• 1 Post
  • 7 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle

  • Anyone got a good lead on a Replicant-capable phone? I’m currently running LineageOS on my phone, which is alright. But, of course, it has a bunch of proprietary firmware and I think proprietary drivers in it. I have a tablet that runs Replicant, and I love it, because it’s 100% free open source software. I chose not to add any proprietary firmware to my Replicant tablet’s image, so it doesn’t handle video that well, but it’s good enough for what I need.

    I’d love to get a new phone that could be as FOSS as possible. Either Replicant, or maybe a modified LineageOS, or perhaps something else if anyone has any good ideas!

    I have only a bit of experience with Android at the low level, but I know a little bit about adb and unlocking bootloaders and stuff.


  • Actually, I think that’s a really good idea. Just be aware of possible inductance in the long wires from the transformer area going to the camera. Putting a large electrolytic capacitor next to the camera should fix that.

    As for your bell, there are dead simple systems that use a battery-powered stick-on button with a transmitter, and a chime/receiver that plugs into a wall. If you want to be fancy, you could find a way to power the transmitter with that 5VDC, in parallel with the camera… or you could just keep it simple and use the battery that comes with the button. They last near forever.


  • Remember that voltage is measured across a pair of wires, so you can’t power the chime with only a single wire. That’s part of what makes this difficult – these doorbell systems only have the bare minimum of wiring in them. Powering the camera and the chime in series with each other is quite difficult. I think a lot of these things just accept the short circuit, and use a battery to power the camera while the button is being held.

    Here is what I was proposing, and I think what ch00f was also proposing. Replace “5VDC power supply” in this diagram with “a full bridge rectifier and a bunch of caps” in their description, and also note that your camera probably requires a well regulated 5VDC supply.


  • The easy way: take your existing wiring. Put an 18VAC to 5VDC power supply in parallel with the pushbutton. Then, the output of that power supply goes to the 5V USB input of your camera setup.

    The downside is that it will reboot the camera every time someone rings the doorbell, because you are shorting across the camera’s power supply.

    You can put a resistor in series with the button to fix this. You will need to find a resistance that’s low enough to still cause the chime to ring, but high enough not to disrupt the camera’s power supply. Maybe start around 20 ohms. If you can’t find a working resistor value, you can change the transformer to a 24V or 36V transformer, but make sure to keep that resistor high enough not to burn out the chime, and make sure your 5VDC power supply can handle the increase in input voltage.



  • Limonene@lemmy.world
    cake
    toMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldMFA
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    61
    arrow-down
    12
    ·
    3 months ago

    I agree with this sentiment. Steam notably falls into the third category, while otherwise being pretty good.

    But I’m quite disgusted now seeing an image of a Yubikey for the first time. I’ve heard so many good things about them that it’s a major disappointment to see now that they use that awful noncomplaint shape of USB plug.

    There are two very important reasons for the metal shield around USB plugs: 1. For ESD protection, and 2. to hold the receptacle’s tongue in place and prevent it from bending away and losing contact. Every USB device I’ve owned that was a flat plug (like this Yubikey image in this post) has within a month deformed the USB receptacle it’s plugged into to the point that the device no longer works in that port. Compliant USB devices still work in that port’s deformed receptacle, because they have a correct metal shield that bends the tongue back into the correct position.