After running the D-Link DNS-320 for a while, I decided to shift fonz’s fun_plug (ffp) to run off the USB drive instead of the hard disk. Some benefits of doing so are:
- Reduce mechanical wear and tear – I frequently access the DNS-320 via ssh and by doing so, the disk spins up. By shifting the ffp onto the USB drive, the disks do not spin up as much and hence lesser mechanical wear and tear
- Power saving – I assume lesser disk spinups translate to marginal power savings in the long run
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I’ve a couple of stand fans for circulating air and cooling the rooms down but seems like the roomba 560 so not really like them.
The roomba 560 will climb onto the base of these stand fans and occasionally get stuck there, making that the last destination of its cleaning cycle.
So how can I avoid such situations? After some thoughts, I reckoned that I could:
- Replace all my standing fans with wall mounted fans; or
- Have a high tech solution of carefully positioned virtual wall(s) to exclude the fan area; or
- Live without the fans and use air-con instead; or
- Make the fan base difficult / impossible to mount
Well, seems like the first three are either too expensive or challenging so I would go for option 4 instead!
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I recently got a pair of Aztech Powerline Networking adaptors to hook up additional network devices. Powerline networking is great if you do not want to run messy LAN cables around your place but yet want to plug in that spanking new toy (e.g. Apple TV2) to the network.
The Aztech Powerline Adaptors (HL115EP) are advertised to have connection/data rate up to 500Mbps (megabits). So how do they really perform in reality? The Aztech 500Mbps Powerline Networking adaptor (HL115EP) managed to have a sustained network throughput of 94.12Mbps and 89.24Mbps for writing and reading respectively.
Just to set the expectation right, Wireless-N technology have connection/data rate up to 300Mbps but in practical scenario, it manages throughput of ~82Mbps (taking reference from SmallNetBuilder’s ASUS RT-N56U review). So comparing the Aztech HL115EP and Wireless-N, the powerline networking adaptor is not that bad after all.
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A pair of 500Mbps powerline networking adaptors from Aztech! It comes with electrical pass through so you do not lose a power socket
Got a pair of the Aztech 500Mbps Powerline Networking adaptors (HL115EP) to hook up my network printers/scanner. Due to some miscalculation, I didn’t cater for sufficient network ports at the location so powerline networking to the rescue! Powerline networking is not new to me as I used to have the 200Mbps version.
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This is the scooba floor washing robot in midnight blue!
The iRobot Scooba 380 Floor Washing Robot from Woot.com finally arrived via ComGateway. The shipping, like the last time, is pretty fast. It took only four days to get from US to SG (via DHL Express).
For those who do not know about the iRobot Scooba. The Scooba is essentially a floor washing robot that automatically navigates around your apartment/room and does all the floor washing, scrubbing and lastly, squeegeeing. It does all the light vacuuming, washing, scrubbing and squeegeeing all one a single pass and it passes a spot multiple times just like the iRobot Roomba.
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Better late than never, D-Link released a beta firmware to address the incompatibility issue with OS X Lion. The beta firmware 2.02 B01 can be found on D-Link Forums. Both Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) and Time Machine (TM) are working as it should on the DNS-320 with Lion.
A little history about the AFP and TM issue can be found here. Basically, Lion’s AFP is using a different security mechanism, hence breaking AFP support for quite a fair bit of NAS. I put up a workaround sometime back before D-Link came up with theirs.
Give the beta firmware a shot and continue with your Time Machine backup!