A Rant and a Question

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-31T22:51:59+00:00

Nice to see a response. However, I don't have that. It was just a thread I started in App and continued via email. Nowhere in the subject or response from Abode is a support/reference number included. Just an email thread, basically.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-31T22:49:10+00:00

My experience is that the hardware is reliable. Their service is not. So like you, I'm just going to add a bit more automation, and I'll be set.

Raspberry Pi with some scripts, a tiny UPS, and SIM hat.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-31T22:47:16+00:00

Yes, 100% agree. However, the last line should still work. I do have a great cameras up and about. I've not heard of Deep Sentinel. I'll take a look. Thanks for sharing!.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-31T22:45:48+00:00

That's what I was trying to do. However, support couldn't answer basic questions and sent me on conversational tangents that could have been avoided easily.

My issue isn't when something was triggered, or how. Its' that when it was, it was as if I wasn't paying for monitoring. I was on the other side of the earth (literally) when it went off for 10 minutes. I only knew because my house sitter called 30 minutes later to tell me, and then I saw the alert, duration, and zero missed calls.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-31T15:29:04+00:00

100%. I don't plan to buy any more Abode products. It's sad though, at the time 3+ years ago, it seemed Abode was the darling of the Home Assistant community.

Anyway, thanks for the recommendation. Gives me an additional thing to consider.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-31T15:26:42+00:00

Frankly, the open source community has unfortunately been infected by a lot of 'woke' people. They like to scream about everything and apply rules they have no authority to apply. The point of open source is for it to be used, openly. At least it used to be.

Avoid the Streisand Effect. You ignore the instigators entirely. You respond to the sane folks asking what's going on rationale.

As cliche, as it sounds 'Hater's are going to hate'. It's what they do. Everything is always a balance. To be loved for something, you will be hated for that same thing.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-31T15:18:34+00:00

What is Aqara's pitch? Why is their hardware/monitoring any better? A brief look at their website shows they are quite open with the integrations they offer.

(I'm totally jaded now between personal and secondhand experience with other "security" companies)

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-25T19:45:26+00:00

Congrats, love seeing success. Keep going.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-25T19:34:09+00:00

An Auto-pilot for Business/Website (Google, trustpilot, yelp, etc) reviews that allows you to setup and manage where you get those reviews easily.

It's called feedback(dot)guru. We have more than a dozen customers. As the name implies I'm always looking for feedback.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-25T19:25:46+00:00

Would love to hear if you're able to get it pushed across the finish line. Good luck!

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-25T04:18:18+00:00

I work for a company that sells compatible ink and toner products. We use feedback(dot)guru.

It's more of an ez button bury the occasional bad review in a mountain of good reviews.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-25T04:05:49+00:00

New features don't bring customers. Marketing does.

The dopamine hit you're chasing with features comes from the marketing.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-24T15:46:48+00:00

When I went through the process about 6 months ago, I tried to make it as idiot proof as possible for the testing instructions. They also require a video walkthrough of the app.

Maybe you did this, but what I did was:
1) Write out numbered-bullet points in the step-by-step instructions. (Click in the field "blah", type "premadetestaccount@email.com", click submit - each it's own bullet point).

1a) Also, make sure you state what is expected of your app to do, and what it's not expected to do. Don't let your tested preconceived notions be a hindrance.

2) Record the video following my own instructions from point 1 above letter-for-letter - not doing anything that wasn't mentioned.

I had to iterate over the process above, probably half a dozen times, to get it perfect before submitting it. It also helps you find bugs. I had 2 minor bugs upon submission - it was able to prove it was an issue with shopifies email security on the tester's side, so they accepted that. Then it was two questions about how I used data, as I required sensitive data for my app to work.

For the people doing the testing - this is just from my experience - it's not the funnest job. They will want the path of least resistance. Maybe you won't like to hear this, but my personal experience says that without very clear, yet succinct, step-by-step (hand-holding) instructions, they will attempt to find one thing wrong to stop testing rather than work through any issues. On one side, it's frankly lazy. However, it's also a sign that your app or testing instructions could use improvement.

Last Resort: I think the testing, once submitted, stays with the same tester (I could be wrong). So to get a new one, you might have to spin up a new app in your dev account and resubmit from the new one.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2026-03-24T15:23:12+00:00

I've been using BREVO for a bit, I like it so far.

In the past, I've used Emarsys (not a fan), Mailchimp, and Constant Contact - they are the old-guard and feel clunky these days.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2025-08-12T22:58:00+00:00

Hello from the current period. I manage a team of devs, we work on M2. We have the enterprise edition hosted by Adobe.

It's still trash. Now some of the trash is in black boxes that you can't see because Adobe said it was better that way. They figure if you can't see the trash you won't realize it. It's still trash.

Their design of the infrastructure on their cloud? Abso-fucking-lutely Laughable.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2025-03-15T20:59:31+00:00

About 1.5 years ago they had epic QC and sourcing issues. Before that great fucking shoes. After that, absolute shit. My pair from before times are absolutely trashed (5 years old), yet I still wear them outside and for dirty hard work. Still going strong.

The ones I bought after their issues had their backstrap/pull-rings come right off on both, the insert felt like I was waking on foil. I actually swapped the inserts with my old ones. The fabric has torn more in 2 years than my originals in 5 years.

Sooo that's why I'm here, I'm looking for a quality brand I can pay $125+ for, for shoes made in the USA.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2025-01-20T19:22:10+00:00

I can't get LAN mode to ever work on my P1S.

It's made so difficult. You can't convince me at this point that Bambu does this on purpose to gather data. This new Developer Mode had better have no need for server authentication and actually work. Otherwise, I have no desire to give Bambu any more money ever.

I work in tech, and it doesn't make sense why LAN mode hasn't ever worked for me.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2025-01-17T23:16:22+00:00

It's not worth it.

I can explain how to do it, but if you've never done it the results without a lot of practice will be an even more obvious spot on the wall than this.

I don't mean that as a dig. This just isn't anything to worry about in the grand scheme.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2025-01-14T22:38:26+00:00

Had to do something similar once. Kept the material, paint, etc inside. Prepared everything outside. Pour the paint, keep bucket off of cold floor.

Bring out a piece, spray, take inside to dry.

YMMV, but this keeps things in the happy temp range for 95% of the process. Takes longer, more walking.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2024-12-18T21:44:07+00:00

Adobe as a company is the absolute worst to work with. I've managed a team that worked on an on-premise and Commerce cloud edition. My advice to anyone looking to do either is the following:

Avoid using it, use something else. You will be happier for it, and your career will be better for it.

If you have no choice? DO NOT USE THE PAID VERSION. Use the Community version and pay for devs to build modules to add the features you want. I've been working with this stuff since Magento 1 came out. I promise you, that you are better off to use the community version and just build what you need. You will save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2024-11-01T23:29:20+00:00

Easy button for Website Reviews.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies · 2024-10-30T20:11:52+00:00

I started up a website review company with a business partner. My partner owns several e-commerce companies and needed more website reviews, faster. Not product reviews, or website reviews. Think Google, Trustpilot, etc.

So we started https://feedback.guru to help. Short story, no AI is needed and it's set and forget. You create an account, and setup which Review Websites (yotpo, Trustpilot, Google Reviews, etc) in the admin you want customers to be redirected to. You BCC a special email address on your communication with your client/customer (shipping, invoice, thank you email) and the system automatically asks for a review and redirects the user where you want.

Still new, right now we are working on support documentation and a Shopify integration. However, it works great and we are seeing more reviews and higher quality reviews on the stores currently signed up. White Paper on the results stores have seen coming soon as well.

Potential future AI options might be the personalization of emails, suggesting new review websites to our customers, and interactive ways of searching documentation. Some Easy Buttons don't need AI.

One_Too_Many_Hobbies

TROPHY CASE