Yesterday I have released a new page on this blog, which describes my most recent project: a smart home dashboard using an Inkplate 10 e-ink display and Home Assistant as a backend. Home Assistant displays a lovelace view of the dashboard which is then rendered to a JPG-image. The Inkplate wakes up every 20 minutes … [Read more…]
For my current personal project in developing a dashboard, which displays metrics of my servers and devices among other things, I was faced with the challenge to collect metrics from all devices. Usually solutions like Prometheus are quite famous for use cases like this, but I did not want to open any ports on any … [Read more…]
Setting up the environment During a current project I looked into HomeAssistant as a central component / hub for home automation. When starting out with HomeAssistant it is recommended to install the software either as a OS distribution (HASS OS) or run a supervised installation, which is just a couple of fancy bash scripts that … [Read more…]
Issue: I want to backup specific, existing folders of multiple Android devices. The backup has to be done locally inside the LAN and encryption at rest is a must-have. tl;dr: Resilio Sync hosted on a Raspberry Pi / Odroid / NUC does the job perfectly with their app. Nextcloud is far slower and the FolderSync … [Read more…]
Issue: I need to get a notification if a necessary volume on my Linux device is not mounted, as this volume cannot get automatically mounted because a passphrase is required. The curl-request is dependent on the custom DNS (Pi-hole). When setting up my Intel NUC I decided that all my persistent data of the running … [Read more…]
Issue: Another bug in SoapUI might alter the security configuration of sent SOAP Requests. This may result in broken or discarded requests. This issue can be reproduced in SoapUI 5.4.0 and 5.2.1. I have not tested other versions but I’m quite certain this problem exists in all of them. SoapUI features a dedicated “Auth” button … [Read more…]
Issue: I am connected to a VPN and (some) websites cannot be accessed while a working internet connection is established. A few weeks ago I attended DevOpsCon 2017 in Berlin. The conference has been quite interesting, but lacked in organisation and preparations. Some WLAN access points have been established where two SSIDs were given – one … [Read more…]
Issue: My Sony HT-XT2 cannot be updated via internet, due to a communication error with the server – how can I MITM the connection to analyse the issue? Recently I bought a soundbar like gadget from Sony, the HT-XT2. After setting it up I tried to update the firmware via internet – the HT-XT2 can be … [Read more…]
Issue: How can I restore my login to the Snapchat app on a rooted Android device using the Bluestacks application? There is quite some confusion about the Snapchat app and it’s login on a rooted Android device. A lot of the time people online claim the Xposed framework is the culprit – after deinstalling this … [Read more…]
Issue: How can I add basic authentication / password to my OpenVPN connection featuring certificates? There are quite a lot of tutorials on how to set up your own VPN server. An excellent tutorial has been published by DigitalOcean. However this (and nearly every other) tutorial feature a secure connection by either certificates or user … [Read more…]