Jacob, Author at Jacob N Calvert

Network bandwidth testing with iperf3

February 10, 2018

Everyone knows how to use speedtest.net to test your internet connection speed, but how do you test your LAN bandwidth? When you want to troubleshoot speed issues on your LAN, what can you use? Luckily, some clever software call iperf3 can help us out. You can find the tool at the main website for iperf and iperf3 here. This tool is available for Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, and iOS, so you’ve got options. There are two parts to testing your network with iperf3. First…

I’m back!

February 10, 2018

Jacob

General

The server was down for about 24 hours while I performed some hardware and software upgrades. I’ll be bringing all of my blog entries back as soon as I can get the SQL imported! For the nerdy and techies who wonder: Hardware Upgrades 512MB RAM to 1GB Single Core 32bit to single core 64bit Software Upgrades Debian 7 to Debian 9 Installation of security (super secret stuff!) software to mitigate the endless torrent of hacking attempts PHP5.4 to PHP7.x …

Build Your Own Router – Part 2

April 19, 2017

Jacob

Projects

BYOR part deux Hello all! I’m back again with part two of the Build Your Own Router Series! In this post, we’re going to do the following: Talk about our proposed network architecture Set up our interfaces Set up a DHCP server and define our subnets Define some subnet ranges for our devices Set up some DHCP reservations Set up a DNS cache server Set up some basic iptables rules and forwarding What you must have before this point You…

Build Your Own Router – Part 1

April 10, 2017

Jacob

Projects

Hi all, Since many folks these days are talking about VPNs and improving their online security, I thought I’d write a series on my approach to this. In this series, I want to cover the following: Why would you build a router to improve your privacy? What are the basic skills needed for building your own router? What hardware is needed? What software is needed? What does all this effort buy me? I’ll address these questions and more as I…

Presenting…. The MIDI Control Surface (Rev. A)

April 6, 2017

Jacob

Projects

Hi all! I’ve finally gotten around to posting the pics of the MIDI control service project I was working on. Here are the details on this guy: Total Cost to Build: ~$60 if you count the hot glue gun, $45 ish if you don’t Total Time to Build: ~A month of planning, a weekend of building, a few weeks of tweaking software How’s it made? The guts This project has the following components: 1 wooden cigar box from a hobby…

I’ve been busy working, but I’ve started a side project

February 2, 2017

Jacob

Projects

Hi folks! It’s been a long while since my last post. I’ve been working like crazy and preparing for my wedding! I have picked up a side project however. I wanted to learn about how a multitasking kernel does its thing at the basic level. So I grabbed an ATMEGA328P and built a little kernel for myself. You can go explore it at my GitHub repo. Introducing littleKernel As the name implies, it is a little kernel. I’ve built this little…

A Little Music to Relax You

June 7, 2016

Jacob

Music

Hey all! I’ve put together a little playlist (which I’ll keep updating) of music I like to relax to in the evenings. Give it a listen!

Reliably identifying discrete colors from an RGB color sensor

April 16, 2016

Jacob

Math

For my Capstone Design project, one of my many tasks was to identify discrete colors on painted blocks (red, green, blue, yellow) using a the TCS34725 color sensor. I configured the color sensor to pass back four 16-bit integers representing the RGB and Clear color values of the reflected object that the sensor is “looking” at. Initially, I tried a simple linear matrix equation to map the input RGBC values to RGBy output numbers. I then took the highest output value…

It’s been a while again!

April 16, 2016

Jacob

General

I have been very busy with Capstone Design again this semester so I’ve not had any time to myself. However, I have quite a lot to write about! School I am wrapping up my final few classes and getting ready for graduation! This semester I have taken several rather applicable classes to my upcoming work situation. My favorite class has absolutely been Embedded Systems. This class goes from the question What is an embedded system? through What are the considerations when designing an embedded…

It’s Been a While!

December 18, 2015

Jacob

General

I’ve not posted in a few months, mainly because I’ve been extremely busy! Here’s what I’ve been up to recently. School I just finished up the semester and finals were rough, but I came out with great success. I really enjoyed a few of my classes. Namely, Computer Architecture, where I studied how the MIPS32 ISA was designed, and then implemented several hardware versions of it. The second best class was Digital Systems Design where I was introduced to VHDL and was able…