Eric Sloof

In this article, I’ll describe how I’ve hooked-up a Raspberry Pi Pico with an Elgato Key Light Air by accessing its REST API through CircuitPython.

The Elgato Key Light Air provides WLAN enabled studio lightning for presentations and video productions. I’m using it for my online training course deliveries. The panel has 80 premium OSRAM LEDS, which provide a total output of 1400 lumen. It’s shipped with the Control Center app to switch on/off, adjust brightness, and fine-tune color temperature.

Recently, I bought a Raspberry Pi Pico W with a Grove starter kit. This kit has some challenging projects, but I decided to postpone them. I started with integrating my Elgato Key Light Air with the Pi Pico, and using it to control my light, instead of using the Control Center app.

The Grove starter kit shield is fitted with a button, light, and rotary angle sensor. These sensors will be used to control the power, brightness, and color of the Elgato Key Light Air.

The Pi Pico W is mounted on top of the shield and equipped with a built-in WiFi adapter. The first step is to set up a WLAN connection and hook up the Pi Pico to my home WiFi. Initially, I flashed the Pico W with MicroPython uf2 firmware, but I had some trouble getting information from the Elgato API. It seems stalling, and didn’t come back with a JSON reply.

I recently bought a new 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Max chip, and soon discovered my VGA, HDMI and Ethernet adapters didn’t fit anymore. These adapters use Thunderbolt Mini DisplayPort connectors instead of the new regulated USB-C ones. So, I had to buy a few new adapters.

The most important one was a USB C to HDMI adapter, because I mainly use my MacBook for training course deliveries. I know it has an onboard HDMI connector, but in most cases, when I attach a long cable to this port, I’m not able to establish a connection to the presentation device. When using HDMI over USB C/TB4, the length of the cable can stretch much longer.

The MacBook Pro with the M2 Max chip can serve up to four external displays simultaneously, and supports 8K at 60Hz (or 4K at 240Hz) over HDMI. The USB C connectors support 6K at 60Hz over Thunderbolt 4. Make sure the USB C to HDMI Adapter you’re going to buy is compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and operates at 4K @60Hz. The one I’ve ordered works, but it’s not on stock anymore. I’ve included the Dutch product description on Amazon.nl as a reference.

USB C naar HDMI, Mini HDMI Type C Adapter naar Thunderbolt 3 & Compatibel met Apple MacBook Pro/Air/iPad Mini/ - 4K @60Hz

The Ethernet adapter is a bit trickier. Not all USB C/TB to Ethernet adapters are supported by the Apple M2 chip. My MacBook supports Thunderbolt 4, which offers a bandwidth of 40Gbps. My Ethernet switch only supports 1Gbps, so that’s not a limitation. But I had my eyes on an adapter with M2 and Thunderbolt 4 support. I found the following one at Amazon. The link is included as a reference.

USB C Ethernet Adapter, Maxonar USB C Gigabit LAN Adapter Thunderbolt 3/4 RJ45 Network Adapter, Aluminum Compact Design, Compatible with M2 MacBook, Pad Pro/Air, Surface Pro 8, Galaxy Tab S8, Galaxy



I can confirm both adapters work. I’m still looking for a VGA adapter, but these days there are not that many devices using VGA anymore. Maybe I settle for a HDMI to VGA adapter. At home, I’m not using my MacBook as my main computer, but there are some interesting docking stations for MacBook Pro's with Thunderbolt 4 support on the market.

There seems to be a problem with the Realtek RTL8153 chipset, comments on X please.

This video shows a recorded whiteboard session created with Excalidraw and Dropbox Capture. It starts with an introduction into vSphere virtual networking using a standard switch. It also explains the benefits of using NSX segmentation compared to VLAN ID's. Finally, I'll discuss distributed routing and the distributed firewall. 

After 10 years of reliable duty, I’ve decided to replace my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012) with a new one. My choice is a new shiny MacBook Pro Model: Mac14,6 with an Apple M2 Max (m2) CPU: 12-core processor and 64 GB RAM.

I was aware of the Silicon CPU architecture being different, but I didn’t want to choose an older model MacBook with an Intel CPU. One of the first things I did was install VMware Fusion Professional version 13.0.2 and spin up a virtual machine with the ESXi on ARM fling. I soon discovered the M2 CPU isn’t supported.

vSphere ESXi 7.0.x will be the final release supporting Apple Mac platforms (88698)

I had to run something on all those cores, so my next challenge was getting the Photon OS up and running in a Fusion VM. I first tried to deploy the photon-uefi-hw14-5.0-dde71ec57.aarch64.ova file, but surprisingly I got the following message: “This virtual machine cannot be powered on because it requires the X86 machine architecture, which is incompatible with this Arm machine architecture host.” and I referred me to KB 84273.

Next, I downloaded and attached the photon-5.0-dde71ec57.aarch64.iso to a new virtual machine. After a power-on, the installation started successfully. Some next, next and finish clicks, and the Photon OS was up and running. 

I also want to give Windows a try, so I signed up for the Windows Insider program. As a member, you get access to the Windows 11 on Arm Insider Preview. Converting the VHDX into a VMDK is described in the following article: How to install Windows 11 on M1/M2 Mac using VMware Fusion Tech Preview by Jeff Benjamin.

Comments on X please.

Technical Overview of the latest version of vSAN, including vSAN Max.

This document contains the latest updates, aligned to NSX version 4.1.

Some highlights include:

Technology overview chapters:

• TEP HA (Ch3)
• VPC/Projects (Ch2)
• A/A Stateful Gateways (Ch4)
• Bare Metal edge hardware recommendation (Ch8)
• DPUs (Ch9)
• Update VRF route leaking (Ch4)

Design Chapter (Ch7):

• Projects
• 1 VC to many NSX
• MTU recommendation, Gateway vs. global MTU

With vSphere 8 and NSX 4, VMware has introduced support for SmartNICs or Data Processing Units (DPUs). The DPU implementation in vSphere is called vSphere Distributed Service Engine.

DPUs (SmartNICs) are network cards with built-in intelligence that can perform various network functions directly on the adapter through their own programmable processors. In addition to the networking accelerators, DPUs like NVIDIA BlueField also have general-purpose Arm processor cores that can run a full ESXi general system.

With the DPU technology, NSX services like routing, switching, firewall and monitoring are offloaded to the DPU from the host hypervisor. With these capabilities, it is possible to improve performance, free up resources on the host and isolate workload and infrastructure domains.

White paper: Optimizing Networking and Security Performance Using VMware vSphere and NVIDIA BlueField DPU with BWI 

When I’m teaching a VMware training course, I often use Excalidraw as a tool for creating online whiteboard sessions. There was a good use case for this tool during the COVID-19 period, when most training courses were delivered online through Zoom or WebEX.

But nowadays, when I’m teaching a training course at an onsite training facility, I’m still using Excalidraw as my whiteboard tool, even when I can use a normal whiteboard with real markers instead.

Compared to a real physical whiteboard, Excalidraw still offers some great benefits; like drag-and-drop, elaborate and sharing the created whiteboard sessions. Those tasks can be performed much easier when working with a virtual whiteboard.

Recently Oliver Draghi introduced a new plug-in, especially targeted at VMware architecture icons. He did a great job creating whiteboard elements like networks, routers, databases, racks and much more. This plug-in is freely available, you can use it in Excalidraw with a simple click of a button.

I’ve created a short video to demo this plug-in within an Excalidraw whiteboard session.

Links:

Excalidraw

Oliver Draghi on LinkedIn

VMware architecture icons

Excalidraw Libraries

This is a video taken by Rick Sloof at Wednesday, August 23 at the strip in Las Vegas. It was picked up by several big media companies, like the BBC and ABC News. At this day in 2023, the VMware Explore Party took place in the WynnXS Las Vegas.

Dimitri Desmidt over at VMware has created a great presentation about NSX Anti-Malware Detection.

Here's a list with the topics:

What’s new in NSX 4.0.1 NSX Malware Detection and Prevention

• What is it?
• How does NSX Malware Detection and Prevention work?
• Malware Detection and Prevention
• Gateway Malware Detection
• Distributed Malware Detection and Prevention
• NSX Malware Detection and Prevention - Reporting
• NSX Malware Detection and Prevention Requirements / Limitations / Scale

Advanced points:

• NSX Malware Detection and Prevention High-Availability
• Malware File DB Population
• NSX Malware Detection and Prevention Installation
• NSX Malware Detection and Prevention Upgrade
• Supported Windows versions and VMware Tools releases