While working on one of my DIY projects, I’ve ordered some really nice retracts with linear actuators from HobbyKing, available here. As soon as I got that cool stuff from them, I realized that the controller (picture on the right) did not work like I would like it to. Although it would fit most RC projects, my demands from it were a tad different.
In the original scenario, the controller is hooked onto one of your receivers channels, and would drive the retracts connected to it according to the PWM signal it receives – which are in most cases translated from a stick position on your remote, or a state of a button.
In my case, I wanted the controller to retract or extend upon receiving a signal from a GPIO, and pinging back, to another GPIO, whenever the requested action is finished. I had several options to approach this problem:
Buy another controller Find a way to download the program from this controller, reverse engineer it, and change to my needs “Reverse engineer” the circuitry, and build a new program for it, accommodating my needs
So I got me another Raspberry Pi 2, and I’m working on building my main media center on it. Of, course, most of the stuff needed for a media center on a Raspberry Pi is pretty straight forward today, and there are lots of guides on the net which will help building a perfect media center. However, one thing I did not find, and it is installing CouchPotato server on an official build of OpenELEC. This is mainly because OpenELEC is specifically optimized distribution of Linux for media centers. Anyways, after some playing with OpenELEC through SSH (can be enabled in the system settings), I’ve managed to run the latest CouchPotato as a service using systemd. Below are the steps to accomplish the above: 1. First, we need to get the latest version of CouchPotato
git clone https://github.com/RuudBurger/CouchPotatoServer.git
By now you have probably already heard of the POODLE vulnerability (here, and here), and started worrying about the security of your browsers. Well, from a quick Google search, there are already dozens of manuals and instructions on how to disable SSLv3 in most of the popular browsers and operating systems. Still though, I haven’t found any proper instruction on disabling it in Chrome for Android, thus I’ve found a way to do it myself, and decided to break it down to some simple steps for anyone searching for the solution. Be advised, that this solution will only work only on rooted devices, and assumes that you have working ADB connection to your phone.