Category: Uncategorized

  • zram swap: Speed analysis on an old laptop with low memory

    Full article: Faster Linux on low memory using zram (ubuntu 22.04) I have an old Acer Aspire V3-772 laptop. I am still quite happy with that old 17-inch brick, but its age is showing, especially the somewhat low memory. I can still develop software nowadays, but a lot of development packages got very memory hungry…

  • I revived an old Medion NAS with OpenWrt

    (Update 2020-12-31) I wrote up the installation procedure on a project-page. Have a look if you are interested. (Update 2021-08-29) I was notified that OpenWrt might lead to suboptimal NAS performance on some models of the Medion NAS. See comments section for details. We have an old Medion NAS server from the German supermarket chain…

  • PIC Micro processors and libpic170x

    I started out with the Arduino platform and developed a lot with it. The Atmel processors that come with them are great and I especially love the small form-factor Arduino Pro Micro boards for small projects since it not only has its own USB interface, but also a separate, additional UART unit to allow communication…

  • FreeCAD and servos

    I am currently experimenting a lot with CAD design. A few years ago, I tried out FreeCAD, an Open Source 3D CAD solution, and found that it was quite unstable. I anyway managed to make my first 3D design with it that I later even 3D printed. Due to the problems with the software I…

  • Wavedrom on-demand

    Note: The service was switched off on 2022-08-17 because it was barely used. There is a really cool JavaScript library for generating electronic timing diagrams created by Aliaksei Chapyzhenka. The problem with this library however is, that it is JavaScript: It makes it easy to embed in a website, but how can you make use…

  • Prometheus and anti-pattern pushgateway timeouts

    Prometheus is a pretty awesome recording server for metrics of all sorts. We use it at work to record data about servers, room temperatures, and other things. The whole server gets really nice an shiny if combined with a slick dashboard like Grafana. But enough of this fanboy-ism, there is a problem with prometheus which…

  • Electronics: Controlling a Robot Arm

    Last year, I bought a robot arm and “modded” it a little bit with custom electronics. Specifically, I created a USB controller board for it to be able to programmatically control it from my computer. This was also aimed at getting some use out of my Arduino micro controller boards that I bought the summer…

  • Playing around with the Space Engineers source code

    I really like the game Space Engineers developed by Keen Software House. I recently picked it up again and was a little bit disappointed that there were a bunch of new features added to the game, but the underlying network engine did not seem to have changed in over a year. Since I am a…

  • A (new) hobby Programmer Website

    Freshly recreated, this is my new website where I document my projects and general stuff that people might be interested in. The page needs to grow again after being down for almost a whole year. I had to take the website down after it was hacked by Google-Drive scammers. First thing for now: re-discover what…