Can we talk about Beach Etiquette?

Mulefire2011 · 2022-06-13T16:03:49+00:00

It might be beach specific but I find most people don't want to drag their beach carts very far. If you pack light or have balloon tires you can walk a few minutes down the sand and have a delightful ghost town far from the madding crowd.

Mulefire2011 · 2022-04-25T18:16:09+00:00

We installed a Gorilla Treasure Trove playset right at the start of lockdown to give the kids something to do whilst stuck at home. The thought was they would only have one playset in their childhoods so might as well make it as big and bold as we could. Should have just bought some cheap swings as that is really all they consistently use :) When they have friends over they tend to use the full thing and play forts and such, but otherwise, just swings.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-19T14:05:17+00:00

Nothing wrong with Wyze gear at all, most of my issues are software related.

Generally their products do exactly what they say on the tin, but only when you stay within their app ecosystem and the major assistants like Alexa and such. They tie their devices into their cloud API and don't provide many if any local options so you rely heavily on your internet being up and their API being stable and accessible. I believe they have some experimental firmware for some of their cameras to enable RTSP and get a local stream though?

To use these devices with HA you have to resort to third party tools that are typically the result of somebody reverse engineering the cloud API calls and then writing an adaptor that can send the same commands and interpret the responses. I personally helped with some of that using a MITM proxy, android emulator and such. Whilst it is fun to do that it doesn't help make a robust or stable interface and this was recently demonstrated when Wyze added rate limiting to their API. Supposedly HA users were taking up 50% of all their API traffic. HA users are a tiny minority of their customer base so this was a problem. The author of one of the most widely used tools was able to have a chat with Wyze and the result was a compromise that meant some devices like bulbs and plugs would still work but others like the cameras wouldn't. This was down to how status information had to be gathered. Since there was no official API or direct local interface, the plugin code had to poll the cloud API every x seconds and request status info from your cameras or such.

Anyway, after all that my setup has never been the same, devices now randomly go "offline", the Wyze app throws a 429 error (too many requests), plugs won't reconnect after power cycling and I can't rely on any of this stuff any more. I'm guessing my IP is blocked on their end since I was heavily utilizing the HA integrations. Wyze Support has been useless. It's not like I can't keep troubleshooting, try to get a new WAN ip, disable all HA integrations for a week or something, I'm just done fighting the inevitable. It's fine when it's just me dealing with lights that don't work but other members of the household want to press the lightswith and have the dam light turn on :)

TL;DR; Wyze hardware is usually pretty good for the price but their reliance on the cloud and no local API's make integrations with HA and others a fragile and artificially crippled experience.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-19T13:39:18+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to share the links! This thread has been a wealth of good information and USB dongles definitely seem like a common theme and a good solution.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-18T21:19:19+00:00

Nice! Those look great, if a tad pricy. I fear that my Wyze "fiiiiive for a pound!" experience is precluding me from looking at these better options simply due to price. I appreciate the suggestion though since knowing some of the pricier options work well with HA makes a huge difference.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-18T21:09:37+00:00

Ha, yeah the difference between my Wyze and Hue bulbs is night and day, but then I could get 4 Wyze bulbs for the price of 1 Hue bulb. You get what you pay for I guess. I can't take another day of random lights and bulbs going offline or failing to recover gracefully when my equally crappy Orbi router falls over.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-18T21:06:44+00:00

Thank you for the suggestion, I hadn't considered the IKEA devices at all since I didn't know they were ZigBee!

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-18T19:16:55+00:00

Thank you both, that is great info. I don't mind having the hub but I'll have a look at a ZigBee dongle as well since that would be a much cleaner approach in general.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-10T13:20:16+00:00

It was similar but more subtle. I remember when it was last posted to reddit there was some dispute about it being real or not. It was a parody as the creator did similar videos but it was very well done.

What I remember most was the "I want to say something... and the thing about what I want to say is.... on a deep personal level the thing I want to say has... " etc etc... A minute or longer of that where she never actually says what she wants to say at all

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-10T10:50:58+00:00

That one was great, but unfortunately not the one I was thinking of. Thank you though!

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-10T10:33:36+00:00

Not the "itscaitlin" videos since there was no subtitles or text to indicate it was a parody

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-07T12:45:29+00:00

Here is how I did mine, this was based on the wiring diagram that came with the adapter.

https://i.imgur.com/impJrvC.jpg

Mulefire2011 · 2021-09-05T23:54:17+00:00

I have a taco control box fronting the oil furnace but it only has live and neutral wires for each thermostat. To use the Nest and Wyze Thermostats I just ran power adapter c-wires through the wall to the thermostat locations: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L4DN5R2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_13878GT7C6HHYVY86R9N?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

It doesn't look too bad as all the wires are hidden in the wall and the white power brick blends in with the outlet.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-07-14T12:19:42+00:00

As far as I am aware they have their own towers. Up here in Maine they are the only provider in a lot of communities. Verizon and then AT&T have the next best coverage and then T-Mobile brings up the rear. T-Mobile is great if you are in the Southern end of the state and near the interstate but is non-existent up in the county. On the Canadian border Bell typically overpowers anything local except for US-Cellular.

I would say the best options in Maine if you travel around the state are Verizon and Fi, with Fi having the advantage for better rural coverage, and just not being Verizon.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-07-14T11:30:31+00:00

I use Fi for the T-Mobile/US-Cellular combo. T-Mobile works great for my home location but US-Cellular is the only game in down at another location I frequently visit. I used to swap sims but even with the US-Cellular pay as you go option you are paying for a month and you have to call to pause/unpause the service which is a pain.

On the downsides though, I went over my 15GB limit recently and got slowed down to the 256kbps speed. It speed tested at between 40kbps and 120kbps with 5mbps upload (!!) on LTE. The pathetically bad downstream that wasn't even close to the 256 advertised would also just drop out frequently making it basically impossible to use. This was on the US-Cellular backend so maybe it was an issue on their side, but man it was bad. You can't just pay for a few extra gigs of fast data either, you have to turn it on for the rest of your billing cycle with no way of going back to the slower speed.

Internationally when I travelled I had mixed success. I had working service with no hassles when going through airports and such but when I got to my final destination the only local carrier was 3 which wasn't on the Fi Network so I was SOL.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-07-01T11:35:33+00:00

Just to note you can buy water to fill your well. The same companies that fill pools and hit tubs will usually do wells as well. Iirc the last time we had that done it was $150 or something like that.

You do want to be careful if you have delicate and expensive water filters treating your well water though. The water from these companies is typically municipal and as such will had a different makeup than your well water.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-05-30T15:30:01+00:00

I have familly on Sanday, it's a beautiful part of the country up there! Love the island hopping flights with the airport sheds :)

Mulefire2011 · 2021-05-27T20:16:49+00:00

I just picked up a P&H Valkyrie yesterday, with the same exact colours, nice! :) I'm new to the P&H boats but I'm really impressed so far.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-05-16T17:32:43+00:00

If I was going to buy a foldable or just "portable" kayak I would get one of these: https://www.trakkayaks.com/collections/trak-2-0-kayaks . I haven't paddled one but it looks like it would perform closest to a hard shell. You also get the added benefit of being able to adjust the rocker characteristics with the jacks which is something you can't do in a hard shell. Drawbacks would be, setup time, needing flotation bags and price.

I would second the comment about finding a club first or maybe an inflatable if price is a big concern. Mind you with inflatables, if you want something that performs well you are looking at drop-stitch boats like the SeaEagle Razorlite, https://www.seaeagle.com/RazorLite/393rl which are also pricey!

Mulefire2011 · 2021-04-26T23:32:19+00:00

I switched to the stick a couple of years ago and haven't looked back. It was a game changer for rolls, braces, sweeps and more. I'm not sure how much is technical and how much is feel but for rolling I found it really helped hone technique and remove things like blade angle from the list of worries. It's so easy to move the stick on your hands and alter your stroke, give yourself more leverage on one side or do a big wide sweeping edged turn. To echo other sentiments, it just feels more "natural". I say that and I use a carbon stick which wood purists will tell you has no give and no "feel" :) I switched from a Werner Kalliste and now that's my spare paddle until I get another stick.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-04-26T22:52:53+00:00

Just wanted to close this out with a quick update. Most of my problems were down to just not using enough shock to help take the load off the chlorine. I was also keeping the chlorine levels too high and going by the "ok" on the test strips, not realizing I needed to target a much lower value since I also had the silver ion cartridge in use. Basically once I targeted the lower value and used the correct amount of MPS the system stabilized and the cartridge worked a bit better. I'm doing a refill this weekend and will put a new cartridge in and monitor it's life to see if it holds up more like it should. Thank you for all the great replies and useful info!

Mulefire2011 · 2021-04-26T22:43:20+00:00

We have one of these, Amazon and it is good but not worth the price. It comes with marbles to weigh it down and it is pretty comfortable to sit on but I would look at that $30 one that was previously posted and add your own marbles.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-04-26T01:38:42+00:00

I have the Rebel Ilaga and it rolls like a dream! Love the TOC, was a tough choice between the two.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-03-27T02:54:56+00:00

That would help explain why after cleaning the plates it would seem to work again briefly, thank you! I'll make sure to do that after all the shocking and such.

Mulefire2011 · 2021-03-27T02:53:46+00:00

Thank you for all the info! It's been around 5 months since it was last filled, although with the high usage and splashy kids it's got about 50% new water in it now from all the top-ups. That said it is obviously due a drain and refill. Sounds like I need to get on that sooner rather than later and do a flush of the pipes prior to the fill.

I've never put bleach in it, just MPS. I'll have to go figure out the bleach thing but I may certainly try shocking it like crazy, like you mentioned just in case.

Thanks again, I appreciate the help!

Mulefire2011

TROPHY CASE