I like to think that I'm quite tech conscious, and that IoT can be a force for good, if installed properly and made easy enough to use. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that the 'smart' devices are just that, and will work reliably not just now, but a few years down the line. They shouldn't be a pain to maintain, or cause problems if the internet dies, or there's a power cut.
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You've likely heard of the 3-2-1 rule for backups. If not, it's really simple:
When forming your backup plan, you should consider each of these requirements, and formulate a plan for how you'll fulfill them. You also want to consider the type of data you'll be storing, how frequently it'll be accessed, and whether the data is truly irreplaceable, or something that can be re-downloaded or imported from another medium.
In this article, I'll be explaining my 3-2-1 backup solution, including the architecture, costs, and overall performance.
This is just a quick post to highlight the possible boot modes on the Raspberry Pis, how these can be used in conjunction with network booting, and the key differences between the Pi 3 and 4B. I found this to all be quite confusing when I first looked at it, so hopefully this post will help it make a bit more sense.
Some of these principles can be applied to other computers, especially PXE boot. This post is, however, more geared towards the specifics encountered with the Raspberry Pi family of single-board computers.
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalise a purchase. Learn more.
I've been auditing the SD cards I have in use on various devices, including the data on them, and whether they are still reliable. I've recently freed up some of these SD cards for use in other projects, as I move to network booting my Raspberry Pis. Some of these SD cards are completely dead, I think because they have had lots of small writes, for things such as databases, which cause lots of stress on the underlying flash, and eventually cause it to fail. One example I can think of is a previous Pi running my Home Assistant, which randomly died one day and had lots of database activity.
This is the second and final instalment for the Wales 2022 trip. In this one, we go to Llyn Padarn, one of the largest lakes for swimming in Snowdon, climb Mt. Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa as the Welsh like to call it) on the Ranger Path, then go caving underground at Zip World in LLechwedd, whilst Jack goes off and looks at a castle somewhere.
This video series comes from my January trip with Dad to Cornwall to smash out yet another bit of the coast path. I didn't post the earlier ones here, mainly because I didn't yet have a functional blog, but they are available on the YouTube playlist.
Here's the latest one, where we walk from Watergate Bay to Porthcothan:
We picked this bit of the coast path to do based on Dad's research as to the more flat bits, as at the time, he was having issues with his foot and wanted to take it easy.
Almost 2 years after the trip, I've finally finished editing the first episode! In this one, we drive up from Salisbury to Wales, stopping off in the Beacons on the way. On the second day, we climb Moel Hebog, which is the mountain overlooking the campsite.