https://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/TPQSS

• USB Ethernet Gadget A Beginner's Guide
• USB Mass Storage Gadget - A Beginner's Guide

• Used for connecting the PiZero to a host computer, eg. PC, phone
• The host computer is the OTG A device (supplying power to USB)
• PiZero is the OTG B device

1. Cable method
2. Software method

• If the ID pin on the USB Micro-B is shorted to ground, PiZero operates in host mode (cable usually known as an OTG cable)
• If the ID pin on the USB Micro-B is not shorted to ground (left floating), PiZero operates in peripheral mode

• peripheral mode: dtoverly=dwc2,dr_mode=peripheral
• host mode: dtoverly=dwc2,dr_mode=host
• otg mode: dtoverly=dwc2,dr_mode=otg (default: forces the PiZero to follow the ID pin functions)

I've been using a RPi4 for running Pi-hole. The RPi4 is way overpowered for Pi-hole so I decided to switch to using the Pi Zero 2 W. The Pi Zero 2 supports WiFi but does not come with an ethernet port. WiFi works perfectly well for Pi-hole, but for personal reasons, I wanted to use ethernet instead. I've read many posts that setting up an ethernet USB dongle is as easy as plugging it in. I decided to purchase the TP-Link UE300, because a poster had given the thumbs up that the UE300 works on the Pi Zero 2 W. The UE300 has an USB A plug.

Through many attempts, I was more and more convincing myself that the USB (data) micro port on the Pi Zero 2 W was faulty. Some folks have floated this idea in the Raspberry Pi Forums. I eventually did find a solution, and I'm detailing my experience below.

Before I start, I am running thte lastest Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit) Lite for the Pi Zero 2 W installed using the Raspberry Pi Imager. I also want to mention that there are two USB micro ports on the Pi Zero 2 W. One is dedicated to providing only power while the second provides both power and data. Please ensure you are using the right port. 

I didn't have a USB A to micro USB adapter but had the parts on hand so I decided put together a DIY adapter. The wiring is pretty simple because the sequence of signals on the pins of the USB A aligned with the sequence of signals on the pins of the micro USB. The USB A has 4 pins while the micro USB has 5 pins. The extra pin on the micro USB is the ID pin which I first ignored (left floating) but will touch on later.

Attempt 1:

My first attempt invovled not using the ID pin. I wired up only the V, D-, D+, and G pins between the USB A and micro USB plugs. When I plugged in the UE300 adapter, I did not see the ethernet interface. I should mention that I also tried plugging in an USB keyboard and mouse but none showed any signs of functionality. I decided to dig into this issue and found a number of posts saying that I should use an OTG cable. OTG stands for "On the Go", and it's a special adapter that treats the Pi Zero as a host to the USB device that it is connected to (I do not know the full specifications of when an OTG cable is is needed).

Attempt 2:

My second attempt involved making an OTG cable. This is easily accomplished by shorting the ID pin and the G pin on the micro USB. Again, when I plugged in the UE300 adapter, I did not see the ethernet interface. It was now that I was starting to think whether the USB micro port was faulty given what I read from the Raspberry Pi Forums.

Validation:

I tried the UE300 adapter on a Windows machine and the machine recognized the adapter. I thought that perhaps the Raspberry Pi OS didn't support this adapter so I tried it on a RPi4 and it also recognized the adapter. At this point, I concluded that the UE300 was not misbehaving.

I needed a way to check if the micro USB data port was faulty. I learned that it was possible to connect the Pi Zero 2 W to a Windows machine by treating the Pi Zero W 2 as a OTG device. Don't confuse this concept with the OTG adapter mentioned above. The OTG concept here means that we can turn the Pi Zero 2 W into a OTG device which allows a connection to the Pi Zero 2 W using ethernet over USB. Anyway, I followed the instructions on the page below. Because the Pi Zero 2 W showed up as only a COM device on my Windows system, and I needed to install the RNDIS driver.

https://www.factoryforward.com/pi-zero-w-headless-setup-windows10-rndis-driver-issue-resolved/

After installing the driver, I was able to see the ethernet device and putty into the Pi Zero 2 W. This validated that the micro USB data port was functional.

Attempt 3:

Having validated the functionality of the UE300 and the Pi Zero 2 W's USB micro data port, I decided to look at the dmesg output on the Pi Zero 2 W when I plugged in the UE300.

I wrote a library that lets you cycle through the available themes in Emacs. F10 and shift-F10 keys will cycle forward and backward through the themes. The theme name is printed for reference.

https://github.com/tsengf/theme-cycle

Installation
Download theme-cycle.el into ~/.emacs.d.

Add the following to your Emacs configuration

(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/.emacs.d)
(require 'theme-cycle)
;; Load as many themes as you are interested in exploring.
(use-package doom-themes)
(use-package ef-themes)
(use-package modus-themes)
(use-package solarized-themes)

To Use

Use F10 to cycle forward through the themes. Use shift-F10 to cycle backward through the themes.

If you set the geometry of your Emacs window in elisp, you may find that the window redraws itself upon resizing. Note that I try to avoid using Xresources to set the geometry which is another solution to this problem. I'd like to control all of my settings in Emacs elisp.

To do this, we will replace default-frame-alist by setting it in the set-initial-frame function which will be associated with the before-init-hook. This hook is run before the frame is drawn preventing the window to resize.

In this example, I set the font to RobotoMono. The width is 170 characters wide and the height is y resolution of the screen less 200 pixels. I also disable other parts of the window like the menu bar, tool bar, and scroll bars.

It would be great if I can control the default background color before my theme kicks in.

(defun set-initial-frame ()
  "Defines and center the frame window"
  (let* ((width-chars 170)
         (height-buffer 200)
         (setq my-font "RobotoMono Nerd Font")
         (monitor-width (x-display-pixel-width))
         (monitor-height (- (x-display-pixel-height) height-buffer)))
    (setq default-frame-alist
          `((width . ,width-chars)
            (height . (text-pixels . ,monitor-height))
            (font . ,my-font)
            ;; Prevent the glimpse of un-styled Emacs by disabling these UI elements early.
            (menu-bar-lines . 0)
            (tool-bar-lines . 0)
            (horizontal-scroll-bars . nil)
            (vertical-scroll-bars . nil)))))

(add-hook 'before-init-hook #'set-initial-frame)

I use use-package and wanted to use it to bootstrap quelpa and loading quelpa-use-package. The project pages had instructions without use-package. Here is what I had to do.

(require 'package)
(setq package-archives
      '(("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))
      use-package-always-ensure t)

(package-initialize)

(require 'use-package-ensure)

(use-package quelpa
  :ensure)

(use-package quelpa-use-package
  :demand
  :config
  (quelpa-use-package-activate-advice))

;; Now, you can take advantage of the :quelpa keyword.
(use-package copilot
  :quelpa (copilot :fetcher github
                   :repo "zerolfx/copilot.el"
                   :branch "main"
                   :files ("dist" "*.el"))
  :hook (prog-mode . copilot-mode)
  :bind (:map copilot-completion-map
              ("<tab>" . copilot-accept-completion)))

I have experimented with using many ZSH prompts. On some slow systems, the latency of rendering the prompt matters. I ended up going with the following solution which is by far the fastest prompt I have come across.

function git_prompt_info() {
    ref=$(git-branch-name -q -h 12 -b 64) || return
    echo " ${ref}"
}

function git_prompt() {
    #BRANCH=$(git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/*\(.*\)/\1/')
    BRANCH="$(git_prompt_info)"
    if [ ! -z $BRANCH ]; then
        echo -n "%F{yellow}$BRANCH"
        if [ ! -z "$(git status --short)" ]; then
            echo " %F{red}?"
        fi
    fi
}

setopt PROMPT_SUBST
PROMPT=$'%F{blue}%~$(git_prompt)\n%F{244}%# %F{reset}'

I use git-branch-name (https://github.com/itchyny/git-branch-name) to improve the speed of retrieving the branch name. If you won't wish to use git-branch-name, toggle the comment of the two BRANCH lines.

FreshTomato is an alternative firmware for routers. It runs very well on the Netgear R7000. Here is a list of useful FreshTomato resources for the Netgear R7000.

• discussion forums
• LinksysInfo.org| FreshTomato-ARM - development discussion only
• OpenLinksys| FreshTomato-ARM
• Reddit| r/TomatoFTW
• download
• freshtomato.org| Index of /downloads/freshtomato-arm/
• installation
• Jays Homebrew| Netgear R7000 freshtomato installation STEP BY STEP instructions
• upgrading settings
• https://github.com/NotVaryClever/tomato-nvram
• repo
• Bitbucket| freshtomato-arm
• wiki
• FreshTomato Wiki
• issues
• can't ping WAN gateway
• Reddit| R7000 - Can't upgrade FreshTomato past version 2021.7
• repair
• GitHub| nmrpflash - Netgear Unbrick Utility
• MyOpenRouter| How to Set Up a Serial Console for Netgear R8000
• Netgear| loading firmware using TFTP from the Windows Command Prompt
• Reddit| R7000 installation failure
• Reddit| R8000 - How to load FreshTomato (or at least un-brick it)
• setup
• antenna position
• NETGEAR Support: How to adjust the antennas on the NETGEAR R7000 router
• guest network
• LearnTomato| Setup a Guest Network for Guest WiFi with Tomato VLAN
• TomatoAnon database - find the most popular Tomato firmware variant as well as the most popular router being used

Here is a list of firmware available for the Netgear R7000.

AdvancedTomato (download)
dd-wrt (info | download)
FreshTomato (download)
Netgear (download)
OpenWrt (info)
Tomato RAF Firmware (download)
XWrt-Vortex (download)

I was setting up a new system. When I disconnected the USB-C power connector, the RPi4 retained its power from the HDMI cable.

If you have set your Wireless Country / Region to USA and lose the broadcast of your 5GHz radio, make sure you also set your Country Rev to 0.

References

https://wiki.freshtomato.org/doku.php/wireless?s[]=%2Aregion%2A#country_region

If you have a USB MCE remote and it stopped working in LibreELEC 9, it could be due to interaction with a feature on the TV called CEC.

If your television supports CEC and it is enabled on the television, make sure that support for CEC is also enabled in LibreELEC.

On LibreELEC, you can find this setting in System->Settings->System->Input Devices->Peripherals->CEC
Select CEC and enable CEC.

If CEC is disabled on the television, disable CEC in LibreELEC.

BgInfo is a utility that updates your Windows desktop image with relevant static information about the system. Linux has a similar utility called Conky. Conky supports updating your background with dynamic information such as CPU load and memory usage.

Jivelite is a visualization application.

Install the git and luajit development packages.

apt install git libluajit-5.1-dev

Install additional dependencies

apt install git libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-gfx1.2-dev libexpat1-dev

Clone the repository

git clone git@github.com:ralph-irving/jivelite.git

cd jivelite

Update the path to the luajit header files.

find . -type f -iname '*' -exec sed -i 's/include\/luajit-2.0/include\/luajit-2.1/' "{}" +;

Update some outdated definitions in the source.

find . -type f -iname '*' -exec sed -i 's/luaL_reg /luaL_Reg /' "{}" +;

In lib-src/lua-cjson-2.1.0/lua_cjson.c, change

static void luaL_setfuncs (lua_State *l, const luaL_Reg *reg, int nup)

to

void luaL_setfuncs (lua_State *l, const luaL_Reg *reg, int nup)

make PREFIX=/usr

You should have a binary in

bin/jivelite

Jivelite uses SDL which disables external screensavers by default. To bypass this behavior, create shell script wrapper jivelite.sh containing the following.

#!/bin/sh

export SDL_VIDEO_ALLOW_SCREENSAVER=1
/home/pi/jivelite/bin/jivelite

The following instructions document how to enable a kiosk setup on Raspbian with the following requirements.

• utilize the lightweight Matchbox window manager
• utilize the Chromium browser to render a webpage in fullscreen mode
• remove the X cursor
• turn off the display after 10 minutes of inactivity

Install the latest Raspbian Lite image. Note, this is the barebone image for server setup.

Install packages

apt install matchbox-window-manager xinit

Use raspi-config to enable auto login into the console with user pi

raspi-config

Add the following to the bottom of /home/pi/.bashrc.

if [ -z "${SSH_TTY}" ]; then
  exec startx /home/pi/startup.sh -- -nocursor
fi

apt install chromium-browser -y

Create the file /home/pi/startup.sh.

#!/bin/sh

# Tweak the energy settings to your liking
xset dpms 0 0 600
xset s off

# Start the Matchbox window manager
matchbox-window-manager -use_cursor no -use_titlebar no &

# Start the web browser full screen
/usr/bin/chromium-browser --app=http://your-site \
  --kiosk \
  --noerrdialogs \
  --disable-session-crashed-bubble \
  --disable-infobars \
  --check-for-update-interval=604800 \
  --disable-pinch

Here's a handy command if you have an available linux system.

arp -a

Look for the hostname raspberrypi.

 If you've set up wifi on Raspbian and want to disable it, add the following line in /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf.

disabled=1

relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = static:username@gmail.com:password
smtp_sasl_security_options =
smtp_tls_security_level = encrypt

Restart the Postfix service.

service postfix restart

Send some email.

echo Hello | mail username@gmail.com

There are several ways to enable Pi-hole on your network. If you are running FreshTomato, the easiest way is to update the DNS server setting of FreshTomato.

First, assign a static IP to your Pi-hole server. You will need the MAC address for the network interface you are using. Assign an IP to Pi-hole, eg. 192.168.1.250. Under Basic->Static DHCP/ARP/IPT, add the static IP assignment. Save the settings. You may need to restart your Pi-hole server to get the correct static IP.

Second, point the DNS server to the Pi-hole server. Under Basic->Network->WAN Settings, select Manual under DNS Server. Set DNS 1 to 192.168.1.250, and set DNS 2 to 0.0.0.0. Save the settings.

That's it.

A couple of days ago, the blinker indicator inside the X1 started clicking at twice the speed. Furthermore, the broken light warning indicator came up on the driver dash. I thought that the bulb had gone out and would be an easy fix. Upon disassembling the broken bulb, I noticed that the bulb housing looked like it had partially melted. The filament on the bulb looked intact.

At this point, I thought that the vehicle may have a short around this contact. I took out the multimeter and confirmed that the bulb and the bulb housing were still intact electrically. Upon further inspection, I noticed that the contact was recessed into the plastic housing. Using a small screwdriver, I raised the contact by prying it away from the housing.

At this point, I cleaned the bulb and reinstalled it. The fixed worked.

I suspect the cause of the original issue is this. The contact was poorly designed. It was not high enough to maintain a robust contact with the main housing. Over time through each use of the bulb, minor sparks may have resulted due to gaps between the contacts. These sparks slowly deformed the plastic bulb housing. The proper fix for this may be to buy a new bulb housing.

There are many prepackaged audio streaming servers available for the Raspberry Pi. Between Moode, Volumio, and piCorePlayer, piCorePlayer is very rich in its capabilities. It can access local media as well as a huge list of free online streaming content including TuneIn. piCorePlayer has also been the most stable where stable is defined to the quality of having a longer uptime. Although piCorePlayer is the most stable, I have occasionally encountered a loss of connectivity to the pi system (through the web interface and SSH). piCorePlayer also touts having a fast boot due to the use of Tiny Core Linux, but I experienced boot delays of greater than 30 seconds.

Granted that I could have spent time debugging why I lost connectivity and why boots took longer than 30 seconds, I decided to take another approach. Rather than using the prepackaged piCorePlayer which is convenient with its one-button push approach, I manually installed Logitech Media Server and Squeezelite player on Raspbian.

Here are some of the differences I see versus piCorePlayer.

• I can access the LMS web interface using the hostname rather than the IP. ie. I don't need to assign a static IP to the server. See Resolve Linux Hostnames in Windows.
• Booting the system takes less than <10 seconds.
• The server has been rock solid.

Here are the steps for the setup.

sudo apt-get install squeezelite

sudo reboot

http://<hostname or IP>:9000

Emails from certain domains are aggressively identified by Gmail as spam, although being legitimate. I've been trying to train the spam filter by flagging the false positives using the "Not Spam" button. However, the efforts do not appear to be helping. It is possible to whitelist emails are not spam. To do this, create a filter for the email. One of the actions for the filter is "Never send it to Spam."

Have you ever wondered what router models running Tomato software are popular? It turns out there is a way to extract this information. Tomato users have the option of registering their router with the TomatoAnon database. Here is the count of the number of routers registered. One model appears to be the winner: Netgear R7000.

How effective protective gear is ranges from non-effective to completely effective and all points in between. Let's assign this range to the numbers between 0 and 1. I agree that we are not 100% protected unless we wear an Infectious Disease Protection suit. Anything that we can do to curb the virus should be done in a pandemic. As a society, we should recognize that putting on a simple face mask helps avoid the spread of the virus more than not wearing a mask. That is, 0.1 > 0. We should be doing what is right from a scientific and common sense standpoint. Republicans have politicized this issue to the point where they are harming the public. Just because wearing a mask doesn't completely prevent transmission, doesn't mean one should not wear a mask.

The problem with politics is that everyone has an alternate agenda and sometimes it disagrees with scientific and common sense reasoning. The truth is contorted to advance the political agenda often at the cost of the public. What can be easily understood and mapped to a number between 0 and 1 ends up being either 0 or 1.