John’s Blog

May 22, 2010

“Gorilla” Update

Filed under: Amateur Radio, Computing, DIY, Green, IPv6, Technology, Work — j0n @ 10:29 pm

I’ve not been in the shack all that much recently (being part of the organising team the the Irish IPv6 Summit kept me busy) so I have not been doing much checking up on the PV installation and how it is working.  Today, after assisting the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group set up a station for the EI2GEO special event station, I got to sit down and do some investigations. I have a second 60 Watt solar panel that I mentioned before. We hooked it into the battery system on Jim, EI8IG’s camper van to keep the battery topped up via solar power, and ran the radio from the same battery bank.  This evening I dropped out my little 850 watt generator to keep the battery topped up overnight (and to give it a good run).

Today over a 12 hour period between approximately 08:00-20:00, my rrdtool graph says the system produced an average of 148 watts. 148 x 12 gives 1776kw, or approximately 28.5 cents of electricty (including vat). If we have about 7000 more days of sunshine like today  (unlikely) then the system will have “paid for itself”.  While it doesn’t seem like a whole lot, it is currently averaging about 1/6 of the ESB bill (over 30 days).

That is the first part done. Next I intend to replace my power hungry dell dimension desktop (approx. 125 watts, 24/7 or approx. 48 cents per day ) with a more efficient machine (approx 20 watts or approx. 8 cents per day). To do this I have purchased an Intel Pine Trail base D510MO a 40GB SSD drive, 4GB of ram and a DC powered case (I already have a DC supply in the shack, plus I can experiment with it in the car as well).

Thus far the machine seems to be able to do most of the tasks I need it to do, time will tell though as I need to get 6 RS-232 ports operational on it to control all the items I have running.

As an aside, we recently replaced the old washing machine (at least 10 years) with a super duper A rated new one.  Initial testing seems to suggest that it is no more efficient than the old one. My suspicion is that I tested the old one (which I no longer have) in late Autumn, where it would have the benefit of taking hot water from the cylinder (Central Heating). The new one doesn’t have a Hot water input, so has to heat the water itself.

April 21, 2010

Irish IPv6 Summit

Filed under: Computing, IPv6, Technology, Work — j0n @ 6:51 pm

Its taking up quite a bit of my time at the moment, and rapidly approaching (19th May).  Registration opened today (finally!), and the (draft) agenda is:

08:30 Registration and Coffee/Tea
09:00 Ministerial Launch

  • Minister of State, Science Technology and Innovation, Conor Lenihan

09:30 Welcome Address

  • Mícheál Ó Foghlú , (Chair, Irish IPv6 TF)

NATIONAL CONTEXTS

10:00 KEYNOTE New Zealand and Ireland: IPv6 Deployment Challenges for Islands

  • Brian Carpenter, Professor (University of Auckland)

10:30 Irish IPv6 Policy

  • Roger O’Connor , Director of Business & Technology (DCENR)

11:00 Coffee/Tea Break and Networking

MOBILE WIRELESS AND FIXED BROADBAND

11:30 Dutch Experience with Fixed IPv6 Broadband

  • Marco Hogewoning (XS4ALL)

12:00 Campus Deployment of IPv6

  • Tim Chown (University of Southampton)

12:30 Irish Experience of Wireless IPv6 Broadband

  • Martin List-Petersen CTO (AirWire)

13:00 LUNCH and Networking

DEPLOYMENT AND POLICY ISSUES
14:00 KEYNOTE: RIPE NCC and IPv6

  • Daniel Karrenberg, Chief Scientist (RIPE- NCC)

14:30 Irish IPv6 Deployment for Hosting Providers

  • Michele Neylon Managing Director (Blacknight Internet Solutions)

15:00 The Story so Far: IPv4 Depletion

  • Geoff Huston Chief Scientist (APNIC) (via Video)

15:20 Coffee/Tea Break and Networking

ENTERPRISE ISSUES AND DISCUSSION
16:00 IPv6 Enterprise Strategy

  • Yanick Pouffary , HP Distinguished Technologist in IPv6

16:30 Panel Session: IPv6 Deployment Challenges

  • Yves Paindaveine (EU Commission)
  • Mat Ford (ISOC)
  • Tim Chown (University of Southampton)
  • Dennis Jennings Board Member (ICANN)
  • Dave Northey (Microsoft)

17.30 Finish

Looking forward to seeing you there!

March 4, 2010

IPv6 and aprs.fi

Filed under: APRS, AX25, Amateur Radio, Computing, IPv6 — j0n @ 8:46 am

Recently, Hessu, OH7LZB, began the process of migrating his service to IPv6.  While he isn’t finished (AAAA still to be added) ipv6.aprs.fi is up and running and usable today.

April 14, 2009

SHIM6 ISO

Filed under: Computing, IPv6, Work — j0n @ 9:31 am

Following up from my previous post. John McLoughlin and I have a SHIM6 enabled Ubuntu Live CD ISO available here. If there’s a problem with the ISO contact John or Myself. Sébastien is busy enough.

February 22, 2009

LinShim6 v0.9 Released

Filed under: Computing, IPv6, Work — j0n @ 2:40 pm

“I am glad to announce that LinShim6 version 0.9 has been released. The major additions are the followings:

——————
- Support for Keepalive Timeout option
- Faster failure recovery for TCP applications (thanks to RTO reset upon path change)
- Shim6 can now be compiled as a module. The trigger heuristic is defined as a separate module. So that it can be
unloaded or replaced depending on the needs. For example, a server that does not want to initiate a Shim6
negotiation by itself, but only answer to requests, can simply unload the heuristic module.
- Added a console option, that allows dynamic setting of the failure detection timer.
——————

The useful links are the followings :

* LinShim6 main page, where you can download the kernel patch and the daemon : http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/LinShim6
* Updated draft shim6-impl (implementation report) : http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/publications/shim6-implementation-report-linshim6
* Documentation (not yet updated for 0.9, however) : http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/publications/linshim6-implementation-shim6-protocol

regards,

Sébastien.

–
Sébastien Barré
Researcher,
CSE department, UCLouvain, Belgium
http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/sbarre”

We (TSSG) have been working with Sébastien, for quite a while, debugging the implementation, and adding features to it. Specifically in the EFIPSANS project, we are looking at SHIM6’s failure recovery capabilities in the event of one network interfacing (or, indeed one upstream provider) loosing connectivity. We have been sidetracked for a while with lots of project documentation to be delivered to the EU, hopefully we can get a linux iso prepared once again to allow others to experiment.

November 17, 2008

Irish IPv6 Summit.

Filed under: Computing, IPv6, Work — j0n @ 10:46 pm

Through where I work, I’ve been using/breaking/experimenting with difference facets of IPv6 for several years. Part of what TSSG has been doing is attempting to raise awareness about IPv6 whenever the opportunity arises.  As part of the Irish IPv6 task force, TSSG is helping to organise an IPv6 Summit, which is expressly for the purpose of raising awareness in the public and private sectors. Even if you have only a passing interest, do come along (and ask difficult questions!).

June 7, 2008

Guilt free Radio!

Filed under: Amateur Radio, General, Green, IPv6 — j0n @ 11:02 pm

Eamonn seems to be enjoying his holidays. With R$15 all-you-can-eat dinners and R$1 for a beer, I’m not surprised. I, on the other hand have been so busy recently it just was not funny.

AREN has been soaking up my spare (ha!) time, with meetings, documentation, and other stuff that comes with trying to organise volunteers. AREN was also involved in recent exercises with other Voluntary Emergency Services in South Tipp,

imgp0844.jpg

and last weekend AREN members aided the Glen of Aherlow Fáilte Society with communications for the Glen of Aherlow Walking Festival, as the weather was forecast to be good, numbers were quite high. Communications from both sides of the mountain were provided and everything seemed to go without a hitch (other than the torrential shower just before walkers got to the buses on Saturday afternoon). Bernard, EI8FDB, has a few pics up on flickr taken during the event. Finally though, things are slowly getting under control (even on the DIY Front!) AND we found that shim6 bug I was talking about, so I can make some headway in work.

Now, as to the title of the post (Thanks Seamus!). I’ve been collecting bits and pieces for a while (2 years or so), batteries, solar panels, charge controllers etc. I finally got the panels installed, (sub optimally unfortunately, but wife friendly) two weeks ago. I let the batteries charge up fully, then I switched off my 13.8Volt PSU, and switched on the (slightly adjusted) 24v-12V DC DC converter. That was the 27th of May. Since then I’ve had my radio gear running from it just the battery bank and the panels (some of it 24×7). At this moment in time (approx 11 days later), the panels have put 204Ah into the battery bank, the DC-DC converter has consumed 350Ah.

Miguel was asking me to work this out during the week, so here goes (its late, and I’m tired so I could easily be way off here)

554 * 24 (volts) = 13.296 (KWh)

13.296.5 /11 * 365 = 441.18kWh for the year.

My last bill says a unit costs 15.02 cent (incl vat), so I should ’save’ about €66.26 on the ESB Bill over the course of 12 months. Or to put it another way, it will never pay for itself, economically speaking.

I’m still experimenting, and will probably add more panels (and more ‘load), but so far, I’m happy as a pig in the proverbial with it. The problems will arise however as winter descends (and that €66.26 total will be in doubt). In those (in)famous words, A lot done, more to do.

February 4, 2008

PB/PG 2.2.1 Released

Filed under: Amateur Radio, Computing, IPv6 — j0n @ 4:42 pm

From Bent Bagger, OZ6BL:

–
I’m happy to announce release 2.2.1 of PB/PG for Linux.

PB and PG for Linux are programs used for download from and upload to
digital satellites (Pacsats) supporting the FTL0 protocol. This
software allows you to directly communicate with the Microsat series
of satellites. It provides a Curses (Ncurses) based user interface. It
features automatic directory fill requests and simple, rules based
file download requests.

This release serves two purposes:

1) To show that the project is still alive and kicking

2) To correct a number of small ‘inconveniencec’ and to add a few new
features. These changes/additions are described in the document
‘ReleaseNotes’ q.v. (included in the release)

PB/PG for Linux may be downloaded (in source form only) from one of
these places:

- http://www.fern.dk/pgpg/pbpg-2.2.1.tar.gz
- http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/apps/ham/pbpg-2.2.1.tar.gz
- ftp://ftp.amsat.org/amsat/software/Linux/pbpg-2.2.1.tar.gz

I may be contacted using this address:  oz6bl (at) amsat (dot) org

Happy hamming

Best 73 de Bent/OZ6BL
 –

I submitted some rather simple patches to the package including IPv6 patches to allow it communicate to a server running predict (which has also been patched for IPv6 support), which were included, then I helped test them with my home station.  Even though I’m only using a vertical antenna, I was able to upload to and download from  the satellite quite successfully on most passes. It’s kinda cool actually, not something one does every day :)

October 31, 2007

IPv6 Will be deployed soon, why?, because there is a video on YouTube

Filed under: IPv6, Technology, Work — j0n @ 9:21 am

Thanks to Miguel for the link. Is it just me, or is this very funny? Answers on a postcard please…..

August 10, 2007

Mobile IPv6 on the N770

Filed under: Computing, IPv6, Technology, Work, software — j0n @ 1:55 pm

Following up from my earlier post. To save someone the trouble of building MIPL for Linux for the N770, you can find a Linux kernel here and mip6d here.

I’ve been trying the kernel out using the following command to upload the kernel:

flasher -l -b -k zImage-su-18-200730

And powering on the device, the mip6 kernel gets loaded (until the next reboot). Once it boots, its possible to copy mip6d onto the n770, as it appears as a USB storage device. Install X-Term, write a mip6d configure script, and off you go (I’ve not tested with IPsec yet though)!

I remain unconvinced about the usefulness of the n770/n800 type devices. They may be usefule for some remote control applications, although I’m not sure, more testing (using IPv6) is needed ;) .


	


	






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