I took some time to work on the house 1-wire network today.. and blew up the serial to 1-wire interface in the process. I think there is a voltage difference between house ground (water pipes) and 1-wire ground and I touched a metal part of the 1-wire counter I was going to use for the electricity counting to a water pipe hiding behind another pipe when I was trying to test whether it responded to the led in the electricity meter. So, still no success on measuring electricity and no new house temperature readings either. I did put in an extension of the 1-wire network from the attic to the cupboard beneath the stairs where the electricity meter lives. I used the 'isdn' sockets on the end of the long 1-wire connection so as a side-effect I moved one temperature sensor from the top of the server to the 'wine rack' area and updated the sensors page. It is a different location temperature-wise so I started new statistics for this sensor. I also looked at options for placing a temperature sensor in the living room. The cable to the thermostat is thoroughly cemented in so I can't place a wire alongside that cable. I'll probably use the hole for an extra television-coax cable to get a wire for a temperature sensor from the crawlspace to the living room. I already ordered a replacement serial 1-wire interface. I hope that is the only component that was damaged.
2008-07-28 (#)
I decided to start monitoring the electricity usage in the house. Using 1-wire sounds the most logical to me as I am already using that to monitor temperatures. I found a description by Jon00 using a MK120 Velleman Kit which sounds quite compatible with my level of electronics knowledge and my budget. So I went to the local electronics shop, Radio Centrum and bought the Velleman MK120. I asked about a 1-wire counter but they don't sell 1-wire equipment (yet?). Well, a counter is something I can order from Hobby boards. Probably together with some other 1-wire stuff to make it an interesting order.
2008-01-07 (#)
Yesterday I found some time to install the new 1-wire sensors in a place where I am interested in the temperatures: the attic where the home server gosper lives and started fetching data into rrdtool databases. The assorted sensors at home page now shows some of the available temperatures. Sensor 2 lies in the open area right below the top of the roof.
2008-01-02 (#)
Happy new year! I used the christmas period to do an upgrade I have been planning for a while: change the mainboard of the home server gosper to a newer (better: less older) one. A few hours of screwing worked: it now is an AMD Athlon 1400. Everything works after a few bits of tweaking, including updated mainboard temperature sensors.
2007-12-22 (#)
At work we now graph several temperatures in the serverroom (results are not public). We joked (or not..) last Friday that we could add a lot of sensors inside and outside the serverroom (that is where my thinking about 1-wire systems came in again) and have someone research this micro-climate and correlate the micro-climate with the ntp statistics. We did see the influence of the cold wind from the east on the pll stats of several ntp servers.
2007-12-21 (#)
Some environment sensors at home are now public. Started with the environment sensors of the home server gosper which are the easiest. Other stuff will be added if and when certain monitoring projects go from being a wild idea to delivering real data. Ok, I did order some temperature sensors and a 1-wire controller from Hobby Boards 1-wire solutions.
2007-12-20 (#)
At work I "took over" a fourfold temperature sensor, Quozl's Temperature Sensor. It got me interested in the 1-wire system for sensors. Applications like Thermd and DigiTemp make it possible to log all kinds of environmental data easily. I'm seriously considering getting a simple 1-wire interface for the server at home so I can monitor several inside temperatures (the cheapest to monitor and the most interesting to me) by just stringing some cheap phone wires and hook up sensors. Yet another network, although this one would be simpler to maintain.
2007-12-03 (#)
Na wat aanpassingen aan de ups stats scripts komen er nu ook mooie jaaroverzichten uit: een jaar Eneco voltage en frequentie. Geen idee waar de universiteit electriciteit inkoopt maar in Utrecht is Eneco de netwerkbeheerder. In April is duidelijk te zien dat er toen aan de aansluiting wat veranderd is.
2007-09-25 (#)
About one and a half hour later, ntp.cs.uu.nl peaked at 1000.60 packets/second.
2007-09-25 (#)
I'm a timegeek, and part of that is making our timeserver at work perform great in the NTP Pool project. With the recently updated pool dns system, servers that have more upstream bandwidth get more clients. We have been ogling our ntp stats for ntp.cs.uu.nl a lot seeing how the client count is through the roof (the internal data structures of ntp can't count beyond 3500 clients without serious hacking) and traffic is rising seriously lately. Still waiting for the first time we get over 1000 packets/second ntp traffic. Our ntp server has no problem at all dealing with this.
2005-12-21 (#)
Minor updates to the Generating Alcatel Speedtouch graphs micro-howto. Some day I should redo it in docbook, just like newer howtos.
2003-03-10 (#)
I bundled the scripts I use to collect ntp stats in mrtg so other people can enjoy them too.