K.C.'s Garage

I flew down to Lompoc, CA on Sunday with Miles, and our friends the Baalmans (Gary, Laura, & their two kids) to watch the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch at Vandenberg AFB. This was the first Falcon 9 "return to land" on the west coast, and it went spectacularly. We found a great viewing spot along HWY 1 overlooking the launchpad.

A few snapshots from my first couple of months of T210 ownership:

I decided, at long last, it was time to upgrade to something capable of more speed, altitude, and carrying my family.   N6779B is a 1978 Cessna T210M.  It's turbocharged and capable of climbing into the flight levels, so it's much more suitable for getting in and out of the Sierras.  ;) Adventures to come!

I recently bought some Sonoff S31 "smart outlet" switches, as I like the form factor better than the Sonoff Basic and the larger Sonoff S20.  I was able to disassemble and flash them with the fantastic Sonoff-Tasmota firmware from Theo Arends . Disassembly instructions: 1. The darker colored square panel with the button on it snaps off.  Pry it carefully off from one side to remove it: 2. There's two "slide-out" corner pieces on the male plug side. Slide these towards the button side: 3. Remove the three screws that are now exposed: 4. The case containing the female outlet side should separate easily now.  No prying necessary: 5. The circuit board is actually two boards soldered together in an "L" shape.  The small edge with the button on it contains the serial header for the ESP8266.  From the top down, the connections are VCC, RX, TX, N/C, N/C, GND   (Notice the two unused pads labeled TX & RX.  They don'...

Premise & Background: Can you build a "LoJack" style asset tracking capability using open WiFi hotspots? The proliferation of cheap, lightweight WiFi embedded ("IoT") devices made me wonder.  The WiFi association stack, DHCP client stack, et al. has to be incredibly lightweight and simple to fit in the firmware on, say, an ESP8266.  If you programmed one to scan, find an AP, associate, get an address, and send a single packet - would it be able to do it fast enough to report its location from a moving vehicle? [Aside: This is actually something I've wondered about for years, but the IoT chips offered a unique and low-cost way to try it.] "But wait," you say, "there really aren't that many open APs these days.  Most of them are captive or paywall portals, or at least make you agree to some goofy ToS." Right, but as has been pointed out multiple times by multiple people all the way back to Dan Kaminsky's DNS tunneling ta...

I recently purchased the Netgear Nighthawk AC1900  dual-band router, to go along with my new faster Internet connection. First off, I'll say- I wasn't a fan of Netgear's past home routers, but this one is quite amazing!  Not only can it keep up with my 1Gbps fiber connection, it also seems to have massively improved the wireless situation in my home over my previous Linksys router. Anyway, enough of that.  One funny thing about this router, in addition to looking like a 1990s stealth aircraft, is that it's covered with SUPER HIGH INTENSITY WHITE LEDs.  They add to the sleek look, for sure, but you can practically read by them in a dark room.  (!)  Not so great if you happen to sleep in the same room with the router. Thankfully, the Advanced Setup UI provides a mode to turn off all the LEDs (save for the power LED, which I just stuck a piece of gaffers tape over.) I like  the status LEDs, though, so I thought - wouldn't it be nice to be able t...