Interfacing EasyMeter Q3M via Info-Interface

Hauke3D printing

The installation of my fuel cell heating required a bi-directional power meter. Bonn Netz, my local power network provider, uses meters of type EasyMeter Q3M which have two infrared interfaces: A bidirectional D0 interface, and a read-only info interface. I use the info interface (INFO-DSS) to read out power consumption and production of the three phases. For this, I built an optical interface, a 3D printed housing for it, and use the UART of a Raspberry Pi with python to get the values.

Rigol DS1054Z Password Login Problem *Solved*

HaukeDocumentation

I use the Rigol DS1054Z as my benchtop oscilloscope now since a few years (the one in my title image), and I am rather happy with it. However, one thing never worked for me (but is of utterly low importance – it was just nagging me): You can access a (very) few scope functions via the web interface when opening http://[IP of the scope]. The network settings section is password protected, and according to e.g. this post on EEVblog the user “rigollan” with password “111111” should work. It never worked for me. Other posts claim that “test” or even “blah” […]

RFID Treasure Chest for LARP

HaukeDIY

I built a treasure chest which opens if a riddle is solved. To prove that the riddle is solved, the players need to put the correct three RFID/NFC tokens (out of several tokens to choose from) onto three RFID readers in the correct order. If they fail too often, a curse is uttered! In this post I describe the hardware selection, the electronics, the assembly and the software.

Root shell on a MStar based UMC TV (Sharp LC-24CFG6132EM)

HaukeDocumentation

Not being happy with a few things on my Sharp LC-24CFG6132EM smart TV, I decided to dig deeper, hoping to find ways to reconfigure some settings. While I not achieved that goal yet, I at least managed to gain root access to the Linux running on the TV. Since the TV set is based on a MStar product, I suspect that my procedure will work for any MStar based TV, at least those manufactured by UMC, which for Europe own the brands of Sharp and Blaupunkt. So here I document the procedure.

Media Center revisited: Libre Computer “Le Potato” plus LibreELEC

HaukeDocumentation

While Raspberry Pi with xbian is already a versatile media center, I’m not 100% satisfied with everything. And, with the advent of H.265/HEVC as German DVB-T2 standard, the technical requirements have outrun the current offerings of the Raspberry Foundation. So I decided to migrate my Kodi media center to brand-new Libre Computer’s Le Potato board with LibreELEC, and here are the steps to do so, starting from the xbian media center described in an earlier blog post.

TARDIS housing for my Raspberry Pi media center

Hauke3D printing

When I built my media center, it went into a simple black box: Boooring! Since we watch a lot of Dr. Who on funk.net, when a Raspberry Foundation blog post on 3D printed cases featured a Tardis housing, it felt just right to have one. The 3D files are available on Thingiverse, and so I put the files into the 3D printing services of the usual supects – to be shocked by the resulting prices: More than 100 € for this thing? It nearly made me buy a 3D printer, but luckily I found out about 3Dhubs, where many many […]