Category Archives: General

General category

uConsole and 5Ghz wifi

I posted this in the ClockworkPi Forum as well.

i had the issue of Ubuntu 22.04 not connecting to my 5Ghz wifi using the onboard CM5 device even though my other devices were connecting to it just fine. even after all the hardware mods with long antennas etc, i finally figured it out.

in Ubuntu at least, power_save must be off.
after loads of testing, this is the setting that would make it work reliabily.
you can set this up by using
$ sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save off
or by using NetworkManager

$ sudo vi /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi-powersave.conf
[connection]
wifi.powersave = 2

Once that is done… Wifi would be stably connecting to 5Ghz thereafter.
Hope this helps someone.

Singapore Meshtastic SG_923 ATIS broadcast

I’m (for now) providing a Singapore Meshtastic ATIS broadcast so as to allow new users in Singapore to be able to tune into something useful.

To begin with, some notes

  • Leave your primary channel (i.e. channel 0) to your default. Or whatever you want your primary channel to be.
  • Set the ATIS channel to whatever secondary channel you wish. In my case, it is channel 1. Use the settings provided below.
  • Below are my MQTT settings.
  • Server: mqtt.meshtastic.org mqtt.lucifernet.com
  • Username: meshdev
  • Password: large4cats

Below are the ATIS settings to tune into.

  • Name: ATIS
  • Encryption: unencrypted – fill in “AQ==” without quotes if required
  • uplinkEnabled: True
  • downlinkEnabled: True
  • positionPrecision: 12 (put in any thing you wish)
  • isMuted: false

Below is the strings / format of my ATIS broadcast which includes

  1. Timestamp:
    [MMDD:HHmm:MsgCount:RETRY]
    MM == Month
    DD == Day
    HH == Hour
    mm == Minutes
    Retry == retry set number. The max retry is currently set to 5. The ATIS message will keep trying until a positive ACK is recieved. i.e. meshtastic command exists correctly.
  2. HELO message, Weather or Traffic
    HELO message = Good morning, afternoon or evening
    WEATHER = WX SGP
    TRAFFIC = TRF SGP
  3. Actual message – Weather
    [Condition] [Temperature] FeelsLike [Temperature] [Humidity] [Windspeed] [Rain mm] [Pressure hPa]

    Weather Condition abbreviation:-
    • “Sunny”: “SUN”,
    • “Clear”: “CLR”,
    • “Partly cloudy”: “PTCLD”,
    • “Cloudy”: “CLD”,
    • “Overcast”: “OVC”,
    • “Mist”: “MIST”,
    • “Patchy rain possible”: “RN?”,
    • “Rain”: “RAIN”,
    • “Light rain”: “L-RAIN”,
    • “Heavy rain”: “H-RAIN”,
    • “Thunderstorm”: “TSTM”,

      Note that if a field cannot be provided due to source timeouts it will be presented by a “-“
  4. Actual message – Traffic (information summarized from LTA Datamall)
    [Sections experiencing delays +X minutes] [Average travel time on Expressway segments] [Standard deviation of the travel time]

    This should be enough to know if driving times are normal and how long it might take for each major expressway leg. Highlighting any sections with out of normal delays

If set up right, you should hear the broadcast over your meshtastic node!

My strategy to backing up my media

This is not a post on how to choose a NAS box. This is also not a post to provide a step-by-step guide on how to configure one. This is also not a post on how to do enterprise backups, while some concepts apply, i’d say that this is mainly for personal backups.

This is a post to share the choices that i made to create a back up plan for my media such that i minimize the risk of losing the media that has been accumulated throughout my PERSONAL life. Some of these are irreplaceable memories of phases, experiences that are usually nostalgic and you definitely don’t want to lose them.

[This post was inspired by a conversation that i had with a retiring colleague/friend who just ventured to purchase a Synology NAS, with the goal of backing up his photos from his upcoming travels and perhaps to catalog them. As we chatted, i realized that i am repeating the comments, recommendations that was provided, to many people, many times over the years.

My choices has served me well all this while and has been running the same way for almost 10 years. I have not had major issues and failures, even though some outages has induced panic for a while, it has always been recoverable.

I hope that by sharing my backup strategies and rationale here, it will help someone in the future.]

Continue reading My strategy to backing up my media

Re-enabling the Kindle Screensaver Hack on an Ad-Supported PW3

I recently jailbroken/rooted the Kindle PW3 to enable an entire host of capabilities. But for some reason, i decided to register my PW3 to amazon and i found that the Kindle Screensaver hack no longer worked! Putting the device to sleep only resulted in an annoying ad that forced me to the Kindle store. Maybe because i live in a non-ad supported country and have an ad supported kindle.

Searching the web seems to suggest that there was no way to revert this, or maybe, i just couldn’t find any related post.

As i was desperate to keep the “Last” view on screen with the screensaver hack, i started digging into the system. The biggest hint was that this issue arose only AFTER i registered my kindle to amazon. There is a way to fix this! To get into it. I assume that you have the following:-

  1. A Jailbroken Kindle
  2. KUAL
  3. USBNetwork or kterm
  4. linkss and its related python packages

If you have no idea what the above is, then this process is not for you. But if you do, please proceed.

TLDR; Remove the directory /var/local/adunits to revert to pre-registration state!

Continue reading Re-enabling the Kindle Screensaver Hack on an Ad-Supported PW3