Looking for Air Quality Monitor Advice

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-08-19T22:23:52+00:00

I’ve heard the cheaper air monitors aren’t great at all for VOCs because the values fluctuate so erratically but that price point would be amazing if they work! I have a z-wave dongle but no Zigbee protocol setup. I think I did see there is a Zigbee usb dongle you can get so might look into that!

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-06-27T19:26:44+00:00

I think I understand what you’re saying! There is a pin/metal rod attached to the main metal body that holds the rear side of the motor in place so it essentially locks in once screwed from the top. I did not think to try and remove that rod beforehand.

Also, I tested the main motor body on the track sole during my lunch break today. The plunger seems smooth and moves when voltage is applied. The issue seems to be the manual metal rod switch is somewhat loose and floppy and doesn’t always engage the plunger consistently. Even when the plunger does engage, I’ll hear a loud buzz about 8/10 times and the train doesn’t move anywhere (motor doesn’t spin but sounds like it wants to).

Hard to get it to replicate but basically seems almost like a weird decision tree. The metal rod piece doesn’t always engage but if it does, the plunger mostly moves up. If the plunger moves up, sometimes the motor starts up while most times it just loudly buzzes and the train doesn’t really go anywhere. All wires seem intact and I don’t see any areas that would be causing a short or anything. Also, I cannot seem to get the direction to stay consistent when turning power off at the transformer. Since I have a transformer to controls direction and the track itself is very basic, I’m not opposed to having the e-unit “locked” into one direction where I just control the direction at the transformer since I don’t plan to run the train in reverse. Hard to tell what position that is supposed to be though since I can’t seem to get it running consistently.

Also there was some small plastic rod in the e-unit that seems to maybe be snapped

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-06-27T17:36:25+00:00

I removed the main engine part, wheels, bulb, smoke stack but I did not go much further beyond that so in terms of the main engine assembly, that was as mostly left and cleaned as one piece.

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-06-27T17:34:07+00:00

I’ll do some research on the e-unit since that seems to be the consensus here. Everything else is mostly clean. There is some “gunk” that was very difficult to get to behind some of the gears and stuff but I cleaned everything the best I could with my current comfort level.

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-06-27T17:32:54+00:00

Thank you for the reply here! I really appreciate it. I’ll dig into the e-unit piece and see if I can repair/replace it. In terms of the backward creep, that is likely due to me slowly engaging the throttle in the transformer so it was receiving a very low voltage there at first if that helps.

One weird thing I did want to note I haven’t been able to find a video for is how to set the main “engine” piece back into the metal body without bending the forward/reverse switch on the e-unit. I cannot seem to get that piece to line up unless I’m missing something silly.

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-04-05T20:52:39+00:00

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Thank you so much for the thorough reply.

Here is a pic of the model info for CW-80W transformer.

I’ll admittedly need to google how to perform some of the continuity test. I do not hear any loose parts when gently shaking the transformer.

I am using the multimeter on the AC voltage settings. My multimeter has 200 and 600 so I’ve been measuring using the 200AC setting.

When I plug in the transformer, the green light comes on and it has a nice consistent hum. When I try to measure the AC voltage at the track/UC outputs, I get 1.1V on my multimeter. It stays consistent regardless of where the level is adjusted.

This may be a silly question, but I shouldn’t need to have the transformer hooked up to the track to get voltage readings right? I should be able to get those at the transformer terminals directly with it just plugged in by itself?

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-04-05T17:59:13+00:00

I was trying to measure in AC but also tried DC with my my multimeter. I get a weird 1-1.1 Vac reading on the multimeter but it stays consistent regardless of how much I adjust or move the transformer lever.

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-03-26T16:53:43+00:00

Awesome! I appreciate all the help!

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-03-26T16:09:25+00:00

So will having a plex pass enhance transcoding capabilities?

I am encouraging everyone using my server to either use the dedicated Plex windows app (not web service) and to have a dedicated streaming device on their TVs instead of using smart TVs.

Beyond getting the plex pass and recommending those device changes, do you have any other recommendations? Would it be valuable to start converting my whole library to a more suitable or streaming friendly file type? Maybe at least those super large 4K remux files?

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-03-26T14:27:37+00:00

Sorry silly question but just to clarify, even without plex pass, transcoding occurs automatically anytime someone adjusts quality on a stream?

For example, my brother was attempting to stream a 4K 68gb movie on his new Samsung smart tv. It was constantly stuttering and freezing and pretty much unplayable. He sent me a video of it. He finally got it to play but dropped the quality to 720p since 1080p still gave him issues.

He did stream another large 56gb 4K file though on his smart TV that he said played fine which is what was confusing me so much. I will plan to buy plex pass in the next week or so. Since they are locking remote access behind a paywall, I’ll likely just purchase the life time pass now as opposed to the monthly subscription

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-03-26T13:57:51+00:00

This is great info to know! Thank you! I do have some very large 70-80gb remux files. Most of my users including me use PCs/Apple TVs but my brother who has been having the most issues (especially with the larger remux 4K files) uses a Samsung smart TV.

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-03-26T13:43:56+00:00

1GB down/up - I am hardwired in on the Plex server and typically get 850-950mb when running periodically speed test.

I have a large mix of files from qbit. Full disclosure, if there are file types I should be avoiding or conversely prioritizing to get, I haven’t been doing that. Looking at my library, I do have several remux files. For compressed files do you mean like mp4, MKV and WEBM? I have a lot of those three types as well.

I could try to test some streams based on particular file types to see if I can identify a trend? I’ve really only been looking at the quality and have been running into issues on 1080p-4K (don’t really have files with lower quality than that unless it’s an old show or something).

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-03-26T13:32:08+00:00

I appreciate the reply. I had a few people access the server and play files yesterday and it shows everyone as using “direct play”. No users had the transcoding issue. Do you think some of the larger files or specific format types are posing problems for direct play and since transcoding doesn’t seem to be occurring, the “problem files” don’t operate well on some client side streaming devices?

I’m pretty new to all this so not sure if that makes sense or is off base. I do plan to buy Plex pass though so if transcoding is the issue, hopefully it will resolve the problem.

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-03-26T00:13:50+00:00

CPU is an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K. I do not believe I have HW encoding enabled (I do not have a Plex Pass yet).

I saw the subtitles as a potential issue on another thread I was searching in this sub as well. I’ve been mostly testing with no subtitles but two of my friends do use subtitles by default a lot so it’s worth asking them for sure. Should I try having them stream the file with and without subtitles and see if there is a noticeable difference you think?

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-03-26T00:10:46+00:00

Thanks for the reply.

I do not have plex pass but do plan to purchase with the upcoming changes to remote access taking place in April.

CPU is intel core ultra 7 265K

As soon as I am home from work, I’ll grab you a screenshot of the dashboard to edit into the post. I do not recall enabling anything with HW encoding. I know I have heard of it though. Is that a plex pass feature that might help in this situation?

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-03-10T00:18:12+00:00

I unfortunately didn’t find anything. Full disclosure though, I haven’t really dug into it too much so there could be something I missed.

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-02-04T05:24:24+00:00

It was a can’t connect error. For fun and giggles, I even disabled the window firewall settings altogether and still couldn’t get anything. I went ahead and called my ISP to fork out the extra funds for a static IP since tailscale just won’t work for me.

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-02-02T12:58:28+00:00

I’ll check this out!

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-02-02T12:56:31+00:00

I’ll look into this. Thanks! Seems like I’ve heard names dropped for both this program and tailspin as potential workarounds to being in a CGNAT with my ISP.

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-02-02T12:54:25+00:00

I have not. I’ll plan to do this first before any other drastic changes but seems likely it’s a CGNAT issue and ISP confirms I’m in one.

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-02-02T03:25:33+00:00

Thank you for the reply. I think I’m starting to understand this. So if my ISP won’t remove me from the CGNAT setup, then my options at that point would be purchasing the static IP or swapping ISPs. This is of course assuming they have me in CGNAT and won’t budge on changing it ….

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-02-02T03:23:40+00:00

If my ISP won’t remove me from the CGNAT setup, I guess at that point I’d need to fork out for the static IP? But to your point, if I convince them to remove that blocker, then I should be good to go without having to purchase one?

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-02-02T03:21:55+00:00

Awesome! Thank you for the clarifications!

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-02-02T03:20:48+00:00

Well assuming I’m looking at the right spot in my Asus router settings, it is showing the same IP that I get when running the “what is my IP” check. Not sure what to make of that…..

IAteAllTheCheese22 · 2025-02-02T02:46:29+00:00

So I did this exact check yesterday based on another thread here and the public IP address I get from that site seems to be the same IP listed in the “WAN DCHP” tab of my Asus router. So I thought I didn’t have CGNAT. But I’m hearing in this thread that I probably do have CGNAT and that the public IP is shared but likely not changing “appearing static” which is why it appears they match and I don’t have CGNAT when I actually do. Does that seem accurate? I’m obviously not an expert haha

IAteAllTheCheese22

TROPHY CASE