⚡ Fast internet even during power cuts

Now when there's a power cut our UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) will keep our VDSL internet service running.

Achieving this required:

• figuring out all the telephone wiring
• wiring a data extension from the Study master socket to the Armoury
• moving the modem to the Armoury rack

Now we know why it took four Openreach engineers to fix our internet issues earlier this year... the wiring isn't pretty:

With the modem relocated I could tidy up the Study a bit:

• the "Internet" cable to the TV stand is gone
• the network cable that was used for the modem could be reused for Emma's desk and the media player, effectively doubling the wired bandwidth in the study

We only get 15mins on the UPS with the current load (modem, server, WiFi) but in future I'll work on extending UPS uptime to 30mins, either with more battery capacity or progressively shutting down services.

_{Part of New Wired Infrastructure}

🏠 HomeAssistant for iOS now finds our server automatically

Configuring 🔗HomeAssistant for iOS is now much easier.

You have to be on the Barn network for this to work, but start the app for the first time and it'll find our HomeAssistant server automatically.

No more having to type in that awkward URL (https://ha.home.whalebarn.com:8443) though you'll still need your username (your first name) and the password (on the gin fridge).

_{🐞HA autodiscovery not working on iOS}

😎 IPv6 LAN

This one's technical, but we now have an IPv6 enabled local network.

🔗What is IPv6?

When your device connects to the Barn network it'll get an IPv6 address as well as the usual IPv4 address.

study has address 192.168.7.6
study has IPv6 address fdfe:aa20:8dfa:c0d0::6

HomeAssistant and all media players have IPv6 addresses. Cyclops remains IPv4-only for now.

I'm still waiting on Vodafone to enable their IPv6 network . Once that happens we'll have quicker response times when accessing other IPv6-enabled sites.