v1.1.0 of Squeezefix is out! Finally with support for newer Fujifilm Cameras. I tested everything with an X-T4 and X-T10, but the script might also work with other Fujifilm cameras. I just don’t have these lying around.

Apparently mining Monero on Raspberry Pis seems to be all the rave now? So let’s try:

I had 5 Raspi 3B and one 4B 8GB lying around…

Don’t we all have that annoying buggy app that should be fixed but works just enough to not do it right now? Well, for me that was my Bookstack wiki that took around 3 sec for every page load. So I will share what I learned and how I fixed it.

Starting with version 58 in 2017 Chrome only accepts certificates that not only define the domain name in the commonName field of the certificate but also the subjectAltName. By doing so they brought their implementation more in line with RFC2818 as Mozilla has done with Firefox 48. Unfortunaltely some tools like the popular CA.pl script do not support the new field in a convenient manner. But you can generate self signed certificates with CA.pl that newer Chrome and Firefox versions will accept. Here is how to monkeypatch the problem away.

Update 2022-04-26: In a newer post I compare the contemporary webcams of 2022: Logitech StreamCam, Logitech Brio, Razer Kiyo Pro and Elgato Facecam.

During the supply shortages of 2020 I always wondered wether my Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera would have better image quality in Zoom than the Logitech c922 I normally use. Now that you can again order any webcam at a reasonable price I finally got around to test which one is better.

Focus of the tests are less pixel peeping and more a qualitiative result wether it would be worthwile to check out the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera as a streaming option.

I recently wanted to debug something on my linux server and listed all bridges. The output was disappointing. All bridges were named with random strings like this:

br-2b6b3cc75104
br-41da10d6d383

I create all my bridges with ansible and it seems that the ansible docker_network module is not very good at naming things in a human readable way. But there is a way you can influence the system bridge names when using docker through ansible.

Update 2022-04-03: Since I published this post, Raspbian evolved into Raspberry Pi OS with its current version Bullseye. There, the old camera stack was replaced with libcamera and the old commands like raspivid and raspistill are now deprecated. If you want to check out the new commands, see Raspberry Pi Streaming update: Raspberry Pi OS.

The introduction of the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera in 2020 has been a perfect excuse for me to acquire new hardware. After some initial tests and use as toy cam, I wanted to build a high quality streaming unit that I could place somewhere nice and watch the images at home. Of course you could buy something like that from off the shelf. But who does that when you can go through the whole development process by yourself and end up with an inferior product at a much higher cost?

Now I had some initial problems getting the stream to work but I found solutions for 3 media tools that I want to share.

Our team is consulting a telco customer and due to the pandemic we all have to work from home. To mitigate the negative effects of remote work we all have been taking part in a continuous Zoom session during the work day. Most of the time our cameras are turned on, so we can see each other kinda like in an office. Everyone from the team would be present in the main Zoom room, moving to breakout rooms as necessary.

Unfortunately, after a while some problems became evident:

• Every time someone starts to talk in the main room, everyone would hear it even if they don’t want to
• Everyone in the room is beeing addressed as if he was the person in focus even if they aren’t
• Lot’s of people don’t want to have a camera in their face all the time
• Finding people in breakout rooms is tedious

During a virtual retreat we learned about gather.town, which is basically what happens if you crossbreed Zoom with Zelda. After initial positive reactions we decided to give it a try in our team.

So you want to set up a new Raspberry Pi but there is no monitor and keyboard around or you just can’t be bothered getting them?

No problem! This is how to get your Raspi up and running without them…

Since the introduction of the GDPR in 2016, on almost every website you will be greeted with an extensive cookie banner. With complicated text, deliberately unusable controls and persistance it will try to get your ok to collecting lots of private data about you, and most importantly, prevent the owner of the website from getting sued.
Apart from hating these cookie banners, I was wondering wether such a banner would really benefit me and the visitors of this blog, or if it would just drive away most of the assumed audience, which are people with interests in developing software, DevOps or apparently people who want to be ansible consultants.
So, I started to take a look around for tools that would enable me to collect some data about how this blog is beeing used, while not requiring a cookie banner and staying GDPR compliant.