#ping
That Clock on the Wall is Actually a Network Ping Display
We've all been online from home a bit more than usual lately, in ways that often stretch the limits of what our ISP can muster. You know the signs -- audio that drops out, video sessions that make you look like [Max Headroom], and during the off-hours, getting owned in CS:GO by pretty much everyone. All the bandwidth in the world won't make up for high latency, and knowing where you stand on that score is the point of this ping-tracking clock.
This eye-catching lag-o-meter is courtesy of [Charl], who started the build with a clock from IKEA. Stripped of pretty much everything but the bezel, he added a coaxial clock motor and a driver board, along with a custom-printed faceplate with logarithmic scale. The motors are driven by an ESP32, which uses internet control message protocol (ICMP) to ping a trusted server via WiFi, calculates the proper angles for the hands, and drives the motors to show you the bad news. There's also an e-paper display in the face, showing current server and WiFi settings.
We really like how this clock looks, and if it wasn't for the fact that the numbers it displays would often be too depressing to bear, we'd build one in a snap. If facing the painful truth isn't your style, there are other neat ICMP tricks that you can try instead.
#clockhacks #networkhacks #clock #epaper #esp32 #icmp #internetmessagecontrolprotocol #ping #stepper
I live in a fairly small village. Not much around here, a visitor centre cafe, a pub and a bit down the road a petrol station with the usual small "shop". Also a small school. That's about it (apart from the houses of course).
- Two weeks ago the landlord of the visitor centre cafe announced he had to close for a while as his wife and himself had symptoms and tested positive for Covid despite both being fully vaccinated and taking measures
- Today I read that the pub will close for a while as several staff member have, you guessed it, tested positive
- Today I also learned that food & garden waste collections will be paused for (at least, I suspect) two weeks as West Berkshire Council is running out of binmen and HGV drivers as many of them are self-isolating after having been pinged
And that's just my little village and fairly small council (West Berkshire only has a population of ~160k). Makes me wonder what is going on in the rest of the country, especially now after "Freedom Day" (actually I've heard of reduced waste collection service elsewhere as well, same reasons).
I'm worried.
#Covid19 #Coronavirus #WestBerkshire #health #FreedomDay #ping #selfisolation