spaghettiwestern @ spaghettiwestern @sh.itjust.works

Posts

119

Comments

566

Joined

2 yr. ago

Organic maps can't find a business that's 15 miles from my location and has been there for years, but it can find another branch that's 90 miles away. Not a useful option.

Good. The idiot flying a drone in an active fire zone could well be responsible for millions in damage that could have otherwise been avoided. Lock him up.

I have a couple of these: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/LKWSZ211.html

They're just OK. Single clicks work just fine, but double clicks have to be done very quickly or they register as single clicks. The button hold function is ridiculous and takes a full 4 seconds before transmitting. I've found no way of changing any of the button timings.

These work really well, but they're single button:

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/WXKG13LM.html

Never, and it has battery back up in case of power failure. Automation, security cameras, HVAC controls, file sharing, etc. running on it.

Adguard Home is a Pi-Hole competitor. They work fine for ad servers, but the content I was trying to reduce couldn't be blocked that way or the TV's wouldn't work. Menu changes were being loaded while the set was off and Roku was inserting some ad content along with menu changes.

To my surprise this setup has reduced menu additions and ads to almost nothing. It seems that these menus aren't updated when my TV's are actually in use and that's now the only time they can connect to the Internet.

Dahua (professional side of Amcrest) still sells their video doorbell through B&H Photo. According to a Q&A answer on the site it will power a wired chime.

I have another wifi Dahua camera (also bought from B&H) and have been really impressed with it. It's used with Frigate and Home Assistant. Be aware that B&H offers their own warranty for Dahua products. I looked at the fine print before my purchase and felt it was reasonable.

EmpireTech sells rebranded Dahua products and they have a different model. The seller gets great reviews on ipcamtalk.com. Detailed user reviews here. EmpireTech also sells through Amazon.

My TV continues to chatter to random servers on the internet long after it has turned off. It transmits to a telemetry server on every single button press.

What's even more irritating to me are the random changes to the TV's UI. Turn it off for a while and I come back to an entire new set of menu entries and ads!

Home Assistant, OpenWRT and Adguard Home mostly fix those problems.

When my TVs are powered off a Home Assistant automation enables a couple of OpenWRT firewall rules. Those rules block all TV Internet access. When the TVs are powered on the firewall rules are automatically disabled and the TVs work normally. That along with Adguard Home's blocking of all UI ads makes my TVs almost user friendly.

When you're ready for a full monitoring package, check out Frigate.

The Shelter app allows you to sandbox other apps:

https://www.makeuseof.com/shelter-sandbox-android-apps/

It's no longer on Google Play (likely because it makes it a bit more difficult to track people) but can be found on Fdroid:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/

I have similar problems with devices disconnecting from my Realtek BT/wifi card. I was able to significantly reduce (but not completely eliminate) the problems by disabling power management for the BT adapter's associated USB port.

The most problematic are ASUS USB-BT400 and Realtek RTL8821CE

Can confirm. The Realtek adapter in my HP laptop is a major PITA. Both BT & wifi have problems that I've only able to partially resolve.

Cities can refuse to provide services to venues who refuse to pay for them in most places. The city officials in every city that Trump screwed should have been demanding payment up front - they knew he routinely screws over everyone he deals with because he still has debts from 2016 that are unpaid. Those who haven't been paid should have been making front page news by suing for what they are owed.

47% of the people in Kent County voted for the felon. Even if the Grand Rapids numbers are lower, it's not reasonable to suggest a significant percentage of those making city decisions aren't Trump supporters.

This isn't an unpaid debt, it's an illegal campaign contribution by city officials at their taxpayer's expense.

Every single one of them knew they would be providing free city services for Trump while charging the Biden then Harris campaign for the same.

Many (most?) Ubuntu fixes also work on Mint. This post might help.

I'm using Netgear adapters between my router and a dumb AP. They've been very reliable outside of occasionally not coming back online by themselves after a power failure.

I don't think us mere mortals can hope to understand the mysteries of Amazon marketing services.

Some problems with that:

1. Companies routinely use more than one source address meaning I'm required to play whack-a-mole to maintain my filters.
2. Setting up a content filter means wanted emails from other sources can be filtered out.
3. The majority of users have absolutely no idea what a filter is.

I had 2 of these just this week. Disney+ sent an ESPN ad with no way to unsubscribe, despite my having all marketing emails turned off. Their chat rep laughably insisted it was not a marketing email, just a way to "help" people use their services. It's very kind of Disney to be looking out for me.

Best Buy sent me a marketing ad with a $5 coupon (lol) attached. All marketing emails were disabled with them too and again there was no way to unsubscribe.

Both problems were easily solved by deleting my accounts.

13K pesos, or about 650 dollars.

I have two Zen 30 switches and since I wrote that comment a week ago both have died. Zooz is blaming the failures on an installation error after 18 months of use! Instead static discharge is the logical cause and since it's a fact of life in my home, if Zooz won't replace the Zen 30's I'll move away from their devices and will install Shelly wifi relays and Minoton wireless controllers instead.

The Zen 30 switches have mostly worked until now, but occasionally they haven't responded to Home Assistant for a minute or two - really frustrating when standing in the dark waiting for the lights to come on. Leviton dimmer plugs and Minoton wireless controllers connected to the same Zooz Z-Wave stick have been flawless, as have all my Tasmota wifi and Zigbee devices.