James Batchelor – Useful I.T & VoIP Ramblings

Unifi UGC Ultra Migration

I’ve been using Draytek at home for routing for the past 10 years or so, with the latest being the 2927 in use for the last few years. With the release of the newer 2928 model this year, it’s inevitable that my router will be going end-of-life pretty soon.

Instead of following on to its natural successor, is there anything else out there that can handle a moderate network setup?

I stumbled upon a Unifi UCG Pro, and at £104 it’s at a price point that’s almost justifiable to get just to see what it can do. After checking some core features I need for my network would be achievable, I ended up getting one.

The UCG Pro claims 1 Gbps IPS throughput, which fits my 900Mbps/105Mbps connection. Let’s see if it becomes a suitable replacement…

Grafana Static Displays

In the last post I migrated a Grafana database to a new server and took the opportunity to upgrade the Grafana version in the process.

This created a new issue, since Grafana’s supported browser list moves with the times, my two “NOC” screens consisting each of a Raspberry Pi 3A running Raspbian Buster and Hyperpixel 4.0 screens no longer worked. Instead, the outdated Chromium browsers now displayed the “If you’re seeing this Grafana has failed to load its application files” page when visiting the Grafana web interface.

Bringing the OS on the Pi’s up to date is the logical resolution, however, there are a couple of issues with this:

One of the Hyperpixel 4.0 screens is an early revision model, meaning the official and legacy drivers do not work.
Even with working screen drivers, compatible browsers will not load on the 512MB RAM available to the Pi 3A.

Not wanting to obsolete a pair of Pi 3A’s with a now unique form factor, instead a workaround was found to continue displaying Grafana dashboards on this older hardware. The solution even gave a slight benefit over the original URL…

Migrate Zabbix/Grafana to new server

I’m in the process of migrating hypervisors and the time has come to move my Zabbix instance that monitors my network, and Grafana that I use for dashboard displays.

Instead of a backup and restore of the VM, it seems the right time to migrate Zabbix and Grafana from an aging RHEL 8 instance to a new VM running a fresh copy of Debian 13. At the same time upgrading the applications to their latest versions…

10 years of website logs, and the resulting nostalgia trip

This week I noticed a little milestone; my current iteration of website logs had clicked over to 10 years’ worth of accumulated statistics.

While I’ve been self-hosting websites since 2002, it wasn’t until 2015 that I started making a conscious effort to backup and retain web logs during server reinstalls and migrations.

To create statistics from these logs, I’ve been using Analog since around 2004. A simple parser that dates back to the early days of the internet and remains wholly unchanged for many decades.

This milestone prompted a nostalgia dive into the archives to see how far back I can go, uncovering Analog output from 2004, and an historic look on how the internet has changed over the last 20 years…

SIP Radio

In a previous post, I hinted at the possibility of replacing a “smart” speaker with readily placed VoIP phones as a way to play radio around the house.

This would kind of make sense, phones use the RTP protocol for audio is designed for real-time communication and so, naturally sync with each other in a local network.

As a proof of concept, I wanted to create a service that allowed me to “dial-in” to a radio stream on demand…

Asus X205TA – Lengthen Laptop Life with Linux

It’s strange to think that I’ve had this laptop around for nearly 10 years. Putting those years in context of my technical knowledge, it seems a lifetime ago.

I owe a lot to this little, £130, underpowered (even at the time) machine. Sat in my car refining and sending off my CV for numerous jobs whilst waiting for my hateful call centre job to begin helped me break into a technical role.

The end of Windows 10 support in October 2025 could be considered a full stop on this laptop’s usefulness, however Windows claimed this as a victim long ago. The 32GB eMMC storage was entirely consumed by just the operating system and its pending updates, which relegated this system to version 18.09.

One point of the X205TA that really impressed was the battery life, with an OS estimated 10 hours at full charge it was something 2016 me had never seen before.

The thought occurred that I’d like a lounge terminal, something with a proper keyboard and screen that I could use to SSH into other machines, with a web browser for reference.

Could I breathe new life into the X205TA with the introduction of a Linux Desktop?

MySQL Replication

Sure, its not the most original of topics, but it is one I’ve relied upon from time to time. For years, this guide from Digital Ocean was my go to choice.

It wasn’t until my most recent visit for an upcoming project that things looked, well, a little different. It was mostly the same, but subtle differences meant it was no longer compatible with how I’d been familiar with setting it up.

Therefore this quick post is to capture the old method of setting it up for posterity.

SIP device as Pi Audio Output

In my Development Den (the spare room) I have a Raspberry Pi 4 setup with a monitor for use as a quick reference station when working on nearby devices.

With no speakers connected this can sometimes pose an issue when trying to follw a tutorial video, and when I do need audio, a Bluetooth speaker is never around.

There is a SIP phone next to the Pi on my desk, and so I thought; that has a decent network connected speaker, why not use that?

This is what ensued…

Pi Weather Display Project

This project is so cobbled together I’m almost proud of it, I don’t expect anyone to be able to recreate this exactly but if there are parts of it that help, here you go.

My dog prefers a walk early in the morning as the sun is dawning, so I’d like info on when dawn is along with the current weather forecast, plus very localised info on what the temperature is now and importantly, if it’s raining out.

The go to choice to present this info would be a Raspberry Pi with a small display to allow a quick glance at in the morning.

The info to display on the Pi screen can be sources from a couple of sources;

An API call from a weather service (weatherbit.io) for more general sunrise, sunset and current weather.
A SDR radio picking up a nearby weather station for more localised temperature and rainfall values.

This is how it comes together…

Zen Digital Voice – Connecting to SIP

If like me you still have a requirement for a landline, or at least a landline number. Zen Internet offers a “digital voice” package as an accompaniment to its broadband service.

Traditionally this service is provided via its supplied Fritzbox router, utilising its FXS port to supply telephony to analogue devices.

As the service is SIP based, it is possible to connect direct via SIP phones or Asterisk which is ideal should the Fritzbox not be suitable for your requirements. While this is permitted by Zen, it is unsupported.

Here are a couple of examples of getting connected to Zen DV without the use of the Fritzbox.