The Skull Cinema

Now I have a virtual Raspberry Pi set up this should be a discussion on how to get Home Assistant (HA) installed on it. Correct? Well, no. Once I'd got the virtual Raspberry Pi up and running, and forearmed with my (limited) knowledge of how VirtualBox works, I went looking for a distro of Home Assistant that would run on the Raspberry Pi Desktop OS . Only this time I made sure I read the whole list and r ight at the bottom I found what I was looking for - Install Home Assistant on Other Systems . However, instead of needing a prepared Raspberry Pi this protocol will install everything in a single process. It turned out, as I read another manual, that Home Assistant is actually an OS in and of itself. The Open Home Foundation , the developer of HA, uses another piece of open-source software, Buildroot , to craft a bespoke version of Linux it calls the Home Assistant Operating System (HAOS; previously known as HassOS). Although the process of setting up the HA virtual machine (V...

Now my computer is set up to run virtual machines (VMs) I should be able to load up a virtual Raspberry Pi and install Home Assistant on that. Correct? Well…hmm, it will be instructive to go through the process, I hope, even if the initial outcome was not was intended. On opening, right at the top of the VirtualBox (VB) window, there is a large blue starburst symbol with the word New underneath (circled in red above). Clicking this will start a wizard that will help you to create a VM. The fields of the first dialogue box are pretty self-explanatory; the Name of the VM can be anything you want; the Folder is simply the location where the VM's files will sit; and the ISO Image is the installation disc (or the file version thereof) from which you will boot the operating system. As you can see, I've chosen a Raspberry Pi OS ISO, which is a Linux Type operating system that is actually based on Debian ( Version ),  obtained from the Raspberry Pi website . At this point e...

What follows is how I solved the following error message from VirtualBox. Not in a hypervisor partition (HVP=0) (VERR_NEM_NOT_AVAILABLE). AMD-V is disabled in the BIOS (or by the host OS) (VERR_SVM_DISABLED). Result Code: E_FAIL (0X80004005) Component: ConsoleWrap Interface: IConsole {6ac83d89-6ee7-4e33-8ae6-b257b2e81be8} VERR_SVM_DISABLED error message from VirtualBox What am I messing around with hypervisors and virtual machines for? And for that matter, what's a virtual machine anyway? Answers to these questions are here ; but back to the matter at hand. Fortunately the error message is actually quite helpful and gives us the answer to solving the problem. SVM is disabled in the BIOS. SVM is the TLA for Secure Virtual Machine (see this article for more information) and the BIOS on motherboards is normally shipped with this option disabled, because the majority of users never need to use it and having it e...

Prior to the trip to buy groceries each week, the tedious chore of wandering round the house checking how much of all the consumables that a household requires is actually present must be completed. Everywhere there is a stash; upstairs, downstairs, all the cupboards, the fridge, the freezer, etc ., etc . I could try to do it from memory, but who has the available headspace to remember how many tins of beans you have at any particular moment and, even if you do try to use this method, how many extra tins of corned beef or jars of mustard is it reasonable to have to buy just to save yourself from the weekly traipse around the house doing a stock-check? What I need is a Bean Counter. I want to be able to scan in the barcode on a tin of beans when I buy it and when I use it scan it out again and have the stock level reflect that fact. Then, on shopping day, I can just look at the stock levels from my desk. Or even better it could just tell me when I need to buy more beans again. Of cou...

A few years ago I set up a new company in the UK. The government here has invested quite heavily in digital services so this can be almost entirely completed on-line. You begin the process by notifying Companies House , the venerable UK registrar for companies (for 180 years this year), that you have set up a company. In order for you to do that on-line the Government needs to have some sort of user registration system and one that is a bit more secure than your regular website. Enter the Government Gateway , a government-wide ID system launched in 2001. It was initially designed to be a one-stop-shop that would provide a log-on solution for all of the UK government's on-line services. Whether you were a business/organisation or an individual citizen, with security credentials backed up by GCHQ no less. The Companies House process was exceptionally straightforward and a Government Gateway ID (GG ID) was set up by Companies House for the business. No problems. Another early task...