Immersun MyImmersun ImmerLINK now working!

We had a power cut this morning, and when I got home my Immersun unit was not working. It displayed "Radio Resets xxx" where xxx was a slowly incrementing number. No problem, I'll turn it off and on again.... nope, that didnt work.

I thought that someone has surely had this issue before, and began googling, but to no avail. People had had it, but no one offered any great solutions.

Long story short, I figured out that if I powered the unit on while holding the 'x' button, it did a soft reset, and powered up properly.

I had bought a second hand MyImmersun unit a while back, but was unsuccessful at getting it connected up. However, as part of my googling I found this page (https://www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk/wordpress/?page_id=4154) which filled the missing piece of the puzzle, the cloud IP, which had to be set to 62.30.9.158

I had actually completely given up at getting it connected, and even put it away, but I got it out again, and set the cloud IP. The next step was to try to log on, I'd been unsuccessful at that too, as the "register" page on http://www.myimmersun.co.uk/ seems broken. So I downloaded the android app, and managed to sign up on there, and all of a sudden I can see how my house is performing, solar, hot water tank, import and export. Now I just need to wait for some actual sunshine to see it really performing.

Power cut, and broken Immersun unit prompted the best thing that happened today!

Kitesurfing - Downhill - 4th Nov 2019

Sunset session at 5pm :)

The nights are getting shorter, and the winter is on its way. However, it was really nice to get out in this easterly wind, even though that's not my favourite direction. It was unseasonably warm at 11 degrees too!

It was a good session, still my bad direction, getting a bit better, slowly.

The wind was quite consistent, a little more cross than I was expecting, but that only made it better. Upwind was no problem today. It was pretty dark about 5:15pm when I was packing up!

Kitesurfing - Benone - 9th Sept 2019

Back out again tonight on the new kites, arrived at the beach after work at about 5:30pm, and was glad to see another couple of kites already there. The wind was quite up and down, but I set up the 12. This is the first time this 12 had ever been on the water.

The wind was quite onshore, which is not my favourite, and it was also quite weak, even on the 12, and so I did a couple of runs and then came in. Tried again a little later and it was the same. One of the other lads was going home so I asked if he'd help me leave my car downwind, and do a downwinder, and he obliged :)

What ensued was a fantastic hour of travelling about a mile downwind, sometimes lit, sometimes underpowered, some big waves, some big flats.


With the lighter wind I tried a couple of bigger boosts in the quite shallow water on my 12, and it is definitely a lot more boosty than my old kites.

With the lighter winds I also managed to do a few downloop transitions, both sliding and toe to heel, all sketchy, but fun, and definitely something to have in the toolbox for these lighter winds.

Kitesurfing - Downhill - 6th Sept 2019

First opportunity to try the new kites on the water tonight, went to Downhill as usual, and it was blowing well.

I was going to self launch by pulling the kite around, but the wind felt a bit uncertain, so I used the car as an anchor to launch, and that worked very well.

The session was epic, the waves were nice, the conditions were almost directly cross shore, and there were nice flats between the waves. With the shifting of the sand this year, it is almost like there is a lagoon in the shallow water, with knee deep water for quite a distance out before it gets deeper.

Staying upwind no problem tonight on this kite, not sure if it is the kite or the current or other conditions, but it was pretty good to be able to jump etc and still make it back easily to the same place.

Kite is fast, light, and easy to fly. Didn't do too many exciting things, as I don't want to tempt injuries; I'll go out a few times before getting too overexcited :)

Kitesurfing - New Kites - 5th Sept 2019

New kites arrived yesterday, second hand Naish Pivots, 9 and 12, 2019 model. It was a bit dark when I got to the beach, but I took the opportunity to blow them up and have a quick fly to make sure everything was ok.

And it was.

The 12 had literally never been out of the plastic, it was still folded in the factory fold, I've never seen a brand new kite before!

The kites only have 3 struts, which is a bit handier, but even nicer is the one pump system, which makes inflating the kites a lot easier.

I pumped them up, flew them for a short time on the beach, and packed up again. Can't wait to try them on the water!

Wakeboarding - 1st August 2019

What a great day! Nice flat, warm water, and a great boat with a great driver, and great company. Pity the guy out behind wasn't a bit more capable or experienced.. but that'll maybe come :)

I got up and riding quite well, although I'm sure I'm still not doing it right, and pulling too much against the boat. I was able to carve out to the sides and go from one side to the other with tiny jumps over the wake.

I tried to switch to the other foot forward once, faceplanted, and then got too scared to try again. I'm not sure whether we were going too fast, or the board had too much grip, or just my bad technique, but I was too sore to make any more attempts.

I also got to drive (pilot?) for my friend as he barefooted out the side of the boat! That was quite the experience, and after he trained me in what to do, and we had a few practice attempts, it was only when he was barefooting that I realised he hadn't discussed how we should end the barefooting. It turned out he just let go in the end, which was a relief to me! I didn't know what I was going to do!

Anyway, I enjoyed a day in the boat, riding, driving, and riding again until my arms felt like they were pulled out of me! What an epic day - can't wait for the next time...

Kitesurfing - Flag Beach Feurteventura - 29th July 2019

After my previous disastrous attempt to get kiting at this beach the guys on the desk suggested that I might enjoy their boat trip, where they take you out in a boat, and dump you in the water far from shore, you kite, and they keep an eye. Sounds like a great idea.

Again, the reality turned out different from the ideal.

Firstly, we had to swim out to the boat from the shore, which was not a long distance, but carrying a packed kite, board and bottle of water while swimming turned out as tricky as you might imagine.

Anyway, in the boat and we set off out to sea. Over the waves. And they were waves. Good grief, musch everywhere, and a 2m constant swell, the boat driver was constantly on and off the power just to keep us in the water. It was a tough 5 minutes, clinging on for dear life.

We made it to our destination, got briefed on the conditions and location, and got set up, and dumped into the water. I went second, so I had been in this horrible rocky boat for about 30 minutes before getting on the water. That was grand, as I got to watch the process of inflating, rigging and launching a kite from a boat, which was quite intriguing.

When it was my turn I jumped into the idyllic turquoise water, and got up and going in no time. However, it was horrible. The swell was so big, and there was so much chop that just riding was quite tricky. And it was no fun. All the time was spent trying not to fall, there was no possibility to try anything or learn anything.

After a while I lost the board, and with the swell and chop it was unusually difficult to get going again in the deep water. I suppose I wasn't familiar with the kite etc, and I'm not used to so much deep water either.

I struggled so much that it wasn't any fun. And when it's no fun, it is time to stop. So I got picked up by the boat and stayed there. I didn't even take my second go, especially as I was feeling a bit queasy with the constant undulations of the boat in the huge swell. I don't often or really ever feel seasick, but I definitely did today.

I've never been so glad to get back to land.

In one way it was good to try it. In another way it was a waste of 60 euro. In yet another way, it made me appreciate what we've got back home, miles of golden sand, hardly any rocks, excellent surf, really magical conditions, if a little cold. But I'd take the cold anyday!

Kitesurfing - Flag Beach Feurteventura - 28th July 2019

Kites everywhere! This beach looked great, a load of kites in the air, a kite school who offered hire and a rescue service, and lots of wind. What could be wrong?

Well, it turns out, plenty. First of all the only 'safe' place to enter the water was about 100m or so upwind, so they launched me and the first thing is you have to walk backwards up the beach against the wind.

Then I went into the water at the spot I thought I was supposed to, but it turned out still to be rocky underfoot - I hadn't gone far enough. Kite in one hand, board in the other, jagged rocks underfoot and big waves are a recipe for falling - and so I did. I ended up with a pretty nasty cut on my foot and a few on my hands.

Then when I got out into the water, somehow I lost my board, got it back, and then lost it again, as I came onto the rocks. I had to come in, I couldn't get to my board, and had to come back in across the jagged rocks again. What a horrible disastrous start to kitesurfing in Fuerteventura.

Amazon Echo - Alexa - Stereo Pair Disappointment

Since I read about the possibility of pairing two echos, I thought it'd be perfect for our kitchen, which is quite a large room. 'Alexa' is in one corner, and sometimes has trouble hearing, if there is some background noise etc, so a second one somewhere else in the kitchen would help with that.

What nobody told me, what I hadn't read anywhere before I bought it was that only some interactions are in stereo. The closest echo will answer regular questions, play podcasts, while the other one just goes inactive.

When you say "Alexa" both normally wake, but as you say "What's the weather?" or whatever, one of them goes back to sleep, and the awake one answers.

If you play music from Amazon's service it will play in stereo. It seems to be some sort of support for different services. If you say "Alexa, play radio 1" (in the UK) it plays Radio 1 from the BBC in mono. If you say "Alexa, ask tunein to play radio 1", then tunein will play Radio 1 in stereo.

This morning I sat at the kitchen table to have breakfast and said "Alexa, good morning". The one closest picked up, and gave me my flash briefing, which is great. Then I asked it to play my morning devotional podcast, and lo and behold the other one (behind me) started playing it.

This is not what I expected when I bought it specifically for this purpose. However, I have to say that when it is in stereo, it really is fantastic, I really like it. I also really like that the volume remains linked in both, so if you use the buttons or use voice control, both change volume simultaneously.

I hope that this mono/stereo annoyance is only teething problems, and that all audio will eventually come from both parts of a stereo pair, but in the meantime, it really is a stereo disappointment.

Edit [1st December 2018]: I got home after a few days away, and one of my stereo pair speakers seemed to have forgotten stuff. I rebooted them both, and one could control the lights, and other skills I had, but the other couldn't. One had access to unlimited music, the other only played samples. When I told it to "discover my devices" it always returned instantly with "no new devices found". I tried quite a few things, but in the end I had to reset it. The only weird thing I noticed was that in the Alexa app when I went into the settings for this device, the volume control was always missing. All working now

Edit [3rd December 2018]: I found this sentence "Note: Paired Echo speakers only support music content" on this page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GPSQQS7N3SBKAEWU
And note: "music content" is different from "Audio player" which is how some of my audio apps work :(

Kitesurfing - Downhill - 21 Sept 2018

Building MicroPython for esp8266 - to freeze modules

For my esp8266 project with the ssd1306 screen I was starting to run out of memory for all the 'threads' I needed. I have a TCP client talking to the server, temperature readings coming from the 1-wire device, and button inputs. Not to mention that I want to run a webserver for configuration.

The answer, and it has so far worked very well, is to build my own firmware, and 'freeze' the modules that are least likely to change into the firmware. I have a font class for the ssd1306 screen, the asyncio library, the aswitch library, and a few others which are unlikely to change, so I picked them.

This is the procedure I followed.

Create a VirtualBox VM, running some recent version of Ubuntu (18.04) (select minimal options), and log into it. I installed opensshd-server, and on the settings for the VM I enabled a bridged network so it gets an IP address on my home router.
sudo apt-get install net-tools openssh-server
Then you can ssh

I more-or-less follow this : http://akshaim.in/IoT/MicroPython_ESP8266/MP_ESP_101.html


sudo apt-get install make unrar-free autoconf automake libtool gcc g++ gperf flex bison texinfo gawk ncurses-dev libexpat-dev python-dev python python-serial sed git unzip bash help2man wget bzip2 libtool-bin

git clone --recursive https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-sdk.git
cd esp-open-sdk
make

(takes about 40 minutes)
(NOTE - this path is shown at the end of the install - run the command)
export PATH=/home/akshaim/Documents/ESP8266/esp-open-sdk/xtensa-lx106-elf/bin:$PATH




git clone --recursive https://github.com/micropython/micropython.git
cd micropython
git submodule update --init
make -C mpy-cross
 cd ports/esp8266
(different from original instructions)
make
(different from original instructions)

Now you can put modules (and subdirectories) into the modules directory, and they end up in the firmware. When you put a new module, you need to 'make' again.

output is firmware-combined.bin located in esp8266/build

This is the current content of my modules dir:
 1624 Sep 15 16:39 websocket_helper.py
 2748 Sep 15 16:39 webrepl_setup.py
 2118 Sep 15 16:39 webrepl.py
   31 Sep 15 16:39 upip_utarfile.py -> ../../../tools/upip_utarfile.py
   22 Sep 15 16:39 upip.py -> ../../../tools/upip.py
 1094 Sep 15 16:39 port_diag.py
   35 Sep 15 16:39 onewire.py -> ../../../drivers/onewire/onewire.py
  850 Sep 15 16:39 ntptime.py
  836 Sep 15 16:39 neopixel.py
 1425 Sep 15 16:39 inisetup.py
 1110 Sep 15 16:39 flashbdev.py
   35 Sep 15 16:39 ds18x20.py -> ../../../drivers/onewire/ds18x20.py
   27 Sep 15 16:39 dht.py -> ../../../drivers/dht/dht.py
  219 Sep 15 16:39 _boot.py
  470 Sep 15 16:39 apa102.py
 1716 Sep 15 17:42 config.py
 6397 Sep 15 17:42 freesans34_num.py
 4096 Sep 15 17:42 uasyncio
   35 Sep 15 17:57 ssd1306.py -> ../../../drivers/display/ssd1306.py

Installing modules

Python uses a package manager to install modules, and it is also available for micropython. I'm not very familiar with all this, and I find it a bit fiddly. However, here are some instructions to install asyncio, logging, and picoweb.

Build micropython for unix.
cd into ports/unix, and here is a version of micropython which can run on the host. This is used to install modules locally before freezing them.

#first some prerequisite packages to install :
sudo apt-get install pkg-config python-pip libffi-dev

#next make the unix version of micropython
make axtls
make

#now you can download and install modules
#cd back into ports/esp8266
../unix/micropython -m upip install -p app picoweb (also installs uasyncio)

../unix/micropython -m upip install -p app micropython-logging

now I move all the files/dirs from app to modules - I suppose you could just install to modules first, but I liked the buffer of not messing up my modules directory, but instead checking the app directory before deciding what to move.

After that just make to build your new firmware, and you're good to go.

Thermostat in progress

As a potential upgrade for my Raspberry Pi heating system, I am working on a thermostat module for it - still in the prototype stages, more info to come but here's where we're at now:

eGalax 7" screen raspberry pi with sketch + GUI

I wanted a light installation of raspian, so I got sketch and added appropriate stuff to make x work.

To install GUI
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg lxde lightdm

This stuff was required to make the touchscreen work - otherwise the calibration just didnt do anything.

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxext-dev libxi-dev x11proto-input-dev xserver-xorg-input-evdev xinput-calibrator  evtest -y


cd /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
sudo mv 10-evdev.conf 45-evdev.conf


sudo vi 99-calibration.conf
add xinput_calibrator output, which should look like this:


Section "InputClass"
        Identifier      "calibration"
        MatchProduct    "eGalax Inc. USB TouchController"
        Option  "Calibration"   "67 1948 1877 183"
        Option  "SwapAxes"      "0"
EndSection

Broken Ribs

Three weeks ago today I had a kite-surfing accident and broke/fractured rib(s). At the time it was uncomfortable, but I carried on surfing for a few minutes, and it was time to pack up anyway.

I was able to pack up, get home, unpack the car, get out of my wet-suit etc, all a little uncomfortable, but really not too painful. The next morning I went to drive to work, and I got about 100 yards in the car and the clicking and pain was almost unbearable. It still makes me a bit light-headed to think about it.

I limped home, and ended up at home for 3 weeks.

The first week I really did no activities at all. I wasn't away from the house for the first week.

I got some stronger painkillers on prescription, and began taking them immediately. I struggled to do basic things like getting up the stairs, or standing and sitting. All week I lay exactly flat on my back all night without moving. Very uncomfortable.

By the time one week had passed, I was able to be a passenger in a car. I was able to get in and out of a car with a bit of care. However, at this stage I was struggling to get in and out of bed, I made sure I only made the transition from horizontal to vertical once per day. No laying about on the sofa, I only spent time sitting straight up during the day.

After about 10 days I tried driving a short distance, but it was still very uncomfortable, so I gave up driving for that second weekend. Each day I felt more comfortable, and at this stage I was able to sleep a bit on my side; my good side only, not the injured side.

Today, 3 weeks after my injury I returned to work. I'm still clicking a bit, and to be honest, driving is probably the activity I find most difficult. I'm much more comfortable sleeping, in fact last night was the first night I got to sleep on my injured side.

I still have some way to go, but I'm feeling incredibly better than I was, and each day brings an improvement. It wont be long before I'm strapped to a kite again ;)

Kitesurfing - Downhill - 11th September 2017

Epic conditions tonight at Downhill, nice wind for my new 9 and the longest flats between the waves I've ever seen. Out after work, on the water for about 90 minutes.

Then I tried a down loop waterstart. Epic fail, crashed kite and face plant. Sore, but quickly recovered. Then I tried a back roll, and I really have no idea what happened, but I fell hard on my left side.  Real hard. So hard in fact that I think I have broken more than one rib. They are cracking and popping like mad. 

I suspect I'll be out of the water for a week or two :(

Kitesurfing Benone 9th September 2017

Today was forecast to be good north west all day, but better in the afternoon with more sunshine. I went to Benone after lunchtime and there were 4 other kite surfers already setting up. They were strangers to me, seemed nice, and also mostly learners, I think.

I set up and set off, but it quickly became apparent that these guys were in my way. Being learners their kites were almost always at 12 o clock and I was upwind of them, meaning I couldn't easily sail past them. The wind was quite onshore too.

So I packed off down the beach, downwind of them. It was great. Great conditions, and the new kites boost a lot more than the old ones. Really enjoying them. I was there for a few hours, just getting to grips with the new kite, and how quick it is compared to my old ones. Great Saturday afternoon!!

Kitesurfing - Benone - Friday 8th September 2017

Forecast looked good for this evening all week, and it actually happened. I don't think I have been this nervous about kitesurfing for ages, taking to the water on a new kite, and not knowing its characteristics.

Anyway, after work I headed straight to the beach, someone else wa kiting, so I went to near them. I took a lot longer than normal to get set up, as I was making sure everything was ok with the gear.

It was quite showery, but between the showers I had a great wee session. This is the first time I easily stayed upwind in a long time. Totally juiced on the new 9.

Kite 5th September

Tonight I went to the beach to try out my new kites. They arrived in the post today, two Ozone C4 kites, 9 and 12.

I was really only hoping to set them up and see what they flew like, but unfortunately there really wasn't enough wind to even do that. Maybe another day.

Kitesurfing 26th Jun 2017

Great wee session this afternoon down at Downhill. Wind was quite changeable, I tried both the 9 and the 12, but settled on the 9. Ended up doing two downwinders from the river to the mouth. Lovely flats between the waves, and nice ramps, up to 6-8 ft at the outside. Cross from the west side. Best day I've had for ages. The 9 is so nimble, makes me wonder if I should change the 12....

Connecting to a Raspberry Pi behind a 3G Router

Experimenting with 3G router and '3' free 200MB/Mth data SIM and of course there is the NAT problem, so I did this:

http://zieren.de/raspberry-pi/reverse-ssh-through-3gnat/

/usr/bin/sshpass -p "password" ssh -o ServerAliveInterval=60 -o ServerAliveCountMax=2 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o ConnectTimeout=15 -N -R 22222:localhost:22 pi@my-house.ddns.net -p 1234

Then I can "ssh localhost -p 22222" on my local pi and get connected to the one behind the NAT. Excellent.