Sunday, April 5, 2020

Day 59, 60 - New Project - TT

Saturday (59) - A YouTube video came out today talking about RV automation. This one was done by Jason of the Getaway Couple and was decent. Not very in-depth but he was making the video for a non-technical audience. He mentioned that he was using open-source software called Home Assistant which runs on a Raspberry Pi for overall control and display. I just happen to have a Pi model 2 (which is older than they recommend) lying around but I think it'll do as a learning platform.

After downloading the package for the Raspberry Pi 2, I uncompressed the file into the Downloads directory. After inserting a 32 GB microSD card, OS X mounts the volume automatically.
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
unmounts the volume but the SD card is still recognized by the system. To copy the disk image to the SD card:
sudo dd bs=1m if=./hassos_rpi2-3.12.img of=/dev/rdisk2 conv=sync
Which returns:
2048+0 records in
2048+0 records out
2147483648 bytes transferred in 138.992654 secs (15450339 bytes/sec)

The logical volume(s) on the SD card aren't mounted automatically since OS X doesn't recognize the file system.

Now I put the SD card in the Raspberry Pi, provide power and an ethernet cord. It powers up, gets an IP address via DHCP and downloads the current version of the software. Now, I just have to wait for the slow Internet.

After a few hours, the configuration screen came up. I'm downloading a few add-ons for more flexible use such as SSH and a web-based editor.

This may take a while as this coach doesn’t have much that would qualify as IOT (Internet of Things).

Sunday (60) - Overcast but I don’t think it’s supposed to rain today. I checked the propane today and over just the last two days, we used about 1/8th of a tank. The front furnace runs a lot but doesn’t seem to put out very much heat or air. Maybe I need to remove it to clean the blower. The SeeLevel II display shows 57% but the system has not been calibrated for propane yet. I’ll do that the next time I fill the tank.

Since we are staying put for a while, I went ahead and put our mat and chairs out again and pulled the e-bikes out. If we had to be stuck somewhere this isn’t too bad of a spot. The trees have really filled in with leaves while we’ve been here. They finally locked up most of the bathrooms here in the campground. I think it’s because they were cleaning them almost hourly for the last week or so. A lot of additional work for the staff. I think they left one of them still open. They also changed the rules somewhat by only allowing fully self-contained RVs. This is a new rule as of Friday when they cancelled all new reservations for anyone arriving at any park in April. I think it was to allow anyone already in a park a spot for the rest of the month.

I finally swung out the TV that’s mounted on an arm in one of the storage bays. It’s not mounted very well as is an old Visio flat screen. I’m not sure I’ll keep it as it kind of takes up most of the compartment. This was the first time we even bothered to see it it works (it does). It was a pretty slow day.

One of the times we went to Walmart, most of the beef was sold out. In the discount bin was a package of two small steaks. Graded “prime” but marked half off. I repackaged them in a vacuum sealed bag with seasoning and a couple of pats of butter. Pulled them out, cooked them with the sous vide (they were still frozen) at 131°F for 90 minutes. Finished them off in a frying pan for about a minute on each side. They came out better than any steak I’ve had at any restaurant, ever. The sous vide is a fabulous way to cook…

No comments:

Post a Comment