2025 Devlog

2025-07-12

Planning the jailbreak strategy for my Petlibro PLAF101 pet feeder.

At first glance, the on-board WBR3 module seems electrically compatible with an ESP8266. I'll pursue this avenue, since it would enable the usage of ESPHome. Looks like people have done it before with other devices!

VLC playback issues on Arch Linux

Encountered x264 playback issues in VLC after upgrading on Arch Linux. It appears the vlc package moved plugins into optional packages, which were not explicitly required on my system. Namely the ffmpeg backend plugin, which facilitates x264 decoding.

Minimum viable remediation: pacman -S vlc-plugin-ffmpeg.
All-in-one fix for other plugins: pacman -S vlc-plugins-all.

Xiegu G90 stand

Printed this stand for my Xiegu G90:

2025-07-11

Xiegu G90 Speaker Deflector

Printed a speaker deflector for my Xiegu G90.

HF rig planning

Planning the at-home power supply for my HF station.

During initial tests, the observed current draw at full TX power didn't exceed 4,5A at 13,8V.
The unit's manual recommends a supply of at least 8A.
I hoped to use my bench PSU, but I misremembered it having a current capacity of 10A, while it's actually 5A. This technically might be enough, given the measurements, but a 4,5A load is awfully close to the limit, and I'd rather not run the PSU that hot on a regular basis.
As a long term solution, I've ordered a used 460W server PSU. These are built like tanks and are very cheap – I got mine for just $10. I'm planning to modify it into a 13,8V supply, since HF radios typically operate optimally at that voltage. I'll do a separate write-up on this project once it's finished.

2025-07-10

Got my first HF transceiver! I'm learning to operate it at my local radioamateur club, since I don't have an antenna rig at home (yet).

2025-07-08

Reworking my off-site backup strategy for Kubernetes PVCs.

2025-07-07

~~Slamming my head against a wall~~ Setting up Nvidia drivers on Arch Linux (btw) for Nvidia RTX4070.

Turns out my only HDMI output just refuses to work with the proprietary drivers (575.64.03-2), whereas the DisplayPort outputs work just fine.
Followed the official Arch Linux guide for Nvidia, and installed nvidia, nvidia-settings, nvidia-utils.
Running kernel linux-lts, which at the time of writing is 6.15.5-arch1-1.
I doubt the HDMI issue is rooted in hardware, since it works just fine in BIOS and when booted with nouveau.

2025-07-06

Observed an issue with my Tailscale setup on OPNsense, where it kept losing its Tailnet connection shortly after startup. No clear indication of failure in the logs. I've been previously using the FreeBSD ports implementation and later switched to the recently added, official OPNsense Tailscale plugin. It's possible that any combination of the following would've sufficed, but here's what I did to remediate:

ensured the old install is removed from the system and does not attempt to start alongside (possibly conflicting with) the new plugin (like a system service);
deleted /var/db/tailscale;
reconfigured the Tailscale plugin with a fresh auth key.