Strav's blog

I have roughly 10 DeWalt 18v battery packs which are on their way out.  Run time is significantly reduced from original.  At market prices, it's going to cost over $500 to replace these - yikes!  I ran across some DIY rebuild instructions and originally was going to go for rebuilding them with soldered on tabs.  The more I looked into it, however, it turns out that the heat from soldering the tabs can have a significant negative impact on the batteries - even potentially causing them to explode.  So, I found some DIY information on making a low cost battery tab spot welder from the transfrormer out of a microwave oven.  This looks like a solid way to fix up my DeWalt battery packs for significantly less than the originals.  At half or less of that price, I would be able to rebuild them more frequently and still come out ahead.  I also believe this could be used to rebuild laptop batteries (of which I have many) for additional savings.  

Below are links to the various pages with details on the processes.  I have yet to do this but have acquired the transformer and am in process of building the spot welder.

DIY Guides
Rebuilding NiCd Rechargable Battery Packs
How to rebuild a Dewalt 14.4v battery pack
How to rebuild an 18 volt DeWalt Battery

YouTube
How to replace Dewalt Cordless Drill battery cells
How to Make The Metal Melter
DIY Ebike Battery Spot Welded MOT
homemade battery tab spot welder

eBay
50 x SubC Sub C 2800mAh 1.2V NiCd Rechargeable Battery w/ Tab White USA Stock
ni-cd sub c 1.2v 2400mah
tenergy batteries
nickel battery tabs

Guides
DIY Bettery Tab resistance fine-spot welder
DIY Bettery Tab resistance fine-spot welder - Electrode and Battery Clamps
DIY Bettery Tab resistance fine-spot welder - Electrode Holder
How to Make the Metal Melter 

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38770.0

/boot/config/go file

# Wait ~ 90 seconds for network to come alive before proceeding

logger "Waiting for network services to come alive ~90 seconds"
echo "Waiting for network services to come alive ~90 seconds"

for COUNTER in {1..90}
do
        sleep 1

        if ping -c 1 192.168.1.62 > /dev/null 2>&1
        then
                break
        else
                echo "Server_B not available yet... Retry # $COUNTER"
                logger "Server_B not available yet... Retrying # $COUNTER"
        fi
done

# Mount the shares if the network is active

if ping -c 1 192.168.1.62 > /dev/null 2>&1
then
        logger "Network active - mounting shares from SERVER_B"
        echo "Network active - mounting shares from SERVER_B"

        mkdir /mnt/server_b_movies
        mkdir /mnt/server_b_television
        mkdir /mnt/server_b_books

# Mount the shares

        mount -t cifs //192.168.1.62/Movies /mnt/server_b_movies -o username=server_a,password=srv020,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777
        mount -t cifs //192.168.1.62/Television /mnt/server_b_television -o username=server_a,password=srv020,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777
        mount -t cifs //192.168.1.62/Ebooks /mnt/server_b_books -o username=server_a,password=srv020,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777
 
else
        logger "Network not active - SERVER_B shares will not be mounted"
        echo "Network not active - SERVER_B shares will not be mounted"
fi

Boatloads of links for Minecraft information.

Redstone
Dissecting Minecraft #6: Common Circuits | Minecraft 1.13
WORKS IN 1.15.1 - How to build a HOPPER MINECART UNLOADING and DISPATCHING contraption!
How to send redstone signal down
Wireless Redstone [vertical] | Minecraft

Farms
Minecraft 1.8 - Automated Lossless Pumpkin & Melon Farm
Minecraft PS/XBOX V3.0 AFK Super cobble generator w/auto stone furnace & pickaxe delivery tutorial
Minecraft's Simple Tutorial - Automatic Ice Cube Farm
Minecraft: High Efficiency Xp Farm (Enderman) Tutorial
Fully Automatic Carrot Potato Farm with Villager AI
"The X79" AFK-able Gold & XP Farm
Minecraft: 5 Farms You WILL Need!
Minecraft Fully Automatic Wheat Farm using Villagers - Minecraft 1.8
Minecraft Fully Automatic Cow Farm AFK - Redstone Tutorial
Tutorials / Iron golem farming
Minecraft (1.8): Fastest Carrot, Potato, & Wheat (Nano) Farm - Tutorial
How can I create a farm in the Nether?
Minecraft 1.8.6 - High Efficiency XP Farm (No Spawner) - HD Tutorial
2x3 Automated Mushroom Farm (1.7.9+)
3x3 Automated Chicken Farm / Cooker (1.8)+
3x3 Automated Sugarcane Farm (1.8)
The Simple Efficient Blaze Farm
3x3 Fully Automatic Villager Wheat / Carrot / Potato Farm
The Automatic Tree Farm
The Easiest Ice Farm in Minecraft
Minecraft Easy Zombie & Skeleton Mob Spawner XP Farm | Tutorial 1.17

Item Sorting
Quick & Easy Item Sorter (With Overflow Protection)
Automatic Item Overflow Disposal System - Minecraft Tutorial
Iron Filter and a Coal Factory
Automatic Hopper Sorting System
Compact Item Filter (1.8.1 READY)
BEST Minecraft ITEM SORTING SYSTEM Tutorial: Optimized for Multiplayer 1.8

Wither
Etho MindCrack SMP - Episode 58: Wither Pad
AFK Wither Skeleton Farm Tutorial for Minecraft 1.8
Tutorials/Wither combat
What is the fastest way to get wither skulls

Item Dropper/Elevators
Ultimate Guide to Reliable Dropper Towers
Minecraft (1.8+) Dropper Elevator Tutorial
Transferring Items Upward via a hopper?
Minecraft Pistonless Glass Item Elevator ( Works In 1.8+ )
Minecraft (1.8+) Dropper (Item) Elevator [Silent/Ultra-Compact/Infinitely Expandable]

Villagers
Cheat sheet for 18 villager trades
Infinite Village Breeder
Minecraft (1.8) - Tutorial: Easy Infinite Villager Breeder
How to get Villagers to your Base/how to farm Villagers - Ethoslab Technique
Compact Villager Breeder in Minecraft 1.8
Minecraft Tutorial: Compact Villager Breeder in Minecraft 1.8
Curing a zombie villager

Storage
How to build an advanced automated and efficient Storage System!
Unlimited Silo Storage system 3x5 + Expandable

Mods / Texture Packs
Faithful 32x32 Texture Pack
FlightHUD
fabric

Misc
What's the fastest way to find melons?
Tutorials/Nether Survival
Redstone Tutorial: Mob-Proof Door
Tiny Toggleable Nether Portal
Instant Health Potion Farm / Witch Killer (1.8)+
Minecraft Beacon - How to craft and use
Nether Fortress Spawning Regions [1.4.7]
How To Find Spawn Chunks Minecraft 1.8 Tutorial
How to Find your Spawn Chunks in Survival - Tutorial
Large Sign Text Minecraft Tutorial
Is there a way to keep Zombie Pigmen off of minecart tracks in the Nether?
How to build down in minecraft

MineOS
Installing the MineOS Web User Interface
MineOS - Managing Archives and Backups

I've been casting about for some time now looking for a better solution for my storage needs.  I've used raid5 in a number of situations, however, with the larger disks, Raid5 may not even be able to recover if only a single drive fails.  After my 4th HP MediaSmart failure, I started searching again in earnest and I ran into unraid.  It's not true Raid5 and each individual disk is readable so if the array fails, you can individually retrieve at least most of your data.  It also has a nice docker app built in and a solid user community contributing to the docker apps.  As such, I was able to migrate some of my apps to docker and also set up additional ones.  Overall, I've been very impressed with it so far.


Docker:
LimeTech Docker Guide
unRAID 6 Beta 6: Docker Quick-Start Guide
Popular unRAID Docker Template Repositories and Containers
(Support) Aptalca's docker templates
[support] binhex docker repository
Popular unRAID Docker Template Repositories and Containers
Dockerization of some popular applications by Needo
My NZBMegaSearch modification (icon)
If you run SSHD in your Docker containers, you're doing it wrong!

LimeTech:
Forums 

Amazon Echo Bridge:
Bridge Amazon Echo to Vera, on github!
GitHub Amazon Echo HA Bridge

MineOS:
GitHub MineOS Docker Template by hernandito
 

The Jetway MiniTop is a very small form factor mini computer.  At the price points I was able to get it, it was a great buy and makes for a very competent MythTV frontend.  The fan can get a little loud but other than that minor issue, it's a fantastic unit and relatively cheap.  

There are a few quirks with it.  The built in remote control does not seem to work with LIRC.  Some kind soul came up with a linux Generic HID Remote Driver that makes it work however.

[LINUX] Generic HID Remote Driver for XBMC (Drivers for XBMC on Linux and XBMC Live)

The HDMI Audio is a bit fussy as well.  In addition to the initial setup from the links below, for some reason, most of the time when the system restarts, I need to run the MythTV Audio Setup to get audio to work.

hdmi audio works only with aplay -D
ALSA DigitalOut
ALSA Dmix