Some more Loopcase action
Jul0
Some late night and weekend time (the new fan heater makes it possible) in the workshop has resulted in some more Loopcase experiments and prototypes. Winter fun.
The first is a set of three custom bags for Sisu Software in Wellington and their Dell 5500 laptops. These have custom printed panels with their logo, are padded and have a bicycle inner tube reinforced corners. They came out really well and now I just need to find some time to make one for me.
While sitting at the sewing machine I had an epiphany about a new design using the “Loop” for a wallet from seatbelts (have been trying to find new seatbelt uses for a while). The photo shows prototype #2, I think #4 or #5 will be useful and #6 or #7 perfect :-)
Merle and I have also been tapping away at the Loopcase site – it almost has enough stuff in it to warrant a new theme I think…or at the very least a tidy up.
The path of most resistance – home insulation with no building science
Jun0
I just met up with a fascinating French skier over in Wanaka for the season. Fred has been working in a building consultancy in Switzerland using some Swiss software to do building performance analysis. It is now mandatory in Switzerland to build to a minimum thermal performance and with the cost of energy high economically advantageous to go higher – they have a successful performance indicator called “Minergie” which offers benchmarking for thermal qualities as well as air and I think environmental impact of material used.
He showed me through the software he uses and it looks a little like the Australian Accurate. What is astonishing is the fact that people in, at least his part of, Europe are lapping up the idea of doing the science before proceeding on a costly build or refurbishment. Pretty much the opposite of my current experience in installing insulation in Wanaka through the Clean Heat and EECA schemes, people have a price point and beyond that their eyes glaze over. It isn’t that astonishing given his company expected to save people “at least 75% of their energy bill“. 75% !!
I have recently become conscious that in building and insulation details is everything, and that our perceived best practice in New Zealand lags that of Europe even further than I thought. Freds software has advanced wall and roof system modeling which includes structural timber/window frame thermal bridging which allows efficiency focused design I haven’t yet seen in any buildings around Otago.
Ideally as part of my work at Energyhouse we could offer a comprehensive model for people to base their insulation and heating investment on. To investigate this further we have commissioned Fred to do a study of the Wastebusters shed and office/staffroom to provide a benchmark from which to make future spend decisions. I have talked ad nauseam for ages about insulating the shed walls with recycled corrugated cardboard and the roof with NOVATherm – maybe now we’ll have a way to make a real, scientific, decision.
Asterisk / Trixbox digital PABX in real world use
May3
What this looks like is a old Toshiba laptop sitting on a shelf. Which is correct except right now it is handling up to a few hundred phone calls a day as a digital PABX running a Trixbox build of Asterisk+Linux software .
What does this mean? Well…Wanaka Wastebusters, where it is installed (please do not steal it :-), has one phone number people can ring in the normal phone like way. That phone number has been parked at a service provider and there enters the internet. Over the interweb thingy this laptop talks to the provider and can conduct up to five simultaneous calls. At Wanaka Wastebusters there are ten extensions that each have voice mail and are available through the IVR (a recorded message you get when you ring the number) – all of these features are running off the laptop. People can dial within each others extensions and transfer calls etc and generally be productive hopefully.
Nice – but why? Well it saves a few hundred dollars a month on line charges for extra phone lines with Telecom and means we can add users and features as we need them. We can also make use of cheaper calling rates and eventually peer directly hopefully with other businesses using SIP which is the glue like protocol making all the VOIP stuff happening. It is an acronym world.
Pretty cool use for an old computer huh. I’m not sure how long a laptop will last always on but it has been working for 5 weeks no problem and because it has a battery even has its own UPS built in. We might have a sweepstake on what gives up first – the power pack I’d say.
In case of failure or hacking I am building another one on a old IBM Pentium 4 which could be plugged in as a replacement. What I would really like though is a few Sheevaplugs, amazing 5w super computers. That is ’super’ as in awesome not as in a Cray – although they are probably faster than most Crays ever built… maybe one day …
Laptop bag prototype – 95% recycled content
May0
I haven’t had much time recently to do as much on Loopcase as I’d like but I did manage to get a prototype laptop case made fro Tommi last week. It is for a Sony 13.1 inch Z-Series (VPCZ116GGB).
I really like having a separate case for the laptop/mouse/power adapter to my pack or other bag. Having a laptop in with my soup pot or tape measure and pliers I seem to carry around doesn’t feel right. So this format – a padded sleeve with front pocket for the peripherals works really well. You can always throw it in another bag if needs be.
Bunk beds from recycled materials
May0
Finally finished this project a few weeks ago – bunk beds for my ‘god’ children (what a strange phrase) Manu and Moana. These are constructed from old rimu timber bed frames and fittings and have ski slats. Lots of fun :-)
Shoestring IT Cabinet Project
Apr0
Wastebusters, where I work two days a week, is a community owned organisation and I have been chipping away at replacing their consumer grade tree of 8 port network switches with something that matches the needs of a growing office with up to a dozen people working at once. Plus with our move to VOIP the network needed to handle the increased demand and reliability requirement.
Today I fitted out a nice steel electrical switching box that turned up in the yard a few months ago as an IT cabinet. It houses:
- 20 port Cisco network switch Bis got from the eDay last year
- 2 x Linksys VOIP ATA’s that will talk to the Trixbox PABX and currently talk to Kiwilink
- A Linksys NSLU2 with a 320gb drive connected for shared storage
- A Linksys DSL modem and switch
I outfitted the box with some quite sketchy looking aluminium brackets that carry any heat away from the switch and ATA’s and stand the whole lot off so air can vent around everything. There are openings top and bottom so a thermal chimney effect will hopefully keep everything cool on summer days. While it looks a bit rough I think it will perform well and offer some protection from the main thing that seems to go wrong around here which is cables falling out of devices when they are knocked by somebody.
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- A bunch of stuff from the recycling centre plus a drill
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- The cabinet kinda showing the aluminium fins
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- The cabinet with everything and the Trixbox PABX laptop the right
Photos by Simon
Trixbox, FreePBX and System Recordings using Audacity
Mar1
I am building an Asterisk box for Wastebusters using the excellent Trixbox CE mixup of Asterisk, FreePBX and LAMP. It is on a Toshiba laptop andas of yesterday I had everything working well except uploading system recordings and the outgoing SMTP for voice mail.
This morning I managed to solve the System Recording using a free opensource audio recorder toolbox Audacity. The steps to record a message for an IVR are below.
- Get the latest version of Audacity, I think it needs to be later than 1.3 (currently in Beta).
- First set the “Project Rate (hz)” at the bottom on the screen to 8000hz.
- Record a message (standard Audacity help files cover this including editing/clipping the message) you should have something like the below. Note at this point it is in Stereo and the wrong bit rate and sample format to use in Asterisk.
- First change the track to mono. Click on the “Audio Track” menu just to the left of the blue waveform and and go down to “Split Stereo to Mono”, this should create two tracks. You can delete one of them.
- Clicking on the “Audio Track” menu again scroll down to “Set Sample Format” and change it to “16-bit PCM”.
- Go to the main “File” menu in the top of the window and pull down to “Export”. Where it says “Save as Type” select “Wav (Microsoft)” it should say “signed 16 bit – PCM” after “Microsoft”. Click “Save”.
- An “Edit Meta Data” box should come up. Just click OK.
- A box called “Advanced Mixing Options” will come up and there should be one “Output Channel” if so click ok.
- Upload to Asterisk using “System Recordings” or directly and test.
I tried all the Wav compressions available in Audacity GSM, Ulaw and Alaw but none of them worked in Asterisk. Strange.
Updated: 16th June 2010 – new bitrate setting.
Wanaka house insulation off to a good start
Mar0
Energyhouse our Wanaka Wastebusters initiative to deliver house insulation in Central Otago is off to a good start with our first houses in Wanaka started last week. Simon, resident light/lense expert came out and waved about his expensive camera gear and got some great shots of our model pretending to be hard at work (actually he was beading with sweat). See them on his Flickr. These will be great on our flyer coming out soon.
Favorite windows software: ISO burning
Mar0
Having had sporadic use for an ISO burner over the years I have normally defaulted to ISO Recorder a nice wee application. This time however I had some rewritable CD’s which needed blanking before being record-able. ISO Recorder does not have this function so I trawled around looking for an alternative.
After trying the free version of Nero (couldn’t for the life of me find the ISO record function) I ended up with ISO Image burner which elegantly handled CD-RW’s not problem and I am now installing Trixbox for Wastebusters from CD on a Toshiba laptop we had lying around here.
Custom solar panel bags for Wanaka Search and Rescue
Mar0
The Wanaka Search and Rescue is an impressive organisation and is often called on for searches throughout the lower Southern Alps. A new part of their kit is solar powered radio repeaters they can setup to provide radio services in remote areas. The solar panels are valuable and required some protection so they asked Cactus what could be done.
Cactus being busy aligning itself under its new General Manager and my workshop all setup now for Loopcase I made the cases here. They are 1000d nylon 6 outers with YKK zips and padded sides.
Clients
