Shack reorganisation

Looks like I am out of action for a few days. We noticed a bulge in the kitchen ceiling which is directly under the shack. There are two pipes that run across under the floor for hot and cold water to the taps and down from the hot water cylinder to the rest of the house. Yes, you guessed it, right under my desk. So, all the radios, screens, Mac and PCs, audio stuff and all cabling out and desk out. On lifting the carpet the floorboard I needed to lift ran right across the room, and right under the test bench! So, all the equipment had to move, including the allegedly portable spectrum analyser and the teleprinter. Fortunately GB7RVB and all the network gear is on shelving attached to the wall so that can stay. And there is was, one leaking lead to copper joint. Far too late to go and get the bits to fix it… and searching for the parts by smartphone is not amusing. Grumble.

It's surprising just how many things one gathers that need Ethernet. Having just made an NTP server out of a Raspberry Pi that took the last port in my 8+2 port PoE switch I needed more ports. The switch is a Netgear GS110TP, 8 Ethernet ports and up to two SFP modules for interlinking. So I have added a second GS110TP linked to the original one via a short fibre lead and two SFP transceivers. The house now has 4 Ethernet switches, all Netgear, making 48 Ethernet ports in total but not all in use, plus 3 wifi access points, Netgear again and all PoE powered. Actually I could have settled for a non-PoE switch as the additional one but this one came cheap, and new in box. All the switches and access points do SNMP too, centrally monitored using MRTG. Why? Because they can!

In between various large-ish DIY projects that need to be sorted over the summer I took time out to begin to rearrange the shack. I really want to site the radios next to the screens for ease of use but with the four monitors I have too little horizontal space. So I thought, if I had a longer support pole for one of the dual monitor stands I could put the other two above. I printed a test cylinder with a flange to see if I could make a coupling for the two poles and after using that to get the size right I printed a 100mm one. This coupled the two nicely but during test fitting the monitors it snapped. Serves me right - I had originally intended the 3D printed part to be a guide only with a metal clamp connecting the two support poles. Anyway, Amazon had extension poles which are a lot cheaper than a 4-monitor stand (Plan B was to buy a 4-screen stand) which arrived today. Here, then, are 4 monitors all nestled together - well, sort of: The Linux screens are across the top, Windows bottom left and Mac bottom right. I use…