The spuds are just coming up and the onions and shallots are coming too. The cabbage is about an inch high but the parsnips and not showing much yet. I have purchased a new Motorised valve to control the irrigation of the spuds. The solenoid I bought last year was a complete and utter failure. This valve seems much better but time will tell. I do not need to irrigate the spuds for a month or so yet.

Wendy and I have been away in Scotland and had a good time staying with a friend of ours. Spent far too much money in the Glenmorangie distillery, good tour though.

• PV Power 2013-06-19
• PV Power 2013-06-20
• PV Power 2013-06-21
• PV Power 2013-06-22
• Battery Current 2013-06-19
• Battery Current 2013-06-20
• Battery Current 2013-06-21
• Battery Current 2013-06-22
• Mains Use 2013-06-19
• Mains Use 2013-06-20
• Mains Use 2013-06-21
• Mains Use 2013-06-22

2013-09-20 I have been constructing the sliding doors across the end of the Pergola roof. the first one is nearly done. I need to get more unistrut to construct the next but it is going according to plan so far. I am going to use the area as a sort of green house in the spring to bring on my seeds etc. It will be no use in the summer as the Grapes canopy will stop all the light.

2014-04-06 0704Z I have not been here for a while. I have not been back to the engine s/w Christmass and the list of STD (Shit To Do) has been more of a priority. The cooker oven ignitor packed up 12months ago and we have been using a blow torch to light the oven LOL so I finaly decided to buy a new cooker. I always wanted a range cooker and Wendy also loves to cook, so what the hell we bought one. That of course ment the kitchen had to be changed. I'm not ready to do a new kitchen just yet not got the dosh or the inclination. So a little reconfiguration of the existing one to make it fit was called for. When you start to move stuff in a kitchen you realise just how dirty the place really is. So I cleaned and repainted before fitting the new cooker, splashback and hood.

So the kitchen looked good again but the back hall was fairly shabby too so I had to do that next. Then the tumble drier packed in. This is in the downstairs loo stacked above the washing machine. The door is narrow and has to be removed to get the old one out and new one in so I repainted that as it was a horrid yellow colour. Just Robs old room and Ours to do now.

On the project front the new growing season is upon us so I have fitted a generic-controller in the Greenhouse this monitors and records temperature and humidity in there as well as controls the temperature of my propagator. There is also a professional rain gauge on it as of yesterday and there will be external air and soil temperature monitors too when i get round to it.

I have removed the plumb tree from the extended part veg patch and rotovated it all, though it still needs a little work before planting spuds onions etc. The weather has decided to test the new rain gauge and I am at work so I won't be planting for a while. I do have broad beans coming and my leeks, chillies, peppers and tomatoes are all coming on too. Even the runner beans are planted some of them out and some in the propagator. All in all a reasonably productive two weeks off and start to the year.

2014-04-08-0503Z Because Greenhouses get really hot in the summer and I have already seen over 30C, I have decided I need to open the door(s) if the temperature rises to high. Automatically would be nice. So I am giving that a go. I have mounted a motor That will drive some M12 Studding to enable the system to open at a preselected Temperature. If it comes together and behaves I will put details in the projects section.

Incidentally it got cool last night and the heating came on in the propagator You can see it level off at 10C at about 20:00Z.

2014-04-19-0318Z I booked an extra day off this week. The weather was going to be good so I decided to make the effort to get stuff planted. On Wednesday I got 7 rows of spuds, 2 rows parsnips, 1 row beetroot, 1 row cabbage, 2 rows cauliflower and 1 row Broccoli planted. We also went out and bought a shed load of potting compost and Wendy transplanted the tomatoes chillies and peppers to larger pots. Then I cut the grass. On the thursday I planted 24 shallots and and 100 onions. This leaves just the leeks to plant out when they are big enough.

On the 10th I increased the size of the heater in the propagator to 120W vice 60W as it was struggling to cope when the outside temperature was getting below 3C. It's quite cool tonight about 2C now and seems ok now.

The door opening motor its drive screw and connection to ther door is fitted and tested but it still needs the permenant wiring and micro switches at either end of the travel to stop it when opened and closed.

I am putting MDPE pipe in to deliver the irrigation water to my spuds with a stand pipe tap in two places. It'll be a lot tidier and the water pressure will drop a lot less as it's 25mm pipe vice the garden hose that it was the last few years. It will still be controlled by the system using a motorised Valve and use rain water. I ordered the stuff on Thursday expecting it to arrive Friday (Yesterday). Friday was of course Good Friday a sodding Bank Holiday. So I got nothing much done Yesterday. Arse...

The rain water is down to 700L and we are back to mains water to flush the loo it is supposed to rain Sunday (tomorrow) around 1800 and again on Tuesday I will be glad to see it. But the weather will be it's usual generally unreliable self I expect.

2014-04-27-0646Z On the Wednesday before I started my 4 12hr days (It's Sunday today) I bought 4 sleepers to edge my veg garden (£81.60). Two and three quarters of them are in place along the edge of the path and protecting the Irrigation supply pipe. The remaining quarter is going to protect the corner where the one standpipe is and the fourth sleeper is as yet undecided. I will probably need more.

It has rained fairly well the last week about 32mm the tanks are full and we are flushing the loo on rain water again the system was offline about 5 days. The Mains water use graph does not really show the increase well but the system cam back on line on the 24th and it shown a marked drop in use then.

2014-04-30-0406Z I have spent the last two days clearing crap from my yard. Two trips to the dump with rubble and old chipboard etc from the kitchen. One load of scrap metal to the scrappy £15.20. One small car way beyond economical repair to the scrappy too (£98), One load of old computer stuff to be recycled properly (£0.0) and one load of wood fetched ready to be logged.

I have also sprayed a small patch of particularly invasive weed (no you can't smoke it) on the farm it's about 5x5m I noticed it early this year and by the looks it has been there a while. I read that the seeds produced in late summer are rarely fertile and usually spreads by vegitative means. The rhizomes can survive for years even if the the plant is sprayed regularly. I burnt it all earlyer in the year to clear the patch to allow access but as expected it is coming back (1-2m Tall) It's not doing any harm as is but it WILL be dead when I'm done, but it will be interesting to see how it's destruction proceeds.

2014-05-05-1827Z Wendy is off on holiday with her sister and friends for a week so I am getting on with the S*** To Do I have stripped out the Lader in the kitchen and am going to paint and re-shelve it it have not been done since the house was built in 1950 and desperatly needs doing.

I have been given a Stihl 018 chainsaw that runs but does not oil I have it in bits trying to fix it. Good old Youtube... Lets hope I can and it still runs. I have even found the workshop manual,

2014-05-07-2013Z So the chainsaw is back together all oil ways clear. It runs fine but only a tiny bit of lube oil flows. New pump on order...

As for the larder all the shelves are stripped out and the holes filled just a little sanding washing and then finally painting. With luck the new shelves too before the bosses return LOL...

2014-05-15 0455Z On nights not much going on as a result. I have ordered and planted new runner bean seed as the ones I have planted have not germinated and are rotten in the pot/soil. New pump arrived was not much better in fact did not turn easily sent it back chap not happy and not had either refund or new one. I will have to chase him today.

The larder shelf supports have arrived I hope to get that started this afternoon after I have slept.

In some spare time I have added some web control stuff to the one of the control pages So I can change set points and switch on and off the Greenhouse Door and the propagator control.

Retirement is still on my mind the door opens in October (Pension reaches critical mass) and I wonder every day just WTF I am still doing here, other than taking the money that is.

2015-05-20 First new pump did not rotate well sent it back second works a treat. As my dad owned the chain saw I used before he kind of inherited the safety hat fuel can and stuff I bought, so I have bought some more. Hat £45 local supplier £12 ebay. Guess were I got mine new one from.

As well as the runner beans failing the cucumber, beetroot, parsnips and broccoli did too. That'll teach me to be tight and use old seed. I have bought new seed and replanted. The spuds, cauliflower, shallots, and onions are all doing very well though.

2014-05-24 0315Z After a bit of a re-design to add more the larder shelving is all done (TFFT I've had a right tit full of DIY this year. I don't mind a bit of woodwork but I Fricking hate painting). There is a shed load more room and even if I say so my self it does look the part. Just got to do more shopping to fill the shelves. Wendy likes it (the shelving) and things have been re-arranged so the stuff she uses regularly is where she can reach it. (she's only short I'll probably get a slap for that one if she reads this LOL)

Runner beans are up in the pots but the outdoor seed has not yet come, as it has heaved down with rain the last two days they should not be long. I have turned off the propagator as the tomatoes, chilies and peppers are all quite strong now. Some have germinated grown and just died at about 50mm tall not sure WTF is going on there, though wendy says I over water. She's probably right I am a bit heavy handed with the water.

I have got interested in amateur radio again Jeese I thought I'd had the cure guess it's like being an alcoholic your never cured just abstaining. Any way my attention was drawn to this page http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ I was completely blown away. It is the nicest and easiest way I have ever played with a radio. Anyway I have bought this Dongle, FuncubePro+ and downloaded some software, SDRSharp, to use at home. Its not quite as nice to use as the web one but still very good. However my chuffin netbook is just not up to the job. It needs a real processor not my Intel atom 1.6Ghz single core clockwork one. Ah well guess it's time I spent some more money and bought a real one. Best do it now while I'm still earning I may be retired soon...

2014-06-08-1647Z Well my week off is nearly over. It's not been a good week some tosser (me) left the truck unlocked on the drive and another tosser stole my satnav (BASTARDS) guess that'll teach me. They have changed the lane arrangements at the edgar street roundabout and some woman has driven into the side of me truck. She has however done the honourable thing and admitted liability so it won't affect my NCB.

This week I have taken all the timber (Willow) that I acquired last year and have split it and put it to dry and believe me it is very very wet. The stuff I have acquired this year is still out in the yard. I will have to cover it later in the year or it will be just as wet next year when I am hoping to use it. I do have quite a bit of ash cut down in late winter ready to cord and log. But my hip has been playing up and moving that kind of crap around is not going to help.

Because some toe rag now realises there are spoils on my property to have I have put sensors on various doors, gates etc to log entry/egress and I am getting security cameras. I have decided not to electrify the place YET, but a pulsed 100,000 Volts is not at all hard to produce and I do feel properly motivated. And I have a large compost heap to put the result of contact with it to good use.

The garden is less full of weeds than it was but everything is very wet still so not a lot done there this week. The green house has been tidied and plant moved to bigger pots and we spend a lot of time in there.

I may have mentioned that when I run the hot tap in the kitchen it takes about 4L of water before it STARTS to get warm I usually capture this and save it to a larger container before moving it to the rain water storage. I have now put a pump to do the moving I got fed up of carrying 25L of it around.

I have put new disks and Pads on the fester and Graham is welding a new sill on it so it will pass the MOT. It only has to do another year as I am convinced I want to retire in October.

2014-07-09-1717Z As from the 7th of this month BT are running a Paid leaver scheme 9 month pay to leave, thank you god Guess I have to make some decisions. This week however I have been reminded that I am not the only one who my money bails out of the shite. They have been reminded if I retire they are on their own I simply won't have it and can't do it. I have till the 4th of August to sign up and last leaving date is end Sept very close to when I want to go. I see no reason not to at this point.

2014-08-24-1100Z I finaly got round to putting the new Fridge freezer on the system monitor only to start with as I need to shut things down to move the relay box that control the on/off function to control it. After a couple of days monitoring it became obvious that the temperature variation in the freezer was way out side what I would have liked. So on the 22nd I decided to shut down, cut the relay box wires and move it to the current location of the fridge freezer.

I have bought an FTDX 3000 radio to play with got a very good price from a fellow amateur G0DLT. But under sad circumstances, he has recently lost his father to cancer.

The new year is here nearly halfway through the first month. It's showing little sign of improvment over last year which delivered crap by the truck load. Life got very busy towards the end mostly with other peoples "stuff" all of which was important so I have not had a lot of time for my own which I admit was less important. I did manage to get the firewood ready for winter something we'll be grateful for now.

I did build a Gieger Counter and connect it to the prototype weather monitor that is running on my system it displays the data on the Environmental page at the bottom under the Test section. The finished wx monitor has got no further. In fact from a hardware oint of view I am do a total reconcideration and that will mean a re-write of the software too.

The Pi Server I was writing the cpp and php code for, to do the data collection died and did it's best to loose everything. I was lucky I only lost the webpage graphical data display php code modications. I had had to modify the original code to make it work with the latest version of PHP MySQL JQuery and JPGraph. All of which have changed default settings and or depricated version of code I was using. I now have a R-Pi 3B and have loaded it with all the required Code and php pages and re-modified the code to make it work and backed it up. So I am about where I was last February. The cpp code for data collection I had backed up and lost none of that TFFT 'cos that took me ages to do. I have of course got a shedload more to do to finish it. I trying to move away from building my own hardware and use some of the miriad of available pre built hardware so I can reduce the workload and speed to operational. This will need me to research new hardware and then learning how the drive it. Always an interesting thing to do.

Guess I've not been here for a while. So what have I/We been up to?

Wendy and I decided to get married in February last year and the preparations are well under way for the 14th July this year (2018). Registry office and Party back here at home. Lets hope the weather is good. It's not been to special so far. I'll probaly put a page up with some photos on after the event. I haven't really done any kind of personal update since Susan died in 2005. Doesn't seems that long ago, But I know I'm very luck to have found someone else as special that'll put up with me. Wendy is away on her hen WEEK in Portugal perhaps this is why I have found time to do this shh don't tell her...

I have pretty much completed the server s/w re-Write. The data collection program now runs under Linux on a Raspberry Pi3 vice mini-ITX under windows Borland C++. The Web server is on an Synology DS416P NAS drive a very expensive and ineffectual piece of crap I deeply regret spending money on. Really can think of one thing it actually does well. OK the web server is OK. Though it did update and nothing worked for a week before I finally worked out for myself (Their Help desk is crap too) that while it works out of the box, none of the setting it uses to actually work are set in a fashion that it can remember them after it's first update. You then have to configure it over again. The Second Update it survived ok. It has a very nice Web interface to this unlike any other server i.e. the ones I'm used to. This is assuming you can find it, their help files are crap too. best place to look is the web. The MySQL server runs on the Pi as well. This is because if you're moving files or anything vaguely network intensive on the DS416P it's MySQL server ignores your requests to connect and you loose the data. (I have GBethernet) While I'm whinging the TV record feature works OK MOST of the time. BUT the Phone application often does not display a full days TV program listing for you to choose what to record. The security camera recording Application freezes and looses image in the play back files and this is after having to buy licences to use more than 2 fricken cameras and a memory upgrade from 1G to 8G.
So all in all IMHO it only has half an ARSE.

Because the weather has not been special the garden was planted late but it's all done now and the spuds are showing signs of coming. I glad I'm not an arrible farmer. Because the party is going to be here It'll HAVE to look tidy this year at least for they day LOL.

Oh Yes. Last year Wendy and I joined the Hereford Amateur Radio Society I was last a member when I was in my 20s and I had Joined when I was 12. In October 2017 Wendy decided to take her Amateur Radio Foundation Licence and PASSED. Then a month later took her Intermediate Licence and PASSED that too. So From Nothing to Intermediate in two months a very Good effort. Since then we have both been involved in the Amateur Radio Licence courses Run by H.A.R.S. and should continue to do so and taken part in a few contests. But as usual time is short so enthusiasm has to be tempered with necessity.

The preparation for the wedding and party are moving along slowly but surely. Outside preparations have been delay by the bad weather. I have finally replaced the sunken concrete on the drive and laid some Brick pavers where the bins are kept. Wendy has replaced the hanging basket and support hooks by the front door. So the front of the house is looking a lot tidier. I have ordered some Industrial bug zappers to keep the flies down. We still have to arrange glasses hire and check that the gazebos are all operational.

On the software front the new System Control web pages are nearly completed just a few to complete. There are still a few operational routines to write. For example the irrigation stuff is not yet written and so is the rain water level trips and alarms stuff. There is bound to be more too. But it is online and running ok doing the job well.

The scouts WiFi link went down and has had to be replaced. I have a temporary Access point up at the moment but as bits and time become available I will put a proper point to point link and separate Network Access point up.

Good god has it been a year since I looked in here. Well we're Married it went really well the party in the garden was amazing. Everyone said how relaxed and how good the food was. (It was good too) We left the canvascover over the yard for the rest of the summer and put the pool up in it. That was good too.

Since the I have pretty much finished re-writing the server s/w it now runs in a RPi3B and RPi3B+ as a redundant pair. Loging data to themselves and to the DS416 as the main MySQL server. Yes it still misses the occasion entry but less since I stopped it doing the security stuff it did such a really crap job I went back to the old software. There is a Linux version I will try it looks good. As well as finishing the control web pages I have also re-written all the RC+M web display pages and graphs. Centralising a lot of the config and attributes. Making changes etc much quicker. I have started using GIT a version control system and save to GIT-HUB when done here. It's a little bit of a drag at the start but now the most difficult thing is remembering my GIT-HUB password. This is in the hope that a Hardware failure will not trash all my work becaus Backups are old.

Did I mention I allowed a W10 update and a Dell update on my laptop. One after the other. When that job was finished I had lost nearly everything from the last 3 months include wedding photos and had to buy a new hard drive as well. I now run Linux mint. No more shit from W10. Dell can go shove too... In fairness I have dual boot W10 and Linux mint. Linux is used every days and W10 is allowed a day once a month to update usually takes a day.

There has been a problem with the Pi's they lock up after about a week or two. I did find a couple of memory leaks in My C++ MySQL software. Me not freeing up the result every time during iterative fetches. I can find no more. But it still locks up. I have resorted to a cron job that reboots each Pi at the same time twice a week. Then restarts tmux and the RC+M program. No more shit from that. Interstingly I have two KODI Pi's as well they lock up regulary too though the symptoms are different...

Amateur Radio has taken a back seat for the last 18 months or so not really had a lot of time to turn them on and play. I have taken up helping out the H.A.R.S. with their Amatuer Radio License Coarses. That only takes up a five or six of weekends a year. Wendy and I do spend quite some time looking after Parents and Grand Children.

The Garden is looking good. Lots of reasonable Wx early on, to allow planting and weeding looks every bit as good as it did for the wedding last year. Amazed and pleased. We're eating strawberies now (well Wendy is I can't stand 'em). The irrigation s/w is written and tested but as it's raining (9.75mm so far today) regularly, it's not needed.