Smart devices update

Posted in Amazon, Apple, Hardware, Internet, Smart Tech on February 2nd, 2021 by michael

My smart devices situation has gotten out of control.

I guess the first thing I need is an inventory, so here goes:

 

AMAZON ECHO DEVICES

  • Front hallway – Echo dot
  • Joanne’s office (and guest room) – Echo dot
  • Lab (my office) – Echo show 1st gen
  • Lab – Sonos (microphone turned off)
  • Garage – Echo dot
  • Kitchen – Echo show 2nd gen
  • Living room – Echo show 5
  • Living room TV – Echo cube
  • Bar – Echo
  • Bar – Fire Cube (microphone turned off)
  • Laundry room – Echo dot
  • Thermostat – Ecobee (microphone turned off)
  • Bedroom – my nightstand – Echo spot
  • Bedroom – Joanne’s nightstand – Echo show 5
  • Master bathroom counter – Echo dot (no camera on this one)
  • Back patio – Echo dot

(We also have an Amazon Auto that neither of us likes, so it’s on my workbench right now)

 

APPLE HOMEPODS

  • The lab – HomePod Mini

 

TV DEVICES

  • Our bedroom TV – Fire Stick
  • The living room TV – Fire Cube & Apple TV
  • The bar TV – Fire Cube
  • The lab TV – Fire Stick & Apple TV
  • Joanne’s office TV – Fire Stick

(Note that all of the TVs are also Smart TVs, but I don’t use them as such)

 

LUTRON SMART SWITCHES

  • Front hallway ceiling lights
  • Lab ceiling lights
  • Garage overhead lights
  • Kitchen ceiling lights
  • Kitchen island lights
  • Dining room ceiling lights
  • Game room ceiling lights
  • Bar ceiling lights
  • Master bedroom ceiling lights

 

SMART PLUGS

  • Office table light
  • Office desk light
  • Lab desk light
  • Lab floor light
  • Lab tree lights
  • Living room table light
  • Living room floor light
  • Living room tree lights
  • Bedroom floor light
  • Bedroom table light – my nightstand
  • Bedroom table light – Joanne’s nightstand
  • Bedroom tree lights
  • Hallway china cabinet lights

(Every year, we add a whole bunch more plugs for all our Christmas trees, village, and indoor and outdoor lights)

 

COMPUTERS

  • Lab – Larry – MacBook Pro 16″
  • Lab – Moe – Mac Mini – Intel
  • Lab – Curly – iMac 5K 27″
  • Lab – Bob – Mac Mini – prototype Apple silicon
  • Kitchen – Groucho – MacBook Pro 15″
  • Garage – Chico – MacBook Pro 13″
  • Lab – Joe – Dell 14″ laptop
  • Lab – Brutus – Homebuilt PC desktop
  • Office – Unnamed 1 – Joanne’s Dell 14″ laptop
  • Lab storage – Unnamed 2 – Asus Chromebook
  • Lab storage – Unnamed 3 – Joanne’s Asus Chromebook
  • Lab – Shemp – Raspberry Pi 4 8GB
  • Lab – Junior – Raspberry Pi 4 4GB
  • Lab – Octo – Raspberry Pi 3B+
  • Lab – Peewee – Raspberry Pi 3B+
  • Lab – Nano – Raspberry Pi Zero W

 

OTHER STUFF

  • Lab – Echo glow
  • Kitchen – Echo wall clock
  • Garage – MyQ garage door opener
  • Everywhere – Our smart alarm system
  • Front hallway – Roombie the Roomba
  • Lab – Monoprice Maker Select V2 3d printer (connected to the net via Octo the Raspberry Pi)
  • Garage – Chip, my Tesla Model 3

 

I suspect there’s more smart stuff I haven’t thought of yet. If something comes to mind, I’ll add it in the appropriate place above.

 

***UPDATE***

It appears that I left out my smart cameras. There are five of them. I think I’ll leave their locations out, other than the one mounted to my 3D printer, providing time lapse video of all my prints. Fun!

***END OF UPDATE***

 

Having all this smart stuff has a few downsides.

  • The obvious security risks of having all those connected devices
  • Maintaining everything and keeping it all working
  • Spending WAY too much money buying new stuff

 

But it has a whole lot of upsides.

  • We can turn lights on and off in every room of the house just by speaking
  • We can control many things in our home remotely
  • We can create fun routines that run either on voice command, at a certain time every day, or when other events trigger them
  • Our home feels like we’re living in the 21st century

 

Anyway, while I admit my automation is out of control, I don’t care. I love my life. Would you do anything differently?

Big Sur problems

Posted in Apple, Computer Science, Hardware, Software on December 27th, 2020 by michael

I gave Mac OS Big Sur every possible chance. I really did. And there are just too many problems.

I currently own six(!) Macintoshes. Also two Windows computers, one very old Chromebook, and three Raspberry Pi single-board Linux computers, with one more RasPi in the mail (Update: the fourth one is now here and working). I also have a nice Synology server.  They all have a job. I admit that I could safely eliminate a few, but I  don’t want to. So I don’t.

Anyway, I looked forward with some trepidation to the release of this year’s Mac OS update: Big Sur. It looks a lot more like iOS and it comes with several exciting new features, like … hmm … thinking … well, I’m sure there’s something.

Here’s how my Macs stack up:

  • Chico: 13” MacBook Pro, about 2010. Stuck on High Sierra.
  • Groucho: 15” MacBook Pro, early 2013. Stuck on Catalina.
  • Moe: Mac Mini, late 2014. Upgraded to Big Sur.
  • Larry: MacBook Pro 16”, 2019. Upgraded to Big Sur.
  • Curly: iMac 27”, 2017. Upgraded to Big Sur.
  • Bob: Mac Mini, Apple silicon development (A12Z). On latest Big Sur beta.

Chico and Groucho are fine, obviously. They’re stuck on older operating systems for the rest of their lives. That was part of my reason for buying my newer laptop. Groucho is an amazing computer. He’s fast and powerful. He’s started feeling his age, of course, but he has plenty of life left, especially for a 7-year-old computer. Apple has made some exceptional computers over the years.

Bob is what he is. With Apple silicon, he can’t run anything but Big Sur. I got him to test my Morse Code iPhone app, which I’d like to have also running on Mac OS. If I had known I could have gotten a much faster Apple silicon Mini just a few months later, I would have waited. But here we are. It was kind of cool to get one of the early Apple development machines.

That leaves us with Larry, Moe, and Curly. Each one of them has problems.

Let’s start with Moe the Mac Mini. He’s my Plex server and has been running flawlessly for a very long time. Then he got Big Sur. Immediately, Plex started crashing at least once a day. The crashes may not have been Plex’s fault, but they were happening. After a lot of internet research and trying a bunch of things that didn’t work, I finally reverted Moe to Catalina. It’s been a week or two and he’s working perfectly. Strike one for Big Sur.

Then we have Curly the 27” iMac. Ever since I allowed him to upgrade himself to Big Sur a few weeks ago, he has stopped communicating via Ethernet and WiFi about once a day, requiring a reboot to get him working again. This never happened before. He’s going back to Catalina this afternoon.

And there’s poor old Larry, the 16” MacBook Pro. I thought he was working great with Big Sur. That made sense, since even though he’s an Intel Mac, he’s a model that’s still being produced and sold. But no. I tried to attach my portable external monitor to him on Christmas. He was unable to connect or even recognize the monitor. He connected to that monitor many times in the past. So it must be Big Sur. He’s going back to Catalina as we speak.

Frustrating times for Mac owners. This is the worst Mac OS update I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them. What’s up with that, Apple?

Alexa and Amazon Fight it Out

Posted in Amazon, Hardware on November 25th, 2020 by michael

Okay, we’ve got kind of a situation over here. Alexa and Amazon – two of my beloved personal assistants – can’t get along. Here’s the situation:

Me: “Alexa, play <insert song name here>.”

Alexa: “Now playing <song name> on Amazon Music.”

Amazon: [Thinks she heard her name being called; starts playing some random song also.]

Alexa: [Sees that Amazon has started playing music; stops playing what I asked for.]

Me: “Aaaaaargh! Amazon, stop!!!”

You might think that Amazon devices would know not to take orders from each other. Apparently, there are limits.

Help me Amazon Dot Com! You’re my only hope.

My Personal SSD-palooza

Posted in Amazon, Apple, Hardware, Problems on May 22nd, 2020 by michael

I’ve been doing a few things with SSDs lately. It all started with my niece Christy.

I’m kind of the family Tech Support guy. There are others in the family who are – dare I say? – possible even better tech supporters than I am. Yet I get my share of the work, and I love doing it.

Anyway, Christy lives very close to us and she had a problem: her very old (early 2011) 13″ MacBook Pro had stopped booting and refused to give up its secrets. And it held many of Christy’s secrets. Mainly her photos and a bunch of school work, as I recall. There were no backups. And she needed that data. So I went to work.

I did all the usual things, mainly involving trying to use Apple’s tools to restore the OS, which didn’t work. It appeared there were one or more damaged disk sectors in the boot area. No boot. I needed to operate.

With Christy’s permission, I took the back off the machine, retrieved the damaged disk, put an external USB drive interface on it, and plugged it into my Mac. Everything was there. I copied it all and put it on another external drive her dad Ken gave me. The day was saved!

The machine was old and pathetically slow and I asked Christy what she wanted done with it. She said to keep it and do whatever I wanted with it. So I put it back together, wiped the drive, and reinstalled the operating system.

It booted! But I was right – it was pathetically slow. It was old, couldn’t accept the latest OS, had a slow 320GB drive, and sported 2GB of ram. Pathetic. So while I got it working again, it was far from useful. Time to throw it away?

Nope. I assumed the 5400 RPM HDD was holding it back. So I budgeted a hundred fifty bucks or so and ordered up a decent 500GB WD (Western Digital) SSD and 16GB of RAM. Easy install, quick OS install, and the machine was fast! Even though it won’t update to Catalina, it’s pretty cool. In fact, I’m writing this on it now. Its name is Groucho.

Classic case of the cheap upgrade. Encouraged, I decided to do it again.

I have an ancient Dell Latitude E6430, circa 2012. Joanne and I bought matching refurbished Dells in mid-2019 when she was in the middle of a job change. We wanted the best available bang for the buck for the lowest price possible.

These are actually pretty cool old business laptops. They have 14-inch screens and refurbished, with Windows 10 Professional, 8GB of memory, and 500GB hard drives. We got matching docking stations too! We both really like them, in spite of their age and weight.

The trouble is that they’re a bit slow. So it was time for another project on my laptop. The exact same project as with the MacBook Pro. I bought another 500GB SSD and 16 more gigs of memory. The install on the Dell was even easier than on the MBP. Those things are made to be serviced.

And the best news is that the machine became really fast! Two for two!

It wasn’t long before Joanne felt her machine slowing down and wanted the same upgrades. So I bought a 1TB SSD, threw it into my machine, and gave her my 500GB drive as a hand-me-down, which she seemed okay with. So we both have fast, solid, relatively powerful Windows laptops!

Mine is named Joe. Joanne’s doesn’t really have a name, but that’s okay. It’s her only computer and it doesn’t need a name.

Now what to modify? Curly, my 27″ 5K iMac is pretty new and has a fairly powerful 3TB hybrid drive. I upgraded Curly’s memory to 24GB the day I bought it and other modifications are quite difficult to make. So Curly was a no-go.

Moe, my late-2014 Mac Mini, has a 1TB HDD, 8GB of memory and is slow. iFixit says it takes 35 steps and a complete disassembly to get to the hard drive. And that machine’s assignment has been downgraded to just serving Time Machine backups to the other Macs on the network. So not for now.

Larry is my early-2013 15″ MacBook Pro. I loaded it up pretty well when I bought it. It has 8GB of memory and a 500GB SSD, all of which I’m led to believe are soldered on to the motherboard. Plus, it’s still a quite adequately powerful laptop. So it remains as-is.

On to Brutus, my homebuilt desktop PC. It has a 3.3GHz 8-core AMD cpu, 32GB of memory, and a GTX-760 GPU. It also has 5TB and 2TB internal hard drives. But it runs slowly. What the heck?

So I bought yet another 1TB WD SSD and installed it. Turned it on and . . . it’s still pretty slow. What the double heck? The research began.

My first concern was that I might have installed the drive in a way that resulted in some kind of electronic interference, as remote a possibility as that might be. I had kind of temporarily zip-tied it to the bottom of the 2TB drive. Not the best install in the world, granted.

So I bought a 2.5″ drive sled and installed it. Still slow. As expected, to be honest. What else could it be?

I downloaded the motherboard manual to look for clues. And I found one! The machine has 6 SATA ports, but they’re only SATA-2. I think I need SATA 3. A little bit of research later and I’ve ordered a replacement motherboard that’s slightly newer, has 6 SATA-3 ports (6Gb/sec), and USB 3.1. It uses my existing CPU, memory, drives, GPU, and everything else. Should arrive sometime next week, and then we’ll see.

Enough for today. I’ll tell you about the SSD attached to Junior, my Raspberry Pi 4b, next time.

See you soon.

Apple watch replacement

Posted in Apple, Hardware on January 12th, 2018 by michael

My Apple Watch Series 2 suddenly stopped working the other day. Got on a chat with an Apple employee, who asked just a couple questions, seemed to actually read my responses, and quickly decided to have me send it in for repair. A box came in the mail a couple days later, I put my watch in it and FedExed it back a couple days ago. I just got an email telling me they’re shipping a replacement today. I guess it was REALLY busted.

Anyway, quick, easy, thorough, and polite. Good job, Apple

While waiting for my replacement, I’ve been wearing my old Series 1 watch. It has the dreaded dim screen with image ghosting problem. Can’t see the screen outdoors, but it’s working okay inside. Also, the battery isn’t always lasting an entire day. It should be obvious why I bought a new one. Better than nothing for the time being, though.

UPDATE A FEW DAYS LATER – The new watch is here. I love it. The process was painless and pleasant – although admittedly less pleasant than never having my watch fail. But still, good customer service, Apple!

Home automation update

Posted in Amazon, Hardware on January 12th, 2018 by michael

Wow, it’s been a long time since I wrote about my Echo Show. Still enjoying it, although I don’t think I’m getting as much usage out of the screen as I could. I’m still not sure what screen-centric things to do with it, to be honest. I think a lot of people agree with me, as the price has fallen dramatically from what I paid.

Be that as it may, I still like it and hope the screen becomes truly useful to me one of these days.

But wait – there’s more! I now have the following Echo devices in my house:

  • The [amazon text=Echo Show&asin=B01J24C0TI] in the kitchen
  • My original [amazon text=Echo&asin=B06XCM9LJ4] in the bedroom
  • An [amazon text=Echo Dot&asin=B01DFKC2SO] in my office/lab
  • A brand-new [amazon text=Echo Dot&asin=B01DFKC2SO] in the master bathroom
  • A [amazon text=Dash Wand&asin=B01MQMJFDK] in the kitchen
  • One more brand-new [amazon text=Echo Dot&asin=B01DFKC2SO] still in its box, which I think will go in the guest room (although the garage is still a possibility)

Don’t laugh about the Dot in the bathroom. I listen to books, podcasts, and music while I’m showering and shaving in the morning. I was bringing my nice little [amazon text=Bose Bluetooth speaker&asin=B076LFBHKJ] into the bathroom connected to my phone for that purpose, but now I can just ask my Dot to play things for me. It’s a little low in the max volume department, but it works. Plus, I can interact with it in the usual way while I’m there.

And I suppose it can be useful while I’m in that particular room for [amazon text=other purposes&asin=B01AFRSQGW] too. Hey, it’s no different from a phone in that regard. Stop judging!

So what are all those Echos doing? A plethora of things:

  • Turning lights on and off – In the living room, in our bedroom, and on the front of the house, so far, with more to undoubtedly come. I’m thinking about the lab next.
  • Listening to music – I recently bought a trial subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited and I’m generally pleased. I’ll add my thoughts in a future post. I can also listen to any of my Pandora playlists. Choices! Oh, the Show also shows lyrics for a lot of songs. Karaoke night, here I come!
  • Listening to Kindle books – I recently discovered you can have Alexa read you your Kindle books. No need to subscribe to Audible (sorry, Audible: I know your quality is better; I just wouldn’t use you enough to justify the price).
  • Listening to podcasts – This one is still tough for me. I use the excellent podcast app Overcast on my phone (and therefore in my cars, including on Carplay) and love it. It keeps track across devices of what I’ve listened to and where I am in a given podcast. It allows me to order my podcasts however I like. It allows me to either stream or download podcasts, or any combination of the two. It intelligently speeds my content up if I choose. It’s great. Sadly, it’s not yet available on Alexa. Come on, Marco, Arment! Just do it! In the meantime, there are a couple of podcast apps supported by Alexa, none of which I really like.
  • Listening to the radio – I use TuneIn to play a few local stations when I feel like it. Works great. Maybe I should look into its ability to play podcasts. Hmm.
  • Kitchen timers – You can have multiple timers at once and I can see them on the screen of my Show or query them by voice. I added an If This Then That (IFTTT) applet to turn on one of the living room lights when a timer goes off, just in case I’m not in the kitchen and don’t hear the timer (I just wish I could get it to flash the light). Works great.
  • Kitchen conversions – Alexa knows how many tablespoons in 3/8 of a cup (6). Plus a whole lot more.
  • Telling time – When I feel too lazy to look at my phone or watch, I just ask Alexa what time it is. Works great
  • News – I have a pretty good news feed set up.
  • Jeopardy – I play Jeopardy every weekday. It asks twelve questions and is amazingly good at understanding my answers. Great fun.
  • Other games – I occasionally find another game that’s interesting. Try 21 questions.
  • To-do and shopping lists – We use the shopping list functionality a lot. When I use up a staple in the kitchen, I just tell Alexa to add it to my shopping list. I use IFTTT to transfer those items to my iOS Reminders app, which I use in the store. IFTTT also copies my to-do items to Reminders.
  • Amazon videos – If I know the name of the movie or TV show, I can get my Show to play it for me. Nice company while cooking from time to time.
  • Weather forecasts – Alexa gives amazingly detailed weather forecasts, either local or remote. Really useful.
  • Controlling my thermostats – I have Nest thermostats and can find out and/or set the temperature both upstairs and downstairs
  • Drop-ins – I just started using this capability. I can ask Alexa to drop in on any of the other Echo-equipped rooms in my house and talk to whoever is there. Pretty cool. I haven’t enabled that capability outside of our house and I don’t plan to.

There are numerous other capabilities I’ve messed with but don’t use regularly. For example, Alexa can send text messages for AT&T customers (which I used to be), but it’s fairly clunky, so I only experimented with it.

Oh, Joanne and I also like to tell Alexa to play thunderstorm sounds when we’re going to sleep. There’s something peaceful about hearing a thunderstorm outside when you’re snug in bed, even a pre-recorded one.

Coming up sometime soon – details on my Alexa-controlled lights. I’m using smart bulbs, smart switches, and smart plugs. Each has its own ups and downs.

Are you doing anything really cool with your Amazon Echo?

 

Echo Show First Impression

Posted in Amazon, Hardware on August 3rd, 2017 by michael

I really like my Amazon Echos.

I have an original Echo and an Echo Dot and use them constantly. I won’t say I’m anything like a power user, but I do use them.

I have three smart lightbulbs and control them from my Echos. They’re particularly good in the nightstands in our bedroom. We go to bed with the lights on, get all comfortable, and turn the lights off with a voice command. Sometimes we have our Echo lull us to sleep with thunderstorm sounds. And we play music with it quite a bit, either by streaming from a phone or by using the built-in links to Pandora and/or I Heart Radio.

I use them to set timers and alarms. I use their very convenient shopping list, which I have hooked up to my iOS Reminders app via IFTTT. IFTTT also helps me add to-do items on Echo and convert them to Todoist. They look up information for me, which works sometimes, but not often enough. And of course there’s their most important use – playing Jeopardy every day. I don’t want to live life without Jeopardy.

Oh, and I just remembered I have an Echo Wand. I think I may be the only person who bought one, but look it up. It’s kind of a slightly crippled handheld Echo that has a laser barcode scanner. You scan used-up items you want to replace, for example, and it adds them to your Amazon shopping cart. I’m casually waiting for somebody else to come up with an IFTTT recipe to remove items from my shopping cart and add them to my Reminders shopping list. Then my Wand will become very useful indeed.

In short, Alexa is an integral part of our household.

Which brings me to my latest purchase – the Echo Show. It’s a pretty clever Echo with good speakers (maybe not quite as good as on my original Echo, but good), coupled with a camera and always-on 7-inch touchscreen. It can do a bunch of unique stuff, including acting as a videophone, displaying recipes, playing Amazon Video movies, and … umm … stuff. In general, I like it. So what’s good and what’s bad?

The good:

The screen is always on and displaying useful information when it senses somebody is in the vicinity. You can refine what kinds of things it shows you, which I haven’t done yet, but I might eventually get around to it.

I really like being able to see the status of my timers. I use it for timing things in the kitchen all the time, and I always had to ask it for its status when I wanted to know how much time was left. Not anymore!

I actually watched part of a movie while cooking once! It’s a pretty cool idea, although it only works with Amazon Prime movies, which I don’t watch all that much. Still, it’s there and I like using it.

The sound is fine and it’s nice to be able to see what’s playing.

The bad:

My other Echos offer a visual indicator that they’ve heard their wake word, in the form of a moving bright blue light along the top edge that’s visible from across the room. There’s no light on this one. The screen shows a moving blue bar along its bottom edge, but that’s only useful when you’re standing right next to it. Otherwise, you just have to assume it’s on and listening to you. Not a huge deal, but I’ve been surprised at how much I miss that visual confirmation that she’s listening before I ask my question.

Nobody else has one, so the video phone function is fairly useless. Plus, I don’t want to have to stand in my kitchen to talk to somebody, and my phone, iPad, and computers all have a much more flexible version of that capability already.

It’s kind of expensive.

When I bought my first Echo, I thought it was kind of cool but doubted I would ever really use it very much. Then I discovered more and more of its capabilities over time, and now it’s an indispensable member of our household. I have a feeling this version will turn out the same way. Recommended.

Terrible Connectors

Posted in Hardware on December 9th, 2013 by michael

 

5pin180dinplugAm I the only one who hates those new Lightning iPhone/iPad connectors?

Yeah, I know they’re way better than the old 30-pin connectors. They can be plugged in either way, they’re small, they’re new, they have special Apple-y goodness, etc.

But there’s a problem anyway. The socket is absolutely impossible to find on my iPad without holding the thing edgewise and finding it.  With the old 30-pins, you could just feel your way to it and then plug it in. If you had the plug upside down, that was readily apparent and you simply turned it over.

Dare I say . . . it just worked?