Archive for November 1st, 2015

Easy temporary indoor installation of a hanging antenna

Posted by MB in Uncategorized on November 1, 2015

I wanted to put up my roll-up J-pole indoors temporarily, and I didn’t want to drill holes to do it. (Also, I was feeling lazy).

I used a plastic hangar, zip ties, and cable mounts to put it up. It took less than 5 minutes and it works quite well.

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This approach could be used for any temporary installation of a light antenna that could be hung, such as a roll-up j-pole, horizontal dipole, or anything of the sort.

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Raspberry Pi heartbeat LED

Posted by MB in Uncategorized on November 1, 2015

The Raspberry Pi has two LEDs on the front: One hardwired as a power indicator, and the other is (by default) an SD card activity indicator. This second LED can be changed via software to anything (even a GPIO), but for this, I’m going to show you how to set it as a heartbeat indicator.

sudo su
modprobe ledtrig_heartbeat
echo heartbeat > /sys/class/leds/led0/trigger

The Pi’s led should now start blinking as a heartbeat indicator. If you want to restore the default behavior, you can do so:

echo mmc0 > /sys/class/leds/led0/trigger

That’s all there is to it.

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First steps with the Raspberry Pi or Pi 2

Posted by MB in Uncategorized on November 1, 2015

After getting a Raspberry Pi (or Pi 2), here are the first steps you should take:

login with username pi, password raspberry.

Configure the Pi:

sudo raspi-config
  • Advanced options
    • A0 Update this tool
  • Expand filesystem
  • Change user password
  • Internationalization options:
    • Change locale: Add your locale (Removing the default en_GB.UTF-8 caused display issues on mine, so just add your locale.)
    • Change Timezone

Next, update the Pi:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Last, update the firmware:

sudo rpi-update

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