Ramblings

  • Home Assistant and Zigbee2MQTT

    Home Assistant and Zigbee2MQTT

    On a Raspberry Pi, Home Assistant as-an-OS appears to run everything in Docker containers, with pass-through of USB and filesystem access. This means that things like the Mosquitto and Zigbee2MQTT add-ons are all in their own docker container. This poses a problem when the default configuration for something like Z2M is “mqtt://localhost:1883”, because it can’t…

  • Debugging power gremlins

    Debugging power gremlins

    When I went on board earlier this year, I noticed that my batteries were well below a good resting point. Blue Opal has a 55 Wp solar panel hooked up to a Votronic MPP 250 Duo Digital. With the panel left on deck when I’m not sailing, it should have kept the batteries trickle charged.…

  • A visit to the National Botanic Gardens

    A visit to the National Botanic Gardens

    Saturday gone, K and I hopped on a bus to go to Ireland’s National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin in Dublin. It’s a 10 minute walk to the terminus of the line just south-west of where I live, and about an hour on the bus to reach Glasnevin. The view from the top level of the…

  • Fixing a broken Whale pump

    Fixing a broken Whale pump

    The other weekend, when K and I went to Blue Opal to spend the night (so we could go sailing before the club opened the next day), I used the head and pumped to the tank. There was a bong (which is normal for the tank), and then I heard water dripping. Alas, I very…

  • Winch greasing

    Winch greasing

    Noticed last week that the winch on the coachroof sounded “graunchy” when winching the main up. Realised I probably hadn’t done anything to the winches since I bought Blue Opal, so it would be a good idea to to something about that. Ordered some Lewmar winch grease (research showed it might not be cheap, but…

  • How to check the masthead light without a dinghy

    How to check the masthead light without a dinghy

    Having re-done some of my navigation lights, I figured it was a good idea to make sure I’d wired everything correctly. The LED lights don’t draw many amps, and so it can be hard to tell if the light has actually turned on. In the past, I’ve waited for nightfall, tied up alongside at the…