Oh that’s nice. I use the generic thermostat to control the pellet stove, but I didn’t know about this.

Same here. What especially irritated me was that even though I installed the .deb firefox and followed the directions to disable snap firefox, occasionally Ubuntu went ahead and reinstalled snap firefox for me.

Because I didn’t know it existed until now. :) I’ll have to look into that, thanks.

This is a tough one. The problem with local only backups is, what if there’s a fire?

I use Amazon Glacier to store my pictures. It’s $0.0036 / GB per month, so I pay less than $2/month for ~535 GB of storage that I’m using right now. There is also a cost for downloading, but if I need it, I’m going to be happy to pay it (and the costs aren’t crazy). Uploads are free.

(The other problem with Glacier is that it’s not really an end-user-friendly experience, nor is it something easily automated. I use SimpleAmazonGlacierUploader, a Java program someone wrote, to do it. You can also upload to S3 and have it archive things to Glacier automatically - I’ve never tried this but it should work.)

I considered getting my brother or a friend to build two storage servers (with RAID5 or something) that we’d each keep at home, and just sync to each other. Good if you have a friend or family member willing to do it (or at least host your offsite box). Down sides: Cost to build it, time to build and maintain it, cost to replace things that break, plus cost for electricity. I’ve been using Glacier for many years, so by now maybe I would have spent less on that theoretical backup system, but I also did not have to worry about it.

With Tasmota on the S31, you can disable the ability to turn it off. I have a few set up that way to prevent them from being turned off.

I run it on my Debian server that uses my 15 TB RAID5 array as storage. (When I built it, 15 TB drives were a dream…now I have a 12 TB drive in my desktop computer that serves as backup to the array.)

I mainly serve it out to the client on our DirectTV streaming device. Works fine, other than I wish the intro skip plugin would be able to give me the option to skip on that client (the only way it works on the Android client is to have it skip automatically).

Yeah, unfortunately, I do not have access to the BIOS, nor can I install things on it - security restrictions. What you have done would have been a lot easier and more reliable though!

This was already asked and answered. Maybe read before replying.

I’m not sure if it’s a dock dock or a big hub. It’s a USB-C connection, so maybe the latter. It’s definitely not one of the old style with the proprietary connector.

Yeah, I’ve seen some used Dell ones cheap. But then I might want to use it for my personal non-Dell laptop, and who knows how that will work.

The one I have came from Amazon 3 years ago, and it has worked perfectly. We’ve been full-time work from home in those three years, so it has gotten a good bit of use.

Nice.

My work one, yes. They want us to shut it down every night. I just suspend my personal laptop though.

Thanks. You have to set it up in YAML - there’s no GUI. Here’s the page on it. Obviously you need to know your adapter’s MAC, but that’s not usually too hard to find.

It sets up a switch entity, which is a little odd to me, because it’s not an on-and-off device - toggling it just triggers the WoL command. But I guess that makes the most sense; I don’t think there’s a “button” entity.

Edit: It does look like the entity can track the status of the computer, but it’s not working for me. Hostname is probably not correct.

I’m checking, because I’ve been in difficult situations, too (and have posted a thread in this community about backups). Looks like I have a dozen backups on hand, most recent one is 1:35 a.m. today.

No problem here for either of mine - kvm for one, Raspberry pi 3b for the other.

I’ve been using this client on our DirecTV device, which is Android based, and I noticed an odd bug. I’ll have to check what version it is, though.

When an episode of a TV show finishes, if you hit back to go to the episode screen instead of letting it play the next episode, on the bottom of the screen, where it shows the next up: It’s always skipping the next episode.

For example, if I finish watching episode 12 and go to that screen, I’ll see episode 14 as next (and that’s what plays if I click on it). It skips episode 13. I’ve repeated this several times with different episodes, so I’m convinced it’s not a one-off. I haven’t tried on my Android tablet or phone to see if the bug exists there, too.

I plan to write this up as an official bug, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

I can’t see what the problem would be, honestly. (I’m not an electrician, though.)

My house is wired that way, or at least the living room is. And that was done by the builders.

Yeah you’re probably right. Which reminds me, he was a bomb technician. And he had all of his fingers. So clearly he understood electricity for that purpose…

For the shed wiring job…

First, switch wiring. Normally when you wire a light switch, you have your 14-2 (or 12-2, or whatever, I’ll use 14-2 but the gauge isn’t really relevant) coming into the box, then another 14-2 wire leaving the box, and the two black (hot) wires are connected to the switch. A sequential setup, if you will: Power, switch, light. A simple diagram.

However, in certain situations, it’s more convenient to run only one 14-2 to the box. For example, you might do this if you have a supply of constant power at the light fixture, but no source of constant power near the light switch. So, you bring the supply 14-2 into the box, and then use a single 14-2 to run to the switch. The black wire is connected to the supply at the light and one terminal of the switch, and then you connect white to the other terminal of the switch, and back to the light in the first box. You are supposed to mark the white on both ends to indicate it is being used as hot rather than neutral. Here’s a diagram of the setup.

I think of it as a giant T - supply power comes in the top left, light is on the top right, and the vertical line is the wire to the switch that carries supply hot and switched hot on the “wrong” wire. It’s useful when there’s no power source near the switch, but there is power at the light fixture it controls.

Note that in the box at the light, you’d have three 14-2 wires coming in (6 conductors plus 3 grounds) - supply, power for the light, and the run for the switch.

Okay. It’s like the previous owner of our house learned this trick…and wanted to use it everywhere.

So, there’s a box in the shed that has:

• A constant supply coming in.
• A constant supply going out to outlets in the shed. (No GFCI, but we’ll ignore that issue for this discussion.)
• TWO of these fucking T setups. One controls a light in the next shed, and one controls a light in the shed this box is in. Each one of these generates TWO sets of wires (supply is already accounted for in the first bullet).

So, I have 6 sets of wires coming into this box (hot, neutrals, and grounds). Oh and on at least one of them, he switched the neutrals, not the hots, so there are white wires serving as hot (unmarked, naturally) and who knows what else is going on. At the very least it’s a violation of the code for the amount of conductors in that size of box.

The worst part, though: It wasn’t necessary.

• Both light switches are near outlets that have constant power that could easily supply the switches.
• The light in the second shed could run directly to the switch that controls it, and that would have saved wire and complexity, and make diagnosing an issue much easier. There’s no reason to run that complex circuit.
• The lights in the first shed, where the box is, are somewhat near the box, but not so close that the complexity of this setup is worth it.
• Even if he did want to supply the switches directly from that box for some reason, he could still cut it down to FOUR sets of wires in the box, with no unusual usage of wires and a much more understandable setup.

It’s insane. I’m going to redo it soon, and I don’t think I’ll need to buy ANY supplies to do that. In fact I bet I’ll have extra wire when I’m done (I may need smaller wire nuts, which I have already).