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ToroidalCore
@toroidalcore@masto.hackers.town
mastodon 4.7.3Engineer, musician, and tinkerer. I post about various things, including #electricity, #RenewableEnergy projects, #Linux and #FLOSS, #music, and of course of animals.
Follow requests are generally accepted following a vibe check, just make sure to have a filled-out bio and/or a pinned intro post.
He/Him/They/Them
Alternate: @toroidalcore@soc.unixcat.net
Pixelfed: @toroidalcore
WriteFreely: @toroidalcore
463 Followers
569 Following
50 Posts
Joined April 12, 2025
Eye contact, wolf
Eye contact, fox
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@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange This proves that you can in fact become an internet celebrity on this platform.
I don't have any recent wolf or fox pics as of late, but since it's so hot here are some from back in December.
#wolf #wolves #ArcticWolves
Hot #wolf from today.
#TimberWolf
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None of the wolves I've known have had any strong opinions on urban architecture.
#monsterdon
The wolves got fed today. The four timbers got various bits of raw meat.
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@occult@vox.ominous.net Dana Carvey's brother, Brad Carvey, actually worked on the Video Toaster:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Carvey
Pros of working from home: attending a meeting with a cat in your lap.
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Tim is taking it easy in the air conditioning.
#dog #IrishWolfhound
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@vervain@sunny.garden @_L1vY_@mstdn.social I'm relatively new to it. There's not a whole lot of traffic in my area, but there are a few people on. From what I can tell/have heard, it has some issues with lots of nodes in a populated area, but there are tweaks you can do to make it work a little better. I'd also like to look at #Meshcore.
That said, it's a low barrier to entry, you just need the app and a transceiver, which can be around $30 USD.
Here's a video of some of the wolves from the weekend. (Sorry for the short vid, but I cut it off to avoid some other humans in the original.)
Can't move.
(This isn't George, just one of his cousins.)
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Got a bunch of onions planted. Also some pumpkins, cucumbers, catnip, basil, and as a bonus I even buried some potatoes I had that were sprouting.
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@ret@furry.engineer In the spirit of this, this site can be fun to look at:
https://openinframap.org
I'm trying to remember when the last time I flew anywhere was. I think it may have been 2018 or 2019.
Actually, I'm trying to remember the last time I flew any place that wasn't for work. I remember flying out for an interview for something, which I guess counts as for work.
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@nepi@gts.nepi.gay Is it something to do with how the page file works under Windows, like it dynamically grows it as it needs more?
I thought more recent kernels were actually trying to address this somewhat. Also, I think there's an overcommit sysctl parameter that can be tweaked as well.
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For starters, I'm thinking I should probably have more swap. I also did set vm.swappiness to 10 before, which I feel has made the system a little more responsive.
And, I've never used Windows on this thing, so I don't have that as a point of reference...
But it seems like I shouldn't have to mess with tuning the system to keep it from freezing. I'd rather programs get killed than the system be so unresponsive.
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Just food for thought. I'm comfortable playing around with Linux systems enough that I deal with this, but for wider acceptance as a desktop OS there should be more polish than just making a nice GUI.
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Every so often, however, I've managed to get to freeze due to low memory. Usually, I'm doing normal web/email stuff, and then open Octave (or KiCad) to check something. This is with 1-2 GB of RAM free. I also have 1 GB of swap.
Just today, I had to SSH in with my phone and start killing stuff because I'd left Octave open. Some music I had kept playing, and the mouse worked, but the GUI had frozen. Killing Octave and Firefox brought it back.
They're almost behind the moon.
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@catsalad@infosec.exchange I like how it ends with airplane ears. Like he's had to pose for a picture every day and by that point he's had enough.
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@Michigander I mentally refer to it as the Fediverse, but I realized after I voted that when talking to people about it in real life, I usually call it Mastodon.
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@flipsideza@fosstodon.org In my case, the DC-DC converter I have (something from Amazon with a USB-C connector that plugs right into the node, and bare leads) can tolerate that voltage, so it's not a problem. If a cloud passes by, the BMS reconnects the battery, and it keeps going.
I also kind of bank on my panel not being in the sunniest location, and getting clouds, etc. while the node is on 24/7, so I don't think it's spending a lot of time at full charge. But it is close.
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@flipsideza@fosstodon.org Sort of. This is a LiFePO4 battery with a built-in BMS, so when it's overcharged it will disconnect the battery. Whatever else it's powering will see the raw panel voltage, which for a 12 V panel will actually be around 20-22 V.
Well, when it's loaded it will go down a little. The battery would normally clamp it to something like 12-14 V, but a lighter load will run it at a slightly higher voltage. It depends on the panel's IV curve, along with temperature, etc.
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@nepi@gts.nepi.gay Interesting, I would agree that that's more or less it, which would mean there's some hope that it could be fixed by the right tuning/defaults. I suppose if you have a well thought-out server, this isn't really quite the same issue.
I only hit upon this occasionally, but it and general GUI responsiveness are pet peeves of mine. (The latter not just for Linux, actually.)
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General purpose computers are complex things, and there's a lot that can go wrong. Still, for a "desktop" OS it seems like more could be done beyond just slapping a GUI on top of Linux.
And typical advice I see when people complain about this online is to use a different distro, which may very well be running most of the same software...
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@flipsideza@fosstodon.org Now that said, a controller is probably a good idea. Something regulating the battery voltage to about 14.5-14.6 V will probably let the BMS equalize the cells a bit better. There are cheap ones available, and I think some mesh nodes have ones built in.
This was thrown together, since I had the battery and panel already with PowerPole connectors, as well as a Y-cable. So it was just plug and play.
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@flipsideza@fosstodon.org It's worth looking at cheap MPPT charge controllers. I'd set up your node with a DC-DC converter and measure the power it draws at say 12 V. Multiply by 24 Hrs to get watt-hours/day. Size a battery to run that for a certain number of days without sun.
Look up average sun hours for your area, size your panel so that you harvest as least as many watt-hours as you use. IE, if my node needs 10 Wh/day, and I get 3.5 sun hours/day, I'd need about 3.5 watts of solar.
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@flipsideza@fosstodon.org A lead acid battery, like a gel cell or AGM without a controller or some sort of BMS will get overcharged unless you have a tiny solar panel that just compensates for its self discharge. Car battery maintainers work this way, they're panels that put out a couple watts into a relatively large battery.
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@flipsideza@fosstodon.org That's another thing to consider, LiFePO4 doesn't mind not being fully charged. In fact, if you're going to store it without using it, they recommend doing so at ~50% SOC. Lead acid likes to be charged.
So if you figure on most of the cycling happening below 100% SOC, it kind of works out. LiFePO4 however doesn't like to charge at colder temps (usually below freezing), so take that into account.
For lead-acid, you probably want to size things so it charges to 100% more often.
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@ret@furry.engineer I was just (as in a few hours ago) working on a small aerator system for a pond at the nature center I volunteer at. We have two systems, each in a cabinet no more than half the size of this one, housing a small compressor and BLDC motor controller.
I'd have guessed aerator, but each of our's is driven by 400 watts of solar.
Does it have any markings or nameplates anywhere? Any glimpse of whether its a cable or hose where it goes below water?
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@fsphil@mastodon.social Do you have a picture of the whole circuit board? Might be able to figure out what it is in context.