Faun's Van Hole of Tech

FaunCB · March 14, 2022, 11:48pm

Title change is memes idk

Anyways I am now single and in my van. I don’t need to share info about that other than it should have ended a while ago, or at least had sone separation.

Well now I get to do this however I want and I don’t have to worry about a second person.

I am now in the process of figuring out what is goi g where. I need to find a low power heater I can have in the van, and after that I can probably ditch a lot of hardware. Expect a sale thread soon, I don’t need the servers I have tbh. I can’t think of a good use for them and desktop hardware will be easier for me in the long run. Homelab is stupid.

However this now presents a new issue. I have a 2 core Ht laptop thats a 3rd gen i5/i3 with a shit gpu and the only attachable one I have is a GT730. Equally I am going to attach it over the expresscard port, so its not like a faster card would do better. However, I am now back to missing that stupid MSI GS63VR. That stupid laptop, if I never sold it and still had it I’d never have fucked around. Swear to god.

Now I’m just wondering what the best low profile card is that will work on a gen 2 x1 or x2 connection.

I think back to that HP X360 that I liked a lot and wonder…. Are those viable in linux yet? I would never touch a 2700u now that the 4x and 5x chips are out, though I wonder about fixing my g50v and giving a 9800 another bung, or trying a nuc sized pc. Mac studio? More like stupio, I’d never use all of it.

I need to figure out what I need in a computer. I like my thinkpad, I just checkrained it and blew the bios wide open and now I have it tweaked a bit to have more vram for the igpu and some power targets moved around. It does fine for what I use it for, and it has a buttload of usb ports. I don’t think I can get another laptop with 7 usb ports easily…. At that, it needs to have gpu access of some sort. 6gb vram minimum, and probably at least 4 cores. I’ll need to look around.

5700u based framework? Pen useable touchscreen?

The big shame is with a board upgrade and an expresscard wifi/ usb adapter, my thinkpad would probably be really good for what I want. I need a touchscreen pen capable laptop with some cpu and lots of gpu. I don’t think I need a billion cores necessarily, but fast enough to do my business. I guess I will need to look up emulator speeds, vm speeds, etc on diff processors just in case…

Annoyingly enough if I had all laptops I think I’d be fine lol.

ThatGuyB · March 15, 2022, 1:17am

Sounds complicated. If you are looking for Van life tips, subscribe to Tux Traveler. I know Tom is lurking this forum, but I don’t know what his account is.

Tom had a video about a diesel heater, which he recommends, but you need to mod your van (air intake and exhaust from outside). Personally, would go for a 12V heated blanket, it can save on power (not having to heat up the whole room) and you can wear it on a chair.

Are you planning on van living for a while, or is this a temporary solution? Depending on your lifestyle, living in a van may cost you about as much as renting a studio apartment. If you live frugally, you may be able to live with $500 a month. But living in a van is rough, I couldn’t live without taking showers often and I don’t like being on the move, but you can’t park in the same place for more than 2 weeks in most places, unless you park on a friend’s driveway or something, but most likely you are going to have to move daily in order not to raise suspicion and have cops called on you.

In regards to laptops with touchscreens that have working styluses, I don’t know any. Keep in mind that, unless you manage to plug into a power grid, you have to save power and the only way is to downscale your power consumption. Tom, like me, is using a RPi 4 as a daily driver for most of the things, with a Ryzen 6 core something desktop for video editing 2 hours a day.

Do you have your van equipped with solar panels and battery banks? What’s your capacity? Try living with as less technology that requires electricity as you can. Get dried foods and try not to eat them, unless you have no option.

Unless you are doing video editing, a 2 cores / 4 threads or 4 cores / 8 threads CPU should be plenty. Are you using Krita or something, that you require a stylus? Try looking for older Haswell / Broadwell laptops. I wonder if Lenovo Yoga 2s are any good (older, original Yoga were prone to having their CPU fan break down). Some yoga 2s came with an nvidia something or another (gt930 maybe). I think MIIX Active Pen 2 works with any laptop, but they are tested on Yogas.

Oh wow, do you really need all that GPU memory? I don’t think anything under a 1060 will do then, so your budget for a laptop would go nuts, unless you buy a laptop with thunderbolt and get a TB enclosure. At this point, I wonder if it’s more economical to just buy a 15.6" $200 touch screen portable monitor like I have. Well, mine is not connected to the PC, I tested it on windows and it worked, but on sway on my RPi, I had no touch functionality. I haven’t tried Plasma or GNOME Shell though. And obviously, no idea if styluses work with it.

GigaBusterEXE · March 15, 2022, 1:31am

As someone who slept in their blazer in -20 weather, 3-4 blankets will do while you’re asleep, heated blanket would make you very comfortable

As far as while you’re awake

Maybe investment in insulating the van could help on the energy needs

Solar panels and batteries?

FaunCB · March 15, 2022, 5:04am

Working on planning power and batteries out. Researching other van features and watching builds. Actually the biggest offender is the roof. Its held together with 2 boards and some nails and a handful of crews.

I want to have 2 150-250w panels on the roof, feeding a few basic car batteries (class 78 truck batteries, currently have engine battery and 1 cabin battery[duralast gold, agm silverline something something] and am researching how others do this).

On top of all this I need to insulate it, as suggested, but also reseal the windows and change 2 or 4 of them out for completely different types of windows.

The biggest issue with these vans is they get stolen easy. Jimmy thru a window, pop the lock, side or back open easy and Hotwiring them is nothing to fart at.

Living wise, I am setting up to have bases of operation where I can park and plug in, and I am otherwise researching where I can park and sap wifi / power for right now. As it gets warner I will care less about a heater, but next winter I will care.

I remember someone mentioning a heated floor. I bet they did it to heat the whole van…. But it was a fedex truck, I don’t exactly have that.

Pc wise, yeah 2 cores or 4 cores probs would work, but I am looking at doing IT contracts and moving around the country when shit gets dry. When not home, I want to be able to do music, art (krita, blender), play anything up to DXMD / Tarkov without lag, work on repo shit (do surgery on the repo at home if I need to), edit video…. Sone random other shit thats minor in comparison…. I’m worried a 2 or 4 core won’t be able to keep up.

Then again I am legit thinking about playing with a pentium D again…. Lol

FaunCB · March 22, 2022, 9:36pm

-Quick list of projects as a to do I can’t misplace-

Finish editing rig video

Lighting Rigs and Cam, Color Match

Start mac pro rec stage
Imac to mac pro, fw
PB mpfw
Dvd drive from koga?

Delivery Run

Wire in backup camera

Solder dingus fol gmas

FaunCB · March 22, 2022, 9:43pm

-Van Research: Current-

Water tanks
Battery Box Setup
Propane Bottle Setup
Bed Removal and Replacement, Foam pad / jap. bed roll

Remove Front Pass Seat for Storage
Front pass seat on swivel w/ drv seat
Onion (post sugg.)

0 voters

Research rockwool sources
Research bolt on hitch mounts

FaunCB · April 3, 2022, 3:32pm

Well today I am happy to say I have gotten up and taken care of things at an early enough time that I am motivated to do even more things. I have this annoying problem with my arthritis in that I can only walk so much before it really taxes me and eventually just can’t move.

My answer to this was to move the van from the front yard to the barn yard. Now I don’t have to run around so much :V and actually I think I move around less now barn wise, which helps me a bit.

So with the extra energy I get from this I am going to boon on cleaning the house up more today. I am starting to get a general vision and idea for my office, as it were, and I have atp figured out where I really want things. To the point that I am moving the machines from the attic back into my room. Mostly because the router is in there and I don’t want to deal with it.

My following issue is my servers and how they will connect, followed by the two or tree videos I am scattered in making. I might completely reshoot everything once I have a completely new setup just so everything is clean and nothing embarrassing can be seen. But I have the ideas down and a draft shot.

I think what I need to do is formulate a production process for myself, in a way. I’m not the best at executive order, so if I laid out a basic framework that was easy to follow for making a video…. Like a todo list I guess, it might be easier for me.

Idk I’ll have to fuck around with that.

Things are coming, including the Vermillion post and the video editing setup video.

FaunCB · April 5, 2022, 1:43am

moody blogpost warning cuz I hurt

Getting things moved slowly rn. Been without my arthritis meds gor a few days now and I completely feel like a pile of shit rn. Just got stuff picked up today too.

Trying to make my room the creator space instead of the attic now. Closer to the ground is better for me and I’m living in my van now so idc. Trying to figure out where I want to put my desk and what I am going to do with the remainder of my partners things. They are moving rn.

Gunna get a shower and maybe go back to bed. fuck do I feel like shit

alwaysFlOoReD · April 5, 2022, 7:25am

I hope you find your way thru the pain.

FaunCB · April 9, 2022, 6:11pm

Today I am getting some things done like get my desktop set up and clean up the popos 1910 i stall on my thinkpad.

Yessm’ thats how little I have used it.

Well I just got some shit spruced up and I am liking the results. As well, ElementaryOS is some sick shit nowadays. I heard the main guy went solo and was worried about quality, but if he can do that shit with just his community fuck it I will only install eOS on my 64bit machines from now on. I’m not getting the laginess from gnome, I don’t have to dig in memory for keycombos or dumbshit, its clean.

Given my recent mental health awareness status I need this in my life.

Also I need a TPM key for my desktop I want to play with W11

FaunCB · April 9, 2022, 6:47pm

FaunCB · April 9, 2022, 11:07pm

I got pissed. I think my older router is finally pooping out. I had to get ny backup out. I have no choice but to invest time i to the firewall now.

Also while elementary is cool I think my routerfucked the image on download. Even on torre t. Or 6.1 is shit.

Argone · April 10, 2022, 1:04am

You using pfsense?

FaunCB · April 25, 2022, 1:54pm

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This post is here to flag that I am moving posts from a thread and there will be an influx from one to another.

Thank you

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I’m putting this in gaming but I’m doing more than games.

If you have a 3DS and a wii laying around you may have thought to sell them. Why? Pandemic sucks and peoples kids suck so give the kid a thing so they don’t suck. Pretty easy. But… Did you know the 3DS is as easy to hack as the Wii now?

Well ok, its not letterbomb on an SD card level simple, but its pretty fast.

Well for the last few days I have been playing with my 3ds, and now I have a 256GB SD card working at full size in it with a few switchable firmwares for running games accurately. Very nice. As I have been setting this up I was reminded of setting up the roms folder and all the files of my first 3ds and how much of a mess that was, and then of the wii and how easy it was.

I don’t know what the end result will be, but I think it would be cool to go out with my DS, play shit whatever, go home, SD card into the wii and continue my game on the big screen. I want more than that of course, I think porting void linux to it could be memes, and I have some wrenching to do personally UAE for the DS (you can’t even load configurations like you can on the PSP like what the fuck how is a PSP a more useable desktop) personally.

I think what my thought process is here is I plan on getting an Ayn Odin, Steam Deck, or something similar to either of those hardware wise and using it in combo with another machine. So before actually spending money on it, make sure the idea would even be beneficial to me in the first place.

Of course a wii and a 3ds aren’t exactly productivity units, but I’ll be able to give some insight to the wiibrew scene. I used my wii as a desktop computer for a while because my dad stole my laptop when I needed it for studies lol. So I usurped him, and actually from memory it worked pretty well in 2011. Doubt it will now for internet stuff, but everything else?

Starting goals:

Simplify folder structure
Pause on one system, resume on the other
Notifications + data (being able to pull from the wii to the ds AND VICE VERSA)

End Goal: Void linux?

Been thinking about this for a minute, and idk what the end thing will be but meh / thread incoming.

This won’t be immediate as I am doing some things irl and dealing with some shit rn, but I will be posting this soon. If you wanna do the same at home, lmk!

Random BS Ideas

From the lounge: Me " Hmmm… Port pihole to the 3DS? That might be broken… Oooo make an MITM DNS app for 3DS to force everyone on a network thru a pihole install.

That actually might be kinda sick "

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Instant post, I just had a thought. I hate that DS Homebrew makes you poke the touch screen for typing. I think maybe first code project is mimicking the PSP typing with buttons, which means I need my triggers repaired ASAP XDD

Anyone got 6 bucks?

Also any time I just have a random idea I’m going to throw it in here for storage for later

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Another code project: Linux

Theres this thing called doom that everyone ports to everything. Thing is that doom is so fucking simple to run that I’m not impressed with anything anymore that runs doom. Printer? Ok, do it on an industrial newspaper printer and the rendering is off the print line. THEN I WILL BE IMPRESSED.

Rather, I want Void to be the next Doom. Its so light weight you can run it on damn near anything, and with the way ARM is going rn I think linux on a handheld like a DS would actually be kinda handy. Hell the other day I got the idea of, hey, port kali to a 3DS and see what sorta MITM shenanigans you can do with it in like a walmart etc.

What would yall want to be able to do with void linux on a 3ds? PM me if you don’t want to post in here.

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Another thought that I want to tackle here, however I think I can actually do this one: port a better version of UAE over so you can run classicWB

Part of me is curious about making the 3DS use both the processors it has, Arm11 and Arm9, however IDK how useful that would be vs just having the cpu overclocked or clock enabled and L2 enabled… Will need testing later

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Is this seriously the state of homebrew youtube on the wii? Oh come on shit can be done better

add that to the list

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Ok so I have bumpers in the mail. Should pop up tomorrow or the day after, if I’m lucky MAYBE today.

I have some more things set up on my 3DS as well, including a whole pile of custom virtual console titles. I will be playing a lot of GBA games and watching a lot of 100p shittily rendered because of the gameboy tile graphics system, video now carts.

Though I am sitting here thinking about all of this, looking at romhack stores that are available thru reddit, thinking about what I want to do in the next few months… So I am goin to make a list of goals for what I want to do here.

Study linux loader and attempt to boot void linux. If
Investigate Box86 and or other x86 emulators
Investigate Virtual Console custom images
Investigate wii softwares (VC and void linux)

Questions to be had from this: Could Linux Apps be linked to the home iOS screen? Like a VC title?
Could Box86 / DosBox load a 3d game / allow for one to run? Will the MPCore explode? (likely)
Overclocking?
Multi-user mode? Ie swapping from 3DS game to linux tool? (read memory, stream a game, etc)
Replace iOS with linux?

These are the things I am interested in for right now. I have yet to explore much of my wii yet. Actually I have a few questions about how I had set it up so I might do like a video looking at that idk.

Still got some other things in the works too. Up in the air rn on some channel decisions. Might stay away from PC stuff, IDK yet.

Edit: Buttons confirmed for tomorrow. I have my wii set up and my 3DS is a little busy right now, but its goin.

I might take a slightly different approach. Not terribly different, but just enough. Apparently theres an app called Pinbox that will let you stream games from your PC to your 3DS. I would love to play fable in bed on a 3DS! Perfect!

I also have managed to actually need to set up another router. Tomorrow I will consolidate these posts into the OP and rewrite it, make a goals post after, and then we’ll start on the first real research post, and I’ll probably have a video in there somewhere. It’ll be easy for me to do lol.

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I just figured out HID input for new 3ds on linux

basically old style systems will replace the inner buttons with more macropages, or a touch screen keyboard.

With this in mind though, you could theoretically type really fast on a new 3ds system. The system has n key rollover as all of the switches are independant, and you could set up any format of jeyboard you want.

I don’t know if I am a smarty or a dipshit

This seems viable to me how has no one thought about this yet

Depending on how things were set up, I think xfce, mate, and almost any other destop system could be ported to this user interface remarkably easy. Any menu inputs can be done on the bottom screen with a finger or the pen, or the user can dovide the displays so the top is the os and the bottom only displays input, but heres a thought, if the user uses both displays to have a “dual monitor system” you could have the typing diagram pop up on the other screen, or forcibly swap screens and keep a 3rd screen spawned that permanently has a keyboard on it.

Oh my god this would be amazing

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Ok the new buttons are in and I’m crying a little bit. I’m so excited its near unbearable. I can now play allllll the games I never got to for yeeeeeeeaaaaarrrrs and I get to have ALL the console games I love, except a very very choice few of PS2 games that I like, in my pocket ready to go.

Hell I can even beat that corrupted lord of the rings game I actually really liked when I was like 8. Its a good ass RPG, but my game would corrupt when you got to the caves of… whatever the hell, where the guy gets killed by the troll and everyone freaks out.

I am so shittingly excited right now.

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