ARFNET

- ARFNET is a non-profit organization (a homelab really) devoted to several causes such as: -

Reenancment of the look and function of the old internet form the 80s, 90s and 2000s
Preservation of humanity's knoledge, artwork and entertainment via archival, and its availability to all
Free (as in freedom) and Open Source Software, hence all being published under GPLv3 on github

- -

- The ARFNET infrastructure consists of a network of hosts providing services like this website itself. - Some of the services are for my own use, some others are public, for friends or everyone to use them, for example, - /FTPServer is the general directory for sharing random stuff. - But ARFNET didn't start like it is today, in the begining this was just me opening random ports. Now is (mostly) well organised and administrated. -

- -

- A little bit of history now. A long time ago, several years back, I downloaded Apache HTTP Server in my shitty Pentium PC (the first host), and opened port 80 in my router. - That is the origin. But I wanted more, I got a FreeDNS domain, the former arf20.mooo.com, and made a HTTPS certificate. Also installed Bitvise SSH server for remote management, - with public key authentication, and allowed my NIC to wake the PC with Wake-on-LAN, to have it always available. But this wasn't a very good way of hosting a website, is not 24/7. - I had a little Raspberry Pi 2B (raspi), which used to serve PPTP 24/7. But a raspi is not beefy enough to run nginx and to have a big drive. So, the waiting - has paid off, and in summer 2021 I got my first real thicc and beautiful enterprise server. A DELL PowerEdge R720, which I inmediately bricked. You are not warned of the - special update process that iDRAC needs, so I just tried updating to the last version, which went wrong. So wrong that iDRAC cound't be reflashed again. The only - thing that I could do is change the motherboard, but that is even more expensive than another server. Another server? I still got eBay 1 month return warranty, - so I applied it. Told the seller "iDRAC broke itself lol", somehow they accepted. I got my 300€ back, and bought another R720, with better CPU! So I popped the boot drive, - for which I choosed Ubuntu Server, and HDD from the old server, and it was almost plug-and-play. ARFNET back in business! From that point on, I have been migrating more services - to the server, and adding new ones, like NTP and DNS. Now, my workstation is so linked to the server with SMB mounts that it is useless without it :concern:. I'll be more careful. -

- -

- Update 2022-3: Got a rack, mounted server in the rack, also got a Mikrotik RB2011UiaS-RM, but turns out it sucks (can't do NAT fast enough), rewired the network with a nice patch panel, - got donated a few DELL switches and Cisco router, and finally kicked Vodafone, in favor of Avanzafibra, local ISP. - Pretty nice people, they offer static IPs, 1000/1000 FTTH, separate ONT, and SIP credentials. - Then I won an auction for 10x 3TB HGST drives, so now I've got a pretty nice 18TB RAID5 vault. The raspi died, sad. And then I eventually opened my mind and discovered just - how shitty ubuntu is, so I installed proxmox and made debian VMs, from which ARFNET is running now. Also got 64GB of 2Rx4 RAM for more VMs, like an OPNSense to replace the Mikrotik, - now I can finally make use of a full gigabit backbone, you'll notice a fantastic increase of speed. -

- -

- And what will the future hold? Well, the future is not written, but I got a few ideas. Like a 10gig upgrade, but not the whole network, that would be just too expensive. - Just a 10GBASE-SR link, between the server and desktop, to make it even more linked together, with SATA speeds network shares. Both with their respectible 1000BASE-T links to - the router. I could also get a rackmounted KVM console, one of the coolest things one can have in a rack. Maybe with a KVM switch for future servers? I should get a proper 2U UPS too, - this one doesn't last enough. -

- -

About ARFNET

ARFNET technical description

+ ARFNET is a non-profit organization (a homelab really) devoted to several causes such as: +

Reenancment of the look and function of the old internet form the 80s, 90s and 2000s
Preservation of humanity's knoledge, artwork and entertainment via archival, and its availability to all
Free (as in freedom) and Open Source Software, hence all being published under GPLv3 on github

+ +

+ The ARFNET infrastructure consists of a network of hosts providing services like this website itself. + Some of the services are for my own use, some others are public, for friends or everyone to use them, for example, + /FTPServer is the general directory for sharing random stuff. + But ARFNET didn't start like it is today, in the begining this was just me opening random ports. Now is (mostly) well organised and administrated. +

+ +

+ A little bit of history now. A long time ago, several years back, I downloaded Apache HTTP Server in my shitty Pentium PC (the first host), and opened port 80 in my router. + That is the origin. But I wanted more, I got a FreeDNS domain, the former arf20.mooo.com, and made a HTTPS certificate. Also installed Bitvise SSH server for remote management, + with public key authentication, and allowed my NIC to wake the PC with Wake-on-LAN, to have it always available. But this wasn't a very good way of hosting a website, is not 24/7. + I had a little Raspberry Pi 2B (raspi), which used to serve PPTP 24/7. But a raspi is not beefy enough to run nginx and to have a big drive. So, the waiting + has paid off, and in summer 2021 I got my first real thicc and beautiful enterprise server. A DELL PowerEdge R720, which I inmediately bricked. You are not warned of the + special update process that iDRAC needs, so I just tried updating to the last version, which went wrong. So wrong that iDRAC cound't be reflashed again. The only + thing that I could do is change the motherboard, but that is even more expensive than another server. Another server? I still got eBay 1 month return warranty, + so I applied it. Told the seller "iDRAC broke itself lol", somehow they accepted. I got my 300€ back, and bought another R720, with better CPU! So I popped the boot drive, + for which I choosed Ubuntu Server, and HDD from the old server, and it was almost plug-and-play. ARFNET back in business! From that point on, I have been migrating more services + to the server, and adding new ones, like NTP and DNS. Now, my workstation is so linked to the server with SMB mounts that it is useless without it :concern:. I'll be more careful. +

+ +

+ Update 2022-3: Got a rack, mounted server in the rack, also got a Mikrotik RB2011UiaS-RM, but turns out it sucks (can't do NAT fast enough), rewired the network with a nice patch panel, + got donated a few DELL switches and Cisco router, and finally kicked Vodafone, in favor of Avanzafibra, local ISP. + Pretty nice people, they offer static IPs, 1000/1000 FTTH, separate ONT, and SIP credentials. + Then I won an auction for 10x 3TB HGST drives, so now I've got a pretty nice 18TB RAID5 vault. The raspi died, sad. And then I eventually opened my mind and discovered just + how shitty ubuntu is, so I installed proxmox and made debian VMs, from which ARFNET is running now. Also got 64GB of 2Rx4 RAM for more VMs, like an OPNSense to replace the Mikrotik, + now I can finally make use of a full gigabit backbone, you'll notice a fantastic increase of speed. +

+ +

+ And what will the future hold? Well, the future is not written, but I got a few ideas. Like a 10gig upgrade, but not the whole network, that would be just too expensive. + Just a 10GBASE-SR link, between the server and desktop, to make it even more linked together, with SATA speeds network shares. Both with their respectible 1000BASE-T links to + the router. I could also get a rackmounted KVM console, one of the coolest things one can have in a rack. Maybe with a KVM switch for future servers? I should get a proper 2U UPS too, + this one doesn't last enough. +

+ +

Astrophotography section

Wide field category

Astrophotography section

Wide field category

Astrophotography section

Projects

arfvcr

+ A friend from the Makers of Murcia hackerspace + brought a few 80s tube TV cameras to a retro meetup, and they were free to take. I took one such + SONY Trinicon HVC-4000P, an awesome camera that was released in the early 80s. At that time, + camcorders didn't exist, they were television cameras because there weren't small enough + tape mechanisms to be integrated in. They required heavy external battery powered VCRs + like the Sony SL-F1, that you would hang off your shoulder, which we did not have. + So I thought I'd build a digital knockoff. +

+ The thing is basically a battery powered video capture box, a little computer + with a composite capture card attached. I chose to base it on a Raspberry Pi 4B + because it has to be fast enough to encode video at real time; and for the capture + card I had a *forgot* USB card, that exposes a raw yuv422 stream thanks to the + video4linux2 driver. Interfacing with the camera, the same friend gave me the + hard to find matching female connector that I could just mount to a chassis. + Finally for power, because I am a cheap and simple person, I went with a 7Ah + lead acid battery, which was very controversial in the hackerspace telegram channel :) +

+ So, power comes in from the battery or a barrel jack in the front panel, and comes to a + general power switch. That then goes to a 12-to-5V buck converter for the raspi and to another + toggle switch for the camera. The front panel also has a volt meter to check battery charge, + power and status LEDs, the rec/review switch and of course, the proprietary SONY connector + for the camera. +

+ The tethering cable has AV in and out, because it can also review recorded footage; and + some control signals as well: recording start/stop (from camera), rec/review (from camera), + tally signal in (from VCR: switches the viewfinder and monitor headphone jack to AV in). + Now, slight problem. I don't know how the signaling is supposed to work. start/stop and rec/review + aren't simple HIGH/LOW signals, they have no voltage when hitting the reflected buttons. + The camera also doesn't respond to a LOW or HIGH on the tally sig in, 5 nor 12V. + I should review the public schematics for the thing and figure it out. + Also, the audio out appears to be quiet. +

+ Software wise, I installed Debian 12 for ARM64, and then found that I needed a feature for + power debugging, so I had to install the downstream rasperry-pi kernel and userspace software. + I found that the hardware encoder never worked at all with any OS or ffmpeg version so it + mattered not, thats why I needed a fast raspi, for RT libx264. Of couse as mentioned, + ffmpeg was chosen by default for video capture and encoding. I love ffmpeg. Thanks Fabrice Bellard. + ffmpeg is love, ffmpeg is life. +

+ Because this is a headless device and I shouldn't need a console to hit record (although + the raspi creates a WiFi network to ssh into), I had to write + some software to trigger ffmpeg; so I wrote a daemon in C that reads GPIO pins from the front + panel or the camera (explained later) to start and stop the capture. + All of this is GPL available at github. +

+ + + diff --git a/projects/arfvcr/me.jpg b/projects/arfvcr/me.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..76c5758 Binary files /dev/null and b/projects/arfvcr/me.jpg differ diff --git a/projects/arfvcr/vcr.jpg b/projects/arfvcr/vcr.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7400f76 Binary files /dev/null and b/projects/arfvcr/vcr.jpg differ diff --git a/projects/index.html b/projects/index.html index bd4ade1..ba99985 100644 --- a/projects/index.html +++ b/projects/index.html @@ -1,20 +1,74 @@ - - - - - - - ARFNET - - - -

About ARFNET

ARFNET technical description

About ARFNET

ARFNET technical description

Astrophotography section

Wide field category

Astrophotography section

Wide field category

Astrophotography section

Astrophotography section

Astrophotography section

Astrophotography section

Projects

arfvcr

Projects

Projects

Hardware

arfvcr WIP

oscilloscope-terminal WIP

workstations-gaia WIP

Software

asd WIP

arfts WIP

arfchat WIP

arfmipsas + arfmipssim + arfcpu WIP

arfminesweeper WIP

arftracksat WIP

ARFNET CSTIMS WIP

ww1game WIP