I decided to upgrade the server's RAM from 4GB to something more useful. I ordered two second hand low profile 8GB modules with ECC, which is better suited to the ZFS file system.
Swapping was really easy, except for the one stuck connector in the motherboard, which was a pain to unplug. However, the server booted on the first try and detected all 16GB of RAM, even though the server is only supposed to be able to detect 8GB.
The second thing I wanted to try was to mount the 2TB USB hard drive with movies and shows so that I could share them across devices and play them on every TV in the house without having to carry the drive around. However, I discovered that there is no way to share an NTFS drive with TrueNAS as it can only work with ZFS. So one of the solutions was to back up the media to the hard drive, reformat it, copy the data back and use it as a hard drive, but then I would lose the ability to take it anywhere and connect it to any device.
So my solution is maybe to use my Raspberry with recalbox to run the ...
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I bought a round flash for my Canon camera on Aliexpress. I would like to use it for macro photography and also to photograph objects that are sensitive to flash.
In this kit, there are many adapters for different lens circumferences, and there are also different coloured diffusers so you can adjust the colour of the flash.
The round flash has a controller that attaches to the camera's hot shoe and offers different settings for the sensitivity of the flash, the length and also the number of diodes on the ring to flash. You can also flash only on the right or only on the left side to create some effects on the photograph.
My first attempts were not so successful, as for the long exposure times it burns the circle to photography on the sides. Focusing is also a bit weird, as the motor in the lens is much louder due to the weight of the flash attached to it. I am a bit afraid of this louder noise and I am afraid of damaging the mechanism.
In the end, I am not too happy with it for now. I will have to do some research on how to use it correctly ...
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I have done some analysis of SEO and Google ratings of my site hryprodva.cz. I found out that my average position in Google search is about five, which I think is really good.
The site has no income, so I have spent exactly $0 on advertising. The only thing I have done is to post some replies to forum topics and relevant internet discussions that suggested the games, but nothing special.
Also I have checked the backlinks and I found out that there are about 50% pages that have posted the links to my page by themselves or by other users, so I am glad that I am not so much spammer. There are about 300 external links (if google does not count), which I see as really satisfying.
I also tried to look at some statistics from microsoft bing search and crawling engine, but there is not much to study. There are also some statistics, but they are a bit confusing and not reliable at all.
I also found out from google statistics that about 65% of visitors come from Czech Republic and 30% from Slovakia. The remaining 5% are from Poland, Germany and others.
I already have an EN translation on my site, ...
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I couldn't find any suitable cases for camera filters, so I started designing my own. I decided to 3D print separate cases, one for each filter, with the description of the filter on the lid.
After some tinkering and test printing with PLA, I arrived at the ideal design where the lenses would not rattle and fit perfectly.
Then I thought about the material for the final cases. I am a bit afraid to use PLA because it gets soft at about 70 degrees Celsius. It may look fine, but if you imagine leaving the case in the car in the sun, the case can easily melt a bit and damage the lenses. So I decided to try PETG. I have never printed anything other than PLA, but it looked like PETG should be quite easy to print, and it just needs a bit higher temperatures.
However, I found that the bed adhesion was really bad. Even though the PLA always prints very well and adheres very well, I was unable to get it to stick to the bed. For the large parts (box and lid) I had to restart printing about fifteen times to get it to stick well enough to continue ...
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I finally found some time to make some progress on my NAS. I removed all four drives from the bottom of the box and started the FreeNAS installation again.
Everything went fine, the system installed successfully and after rebooting and inserting all the hard drives, it recognised them correctly.
There was a problem setting up the samba share, but it all worked out in the end. The Wireguard connection was set up very quickly and worked on the first try.
I tried writing about 20 gigabytes and everything worked fine. The transfer speeds are not very fast (around 2mb/s), but I think the bottleneck is my router, which is very old.
However, I think this speed is enough for me and it will cover my needs perfectly.
I am still thinking about adding more RAM. The recommendation is 8GB, but I only have 4GB. However, everything works fine and there is still about 1GB of RAM available when I am writing to or reading from the hard drive.
Maybe I will decide later if I find out that I "definitely" need to run more services on this server.
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I have been thinking about building a NAS for years. Two weeks ago I bought the 7th generation HP Microserver. It has an AMD processor, 4GB of RAM and space for four hard drives.
It also has a slot for a CD/DVD drive, which I found completely useless. The first thing I did was to 3D print a "reduction" for another drive to fit into that bay.
It fits absolutely perfectly, there are pins that fit exactly into the holes for the screws in the HDD and then you are able to push it onto the shaft.
The server now has 5 HDDs, 1TB each. So one should be for system and unimportant stuff, and the other four I have joined to RAIDz2, so I have 2Tb of space for my data.
The main purpose for this server is to store family photos, videos and other documents, so I think the space is big enough.
I installed TrueNAS and configured everything I wanted. After some research I set it up to connect via SMB and it worked.
However, after copying about 5GB of data at standard speed, it then dropped to cca 100-300 kb/s. I have tried rebooting the server, rebooting the router, rebooting my PC ...
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Yup, after many years, it is finaly here. I am launching my own blog, to complain about everything and I can rarely brag with the projects that are going fine.
I can bet, that whe complains will be the most common topic of my articles, but we will see
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