Random Wire Review 90: May 17, 2024
Virtual machines and a promise for more content next week
This is a shorter Random Wire Review. I’ve been on the road for work all week and have had little extra time to delve into amateur radio topics and activities. I’ll have at least two radio topics next week: configuring my Yaesu FTM-300DR as a Personal Digital Node, and a few more Meshtastic devices to get to know.
As an aside, I’ve been running a Meshtastic node in the vehicle while I drove from Portland, Oregon to Pullman, Washington, and back. I wanted to see how well it worked as a tracker. Surprisingly, it appears to be about the same, generally speaking, as running APRS on the Yaesu FTM-300DR radio. The limiting factor with Meshtastic is nodes that can hear my node. The limiting factor with APRS is digipeaters within range of my radio. Of course, running APRSDroid on my smartphone provides good tracking density because of more consistent cellular phone coverage.
Virtual Machines
It’s been a while since I dove into the world of virtual computers. My tool of choice was, and continues to be, VirtualBox. Why? Because I have a sense of familiarity and comfort with it. It may not be the best tool and I look forward to advice from readers about how I can “up” my game with virtual machines.
I loaded a VM with Debian 12 and WordPress, sourced from Bitnami. VirtualBox is running on my big file server. I’m finding that the many cores of the Xeon processor on that server make light work of running VirtualBox, and with this realization I’m pleasantly surprised.
To test WordPress in a VM, I downloaded my entire Random Wire archive and imported it into WordPress. That went pretty smoothly. Right now I’m looking at everything up to Random Wire Review 88 on the VM:
This gives me a platform to play with how the Random Wire might look if I moved to my own WordPress instance. I do have a “kinda sorta” copy running on WordPress.com at https://cupofradio.com/ but I can’t do as much customization of that site as I would like. Note that Cup of Radio lags the Random Wire site hosted on the Substack platform.
I’d also like to explore maintaining a Random Wire store. While Substack does allow authors to use affiliate links, that is an unsupported use of the platform, and Substack enforces some restrictions:
Substack allows content creators to include affiliate marketing links in their newsletters, with some restrictions. For instance, while creators can use affiliate links, it’s important to note that certain platforms, like Amazon, prohibit sharing these links via email. Consequently, Substack automatically removes Amazon affiliate links from email versions of posts to comply with such guidelines. This policy underscores Substack’s support for the monetization of newsletters through affiliate links, as long as they adhere to the rules set by external affiliate programs. For more specifics, one can refer to guidance on Substack and affiliate marketing links.
Currently, I keep a list of items with affiliate links on the Random Wire Support page. That way I don’t run afoul of Substack’s automatic removal of Amazon affiliate links from emailed newsletters.
Hosting a separate site for an online store makes a bit more sense to me.
The most likely scenario is I’ll use a VM to test a storefront and how much work it is to build and maintain. I can’t use randomwire.com for that as that domain is already in use. I do have randomwire.net so perhaps I could use maintain my branding by using that domain for the store.
WooCommerce is the big dog in the WordPress store space.
If you’re interested in pre-built VMs for VirtualBox, check out these links:
http://virtualdiskimages.weebly.com/virtualbox.html has Windows images
https://www.oracle.com/downloads/developer-vm/community-downloads.html features Oracle distributions
In addition, you can use Bitnami virtual machines in VirtualBox by going to File, Import Appliance.
INTERESTING: Meshtastic node blinded my key fob
I have the kind of vehicle key fob where I can walk up to my door, slide my hand inside the door handle, and it automatically unlocks.
I assume the key fob contains an always-on receiver because an always-on transmitter would quickly drain the button battery in the fob. That would mean the vehicle is always transmitting, and when the fob receives the correct signal and sends the proper response back to the vehicle, the vehicle will unlock. (A way to test this would be with an RTL-SDR. I might have to acquire one of these devices to satisfy my curiousity!)
It was a surprise to me last weekend when my door did not automatically unlock. I had my keys in my pocket along with my Meshtastic node. The keys were closest to my body and the node was between the fob and the vehicle. As soon as I removed the node from my pocket, the whole automatic door thing worked. I put the node back in my pocket and it would not work.
At first I thought the node and the fob might be on similar frequencies but that appears to not be the case. In the United States, key fobs are in the 315 MHz range. My Meshtastic node is running at 915 MHz.
Perhaps the small circuit board or the shielding inside the Meshtastic node was sufficient to reduce the signal strength reaching (or coming from) the key fob. It’s interesting to think about. If anyone knows what is really going on, I’d love to learn more.
After my first reaction of “that’s cool!” my second thought was: maybe a Faraday cage made from circuit board material would be a fun project!
I walk around with meds that come unit dose packaged in aluminum foil. A strip starts with 10 pills in a 5x2 configuration. I usually fold this on one of the creases and carry it in the same pocket I carry my car fob and other keys. Just last week I had the same experience you report, remedied by taking the folded packet of pills out of my pocket. I returned them to my pocket closer to my body with the keys and fob towards the outside of the pocket and the car locked and unlocked just fine.