Review on Pieter Viljoen's Blog

Mattos RGB Trim permanent roofline RGB pixel install

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 20:54:16 +0000

[Late post] I finally got around to installing permanent under eave roofline RGB lights, and I’ll share my experience and opinion of the Mattos RGB Trim I used. See my previous post and post on RGB holiday lights for background.

I pre-ordered Mattos Engineering RGB Trim in December 2021 and received the shipment end of January 2022. The boxes have been sitting in my garage for a year, and I just got around to installing them mid December 2022.

Moving from UniFi-USG and Circle to Firewalla

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 15:56:14 +0000

I replaced my aging UniFi Security Gateway Pro and slow Circle Home Plus with a Firewalla Gold Plus, giving me gigabit speed firewall and parental controls in a single easy to use and actively developed device.

Why Firewalla? We have 1Gbps internet, and I want a feature rich firewall that can operate at line speed. We do configure Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, etc. (homogeneous control remains lacking) child account restrictions, but I also want content control and visibility for any network connected devices. Firewalla is at the intersection of high speed and visibility and parental controls.

Installing FLAIR Smart Vents to keep room temperatures balanced

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 20:19:28 +0000

Every year on the hottest days and coldest nights, with the HVAC on, our bedrooms are either too hot or too cold, and I installed FLAIR Smart Vents to try and remedy the situation. In this post I am sharing my experience with the FLAIR installation and configuration, and my opinions and mini review of the Flair vents.

Background

First some history and background, skip to the installation or conclusion section for TL;DR.

Cooling an Overheating NVMe SSD

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 15:10:50 +0000

The SSD in my Windows 10 system started reporting failures, and as luck would have it, died while I was cloning it to a new drive. I suspect death was caused by overheating, and I addressed that with my new setup.

This Windows 10 system is in an NCase M1 v5 SFF case with an ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-I GAMING mini-ITX motherboard and a Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD drive. The motherboard has two M.2 slots, one on the front of the motherboard and one on the back. The slot on the front has a heatsink, but I noticed the drive runs hot even under no load. Some googling showed this to be a common problem with the heatsink and M.2 slot being heated by the motherboard chipset, so I moved the SSD to the slot on the back of the motherboard. The SSD still reported +60°C temperatures under load, and I added a passive heatsink, and that kept temperatures in the low 50°C’s even under load.

Abandoning GreenEye for Sense

Sat, 05 Sep 2020 23:30:28 +0000

I planned a whole house energy monitoring setup when we built our house. But in all these years I never completed the Brultech GreenEye installation, I officially called that plan abandoned, and instead installed Sense energy monitors.

First a bit of history, skip to the end if you’re not interested in my procrastination journey.

I installed my first energy monitor, circa 2009, The Energy Detective TED-5000 connected to Google PowerMeter.

Although our power utility (SCE) had installed smart meters, it took them several years, circa 2012, to enable Home Area Networks (HAN). I installed an EnergyHub Home Base, that turned out to be too unreliable due to the too long distance for ZigBee from the meter to our condo. I ordered the starter kit, that also included an energy monitoring power strip, but the power strip was unusable due to the excessively loud high frequency noise it generated.

Phyn Plus Smart Water Assistant - Early Impressions

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 04:03:13 +0000

Phyn Plus is a “smart water assistant”, a device that monitors water usage, and can automatically shut off the water supply when a leak is detected.

I am familiar with whole house water monitoring and leak detection devices, like the widely available and advertised Moen Flo Smart Water Shutoff, but until very recently I’d never even heard of Phyn. I was introduced to Phyn by a tech savvy friend that bought one at Costco, installed it at his house, and he had only good things to say about it.

Moving from Unraid to Proxmox VE

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 20:18:48 +0000

I finally took the plunge and moved from Unraid to Proxmox VE.

I used to love Unraid, but at some point the easy to use web management UI and app store ecosystem simply lacked capabilities I needed for deployment automation and configuration tasks. Then there is the problem with the poor IO performance, that I’ve written several posts on, and excessive SSD writes wearing out drives, that have remained unresolved, and no solution seems to be forthcoming.

Moving from W2K16 to Unraid

Mon, 06 May 2019 01:34:42 +0000

I have been happy with my server rack running my UniFi network equipment and two Windows Server 2016 (W2K16) instances. I use the servers for archiving my media collection and running Hyper-V for all sorts of home projects and work related experiments. But, time moves on, one can never have enough storage, and technology changes. So I set about a path that led to me replacing my W2K16 servers with Unraid.

I currently use Adaptec 7805Q and 81605ZQ RAID cards, with a mixture of SSD for caching, SSD RAID1 for boot and VM images, and HDD RAID6 for the large media storage array. The setup has been solid, and although I’ve had both SSD and HDD failures, the hot spares kicked in, and I replaced the failed drives with new hot spares, no data lost.

Monoprice MP Voxel 3D Printer Setup

Sat, 05 Jan 2019 19:07:03 +0000

[Update] After using the printer for about two weeks, I returned it to Monoprice for a refund. I would suggest you stay away and look elsewhere, or wait until Monoprice addresses the serious issues; Polar Cloud disconnects while printing, IO timeout error breaks camera function, and the deal breaker is the hangs during printing, with the touch screen unresponsive and the extruder and print bed heater still on.

I’ve been looking for a new 3D printer to use at home, and I just installed and configured my new Monoprice Voxel 3D Printer.

PurpleAir Sensor Installation

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 00:16:37 +0000

I’ve had an Ambient Weather WS-1400-IP weather station installed for some time, reporting to Weather Underground. During the fires of previous years, I considered getting an air quality monitor, but I could never find anything worth the installation effort. During this year’s fire season I saw several ads for PurpleAir, advertising that they collaborate with Weather Underground, so I decided to purchase and install a PA-II outdoor sensor.

The installation instructions are sparse, and the device is not really what I would call rugged or weatherproof. I would not put money on it surviving outdoors for longer than a year, specifically because of the use of a vanilla Micro-USB power plug that offers no corrosion protection. The unit I received came with a Nest outdoor camera power cable, but unlike the Nest camera that uses a watertight plug, the sensor uses an open USB cable. The instructions do say to point the open USB port downwards, instead I opted to seal it in using clear silicone sealer.

Razer BSOD When Driver Verifier is Enabled

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 05:13:57 +0000

Not too long ago I complained about Razer’s poor UX and Support, this time it is a BSOD in one of their drivers, and forever crashing Razer Stargazer camera software.

I’ve been looking for a Windows Hello capable webcam, and the Razer Stargazer, based on Intel RealSense technology, looked promising. The device is all metal and tactical looking, but the software experience is so buggy, install this, install that, then crash after crash after crash. I ended up returning it for a refund, and got a Logitech BRIO instead, the BRIO is cheaper, and works great.

Razer Shoddy Support and Bad Software UX

Tue, 28 Mar 2017 19:07:28 +0000

This post is just me venting my frustration at Razer’s poor software user experience, and their shoddy support practices. I’m writing this after I just had to go and find a working mouse, so I could click a button on a dialog that had no keyboard navigation support.

I’ve been using Razer keyboards and mice for some time, love them, their software not so much. I had to replace an aging ThinkPad, and the newly released Razer Blade Stealth looked like a great candidate, small and fast, reasonably priced, should be perfect, well, not so much.

Ecobee3 WiFi Connection Troubles

Sat, 30 Jan 2016 17:39:45 +0000

In a previous post I wrote about my transition from Nest to Ecobee3 thermostats, and how the biggest benefit of the E3 was the use of remote sensors.

After several months of use, winter and summer, I find the remote sensors really do work very well, and our bedrooms remain at the desired temperature, while the areas around the thermostats can be warmer or colder.

But, the E3 is not perfect, there are two recurring problems; the remote sensors would report offline, and the units would lose network connectivity.

Ecobee3 Thermostat with Remote Sensors

Fri, 04 Sep 2015 18:17:45 +0000

We’ve had a particularly warm summer, for our very moderate area, and between my wife and my parents-in-law, they were constantly changing the thermostat temperature, leaving nobody particularly happy, and our electricity consumption sky-high. I needed a better solution, I found one, but it has some quirks.

I was an early adopter of the Nest Generation 1 thermostat, and when we moved to our new house, Nest was still the best available, and I installed two Nest Generation 2 thermostats, one upstairs, and one downstairs.

MR16 12V Halogen to LED retrofit

Sun, 02 Aug 2015 21:25:14 +0000

[7 years later, see update at end of post]

This post is about my research into finding suitable MR16 LED’s for replacing the 50W recessed halogen lights in our house. In summary, I’ve found “ok” bulbs, not great bulbs, and you can read about the details below.

Our house is about 3 years old, new construction, and one of the many decisions we made during planning was recessed halogen vs. recessed LED lighting. At the time my calculations showed the additional cost for LED lights would only be recovered in electricity cost savings after about 12 years, not worth the cost at the time. Another problem was the optical quality of the products, the near halogen optical quality LED products were ridiculously expensive, and the mainstream LED’s were of poor optical quality, and had poor dimmability.

Nest Protect False Alarms

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 03:08:42 +0000

2AM, beep, smoke alarm low battery warning, and when one beeps, all the interconnected ones beep, now it is impossible to find which one has a low battery. As for how smoke alarms look, I’ve always wondered who made those terrible aesthetic design choices, maybe it is some kind of industry insider competition to see who can design the ugliest unit with the most obnoxious markings, and still get them sold.

Rack that server

Thu, 09 Oct 2014 00:24:34 +0000

It’s been a year and a half since we moved into the new house, and I finally have the servers racked in the garage. Looks pretty nice compared to my old setups.

My old setup was as follows: Two DELL OptiPlex 990 small form factor machines with Windows Server 2008 R2 as Hyper-V servers. One server ran the important 24/7 VM’s, the other was used for testing and test VM’s. The 24/7 VM’s included a W2K8R2 domain controller and a W2K12 file server. For storage I used a Synology DS2411+ NAS, with 12 x 3TB Hitachi Ultrastar drives, configured in RAID6, and served via iSCSI. The iSCSI drive was mounted in the Hyper-V host, and configured as a 30TB passthrough disk for the file server VM, that served files over SMB and NFS. These servers stood on a wooden storage rack in the garage, and at the new house they were temporarily housed under the desk in my office.

TiVo Roamio DVR vs. Verizon FiOS DVR

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 22:00:50 +0000

I just replaced the last of my four Verizon FiOS DVR boxes with a TiVo Roamio DVR box.

The last time I used a TiVo was about seven years ago, it was a DirecTV TiVo box, commonly referred to as a DirecTiVo. At that time DirecTV was my only option for television service, TiVo the only option for a DVR, and AT&T DSL the only option for internet and phone.

I then moved to an area where I could only get Time Warner Cable for internet and TV, and only Verizon for phone service. I used TWC for internet and TV, and Vonage VoIP for phone service. The TWC DVR sucked compared to the TiVo that I was used to, and so did their internet reliability, and so did their customer service.

Panasonic Lumix WiFi Disappoints

Thu, 22 Aug 2013 21:38:27 +0000

I’ve been a long time fan of Panasonic Lumix digital cameras, and I tend to update them every couple of years. My current cameras are the DMC-ZS20 for travel, and the DMC-ZS7 for pocket use.

My workflow typically entails taking lots of pictures, and then using a Transcend USB3 card reader and ImageIngester Pro to copy and rename them to my PC, and finally import them into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. This is a tedious process, but with the release of the Lumix WiFi capable handheld cameras, came an opportunity to make my life simpler by uploading directly using WiFi.

XBMC on NUC's and Pi's

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 22:44:44 +0000

I’m still looking for the perfect XBMC hardware; must be small, silent, low power, low heat, 1080p, HD audio, and play anything I throw at it without a hiccup. The number of options is increasing, but no clear winner.

I previously tested an XIOS DS running XBMC on Android, and XBMC on Linux. At that time the builds were pretty unstable. I retested the latest Linux builds, that also include XBMC 12 Frodo RC2.

LSI turns their back on Green

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 23:02:00 +0000

I previously blogged here and here on my research into finding power saving RAID controllers.

I have been using LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-4i4e controllers in my Windows 7 workstations and LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-8e controllers in my Windows Server 2008 R2 servers. These controllers work great, my workstations go to sleep and wake up, and in workstations and servers drives spin down when not in use.

I am testing a new set of workstation and server systems running Windows 8 and Server 2012, and using the “2nd generation” PCIe 3.0 based LSI RAID controllers. I’m using LSI MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i with CacheVault and LSI MegaRAID SAS 9286CV-8eCC controllers.

Storage Spaces Leaves Me Empty

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 22:54:46 +0000

I was very intrigued when I found out about Storage Spaces and ReFS being introduced in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. But now that I’ve spent some time with it, I’m left disappointed, and I will not be trusting my precious data with either of these features, just yet.

Microsoft publicly announced Storage Spaces and ReFS in early Windows 8 blog posts. Storage Spaces was of special interest to the Windows Home Server community in light of Microsoft first dropping support for Drive Extender in Windows Home Server 2011, and then completely dropping Windows Home Server, and replacing it with Windows Server 2012 Essentials. My personal interest was more geared towards expanding my home storage capacity in a cost effective and energy efficient way, without tying myself to proprietary hardware solutions.

XBMC for Linux on Pivos XIOS DS

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 02:41:59 +0000

Pivos released an XBMC build for Linux, and I tried it out.

The Pivos XIOS DS is a very small (less than 5" x 5" x 1") HTPC supporting hardware accelerated 1080p video and HD audio playback. The XIOS DS supports XBMC for Android, and XBMC for Linux, with native hardware acceleration. I reviewed the Android port of XBMC in a previous post.

The XIOS DS is available for $115 at Amazon, placing it, price wise, between the $98 Roku 2 XS and the $178 Boxee Box.

Koubachi Wi-Fi Plant Sensor

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 00:54:48 +0000

Last week several tech and gadget news outlets reported that the Koubachi Wi-Fi Plant Sensor has been released and is available for order (Amazon or SmartHome). I remembered reading about this device some time ago, and I decided to try it out.

Our houseplants are under my care, and they are generally happy and healthy. A simple water moisture indicator would not get my attention, and certainly would not be worthy of a place in my collection of semi-useful/useless Wi-Fi enabled devices (of which the Nest Learning Thermostat is the most useful), but the Koubachi promises more than just moisture monitoring:

SuperMicro Beta BIOS supports Windows 8 and Server 2012

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:15:32 +0000

In a previous post I reported that my SuperMicro SuperWorkstation 7047A-T failed to install Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 due to an ACPI_BIOS_ERROR. I contacted SuperMicro support, and I was informed that new BIOS releases are on their way that will support Windows 8 and Server 2012.

This morning I received an email from SuperMicro, with a new Beta BIOS for the X9DAi motherboard used in the 7047A-T. The new BIOS allowed me to install Windows 8 and Server 2012.

XBMC for Android on Pivos XIOS DS

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 20:36:07 +0000

In my ongoing quest to find the perfect Home Theater PC platform, I was excited to read that XBMC had been ported to Android. This opens possibilities for XBMC on low cost, low power, low noise, small form factor hardware, with hardware accelerated media playback.

The XBMC Android development was done on a Pivos XIOS DS device, and I ordered one from Amazon. At $115 it is not exactly low cost, especially compared to mature platforms like the Roku 2 XS for $98 or Boxee Box for $180.

From Blogger to WordPress

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:48:58 +0000

I outlined my concerns with Blogger in my last post, and after much deliberation, I decided to move my blog from Blogger to WordPress.

There are two main choices; use WordPress.com for full service blog hosting, or use WordPress.org and host the WordPress application at a hosting provider. Here is a summary describing the differences.

I decided to try both options; I created a blog at WordPress.com, and I created a self-hosted blog using WordPress.org.

Creating the blog at WordPress.com was very quick and easy.

Looks can be deceiving

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 05:28:00 +0000

It has been almost two weeks since I switched to using Blogger’s new dynamic template.

Browsing the site with the new template works really well; it uses most of the available browser real estate, it looks good on an iPad, it feels nice and fluid, but it also has problems.

For some reason my AdSense integration stopped working, and the AdSense site said my account needs to be verified. AdSense was working fine in the old template, so something in the new template, or switching to the new template, must have triggered this. I’ve had AdSense for almost a year, and in that time I’ve not even made enough for Google to trigger a payment. In order to verify my account, I had to enter a PIN they mailed me on a postcard, enter the amount of a test transfer in my bank account, and enter a PIN read to me on my phone. Two days after the verification steps were completed ads started showing up again.

Iomega TV With Boxee vs. D-Link Boxee Box

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 20:38:00 +0000

I have yet to find the perfect media player for playing my archived music and movie collection.

I’ve tried building my own using small form factor computers like the Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11 (Amazon), Nano AD10 (Amazon) and Nano VD01 (Amazon). I’ve tried software like Windows Media Center, XBMC, MediaPortal, and Boxee. I’ve tried commercial products like the WD TV Live Plus (Amazon), Popcorn Hour C-200 (Amazon), A-210, PopBox 3D (Amazon), Apple TV, D-Link Boxee Box (Amazon), and Iomega TV With Boxee. But, they all have problems and shortcomings.

Synology DS2411+ Performance Review

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:43:00 +0000

In my last post I compared the performance of Synology DS1511+ against the QNAP TS-859 Pro. As I finished writing that post, Synology announced the new Synology DS2411+.
Instead of using a DS1511+ and DX510 extender for 10 disks, the DS2411+ offers 12 disks in a single device. The price difference is also marginal, DS1511+ is $836, the DX510 is $500, and the DS2411+ is $1700. That is a difference of only $364, and well worth it for the extra storage space, and the reliability and stability of all drives in one enclosure. I ended up returning my DX510 and DS1511+, and got a DS2411+ instead.

Synology DS1511+ vs. QNAP TS-859 Pro, iSCSI MPIO Performance

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:50:00 +0000

I have been very happy with my QNAP TS-859 Pro (Amazon), but I’ve run out of space while archiving my media collection, and I needed to expand the storage capacity. You can read about my experience with the TS-859 Pro here, and my experience archiving my media collection here.
My primary objective with this project is storage capacity expansion, and my secondary objective is improved performance.

My choices for storage capacity expansion included:

Archiving my CD, DVD and BD collection

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:03:00 +0000

I am about two thirds done archiving my entire CD, DVD, and BD collection to network storage. I have been ripping on a part time basis for about 5 months, and so far I’ve ripped over 700 discs.

I have considered archiving my media collection for some time, but just never got around to it. Recently our toddler discovered how to open discs and use them as toys, so storing the discs safely quickly became a priority. I’d like to give you some insight into what I’ve learned and what process I follow.

Trend Micro SafeSync, neat, but unreliable

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 22:17:00 +0000

I wanted to write about Trend Micro SafeSync, but it reminded me of my Streamload experience, and I ended up writing this instead. This time I am really going to write about SafeSync.

SafeSync is another online backup and sync and share application. Actually, they offer both online storage through a mapped drive, and syncing folders online, this makes it unique compared to many existing offerings.

I have used almost all online backup and sync and share type applications out there, my favorite remains DropBox. SafeSync used to be Humyo, before being acquired by Trend. I used Humyo when they were in Beta, it was just ok, but between then and now their product seems to have come a long way.

NCP VPN not quite Windows 7 compatible

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:24:00 +0000

I got so frustrated with the NCP VPN client software, specifically a recent update, that I decided to let my frustration out by writing about it.

For a long time I used the, IT approved, Cisco VPN client to access our corporate network. And as the OS technology moved along, so did my systems, meaning Vista, Windows 7, and 64-bit. While, for the most part, our IT approved systems remained to be only 32-bit XP. Cisco, for some reason, maybe they are representative of IT organizations as a whole, was late to support Vista, was late to support Windows 7, and for the longest time never supported x64.

Zotac ZBOXHD-ID11 MKV H.264 Video Playback Performance

Sat, 29 May 2010 00:28:00 +0000

When I started writing about the ID11, my intent was to document video playback and use as an HTPC, several posts later, and I am finally getting to MKV H.264 playback configuration and performance.

This is the sixth post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11.

Summary:

The CPU is not powerful enough to render / decode H.264 video, and GPU acceleration via DXVA is required, as well as a DXVA capable player.
The Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder, included as part of Windows 7 x64, worked perfectly for H.264 playback, and compared to other H.264 decoders had the lowest CPU usage.
As a standalone player, Media Player Classic Home Cinema, is a perfect choice, it supports MKV, H.264, DXVA, and subtitles without the need of any other software.
Playback of MKV H.264 in Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, MediaPortal, or XBMC requires the installation of Haali Media Splitter, and ffdshow audio and video decoders.
For AC-3 / DTS pass-through playback via S/PDIF / HDMI, the ffdshow audio decoder is required.

I am not an expert in how these things work, but I have a basic understanding of video playback on Windows platforms, so let’s start with the file format; an MKV file is a Matroska Media Container file. An MKV file can contain multiple audio-, video-, subtitle-, and other, streams. An MKV file is not a video or audio compression format, it is just a container.

Zotac ZBOXHD-ID11 Case Positioning Impact on Fan Noise

Thu, 27 May 2010 19:55:00 +0000

As I was testing the ID11, I noticed differences in the thermal behavior based on how the case was positioned.
I tested three positions; case open, case vertical, and case horizontal.

This is the fifth post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11.

Summary:

Place the case in a vertical position for best cooling.

I used the Beta BIOS for testing. I let the system sit idle, placed it under load, then back to idle, while I recorded the fan speed and temperatures. The ambient temperature was 21C / 70F.

Zotac ZBOXHD-ID11 Beta BIOS Reduces Fan Speed and Noise

Wed, 26 May 2010 21:18:00 +0000

In a previous post I measured the fan speed and noise under load, and I found it to be unacceptably high.
Zotac support notified me that a new Beta BIOS is available that addresses the issue.
In this post I measure the difference between the release BIOS and the Beta BIOS.

This is the fourth post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11.

Summary:

The Beta BIOS reduces the fan speed and noise significantly.
The default BIOS values need some adjustment to get acceptable results.
Similar results may be possible with the current BIOS by setting the target temperature to 65C.

The Beta BIOS was first announced on the global Zotac site, it only later appeared on the US site. I would recommend that ID11 owners look for updates on the global site instead of the US site.
The Beta BIOS is available for download from here.

Zotac ZBOX Mini-PC ZBOXHD-ID11

Wed, 26 May 2010 17:53:00 +0000

I created this page as an index to all my posts about the Zotac ZBOX Mini-PC ZBOXHD-ID11.

This is my first post created using Windows Live Writer.
I used to create my posts using Google Docs, but a recent upgrade to Google Docs removed the ability to publish docs to Blogger. Ironic that I am now using a Microsoft product to post to Google ;)

Zotac ZBOXHD-ID11 4GB RAM

Wed, 19 May 2010 02:46:00 +0000

In this post I describe my experience while upgrading the BIOS, in order to support 4GB of memory.

This is the third post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11.

Summary:
- 4GB is supported after upgrading the BIOS.
- BIOS has to be updated using less than 4GB, else ID11 fails to post.

[Update: 20 May 2010]
After writing this post, the machine started bluescreen / BSOD crashing.
Mostly MEMORY_MANAGEMENT / 0x0000001A errors, with occasional 0x000000BE and 0x0000003B crashes.
When I initially installed the 4GB RAM, I ran memtest for one cycle, and the RAM tested fine. I just reran memtest, and it is reporting the memory as bad.
I replaced the memory with a new stick, I ran memtest overnight, and everything seems back to normal.
I hope it was just a bad stick, and not the ID11 that killed the memory.

Zotac ZBOXHD-ID11 Fan Speed and Noise

Wed, 19 May 2010 00:38:00 +0000

In my previous post I discussed my initial impressions of the Zotac ZBOXHD-ID11.
In this post I continue my review, focusing on fan speed and noise.

This is the second post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11.

Summary:
- High fan speed and noise while under load.
- Fan never returns to silent operation after load is removed.
- Need DXVA capable player for video playback.

[Update: 26 May 2010]
I tested the Beta BIOS, and it produced significantly better results. Effectively the new BIOS runs the CPU at 65C vs. 50C, as such you may be able to achieve the same results with the current BIOS by simply changing the CPU temperature threshold to 65C.

Zotac ZBOXHD-ID11 First Impressions

Sat, 15 May 2010 06:30:00 +0000

I am sharing my experiences and first impressions of the Zotac ZBOXHD-ID11-U mini PC.

In the coming days I will connect the device to my home theater, and review the behavior running Windows Media Center, XBMC, and Media-Portal.

This is the first post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11.

Summary:
- To enter the BIOS, cold boot and press DEL.
- To select a boot device, cold boot and press F11.
- To enable Aero, run the Windows Experience Index assessment.
- To improve performance, install updated drivers from the hardware vendor site.
- To correct HDMI audio output, install updated drivers from the hardware vendor site.
- To reduce fan noise, change the BIOS temperature thresholds.
- The fan is loud and the box runs hot.

Data Robotics DroboPro vs. QNAP TS-859 Pro

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 07:30:00 +0000

I previously wrote about my impressions of the DroboPro, and in case I was not clear, I was not impressed.

I recently read the announcement of the new QNAP TS-859 Pro, and from the literature it seemed like a great device, high performance, feature rich, and power saving.

The TS-859 Pro is now available, and I compared it with the DroboPro, and against a regular W2K8R2 file server.

NEC MultiSync LCD2490WUXi2 and LCD2690WUXi2

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:00:00 +0000

I recently replaced my DELL monitors with NEC monitors.

The primary reason why I replaced DELL with NEC is color reproduction, I could never quite get the wide gamut DELL’s to look right.

I chose the NEC MultiSync 90 series monitors because they have excellent color reproduction, and are reasonably affordable.

The alternative would have been EIZO ColorEdge monitors, but they are significantly more expensive.

Since I had a hard time calibrating the wide color gamut DELL monitors in the past, it was very important that the NEC monitors be correctly calibrated.

Intel DP45SG and Lian-Li PC-C33B HTPC

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:57:00 +0000

I recently built a new home theater PC using an Intel DP45SG motherboard and a Lian-Li PC-C33B case.

I am replacing my existing HTPC that appears to be not quite compatible with Windows 7.

The existing machine uses a Lian-Li PC-C31B case, Intel DG33TL motherboard, and ATI Sapphire HD 2600XT video card.

I started documenting the new machine installation, but the new case was on backorder, and I had all components except the new case, so I tried the HD 5750 card in the old machine.

DroboPro Impressions

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:49:00 +0000

In this post I am describing, and partly reviewing, my experience using a DroboPro over iSCSI.

I have been aware of the Drobo storage devices for some time now, but never used one or knew anybody that owned one.

Recently a coworker’s large home RAID system had a controller failure, and after recovering the data, he migrated to a DroboPro using iSCSI.

After he told me how quiet the device is, and how little power it uses, I wanted to try one out myself.

Hitachi Ultrastar and Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB drives

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:54:00 +0000

In my previous post I talked about Western Digital RE4-GP 2TB drive problems.

In this post I present my test results for 2TB drives from Seagate and Hitachi.

The test setup is the same as for the RE4-GP testing, except that I only tested 4 drives from each manufacturer.

Unlike the enterprise class WD RE4-GP and Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 drives, the Seagate Barracuda LP drive is a desktop drive.

The equivalent should have been a Seagate Constellation ES drive, but as far as I know the 2TB drives are not yet available.

Power Saving RAID Controller (Continued)

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:20:00 +0000

This post continues from my last post on power saving RAID controllers.

It turns out the Adaptec 5 series controllers are not that workstation friendly.

I was testing with Western Digital drives; 1TB Caviar Black WD1001FALS, 2TB Caviar Green WD20EADS, and 1TB RE3 WD1002FBYS.

I also wanted to test with the new 2TB RE4-GP WD2002FYPS drives, but they are on backorder.

I found that the Caviar Black WD1001FALS and Caviar Green WD20EADS drives were just dropping out of the array for no apparent reason, yet they were still listed in ASM as if nothing was wrong.

DELL 2408WFP and Spyder 3 Elite

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:45:00 +0000

I upgraded my vista Ultimate x64 workstation to a dual monitor setup using two 24"DELL 2408WFP displays connected to an ATI HD4850 video card.

I immediately noticed that the colors were unnaturally bright and over-saturated.

I had a similar problem on another workstation with a 30"DELL 3007WFP-HC display. My original 3007WFP was great, until it started making a high pitched noise, and DELL replaced it under warranty, but they replaced it with a 3007WFP-HC model, and the color difference was very noticeably worse than the old monitor.

Power Saving SATA RAID Controller

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:37:00 +0000

I’ve been a longtime user of Adaptec SATA RAID cards (3805, 5805, 51245), but over the years I’ve become more energy saving conscious, and the Adaptec controllers did not support Windows power management.

My workstations are normally running in the “Balanced” power mode so that they will go to sleep after an hour, but sometimes I need to run computationally intensive tasks that leave the machines running 24/7.

During these periods the disks don’t need to be on and I want the disks to spin down, like they would had they been directly connected and not in a RAID configuration.

Asus P5E-VM HDMI motherboard

Fri, 16 May 2008 23:31:00 +0000

In the ongoing saga to get a motherboard that works well with Vista SP1 going to sleep, I have yet again switched motherboards.

As previously posted I’ve tried an Intel DG33TL board, and an Intel DQ35JO, and I am now using an Asus P5E-VM HDMI board.

I was happy with the Intel DQ35JO, but this did not last very long. A few days after posting I found my machine with garbage characters on the screen, requiring a cold boot. Intel support was of little help, but a few days later I updated the firmware on my ThinkPad T61, and I read that one of the fixes in the firmware was to fix garbage characters on the screen when sleeping or resuming from sleep caused by the AMT feature. The DQ35JO board also has AMT, so maybe that was the same problem.

Intel DG33TL motherboard

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:13:00 +0000

This article was originally posted here.

Introduction:

After my bad experience with the Abit F-I90HD motherboards, read about it
here, I purchased two Intel DG33TL motherboards.

Although these boards do not have HDMI onboard, they do have HDCP compliant DVI,
and by adding an ADD2 HDMI board you get HDMI and audio over HDMI.

The Good:

Onboard HDCP compliant DVI.
Intel ADD2 HDMI card support.
Vista installed very fast and with no problems.

Antec Veris Fusion Black HTPC case

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:56:00 +0000

This article was originally posted here.

Introduction:

I purchased an Antec Fusion Black case to replace my aging HTPC.

The case looks very nice, until you turn on the LCD display…

The Good:

The case looks very nice.
The construction is solid.

The Bad:

The two included case fans do not have speed monitoring wires, I had to
purchase new fans.

For such an expensive case this is rather disappointing.

There are two fans on the side of the case, both set to extract hot air,
but hard drives are located in an area with no direct ventilation.

There are ample ventilation holes around the drives, but it remains to be
seen if the drives will overheat or not.

Philips digital photo frame

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:47:00 +0000

This article was originally posted here.

Introduction:

I have been looking for a digital photo frame for a while, and from what I
read the Philips Photo Frame
models appear to have very good image quality and good features.

I bought a Philips 9" wood border model 9FF2CWO.

The Good:

The frame looks very nice.
The image quality is really very good.
The frame’s built in software is very extensive and easy to use.