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encrypted backup appliance with raspberry pi and rsnapshot

*** I actually ended up replacing rsnapshot with obnam as detailed in this post. *** Today, I decided to switch up my backup routine. Before I was using a mix of bash and python scripts to backup different machines, but I wanted to set up a single appliance that could take care of all of my servers and keep backups in a centralized, encrypted location. What I ended up with is a raspberry pi with an encrypted 4TB usb drive.

rtl-sdr upconverter

I’ve been productive this memorial day weekend. I ran across a great deal on a digital oscilloscope on Friday. It’s an Aktakom ADS-2061M that was brand new in the box and I got it for the price of a raspberry pi. With that, I was able to put together an upconverter for my rtl-sdr dongle. I used a NE612 mixer with an si5351 oscillator running at 112.5MHz. The arduino is driving the si5351 breakout board.

2 meter yagi antenna

Over the weekend, I followed this guide to make a 2 meter tape measure antenna. Here is what I ended up with: The build was fairly simple and the antenna seems to be working okay. I’ve got it hooked directly to a Baofeng UV-5R5 and I’ve been able to pick up a few more repeaters than usual. I’ve got no way to test the SWR on it at the moment so I don’t know how well it actually works.

arduino si5351 vfo

A few months ago, I found the soldersmoke podcast and started hearing about the SI5351 clock generator board. I found AK2B’s site and followed this post and this is what I ended up with. Now I just need to figure out what I can do with this thing. Being completely new to amateur radio I am slowly learning all the bits and pieces. Hopefully I’ll have my own home built radio sometime soon.

fpv

I finally picked up some cheap fpv goggles. I went with the quanum v1 goggles. They were too cheap to pass up and I’m still not sold on the whole fpv thing. I still need to finish my good quadcopter build. I’ll post some info on it later, but for now I’ve got a quad that I slapped together with some spare parts. There is no pdb or anything, just directly soldered wires with a cheap flip32 flight controller.

morse code in c

Well, its been a long time since I last wrote a blog post. I’ve set up a new site and moved over a few old posts, but I can’t seem to find the time to write up anything I’ve been working on. A few weeks ago I passed my Technician, General, and Amateur Extra exams, so I am now officially a licensed amateur radio operator. I still don’t have a radio, but I did pick up two of the CW Pixie kits and built a 40m dipole.