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Whole Home Humidifier
Dry air is very unpleasant to be in for extended periods of time. Last winter I tried to rectify the problem by using a single ultrasonic humidifier. It seemed totally inadequate, so I purchased a second higher capacity unit. I quickly became annoyed at how tedious it was to fill the reservoirs. And neither really solved my problem well. This year, I decided to install a whole home humidifier system.
Installing a Humidifier is not an easy task, and required quite a bit of knowledge of different building systems. See below for all of the work that I did, what I learned, and a list of parts.
System Selection
The most common type of whole home humidifier is a bypass humidifier, where water trickles down a special mesh pad that heated air passes over. The humidifier unit itself is quite large and must be attached to a fairly large surface area of unobstructed flat ductwork, as well as have a return/supply bypass. Unfortunately I did not have the space on either side of my furnace (cold air return, or heated air supply) to place the bypass unit.
A significant benefit to a steam system is that it doesn’t need the furnace to run heat at the same time it is humidifying, it only requires air circulation.
The unit has a capacity of 34.6 gallons a day, but my configuration will be at 23.3 gallons a day. Seems the maximum capacity of a bypass unit would be about 12 gallons a day. Ultrasonic units have a capacity closer to 3 gallons a day.
Fixing my Zyxel NWA1123-AC
My home network is pretty advanced. I have a PFSense home-built router (based on Zotac ZBOX CI323) that connects to my modem, several smart switches (Netgear JGS524E), and 2 wireless Access Points. The two access points are both made by Zyxel; an NWA1123-AC and an NWA1123-ACv2. I thought it would be prudent to upgrade the firmware of both devices this week but ran into a problem.
Since both need different firmware, I first downloaded the firmware for the v2 device, and then did the v1 device. Somehow I managed to download the NWA1121-NI firmware for the v1 device, and then applied it. As I was doing some configuration on the device, I saw I was missing the 5 Ghz settings, which lead me to figuring out I had flashed it with the wrong firmware. I thought it would be easy to revert back since I was able to go one way, but that proved wrong! The device wouldn’t accept the correct firmware.
I did some hunting around the internet, gave up quick, and submitted a technical support request. Zyxel got back to me the following day saying I would have to RMA the device, sending it back to them, assuming it was in warranty. After some following correspondents, it was determined that I was out of warranty/support. I turned back to the internet.
I found, on Zyxel’s website (PDF), they had directions on how to have the device pull firmware from a TFTP server before the router fully booted. However, there were some critical steps missing.
- There’s no serial port on the AP; WHAT?
- How do I unzip a bin file? And how do I unzip what comes out of that?
- What software do I use to TFTP?
- What software do I use for a terminal?
Zyxel support insisted that this KB article on their site did not apply to my AP problem, and there was no way I could recover the device without sending it in to them.
I did some more hunting and found someone over at the OpenWRT.org site posted the internal parts of the NWA1123-AC AP, as well as some serial port details. I also found a page for serial port specifics saying I needed a USB TTL adapter. The same page had details on the pins to connect the adapter to on the AP (see: Router with serial port / header / pins). Turns out Amazon and my local MicroCenter both carried a USB to TTL adapter, for use with RaspberryPi devices. I biked over to MicroCenter, and picked one up.
Once I got home, opened up my AP, connected everything, downloaded and set up Tera Term and TFTPD64, and starting going through the KB article. I used 7zip to extract the contents of the bin file, and the contents of the subsequent file. I ended up with the files shown in the KB article, so even though 7zip said there was extra contents that wasn’t extracted, I figured I was on the right track.
Everything seemed to work great, and got my device flashed with the correct firmware! Sadly, Zyxel’s poor design required me to clear my browser cache to get the AP’s config page working correctly, but if that was the only hiccup, I wasn’t too angry, and I had been stupid enough to flash the wrong firmware on the AP in the first place.
Access Point saved from certain death!
Amazon Alexa Skill – Electric Price
I was sick of opening up my phone to check the ComEd hourly price of electric supply, so I decided to make an Alexa app for my Amazon Echo!
It took about 2 hours. It was strange I had to set up both an Alexa skill and the AWS Lamda function, then link the two. I ended up copying most of the code from someones reference code on checking stock prices. Changed the regular expression function which found the stock price to a substring of the ComEd API returned text. Works pretty well! Only problem I’ve had is when the ComEd API is down. If it happens too much, I guess I’ll have to update it with some error handling.
Alexa Skill: Electric Price
Ask: “Alexa, ask Electric Price for Current Price.”
The logo is crap, I know. And I couldn’t use the ComEd company name in any of the program details/functions, so its a bit generic. But pretty good for my first try if I do say so myself!
Raspberry Pi CTA Tracker Kiosk
I purchased a Raspberry Pi 3 about a year ago and finally got around to creating a fully functional CTA bus/train tracker out of it.
Parts Needed
Raspberry Pi
http://amzn.to/2lp5YOf
Micro SDHC Cards
http://amzn.to/2kYn04N
Screen
http://amzn.to/2kTArTK
Cable (Cable that came with screen was defective)
http://amzn.to/2ltoJvX
Keyboard and Mouse (any will do, but I like this)
http://amzn.to/2kNfUO5
CTA Tracker URL:
Create your specific CTA Tracker URL and save it for later
http://www.transitchicago.com/developers/diybtform.aspx
My Three Favorite Windows Add-ins
ZBar
I love having multiple monitors! However, one problem with multiple monitors is that Windows doesn’t extend the task bar very well onto the second or third monitor. It by default doesn’t extent it at all, so to select applications/windows to make active, you have to go to the other monitor. There is an option put the same task bar on both monitors, but with that, I don’t know which program/window is on which monitor.
ZBar to the rescue. ZBar adds a task bar to the other monitor(s), and displays only the applications/windows on that monitor. It also removes the applications/windows on the primary monitor’s task bar. I love it.
WizMouse
WizMouse imitates a really nice MacOS feature; it makes the window under the mouse scroll when the user scrolls. Windows by default only scrolls the active window/frame. With WizMouse, I can scroll the list of emails in Outlook, and then move my mouse over to the preview, and scroll that, without clicking in the frame! I can also move my mouse over an Excel document which is open in the background, and scroll it, even though the Excel window is under a bunch of other windows. What a fantastic program!
ArsClip
ArsClip keeps track of my copy-paste activity and allows me to past something that I copied before the most recent copy. I’ve set mine to give me the history menu when pressing ALT+V. The program also allows me to “paste values” with a keyboard shortcut; I’ve set mine to CTRL+SHIFT+V. It saves me so much time!
ED HAYES 