Steve Saunders - Map59.com

Home Assistant, CBus, MQTT, Philips Hue and more

This has been a coding adventure. My aim? Simple, really: Get Home Assistant talking to CBus, replacing 'MisterHouse', which on my network dates from ten years ago (and is a non-maintained pig). And now dead to me. My stretch goals? Add MQTT discovery for Home Assistant, to eliminate any manual

Ubiquiti UDM running FRR BGP

BGP is the routing protocol of the Internet, and using it locally in your own network for things like DNS and other stateless service redundancy is fantastic.

And the small matter of the bill, sir

What an epic restoration, for something that already looked really good. * Badges: * Trim parts: * Painting trim: * Brakes: * Engine: * Bumper: Total $x,xxx. Not bad given that $x,xxx was on maintenance parts.

Under the hood

Gettin' greasy...

Brake it down

Gettin' brakey with it.

Stuff busted

All the things broken...

Interior trim

I restored a lot of E46 things that were scratched up, or had been replaced with nasty parts, or were just installed incorrectly.

Deflecting

A wind deflector is essential equipment in a convertible, so it should come standard in my opinion. I had to buy one, because BMW.

Refinishing a leather steering wheel

I had a steering wheel that looked a bit second hand. Fair enough after all those years of pawing. So I refinished it... with some good stuff.

Restoring badges

BMW love putting their logo everywhere on cars they build. They're proud of it. One of the first things I did to Arraow was to replace all of the exterior roundels.

When nerds get isolated

Life in lockdown for a nerd. When nerds get isolated was a Facebook series I put together during the Great Covid-19 Lockdown of 2020, when nobody got out much, and not working at the time meant I invented things to work on.

Kevin

A mad little robotics project.

An unending end

There are some things that I am unbelievably glad I started doing in life, like writing things down as they happened, at a time when I could clearly remember them to solidify memories, and also sometimes to record the fun side of a monumental metastatic shit sandwich that had to be eaten.