Pin DHCP WAN interface to LAN for pfSense CARP/HA

Network

Setting up High Availability on pfSense is not that difficult. It consists of configuring the state and settings synchronization (pfsync), creating virtual IPs (CARP) and changing the settings for DHCP, DNS and NTP so that you clients use the virtual IP. But things get tricky if you have only 1 IPv4 WAN address and it is assigned via DHCP by your ISP. If CARP is not an option for the WAN interface, how can we make sure we get the same public IP address on both firewalls?

Continue reading Pin DHCP WAN interface to LAN for pfSense CARP/HA →

Mackie SRM150 repair

Honey I Fixed It, Sound,

I received two Mackie SRM150 amplifiers that had the same problem: both powered on but did not reproduce any sound apart from some louder than normal hiss and a very noticeable pop when turning up the volume. The problem on both units turned out to be a defective linear regulator component on the preamp/mixer board. Read further if you want to learn more about the repair… Continue reading Mackie SRM150 repair →

Philips PerfectCare Aqua does not pump [SOLVED]

Honey I Fixed It

The PerfectCare Aqua is a steam generator iron made by Philips. My model GC8620 had a strange problem: it would heat up the iron and I could hear the steam chamber heating up also, but when I pressed the trigger on the iron (after the steam chamber made no more noise and it was at the right temperature), the pump would not work. No water being pumped to the steam chamber meant no steam 🙁

Let’s dig deeper and try to find the culprit and repair this… Continue reading Philips PerfectCare Aqua does not pump [SOLVED] →

A20-OLinuXino-MICRO 5V SATA MOSFET repair

Honey I Fixed It

I have an Olimex A20-OLinuXino-MICRO board that I use for running embedded Linux (armbian). It is a very nice board with an Allwinner A20 dual core ARM processor, 1GB RAM and a lot of connections. The features I like the most are the SATA connection and the integrated LiPo battery charger. It is like a uninterruptible power supply on board!

Unfortunately both the 5V connection for the SATA drive and the LiPo battery connection are close to each other and they have exactly the same female JST connector. You  can probably guess what went wrong: I connected the LiPo battery to the 5V SATA connector and I plugged the 5V cable from the SATA drive into the LiPo connection on the PCB 😮

Luckily all Olimex hardware is open source and that is yet another reason I love this Bulgarian company! On the A20-OLinuXino-MICRO wiki page you can find a lot of information, including a link to their github repository that also includes the full schematic!

So let’s digg into the documentation and get this thing repaired… Continue reading A20-OLinuXino-MICRO 5V SATA MOSFET repair →