Category: General

General

Measuring USB Power Bank Capacity

Unfortunately there are many subpar USB power banks on the market that overestimate there capacity. Many people take the posted capacities at face value but it is beneficial to confirm. I have a cheap USB safety tester that reads the voltage and current coming out a usb port and from that can capture capacity.

I ran a new power bank from 100% -> 0% and for those two trials I got a capacity of 7.080Ah & 7.131Ah. The reported capacity was 26.8Ah and other users also reported capacities less than that. I will also be testing the capacity of charging as the tester itself has some power draw that might negatively influence the measurement.

Zesty Tuna Couscous

A quick and easy lunch. Couscous was cooked in a lemon juice mixture, flash chilled and the tossed with cucumber, feta, tomato and onion. Micro greens and a little tomatoe rose garnish. Nice and appealing.

Quick Classy Avocado Salad

Just a quick picture of my classic avocado salad.

Just a plain spinach base, ring of avocado and then tomatoes sprinkled around. 2 variations are whether to use a tomato peel as the “rose” in the centre which then matches the color or to go a bit more decadent and use a smoked salmon rose. If using smoked salmon a garlic/dill dressing is a must. If struggling with making the rose place in freezer for a bit so it stiffens up and is easier to work with.

Understanding Fridge Temperature

Following the basis of https://adam-s.ca/quick-temperature-logging-probe/ I setup a wireless temperature probe to monitor the temperature in my fridge because who knows what the temperature is when the dial is set to 3 😉 (there is a joke about a fridge that goes to 11 somewhere there).

Results were very surprising as the 95% confidence interval was so tight together I though something was wrong. Looking at the trend chart we see that there might be some oscillations if we tracked for longer but this was already a 3-4 day time frame O_o. It would be extremely shocking to me if there were oscillation with a period of 7-8 days.Follow ups.

Follow ups & Notes

  • Trial with different locations as obviously positioning further away from cooling coils will have higher temperatures.
  • Trial with larger battery bank to get large time frame trending
  • This was done on a cheap & old mini fridge so there might be value in testing newer hardware.
  • The fridge was heavily stocked with high heat capacity items so hysteresis may be playing a bit of a part here.
  • Higher polling frequency, though 15s should be more than frequent enough.
  • …

Quick Temperature Logging Probe

As precursors to some of my temperature logging investigations I wanted to go over the hardware. Using a cheap 5$ NodeMCU and a 1$ DS18B20 temperature probe I setup a wifi enabled temperature logging probe that my home server pulls from. Not going to go too in-depth but a quick digital read and processing is all it is. Cable is fairly robust so it can be passed through many places. Code is a basic example (don’t want to include network details).

Extra Pasta Hacks

When making pasta I find that usually I end up overestimating and making too much noodles. Rather than ruining the pasta to sauce ratio an interesting trick is to fry extra pasta up in oil and toss with Parmesan cheese. Not going to go into recipe but just drain the pasta, add oil to a pan and toss it in.

The Manhattan

Nice quick simple cocktail. I am by no means an expert but I feel that it tastes better with rye. Also the Luxardo Maraschino cherry is a must.

Aquarium Thermostat Heaters

An interesting observation after setting up my aquarium monitoring system is that typical thermostat heaters actually show oscillatory behaviour. Since they startup based on a temperature threshold and stop based on a cut off they oscillate with varying periods based on external temperatures.

I was expecting large variance since this wasn’t an expensive heater but surprisingly all values were within 1°C. I would likely attribute this more to hysteresis rather than the heater.

Current Home Dashboard

This is a snapshot of my current dashboard I have mounted in my room. All the key stats for my server and network as well as weather details and time.