In an earlier post, I experimented with retrieving date usage and uptime stats from a BT Home Hub 5A, and cobbled together a PHP class to automatically load a privileged page. With access to the data, I need to parse it before committing the results to a persistent database. Step in regex…
Accessing BT Home Hub 5 statistics with PHP + cURL
I’ve had the BT Home Hub 5 for a few months now, and it keeps restarting and generally acting like a cut-price pile o’ shite. So, in an effort to monitor its shitey-ness, I figured that my home server could extract the uptime and the traffic usage every x minutes.
The HH5 is – on paper – a great little router especially as it has an Infinity modem built in meaning you can do away with the separate OpenReach white box. You can’t mount it on the wall which is annoying, and the feet are fairly useless at keeping it from toppling over, but it does output both 2.4 and 5Ghz wireless networks. One of its big downside, at least for myself, is the lack of any way of scripted monitoring (e.g. SNMP).
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Making a radio controlled tank – Part 1 – Mechanics
I’ve tried my hand – literally – at quadcopters, submarines, and RC buggies, and now its time to make a tank. Hmmm, I guess more of a tracked box but we’ll call it a tank.
While searching for information on the subject, I ran across a website describing how he had made the treads out of bike chain and acrylic, the motors were ripped from cordless drills, and the chassis was essentially adult Meccano. All of this looks to be within the realm of possibility, and has the potential for being massively over-engineered – the best way to engineer.
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