July 25, 2021

Setup a family printer with a Raspberry Pi 1, CUPS and Canon LBP 2900

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Ok so after using it as an Media Server (OSMC, Kodi), Audio Server (Volumio, Moode), and most recently a CloudFlare DDNS updater on top of Raspbian Lite, I’m running out of things to do with my old RPi. I figure there’s one thing I haven’t tried turning it into: a print server. So that’s what we’re gonna do today.

Now this is actually one of the most common usage of the Pi so there’s already plenty of guides out there, and there’s really no information in this post that can’t be found elsewhere on the Internet, but I’m gonna do a write up anyway, purely for the sake of documenting my process.

For the software we’ll be using CUPS running on top of Linux, naturally, since we don’t have a lot of options on that front. For the hardware, we’ll be using a first gen Raspberry Pi for the print server part, and Canon LBP 2900 for the actual printing.

Now this printer is interesting really, because despite being one of the most popular printers here in Vietnam, it’s not in the list of printer supported by CUPS. I reckon its popularity is fueled by its economical nature, it’s one of the very few laser printers that fall into the ‘cheap to buy, cheap to maintain’ segment (it costs like $150 brand new, and cartridge replacement is like $3.85, which is insane!). So getting it to work with CUPS is going to require a bit more works, but thankfully there’s an open source driver out there that somebody reverse engineered to our benefits, so we’ll be using that.

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February 4, 2020

Home Computing – Centralized

I recently came across a sale post on facebook for a number of decommissioned Wyse thin clients. The guy was selling it for $20 a piece. Normally I’d just scroll past that but I for some reasons I was feeling especially low-bally that day so I asked, half-jokingly, if he’d be willing to part way with some of them for $10 a piece. To my surprise, he actually said yes. I guess he probably bought a shipment from China thinking it was some kind of SFF workstations. Anyway, long story short, I now have 4 Wyse thin clients that I don’t know what to do with.

Or do I really?

I’ve always wanted to get into building a homelab, and this just give me more motivation to do it. While I do have a home ‘lab’, I don’t really have a real home server to put inside it. I had an old Q6600 antique that I use from time to time to watch DIY videos but let’s face it, it can never cut it as a real home server.

I’m thinking of building a dual xeon server with a healthy amount of RAM as a central server, running Proxmox or ESXi, serving the thin clients that I will be distributing around the house. So far I think I could replace my father’s, mother’s, my wife’s and maybe even my workshop current computer with a simple thin client. Not only does this setup saves a lot of space downstairs, it may actually provide a performance boost for my parents as they’re current using very old computers.

Xeons are super cheap these days, as do ECC RAM modules. The only pricey part is perhaps, the motherboard.

(to be continued…)

October 29, 2017

N.E.W Project 1: Mason Jar Chandelier

If you read my previous post about making a mason jar lamp all the way to the end, you know that I promised to make a goddamn chandelier out of the thing.

Well here it is.

I don’t have time to write a step by step this time, it’s very simple to be honest. You can visit my previous post about making the jar lamp, and then find an old chopping board, paint it, then hang a few of those bad boys on (in parallel)

If you care about power effeciency, you can use LEDs like in my original post. If you want to be fancy though, you can use Edison light bulbs with a dimmer to control the brightness, do keep in mind however, they are expensive. In my case here I use simple incandescent light bulb with the brightness turned way down (with a fan dimmer).

Don’t look too bad if you ask me.

PS: If you’re wandering what N.E.W mean, it’s No Electronics Weekend.

#noelectronicsweekend

November 18, 2015

Making a simple mason jar lamp (no power tools)

So I recently came across one of these neat little lamp thingy at one of the local novelty shop. They’re cute but their price tag ain’t, running something like 800k VND (around $39) for 3 of them. Granted of course their craftmanship is top notch, but being a cheapskate I still decided I’d try to make a knockoff from all the junks I have around the house

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