ZXnet

This is my generic "Personal" site. It used to be used for university stuff but that was long ago now and its not really been updated much since.

Projects - zxweather

My main ongoing project at this time is 'zxweather', the software which runs my personal weather station. Its been built primarily to serve my own purposes as the existing off-the-shelf options didn't meet my requirements. At this point work on this is mostly just adding features as I discover they're missing and fixing annoying bugs. At some point I'll tidy it up and make source and binaries available for anyone else who may find it useful (every year I've planned on doing this "this year" but always some new feature or refactoring work has got in the way). A bit more information about the software can be found here. It currently runs (or has run) the following stations:

• Sandy Bay, Port Charles since 5:55pm on 5 April 2015. Hardware is a cabled Vantage Pro2 Plus
• Hamilton East, Hamilton since 5:25pm on 20 April 2019. Hardware is a wireless Vantage Pro2 Plus with a leaf+soil station
• Ruakura, Hamilton from 3:20pm on 9 February 2013 to 10:20am on 23 Februrary 2019. Hardware is a Vantage Vue. Its humidity sensor started failing at the end of June 2018 but as these are quite expensive to replace (only a little cheaper than replacing the entire outdoor sensor unit) it was left running as-is. It was finally taken offline with the intention of repairing it but instead an entire new station was purchased. I never got around to setting up the new hardware so it sat in its box until it eventually became the Hamilton East station. The original hardware is still around so it may someday be reinstated.
• Ruakura, Hamilton from 5:05pm on 22 March 2012 to 2:05am on 20 May 2018. Harwdare is a FineOffset WH1080. It was replaced by the Vantage Vue in 2013 but continued to operate increasingly sporadically over the following years for software testing purposes. The hardware is still around but needs repairs (a cable on the outdoor sensor unit was chewed)

Astrophotography

At the end of 2017 I bought a telescope (SkyMax 127 & AZ-GTi mount) and started having a go at planetary imaging. In mid-2018 I moved on to deep-space stuff with an Esprit 80ED apo refractor, an AZ-EQ6 mount and my fathers spare DSLR. You can see some of my better pictures over on AstroBin. A full list of all my attempts at deep-space astrophotograph can be found here.

Vintage Computers

I've got a pile of vintage computers. Many of them weren't so vintage when they first came to me - merely obsolete. Details on some of the more interesting/obscure systems can be found over in the Computers section of this website. Mirrors of websites related to these computers are also kept here in case the original web pages go down (something which has increasingly happened as time has gone by). These are over here.