Virgin Media delivers ...

(I have no affiliation with etc etc .. only commercial interest is if you are thinking of switching, let me recommend you and I will get a discount off my next bill) ..

After a bit of to-and-fro with Virgin Media, and a few days of suffering dropouts every couple of hours, I have a new Superhub 3 installed and the latest broadband package - at 20 quid a month less than I was paying .. 

I ran Speedtest ..

.. And in the meantime I thought it a good idea to buy a little runaround ..

So I am working on the big girl. I have it in mind to do a bob/rat/chop on her .. she is mechanically very sound (probably needs the clutch sorting out along with the brakes needing a rebuild, new air filter, oil filter, new tyres, seized fuel tap, seized choke, seized throttle cables, switchgear needs sorting out, new sprockets and chain, rusty frame needs sorting out and the seat needs recovering and repadding. Front headlight is rusted out on the rim, and the front mudguard is cracked. The battery is long dead. The front handlebar bar ends are rusted out to where I am not sure it will be possible to get new grips on her).

My vision statement for her is something like this ..

 

 She is a bit of a pig at the moment though, lots of bolts shearing and so on. I did get the exhaust off, but one stud snapped, so I will have to borrow / buy EasyOffs to get the stud out. I like the wrapped look as the picture above .. the wrap comes from China, and is not too expensive.  I like the idea of a matt or satin black frame where it needs repainting, satin black wheels and spokes, whitewall tyres, creamy white paint job on bobbed mudguards and tank, with an airbrushed orange edging. WS2812B LED strings around to pick out the lines of the bike at night - default colour orange again, but hey! what would be the point of WS2812 without a microcontroller doing some fancy lighting patterns.

So, it's going to take a little longer to sort out the old girl than I hoped. I might make some good progress in August - anyway, it gives a window of time where I am not driving a car, and I am now working across a few of the NHS Trusts in the South. The car parking is outrageous at hospitals, and it is no better for visiting staff. It's not much better for permanent staff - they might let you park in the park and ride for a fee (!). I'm also over on the other Island quite a bit, so I thought it would be a good idea to get a little runny around kind of bike in the meantime. She was cheap, so there are some bits to tidy up. The grips need replacing, the sprockets and chain were well beyond sell-by date, the rubbers on the pegs are worn. But she starts first time, which is one of the the major requirements of a commuter bike. 

 

I've got some new grips on order from China, and very pleased with the gold chain and replacement sprockets. 

Might have to replace those shocks and springs sometime - they look a little shabby. But then I am in danger of spending more time and money on the little runaround that keeps me on the road, when I should be spending money on the big girl.

Fooze that bike!

I've decided that this is the year to get my bike back on the road. It's in a bit of a sorry state, but nothing that a few tens of hours with sandpaper, primer and paint won't sort out. I need a bit of a something to get my teeth into that isn't just electronics.

The bike used to look like this when it was new 16 years ago:

I hope to to something a bit different with it, and get it on the road again this year. It would be fun to get over to the Island on it! and I should be spending a couple of days a week there this year for the project I am working on at St Mary's.

.. and we are live with Asterisk!

I solved the issue with the analogue phone lines by getting rid of them. For the princely sum of 5.95 per month, Sipgate offer a trunking service, which means you can get your Virgin Media provided phone number transferred to them, and they will forward all calls to that number back to your own Asterisk system.

I've not done anything too complex so far, but it all works. If someone calls, then the VoIP phones (the Cisco ones) ring - first the main ones, then if they aren't answered the ones in the office and craft room get added on, and then if they are not answered, the mobiles ring!

If the call drops through to voicemail, the message is sent via an email attachment to us, so we can pick it up on our mobiles wherever we are as well.

Now Virgin Media charged me 17.95 a month for the privilege of a phone line. Since I don't need that any more, I wonder what their reaction will be when I ask that I have that money taken off my bill?  (Please note this only works if your current provider doesn't use the phone line to provide your broadband. Obvious when you think about it!)

All bets taken. Mine is that I might get a discount of a fiver after months of haggling.

*** Wrong again. After haggling, VM tell me that it is actually more expensive to change package to stop paying the line rental than it is to keep it. We need a bit more OFCOM legislation I feel. 

Asterisk and stuff

One of the other fascinations I have is with telephone systems. I have a Cisco 7940, and a 7970 in the house, and I have a Sipgate account for VoIP. It was working fine with one phone, but then I thought I wanted both phones working. SIP is a strange protocol, and is hugely flexible so you can spend happy hours playing with all kinds of things to get it going. The phones are different as well; Cisco rely on having a TFTP server in the network for the phone to boot from, which contains most of the phone configuration. Each phone has a SIP<macaddress>.cnf file in the tftpboot directory that it looks for, to bring up the phone. I had some happy times with Wireshark to find out what was going wrong. Having fixed the 7940, the 7970 uses a similar approach, but a completely different format for the configuration file - now in XML! The phones also have their own web services built in ..

So having the phones working individually, I needed something so I can use them both. There is a lovely bit of Open Source software - Asterisk - that can run on Linux to provide a local PBX solution. So, downloaded that, and it now functions to manage calls coming in and going out on the SIP line.

I then installed Zoiper on all of the mobiles and tablets in the house, and that works well - so I can now call Trish from the office to her mobile, without the call going out over the air - and therefore is free. So far so good.

What I want to do next is to receive incoming calls on the house phone, and send them out to the SIP phones. So, how to solve this?

I did the usual, searched with Google and decided from a ten minute bit of research that the SPA-3000 device, available for pennies from eBay would be a good bet. Ah. Now the real fun begins.

I found the manual online, and there is a very comprehensive Asterisk book for download. I am still struggling though - this is a key part of the home phone strategy, so I can use the existing analogue handsets over DECT to ring them (assuming the phone call is from someone I like - telemarketers will get a very long message advising them that we don't accept unsolicited marketing blah blah on the phone). I will post more as I find out more, but this is a nightmare so far. There are literally hundreds of settings for the SPA-3000.

I may have to sell the little darling and buy a better interface.

Bargain!

I can't help showing off a bargain from that auction site again. This time I found an HP 16500A logic analyser for very few pennies. It didn't have any software with it, but eventually I found that on a site linked from Agilent.

I later found a blogger who had put up details on how to write the software onto diskette, and it went something like;

1) find some 720K 3.5 inch diskettes
2) find a machine that can run DOS and has a diskette drive
3) run the LIFUTIL program
4) format the diskettes to a very strange HP-UX compatible format

5) write the system code to a diskette
6) write the correct code for the options you have on a second diskette
7) enjoy

720k diskettes? Pah! a mere bagatelle. Remember when we used to get boxes of diskettes in perspex holders? I do, and I have a couple of boxes still.

A machine that can run DOS? Well I have an old Toshiba Satellite 110CT, which boots into Windows 98. Close enough. And here it is. Unfortunately the little pigtail cable for the Xircom ethernet PCMCIA is missing. I have two other PCMCIA network adapters, but they are both cardbus and won't fit.

But we do have a USB diskette drive for the Linux machine, so I can download the software and move it over with diskettes! 3.9MB at 720K is five bites. Actually because of the way the files are split up, it takes seven.

And THEN, we get to the point of writing the diskettes with the correct format (77 tracks, not 80, 1024 byte sectors, no interleave).

Wow. Don't diskettes take a huge amount of time to write and read?

Ta da.                                 

New MacBook, old data card

So anyway, I have a brand new (to me) MacBook for my playtime. And work, and stuff. It was a brilliant purchase from eBay (except when it arrived, it seemed to be missing a key) and I am delighted with it.

It took a little sorting out when I upgraded to El Capitan a couple of weeks ago, but I am very pleased.

Then, a couple of days ago I decided to log in when I was at a show in London, with my Virgin Media data card plugged in to the USB. Ah, no device. Tried again. Still no device. Now the USB port knows something is plugged in, and the package to install pops up on the screen, so its not a low level problem. Must be the software, I thought. I go Googling at home, can't find anything sensible, so I decided to phone Virgin Media.

I phoned the number on the web site for mobile data, and got through after a few minutes. I described my problem to the nice person on the phone. Hmm, let me transfer you to the technical department.

Oh, sorry they are busy. I'll just put you on hold, as I want to make sure I pass you over properly (la,l a, music, la, la) Sorry about the delay. To make sure I can pass you over, I need to take some details from you first.

(Go through process of saying no, I can't give you the phone number of the card as when I plug it in, it DOESN'T WORK - followed by my postcode, house number, Nicholas Sargeant - yes, you may call me Nick, the first two characters of my password etc).

Transfer to technical department. Describe problem again.

" I need to take some details from you first. " (Go through process of saying no, I can't give you the phone number of the card as when I plug it in, it DOESN'T WORK - followed by my postcode, house number, Nicholas Sargeant - yes, you may call me Nick, the first two characters of my password etc).

Technical department tell me that it's not a known problem, but it's usually an issue with Windows 7 migrating to Windows 10. I tell him I am using Mac OS X and I am on El Capitan now.  Ah, ok. Well, it's the same thing. The manufacturers can't keep updating device drivers, so we encourage customers to look at Mifi products now. Really? I ask .. having been Googling in the background. Well, I don't need Mifi, and it seems to be a little more expensive, but would be a lot easier than having a special launcher on the machine, so I say Please tell me more. Ah, yes sir, I'll just pass you over to our sales department.

Welcome to Virgin Media. So we can serve you better, please listen carefully to the following ...

Get through to another person. Lovely girl.

" I need to take some details from you first. " (My postcode, house number, Nicholas Sargeant - yes, you may call me Nick, the first two characters of my password etc). I'm interested in your Mifi products, and wondered if you would tell me something about them.

Yes sir. I will need to transfer you to Mobile Data to deal with your query though. Just let me pop you on hold ..

Get through to another person. Lovely girl.

" I need to take some details from you first. " (My postcode, house number, Nicholas Sargeant - yes, you may call me Nick, the first two characters of my password etc). I'm interested in your Mifi products, and wondered if you would tell me something about them.

Yes sir. I am a little new to Mobile Data products, but I will do my best to help you.

Long conversation ensues, followed by me choosing a product I wanted, giving my credit card details and so on. Oh, sorry sir, that one is out of stock. We do have the 3GB per month model available for only 15 quid a month ..

Not convinced, I explained I would need to do some research and come back. Meanwhile would it be possible to cancel the contract on my USB stick, that DOESN'T WORK?

Yes sir, of course. I will just transfer you to Cancellations ..

Oh, sorry they are busy. I'll just put you on hold, as I want to make sure I pass you over properly (la,l a, music, la, la)

Get through to another person. Lovely girl.

Blah, blah,  Go through process of saying no, I can't give you the phone number of the card as when I plug it in, it DOESN'T WORK - followed by my postcode, house number, Nicholas Sargeant - yes, you may call me Nick, the first two characters of my password blah blah ...

My new USB stick comes from O2. Works fine out of the box, even on El Capitan on my Mac. They thoughtfully send me an email when I cross 80% of my data usage, so I can either squeeze my usage until month end, or I can buy an additional GB of data to tide me over. So far, I have managed to keep within the allowance. My only gripe is that while the contract comes with mobile wifi hotspots, they aren't all that prevalent, with one huge exception. The hospital where I spend most of my time at work ;-)