Local News Stories
POWER FAILURE CAUSED SKCAMERA FAILURE
A power failure today resulted in the sky camera not coming back on-line. The cause is unknown and will not be immediately addressed due to other activities,
An estimated time of restoration is unknown at this time.
Cancellation of Houseboat Trip
The 8-week houseboat trip that was scheduled for August has been cancelled so that our dog Marduk can be treated for aggressive Mast Cell Cancer. Surgery appears to have failed to remove all of the affected site, chemotherapy treatment is being implemented and will take 5 months, so our trip has been postponed until 2025.
LIttle-Sense Offline for Hardware Update
The little-sense.au website will be off-air until 0900 24/7/2024 ACST to allow for the power supplies to be updated and a new Raspberry Pi installed as the web server. The sky camera will be off-line during this period.
System Going Down for Maintenance
The www.little-sense.au site containing the skycam files will be down from 1000 ACST on the 5th July 2024 for approximately 3 hours.
Internet Access Down for Extended Period
On the afternoon of the 24th June 2024, access to the Internet was lost. This meant that the website www.little-sense.au went off-line, make the sky camera information unavailable. The ISP Aussie Broadband tested the system and identified the NBN modem as having had 47 dropouts in the pervious hour. It was not obvious if the problem was in the cable or the modem.The NBN technician was booked to attend on the afternoon of the 25th June to address the issue.
This event was just the latest in a long running sage that was had with the previous ISP Internode. They had sent out a free replacement router even though the symptoms did not support the router being the issue.
System restored at 15:00 ACST after the NBN technician replaced the NBN modem and a connector up in/on the roof. After the connector was replaced, connection to the Internet was established.
ISP Change-Over In Progress
Due to a change of Internet Service Providers, various parts of the system need to be modified to reflect the new provider.
After decades of being happy with Internode, its level of service declined rapidly, perhaps because it weas bought out? As a result, the system has been shifted to Aussie Broadband. So far it appears to have a better level of support than Internode and its plan has unlimited data, unlike the comparable Internode Plan.
A recent issue I had with them took 14 days to get a response - when I contacted them again. Their service claim was that they tried for a "48 to 72 hours response". I told them claiming that was practically false advertising.
The last straw with Internode came when I pointed out that one of their web pages was displaying errors; and still got errors when I tried multiple browser types on both a Linux box and a Windows Box.
The response I received was "Have you tried viewing this page with a different browser?" This showed that they weren't even reading the messages being sent to their help desk, and their help desk had degenerated to unskilled tick and flick check sheet operators. With that response, I knew it was time to change providers.
I've only been with Aussie for a very short time, but already their support is superior, in my opinion.
Re-Development of Raspberry Pi Network
The previous power supply used by the Raspberry Pis resulted in the Pi's annoyingly bringing up the lightning bolt on every Raspberry Pi, even though there were never any failures due to low supply voltage with these units or any other USB device powered by the power supply.
I decided to get rid of this annoyance by using an old 19V laptop power supply that is capable of providing 135W. It was connected to a series of switch mode power supplies which step the voltage down to +5.18V which allows for some voltage drop along the USB power cable.
After this power supply as tested, attached to the DIN Rail and powered up, it was found that some of the software, specifically the sky Camera did not work It was later found that the problem was the units booted at different rates and there was a race condition relating to the networked storage.
More work will be needed to ensure that the system comes up fully before the sensitive programs are started.
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The Para District Area Club provides community support in the Salisbury, Playford and Tea Tree Gully areas.
It is operated by Para Broadcasters Association Inc. as a not for profit enterprise. Formed in 1978, PBA-FM conducted a successful test transmission in April 1981 and a full licence was granted in November 1982 with broadcasting commencing in 1983.
