Author: davehamby

A modern Merlin, hell bent for glory, he shot the works and nothing worked.

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Personal Computing Technology

Installing UniFi Talk at Home

Touch Max Phone Image courtesy of Ubiquity

Dismal Manor has been an OOMA Telo subscriber since the late naughts. OOMA began as an alternative residential carrier offering VoIP service to homes having fast Internet service. With the rising generation ignoring home phone service, OOMA has changed focus to small businesses.

While we weren’t looking, Ubiquity UniFi Talk has matured into a substantial product with residence and small business friendly tariffs. The Wizard took a look and liked what he saw. He decided to switch home telephone carriers form OOMA to Ubiquity.

This post introduces the reader to UniFi Talk product and Talk home deployment planning. This post emphasizes the benefits of using Talk and the resources needed to deploy Talk including rough order of magnitude costs for additional equipment and for a router update deployment.

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Car talk Greyhounds Holiday Letter Technology

2024 That Was The Year That Was

2024 is fast becoming an interesting year. Among its notable events

  • The VW ID.4 was mended
  • I sold the VW ID.4
  • I tried Tesla Full Self Driving
  • I bought Bluetti gadgets to replace the APC UPS systems
  • I bought a new iPad
  • I bought Air Pods Pro 2 to go with it
  • I discovered that Missy has an undercoat.
  • Rocky presented with what appears to be a tumor in his lung
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Personal Computing Technology Video

PlexGoes to Jail

Last month, I wrote about commissioning Plex Media Server on a ZimaBoard. All appared to go smoothly except that the service kept failing. The transcoders just wouldn’t run on the little Celeron processor in the Zima Board. Plex Media Server was not stable on the Zima Board so I sent it to jail. After the break, I describe how Plex was failing and what I tried next.

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Home automation Home Economics Personal Computing Technology Video

An Introduction to ZimaBoard’s Docker Environment

Dismal Wizard (DW) was having difficulty finding TV programs to watch although we had multiple program sources. DW decided to try Plex Media Service. Plex needed hardware support so he bought a ZimaBoard, a small X86-64 computer. DW had a go setting it up to run Plex. This post summarizes our experiences with ZimaBoard and and its CasaOS Docker working environment. There was a learning curve but nothing experimentation couldn’t conquer.

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Car talk Driving Electric

Moby Dick Leaves for New Adventures

VW ID.4 SUV parked in a suburban driveway
Moby Dick parked in the drive after mending.

Dismal Wizard gets the new car itch every 7 years or so. In 2023, it struck early. It’s a long story. In 2021, on faith, sight unseen, DW ordered a new VW ID.4 expecting Volkswagen to have its electric vehicle act together following the Diesel scandal. In December, he took delivery. In April 2023, the car was a participant in a mishap on Independence Boulevard in Virginia Beach. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men took 14 months to mend the ID.4. Five months on, DW was getting sick of rental payments to Enterprise for a Nissan Versa sedan, a mean little thing. Realizing he was giving Enterprise a car payment each month, he decided to turn a rental payment into an actual car payment.

I’m a retired engineer which can make me a harsh critic of other’s work. As you read this tale of two vehicles, please keep some things in mind.

  • My local dealer properly mended my ID.4 and that I was pleased with all aspects of their work except its timeliness.
  • The ID.4 is an OK BEV
  • Volkswagen still designs and builds a quality vehicle.
  • The ID.4 is a serviceable family hauler.
  • The ID.4 is not my taste.
Continue reading “Moby Dick Leaves for New Adventures”
Categories
Home automation Technology

Dismal Wizard Updates the Dog Cameras

Why a view of the dog’s observation post (back porch)? On the railing columns are two battery powered video cameras whose batteries can no longer be charged. These cameras are to be replaced. But with what? What did the original cameras do? What should the new ones do? What should I purchase? Read on to learn what Dismal Wizard did.

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Categories
Personal Computing Photography

Dismal Manor Photos Virtual Shoe Box

plastic sewer pipe and water line in trench
2005 Water and sewer lateral replacement

I’ve probably written about CYME PeakTo before but today seems like a good time to do so again. And to tell you how I have reorganized all of the photos at Dismal Manor. This all began when I noticed that the 2 TB MacOS system volume was getting skosh free space so I began looking into a potential solution. Read on to learn about the tools used and what I did.

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Car talk Driving Electric

It’s Lead-Footed but it can park!

Tesla Motors had made April 2024 its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) product debut. The debutant has been in gestation for about 16 year and has just come of age. FSD (supervised) is amazingly competent most of the time in coping with meeting sections and right of way at intersections. And it can be tuned to be chill, standard, or assertive at intersections. These determine the amount of margin to require during intersection maneuvers. All in all, an amazing achievement that was cutting edge research 10 years ago (and may still be).

I’m not an expert and not a fan. And I’m a poor retired moocher. What is it like? What do I think of it? Read on.

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Categories
Audio

Has Your Schiit Remote gone MAD?

Schiit Audio Freya+ Remote that had gone MAD and is about to be reassembled and modified.

Both Schiit Audio and PS Audio provide this simple remote control with some of their products. It’s a simple but effective thing and the one shown here has survived 4 years of drops onto a hardwood floor. When that happens, the circuit board, secured by magnets, can be dislodged from the housing. It’s easy to fit back together. No self-respecting audiophile would put up with such nonsense and would immediately begin the search for a DIY mod to put an end to remotes gone MAD. There’s a simple cure offered and a bit of silly after the break.

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Car talk Driving Electric

Driving Electric in the Cold

Millennium Falcon II in Space Dock

Last weekend, extreme cold weather caught Chicago ride share operators unprepared for driving their electric vehicles in the extreme cold. In most cases, these operators were renting vehicles through the ride sharing services with which they were affiliated. Tesla Model 3, Kia Niro, and Chevy Bolt were the most common choices, and all vehicle types found themselves dead in the water at a charge point.

In this article, I’ll identify cold weather effects on battery electric vehicle operation and describe how the practice of scant bunkering can reduce time spent charging on shift and reduce charge point congestion.

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