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Showing posts from 2020

GE's GeoSpring Hybrid electric water heater

2019-02-24 update: Wrote this back in 2014 and only got around to publishing it now after making some final edits. After the final repairs listed here the hot water heater worked without issue until we moved a few years later. It felt, and still feels, like this was just one of those products that was launched with known issues and that it should have had some design changes. Instead they kept shipping the same design for a number of years inspite of knowing a number customers would have to deal with them. In this case the condensate pan was made of inappropriate material for the fitting attachment that was intended for use, and the condenser had a design or manufacturing flaw that caused a serious galvanic reaction. It's too bad that so many people had a negative experience with this relatively new technology given how energy efficient heat-pumps can be. - Chris 2013 We've had a string of issues with our new GE GeoSpring Hybrid water heater. Many reviews on Amazon ...

CANbus on the Omega2

Omega2S Omega2+ If you are as big a fan of the Omega2 as I am I'm guessing you want to do as much with the platform as possible. Recently I've been looking to get a low cost Linux system on a CANbus, to sniff on some traffic. What are the options for adding a CAN interface to your Omega2, either when you are designing a solution or looking to easily add it to an existing system? eLinux has a great guide on a number of CANbus adapters that I'd recommend to anyone looking to integrate CAN into their system. Interface Typical use case Available on Omega2 / Omega2S serial (via SLCAN) Design-in/Add-on Simple protocol but not considered reliable, efficient or fast by Linux CAN developers . SPI Design-in Not usable , the Omega2 (MT7688 cpu) is only half duplex SPI Software SPI Design-in Higher cpu load than hardware SPI USB Design-in/Add-on Available (Omega2 has one USB host port) Note that all of the design-in options could be used ...

Some interesting ways to use gmail's address rules

Gmail address mapping Gmail has some interesting rules that it applies to email addresses. Gmail ignores periods, '.', and all of text after the plus, '+', character up until the '@. Others have written pretty extensively about the situation, I'll try to be brief here. Using periods to make email addresses easier to read You can insert periods to make your email address easier to read, Email sent to Will go to John.Doe@gmail.com -> JohnDoe@gmail.com j.doe@gmail.com -> jdoe@gmail.com Unique email addresses for each site Using '+' you can use unique email addresses when registering with websites. This can make it easier to figure out who might be selling your email address. Email sent to Will go to JohnDoe+somesite@gmail.com -> JohnDoe@gmail.com JohnDoe+anothersite@gmail.com -> JohnDoe@gmail.com If spam starts arriving on one of these site specific emails you can be pretty sure ...