In an earlier article, I wrote about using EuFy wireless cameras in the latest HomeKit Secure Video enabled series to realize the Greyhound’s Doorbell. Since then, I have added a HomeBridge with HomeBridge UniFi Protect plugin to allow me to bring in the UniFi Protect G4 cameras. UniFi Protect is not currently integrated with any of the smart home ecosystems as Ubiquity’s primary market is professional network system integrators installing video surveillance and entry control systems.
For a million years I’ve been scowling at Apple Music and the iTunes Store as Apple sold lossy-compression renderings of all of the music offered. All of the gripes to Apple Feedback finally payed off somewhat with the initiation of Apple Music Lossless. An earlier article explained the switchology of setting up Lossless streaming and downloads. This article talks about the results. It’s simple, Apple Lossless delivers the Red Book original. Spatial and Dolby Atmos are another thing. It’s all about the mastering, who did it and their goals for the mix.
Cox offers IPv6 home service but with not much of a knowledge base for setting it up. In the simple case, DHCP6 does all that is needed. If you have a Cox provided or supported router, Cox will do all you need. If, like Dismal Manor, you have Ubiquity UniFi software defined networking, some additional configuration is possible.
IPv6 was designed to solve the network address exhaustion issue and make routing simpler. It does this by providing an explicit network number and a separate host address field. IPv6 allows the local network to partition the host space into slices using several of the high order bits of the IPv6 host address. In this article, I’ll explain how they are used here. This setup requires visits to several UniFi SDN configuration pages. Find the proper page and setting using the search tool.
Ubiquity continues to work on the UniFi SDN configuration capabilities and is delaying release of a UniFi SDN user guide until they reach some internal milestone. Keep an eye on UI.COM support to see if this has happened.
Apple now offers bundles of online service under the Apple One logo. Here at Dismal Manor we have
Apple TV+
Apple iCloud storage
Apple News
Apple Music
Since my storage plan was $10/month, Apple TV+ was another $10, and Apple News another $10, changing to Apple One Premier was the same out of pocket and allowed me to add Apple Music to the mix. Read on to learn my impressions of the new Apple Music Lossless offering.
After three clean stool samples in a row, our vet discontinued Drontal+ medication back in the spring. The 3 month check came back hook worm positive. So we’re back to square one with a new baseline fecal egg count and resumption of Advantage Multi plus Drontal+ parasite treatment. And did I mention, fecal egg count stool sample every 2 weeks.
I have mislaid my keys once since then. Find My let me know they were in the house. We ended up playing Marco Polo for a bit to find which room they were in. Once the room was identified, the ultra-wideband position sensing took me right to them.
The Sound is Usefully Loud
I also left them in a pocket in the laundry. Find My quickly let me know they were in the laundry bin. The alert sound is loud enough to carry out of the laundry bin. There were only 3 pants to search so they were found quickly.
My first experience with a Bluetooth token was pretty dismal. The noise maker was too quiet to be heard when tossed into a laundry basket. There was no secondary form of cuing. The ultra wide band location requires a ultra wide band radio and associated ranging software.
Ultra Wide band Location and Ranging
My Mk VII Golf GTI key fob also uses Ultra Wide Band precision positioning to determine whether the key is inside or outside and which lock is nearest. I’ve yet to outsmart it. It won’t let you lock your keys in the car. It sometimes gets confused about the rear passenger door which is next to the gas filler door. The keys come attached to a $30,000 auto.
Apple may be the first to use ultra wide band remote sensing as a consumer product. Here, it actually works. A cute display indicates that Find My is chatting with the selected missing AirTag, a compass indicator shows the relative direction, and the approximate range is shown. This feedback is like the hot/cold feedback of hide and seek. It is very helpful search cuing.
Android Find My is Coming
At 2021 WWDC, Apple software VP Craig Federighi announced that Apple would be making an Android version of Find My to allow Android users to use AirTag and to locate a mis-laid Mac. Hardware capabilities will determine functionality. Those Android devices having ultra wide band locating capability (UWB radios) will support nearby direction and distance capabilities. Those without should be able to play Marco Polo with an AirTag and to talk to it by near field to learn its ID.
Your editor has been reading entirely too many submarine adventures based on the patrol reports and memoirs of World War II submarine commanders. The British called their torpedo fire control computer the “Fruit Machine”. The term is heavily used in WWII submarine adventure novels such as those written by John Wingate.
Given Apple’s new colors, I broke with the hall of fame greyhound theme to name the new machine Fruit Machine. Yes that’s her hostname.
After posting this article I made a second search on “Fruit Machine” and came across some LGBTQ slang usage I was unaware of. My apologies to my LGBTQ friends and readers.
Summer is here
and the livin' is easy
fish are jumpin'
and the flowers is high
From George Gershwin’s Summertime with a twist. Images, author original
Summer temperature shear appears to be a month early with 90F temperatures (33 C) happening in late May rather than in late June. The dew point is low so conditions are very drying, enough so that frequent watering of our newly established ornamental plants is needed.
Last year’s heat found us watering daily using a flower watering wand and shower head. Many plants developed brown spot or powdery mildew. Neither is good.
Brown spot struck in 2020
Brown spot is a fungus disease that affects turf and low ornamental plants during the humid summer months when dew points rise into the 20’s C or 70’s F. The moist humid air hugs the ground creating conditions that promote growth of the fungus. Watering culture is a known factor with evening watering by spray being a risk multiplier.
Much to my surprise, the root stock survived and plants began poking up again in January and most have robust growth. Be sure to remove the mulch before giving up on a location as I found 2 hostas that had not yet emerged hiding in the mulch. These are now exposed and growing nicely.
What started as a quick note about soaker hose has grown into a full-fledged post including the following.
A bit of horticulture, specifically mixed-humid fungal disease avoidance
An introduction to soaker hoses and their use
An introduction to water timers
An introduction to the HozeLock connector system
A bit about pipe thread hand hose fitting materials incompatibility. Never mix metal colors as brass or bronze and aluminum or zinc love each other way too much.
And of course, references.
In this article, I mention several brands and products. I’ve used some of them and others look interesting. I was pleased to note that the HozeLock company that invented the garden hose quick coupling system is alive and well on the Isle of Dogs (UK). Gardena in Germany is also a strong manufacture of lawn and garden care products with international sales.
Note that there are at least 3 hose and fitting standards in use, US ASME, British Standard Pipe, and more ISO standards than you can shake a stick at. When ordering product be careful that it is from the universe in which you live.
I had tried an earlier tracker that worked so well it became E-waste at the end of battery life. Basically, the radios weren’t there yet. A tag in the laundry basket could not be found or heard. Discovery of a tag left away from home relied on the general population running the tag app on their phones. Some did but the coverage in Norfolk, Virginia was truly sparse. Oh, and the battery life was about a month. BlueTooth Low Energy was not so low.
But I also watched the Apple announcement with some interest as I had just laundered one radio car key and cleverly hid the other in pants I’ve not worn for a while. The near death experience of the first key increased my interest in finding the second. I also have a couple of sets of Yubi Keys that unlock several important 2FA things. It would be really bad if they both went missing.
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