Tech
Analyzing my aquarium total dissolved solids (TDS) a neat trend can be noticed. A water change was completed on the 9th which resulted in a dramatic drop in TDS but over time the TDS had risen back to its previous levels. As this the aquarium has an open top, water will evaporate and lead to an increased solids concentration. A water top up was completed on the 8th and there was a drop in TDS related to that as well.
Probably the best hair dryer I have ever seen :D.
A follow up for some of the takeaways of the previous post (https://adam-s.ca/understanding-fridge-temperature/). Repeating the experiment in a different part of the fridge showed some cleaner results. In-fact there were oscillations present at a much more realistic interval (30min). This was very surprising as this is a mechanical fridge with a thermostat and the oscillating period was dead on 30min almost as if it was computerized.
The temperature logger was able to go for 4.5 days on the external battery bank.
One of my Power BI reports has reached the top 1% of all Power BI reports for the whole international company. A few keys to getting my report to this point.
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.
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
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).
Follow up on https://adam-s.ca/aquarium-thermostat-heaters/
As I mentioned in the previous post the thermostat will oscillate differently based on external temperatures. A visual example is bellow where room temperatures went from 24°C to 20°C. With this drop the aquarium temperatures began to immediately oscillate faster due to faster heat loss.
What is the point of running a home server if you don’t manage it?
With a bit of legwork Grafana provides an excellent monitoring and visualization tool. Key stats such as server load, memory, network & disk usage are tracked and alert base on thresholds. I will post some more updates on my home monitoring process over time.
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.
