Projects on Chris Ramsay

Hardening the Home Lab, Part 1: Assume Something Gets In

Thu, 05 Nov 2026 09:00:00 +0000

My home lab grew one Raspberry Pi and one ESP32 at a time, all on a single flat network where every device trusts every other. This series is about changing that, starting with the question that shapes everything else: what happens when one of them is compromised?

A GPS Stratum 1 NTP Server on a Raspberry Pi

Sun, 01 Nov 2026 09:32:00 +0000

Turning a mostly idle Raspberry Pi 4 into a GPS-disciplined stratum 1 time server with an Uputronics GPS/RTC board, gpsd and chrony.

Cloud Detection - Part Five

Sat, 16 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0100

This post follows on at quite a distance from my last post on the subject, and until recently I had not realised quite how long this project has been languishing on the bench. Like many of the electronics projects I undertake they need to be able to withstand being outside and exposed to weather conditions,…

Arduino and Multiple MLX90614 Sensors Take Two

Sat, 02 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Over two years ago I wrote this article about giving an MLX90614 a new slave address, different from the default they are all set with from the factory (0x5A), in order to enable having more than one individually addressable device on the bus.

Projects Update

Fri, 06 May 2016 00:00:00 +0100

It has been a while since I made any progress on a project, so I thought that I would put something down here as a way of summarising to myself where things are, what is left to do and so on, as a form of to-do list.

UV Light Box

Fri, 06 May 2016 00:00:00 +0100

This is a little project to build a cheap UV exposure box for developing UV sensitive printed circuit boards.

Arduino Yún Reliability Problems

Sun, 17 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0100

I’ve been testing out the Arduino Yún recently with a view to making use of one in a project. I’ve come across a problem or two and solutions that were probably worth making a note of, so I thought that I’d write them here as somewhere to come back to in future.

Some Fun with a Cloned Arduino and W5100 Ethernet Shield

Sat, 01 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0100

This article mainly concerns the many trials of reliably bringing a remotely installed cloned Arduino and Wiznet W5100 Ethernet shield back to life after a power cut. The W5100 board is being explored as an alternative to the cheaper 28J60 board which itself ended up with its own reliability issues as described here in another article.

Please note that this particular article references DCcduinos only. The problems described within do not affect a genuine Arduino in my experience.

Giving an Arduino a Heartbeat

Sun, 05 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0100

How would one be able to restart a system that has been deployed in a remote area which gives no immediate access for human intervention? The answer is to give the system an ability to reset itself in case of a system crash.

Soil Temperature Monitoring - Part Four

Fri, 28 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Some would say that at this stage I was almost there with the soil sensor project. All there was left to do was get the thing into the ground. Being that I am a flawed perfectionist, I had some other ideas . I was not going to simply chuck it in the ground without some…

Soil Temperature Monitoring - Part Three

Mon, 10 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A very brief part three of the, somewhat delayed, soil temperature monitoring project. This project has been left a little on the side gathering dust whilst I spent some time concentrating on the cloud detection project, but I am now determined to get this system up and running and its sensors in the ground before…

Cloud Detection - Part Four

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0100

This post follows on quite quickly (for me at least!) from my last one regarding my latest tests and reflections on environmental issues with some thoughts about how to measure ground temperatures in a reliable way. I am also going to take a look at the difficulties I might face in trying to automatically interpret…

Cloud Detection - Part Three

Wed, 17 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0100

Since the last part in this series I have continued to conduct experiments comparing and contrasting the two variants of MLX90614, the wide field of view BAA and the considerably more focused BCF. Whilst undertaking these ‘in the field’ tests I have also come up against a few, what you might call, environmental problems which…

Arduino and Multiple MLX90614 Sensors

Mon, 08 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0100

Nearly all articles you might look for regarding trying out an MLX90614 with an Arduino contain examples of using one sensor at a time. This makes sense as probably 99% of people are going to prototype a system with only one sensor in it. Quite a few articles make the incorrect assumption that having more…

DS18B20 Device Discovery

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 10:57:00 +0100

A little bit of work stemming from from the soil temperature monitoring project; this is an aside on DS18B20 temperature sensing device address discovery with the Arduino. Being that I am going to have a handful of sensors in the ground and therefore not easily accessible for identification I need to find a way of easily finding out all the device addresses in one fell swoop.

Soil Temperature Monitoring - Part Two

Fri, 11 Apr 2014 12:31:00 +0100

Part two on the soil temperature monitoring project. Detailing some thoughts on how to get the sensors in to the ground in a way that will keep them protected from the underground environment. Following that, some subequent details on the construction of the sensor housings.

Soil Temperature Monitoring - Part One

Thu, 10 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0100

This project has its roots in a chance sighting of some, what I thought were, interesting looking API parameters on the Met Office weather data submission service. I’ve been running a small weather station for about a year with its data output being harvested by a RaspberryPi and packed off to the Met Office observation…

Cloud Detection - Part Two

Mon, 24 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This is the next installment on the cloud detection project. This time I am starting to test out hooking up an MLX90614 or two to an Arduino and try out pointing it to the sky in the aim of get some interesting results.

Cloud Detection - Part One

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This project has its roots in a discussion I had a while back with a friend who is a keen amateur astronomer. He had been complaining to me about how he thought that there was a distinct lack of cloud free nights in our corner of Northern Lincolnshire. In fact, he suggested, the weather was…