I describe how I integrated my photovoltaic installation into Home Assistant, featuring Axitec panels, a SolaX Inverter, and a pair of Triple Power batteries. After trying several options, I settled on the MODBUS/TCP integration which works locally via LAN and exposes more data than the other options. …

I set up these three services on a dedicated server at home to monitor my home automation. InfluxDB is a database super-optimized for working with time series. Grafana lets you create dashboards and graphs from multiple sources, and Telegraf is a lightweight agent that collects, processes, and sends data to our database. I’ve decided to install all three on an Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server, on a virtual machine in KVM, so they’re consumed by the rest of the home automation elements: the Home Assistant server and other devices that can write to InfluxDB. …

I’ve migrated the InfluxDB/Grafana services from my Home Assistant to an external server. Moving the service and setting it up on another server isn’t too difficult. What did take me a while was figuring out how to export and import data between the InfluxDB instances and how to adapt the old Grafana Dashboard to use Flux. …

To have control and management over IT assets, equipment, and labs, I’ve been trying iTop. iTop stands for IT Operations Portal. It’s a complete web-based ITIL service management tool that includes a fully customizable CMDB, a helpdesk system, and a document management tool. It offers bulk import tools and web services to integrate with your IT. I set up a small lab to test it. …

I describe how to change the default browser for Jupyter Lab on a Mac. If we don’t do anything and launch jupyter lab from the command line, the system’s default browser (Safari) will be invoked. If you want to change it to Chrome, follow the steps below. …

This post contains my GIT cheat sheet, various reminders I use as a programmer — common commands or situations. It comes in handy for example when I accidentally delete a file and want to recover it, check a previous version of code, or ignore a modification in a specific file. …