This is a blog mostly about techie things, what I am doing to my apartment network on the cheap, IOT, 3D Printing, Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, ESP32, ESP8266, Home Automation, Personal Weather Stations, Things That Go Bump in the Night, and some side issues that need discussing. Remember, sometimes the journey to an end is as much fun as the goal achieved!
After thinking about it for a while, I was convinced that I needed to add the other Edgerouter-12p that I have which has a POE capability. In order to do that, I will need to remove the 8 port switch and 2 ER-X routers which are on the shelf that I need for the ER-12p. So that means that I will need to rearrange the xPod RPis to connect to the main switch and disconnect the 8 port switch and 2 ER-X routers.
Update: completed
I decided to add a way to gather statistics on the wireless connection to Connect in my apartment. I found that luci-app-statistics uses collectd to gather system statistics and uses rrdtool to display them. I installed luci-app-statistics and collectd on the FLINT2 Router. Since I have an MQTT server running on port 1883 of the EXP-PiHole RPi, I decided to open up icmp to WAN (port 10) and WAN2 (port 9) on Edgerouter-12. I then added passthrough of MQTT (1883) to WAN (port 10) on Edgerouter-12 to EXP-PiHole. I am not sure if WAN2 will pick up the same passthrough message to port 1883; that I will have to test separately. I also installed the following packages on FLINT2: collectd-mod-cpu, collectd-mod-ethstat, collectd-mod-interface, collectd-mod-ipstatistics, collectd-mod-iwinfo, collectd-mod-load, collectd-mod-memory, collectd-mod-mqtt, collectd-mod-network, collectd-mod-rrdtool, collectd-mod-thermal, collectd-mod-uptime, and collectd-mod-wireless.
Update: I have removed the collectd items from FLINT2 because it appeared that it was slowing down the download/upload throughput.
I need to setup a way to monitor the WiFi connections in my HomeLab. I have been away from the IC Subcommittee for a long time, but now I have sparked an interest in keeping track of what the current system is doing in terms of dropouts and changes of bandwidth. I need something to characterize what is happening so that I can talk intelligently about it.
Update: I am placing this project on hold until I have more time to devote to it.
I have been needing for a long time to create a Certificate Authority so that I will not be using self signed certificates and simply avoiding the checks on various equipment. This needs to change so that it provides a measure of security in the HomeLab that makes sense.
There have been a number of articles about creation of a Certificate Authority, however one in particular seems to be the one that I could use best. The reason is that it provides intermediate certificate authorities. That article is at https://jamielinux.com/docs/openssl-certificate-authority/index.html. I have made a pdf of that site to work its magic.
Obviously, this will require me to make some modifications to make it easier to accomplish, such as using some scripts for the process. I might also make use of an ACME like internal Certificate Authority to automatically update the certificates. Note that this is in addition to the certificates already created in the Tailscale VPN implementation.
Update: I am placing this project on hold until I have more time to devote to it.
I admit it, I have been relaxed in updating this blog. Lately it's been because of the death of an immediate member of my family and the birth of another. So, I have been experiencing the lows and highs of emotion. However, I intend on getting back on task since I need to have a focus area.
I intend on revisiting the projects that I have not completed; dropping some, attacking the remainder, and coming up with new projects to keep the entry into HomeLab fully up to date. I think that I will focus on three things:
This is one project that has stuck in my craw for a number of years. I am now in a situation where I am about to change out my network to be in two pieces. I have enough computers to think about a centralized DHCP/DNS server for the network. I have used PiHole in the past but now I want to make that the default for all of the routers in my network. The rub is, I have all of these vlans that need attention when I am giving out IP addresses. This will be an effort to consolidate the IP gathering and DNS entries into one location that is easier to control. Some specifics of what I want to do are: