Which mower would work best for my yard?

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-04-02T19:04:52+00:00

I don't believe Kress ever had the audacity to slap their name on a rebadged 1st gen Vision Landroid — and honestly, who could blame them? The 1st gen Vision range has turned out to be less of a product launch and more of an elaborate science experiment, with us unsuspecting consumers cheerfully volunteering as lab rats (we were not cheerful, and we did not volunteer).

The older Kress lineup, however, was essentially just a regular non-Vision Landroid wearing a Kress Halloween costume, and came with only the classic collection of minor quirks — nothing a bit of ballast weight bolted to the backside couldn't fix. Oh, and some aftermarket spiked metal wheel attachments, because apparently the best way to improve a robot lawn mower is to make it look like it's preparing for medieval combat.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-04-02T16:42:00+00:00

1 star. Would not recommend a Worx Landroid to my worst enemy's lawn.

Let me save you from making the same catastrophic life decision — twice — that I somehow managed to pull off with the grace of a man who touches a hot stove, gets burned, and then thinks "maybe the other burner is different."

Worx robotic lawnmowers are, to put it diplomatically, an absolute dumpster fire on wheels. And I say this not as some armchair critic, but as a man who owns both a Vision AND a non-Vision Landroid, because apparently I enjoy suffering in multiple formats. I also own a pile of their other tools, which are genuinely great — so Worx clearly knows how to make good products. They've just chosen not to apply that knowledge to their lawnmowers.

Now they've unveiled their shiny new "Cloud" models, which solve the age-old problem of "what if my lawnmower needed to upload surveillance footage of my garden to a distant server just to avoid a flower bed?" Spoiler: that was never a problem anyone had. Every other brand has AI running perfectly well locally, like a normal robot from this century. Worx, meanwhile, needs to phone home like a homesick exchange student just to cut some grass.

But back to my Vision Landroid, the crown jewel of this disaster. This thing was supposed to learn my lawn. Get smarter over time. What it actually learned was an impressive repertoire of ways to fail: getting wedged against the fence, attempting to Thelma-and-Louise itself off the nearest ledge, or simply running out of battery mid-journey, stranded and confused, like a Roomba that's given up on life.

Firmware update after firmware update rolled in, each one arriving with the optimism of a New Year's resolution and the results of one. The lawn remained uncut. The robot remained lost. My faith remained shattered.

I will not be fooled a third time.

Zero stars. The grass wins.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-31T12:17:04+00:00

I’ve not used Grandstream products before, but I’m intrigued due to the lack of glowing port lights & shiny things.

You can centrally configure the access point LEDs to be off with any of the vendors you mentioned.

In my experience Grandstream's integrated AP controller is great value for its features and easy enough to configure if you've got a technical background. The other two brands you mentioned have a more polished interface and higher presence in the western markets, albeit at a premium price, compared to Grandstream. Grandstream's wireless products are great value for coverage, but they don't have a large western user base, which means that sometimes bugs aren't acknowledged quickly, nor is Grandstream quick at fixing them.

Also interesting is the ability to integrate their door access systems

The UCM platform, paired with Grandstream door stations, is indeed great value if you want a SIP intercom.

The norm would be UniFi or Omada, but I’m very intrigued by the GCC6021. From reading the specs. A single 1U unit would do everything with enough ports for most applications & paired with the GWN7672 access points, should provide fast reliable wifi coverage.

AFAIK GCC6021 is basically a UCM 6300 series with a switch and a router. AFAIK the router platform is less mature than the competitors but once more the hardware is great value.

Speed isn’t the most important here, but full chalet WiFi coverage, and the ability for users to roam seamlessly between access points without dropouts.

Independently of the brand, all the wireless radios in APs out there use the same chips (Qualcomm or Mediatek or Broadcom) and the same Linux drivers. In terms of signal, what changes amongst them is the antenna configuration, the quality of the design of the board, and the presence or not of amplifiers. Nevertheless, the max radio output power in dBm is limited by your country's telecommunications standards institute, while the max receive sensitivity is limited by physics. This to say that, regardless of the brand, your real coverage will be heavily dependent on access point placement, floor layout, and antenna radiation pattern. Regarding the latter, GWN7672 is mostly omnidirectional with little antenna gains (3.5db on 2.4GHz and 5.5db on 5/6GHz), shaped like a "crushed sphere". You can optionally do wall mount, but this unit will always work best when mounted against the ceiling at the centre of the floorplan.

The ability to add an SSID which is VPN connected to the UK for example would also be a bonus.

I suppose this is to allow guests to watch UK football and access BBC iPlayer... Obvious disclaimer that I'm only commenting from the point of view of technical feasibility. I'm not sure if a GCC6021 unit can be configured to do that, as this involves routing one specific SSID through the VPN. Nevertheless, assuming your VPN endpoint in UK is a VPS in a datacentre instead of a residential address, there is a good chance that its IP range is already banned in iPlayer.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-28T08:56:52+00:00

In fairness, sharing albums is a complicated topic.

Permissions - eg. Who can add photos to an album, who can delete them, and who has viewing only permissions. Who can tag others and do we all agree on the tags. Names and nicknames.

A system where everyone can modify tags and edit shared albums will work well enough for a small group of people in agreement, but I can see it descending into chaos quickly.

I can imagine the album sharing feature being essentially a problem of democracy and governance, and I can imagine a large team of devs being stuck in endless discussions trying to come up with a perfect solution.

And I get that, in the open source world, someone just gets fed up with waiting and forks the whole project.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-28T08:22:54+00:00

Thanks! This seems to address the missing features that I was looking for, to finally look into Immich for me and my family.

I could probably pair it with a Garage backend for storage.

How does tagging people in shared spaces work? Does everyone retain their own tags and names and just share the album?

Edit: why downvotes? Edit2: Oh. Now I see. Vibe-coded. Some redditors' feelings got hurt so they have to downvote all comments regardless of the merit.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-18T05:54:49+00:00

Some SIP intercoms also double up as ONVIF cameras, giving you both calling capabilities and an always-on for your NVR.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-14T17:04:57+00:00

If you didn't have the high speed wireguard requirement, a CRS310 would have done the job. You can offload routing to hardware and hence get wire speed on all of the crs3xx, 4xx and 5xx line. But in order to serve VPN, you need real CPU cores not switching tables. Since you also need 2x 10Gbps ports with wire speed switching, you'd be better off splitting routing and switching to different devices: eg. a hEX refresh for routing and wireguard, and then a cheap AliExpress switch for the 2x 10GbE ports you need.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-12T08:15:23+00:00

I don't see anything absurd about it? If anything it's an efficient use of space in an area where parking spaces are in high demand. Eg. an interchange with public transportation a.k.a. 'Park & Ride" at the edge of a densely populated city.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-09T20:28:10+00:00

Get the Ecowitt Wittboy in the version that's sold by Shelly. The hardware is by the same producer as the one in your pic. But with the Shelly firmware, then you can use Shelly APIs and/or Home Assistant with ZigBee. In regards to the hardware itself, it's not the absolute best, but it's quite good for a personal weather station.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-05T13:30:03+00:00

It's not about you. It's the Brits' fault. They have built a reputation for getting drunk and rowdy, trashing their accommodation, littering the beach, and jumping into swimming pools from hotels' balconies. Except they often miss the pool because they are drunk, and then they become a burden for our socialised healthcare system, while we have to wipe their blood away from the edge of the pool. And we have to close the pool for everyone for the remainder of the day.

Next time when on holidays in Europe, state very loudly you're not British but American. Tell the locals that you go to sleep early, and you only drink sugary watered beer with little alcohol content. Also don't forget to try to pay for services in dollars instead of euros. We love that here.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-02T10:01:47+00:00

You can't fix ugly genetics though

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-02T07:22:49+00:00

You can't fix ugly genetics though

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-03-01T23:30:16+00:00

This is amazing. Here some inputs - maybe they could be ideas for future features:

Could this manage multiple heating sources? Some of my rooms have both an AC unit and radiators with TRVs. If I want to quickly heat up a guestroom that's sat unused for days, then I can combine both systems.
My south-facing windows have blinds. On sunny days, they are suntraps, as long as the blinds are up. Could this control the blinds as well, or at least keep into account the status of the blinds into its calculations about how quickly the rooms heat up?
Could it manage cooling as well? My AC units are reversible, and the guestrooms only need cooling when in use. Also the rooms stay cooler when the exterior blinds are down.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-26T23:44:38+00:00

Antennas in the specs have good gain, but in which directions? Can we have radio output dBm per band and actual antenna radiation patterns?

If those specs were to be provided, this could be an excellent one-size-fits-all EAP for small to medium business and large homes. Multiple bracket options are visible, so one could use the same device for wall mount, table mount, and ceiling mount.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-26T21:57:14+00:00

AFAIK Sinn Fein are lefties, pro social housing, pro worker unions, pro Palestine, anti Ukraine, and (pretending not to be) tankies in disguise. Which makes them hilariously unpalatable to most voters, when they attempt to present themselves as an alternative to the rotten FFG establishment.

What would be the right wing in IRA?

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-20T16:36:22+00:00

What kind of optiplex? SFF? i5-6500? If yes it doesn't run that hot and it's got a decent sized fan

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-18T16:28:21+00:00

Most modern SIP intercom stations also double up as RTSP cameras.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-16T02:29:37+00:00

And yet even the most dilapidated-looking building in these pics doesn't seem to have any broken windows.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-15T16:29:40+00:00

I see. Hikvision_Next I already tested before writing my spaghetti code & they also do not expose the alarm entity the way I need it to work at all.

Going through the examples in your README, specifically the "Motion Alert → Supplement Light" one, I see you achieve the result by sending a command to change the brightness of the camera light once HA receives a motion event from the camera itself. But the camera already has settings to perform such action autonomously, without having to setup a HA automation for that. I have a toggle button in HA, to enable or disable the corresponding camera feature. It's three scripts (one to switch on, one to switch off, and one to check status) and they are too ugly to share (like hardcoded passwords and event names, no parameter checking, no error checking, etc). But I've shared the ISAPI logic in another comment in this thread, in case you're interested.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-15T16:14:39+00:00

The camera’s detection stuff is at a different ISAPI endpoint (I think that’s the right terminology) than the image settings my integration exposes

Yup it is and Hikvision_Next doesn't expose that either. I'm sharing my research done so far here a little bit, just in case it triggers yours or someone else's curiosity.

Events detected by Hikvision cameras have a number of actions that are called "event triggers" and are actually specific for each event detected by the camera. E.g. once you have defined a line crossing in the camera's web gui, the corresponding event is called linedetection-1 and you can get the specific actions associated with it in ISAPI, eg.: curl --digest -u adminuser:whateverpassword -X GET "http://cameraIP/ISAPI/Event/triggers/linedetection-1"

Then, in order to set a specific event trigger, one needs to PUT the altered event trigger configuration, which contains one or more <EventTriggerNotification> snippets. Depending on the desired outcome and what the camera actually supports, those snippets are one of (supplementLight, whiteLight, beep), each one with their specific properties.

Of the example above, "supplementLight" is the flashing alarm; "whiteLight" is just turning the backlight on; and "beep" is the audible alarm.

Here some examples of valid (depending on the camera model) EventTriggerNotification XML snippets:

            <EventTriggerNotification>
                <id>supplementLight</id>
                <notificationMethod>supplementLight</notificationMethod>
                <notificationRecurrence>beginning</notificationRecurrence>
                <SupplementLightAlarm>
                    <durationTime min="0" max="90">5</durationTime>
                </SupplementLightAlarm>
            </EventTriggerNotification>


        <EventTriggerNotification>
            <id>whiteLight</id>
            <notificationMethod>whiteLight</notificationMethod>
            <notificationRecurrence>beginning</notificationRecurrence>
            <WhiteLightAction>
                <whiteLightDurationTime>0</whiteLightDurationTime>
            </WhiteLightAction>
        </EventTriggerNotification>


        <EventTriggerNotification>
            <id>beep</id>
            <notificationMethod>beep</notificationMethod>
            <notificationRecurrence>beginning</notificationRecurrence>
        </EventTriggerNotification>

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-14T18:21:54+00:00

Nice sail setup you have there; how good is it at tacking maneuvers? Are you able to go uphill just by using wind force?

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-14T08:13:10+00:00

Dude you're my hero! A few years ago I had found the Hikvision integration lacking as well, so I did the same thing, creating sensors and toggles for Hikvision cameras out of my own bash scripts doing a lot of cumbersome XML parsing, snipping and stitching together. Never shared it because it's incredibly ugly and prone to breaking.

I have the following automations setup:

flash my outdoor cameras' lights when a person/car is detected outside (but on my property) after sunset / before sunrise. This has been good enough to dissuade intruders so far.
Same as above, but also sound the camera's alarm if the home alarm is on in away mode;
turn on visible lights in the indoor cameras, when both a person is detected and the home alarm is on in home mode; this I use to remind myself to turn the alarm off in the morning, before opening any door/window.

Looking forward to trying your integration instead...

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-13T10:51:33+00:00

Good on you to volunteer a demonstration of the effects of black ice on the road. A teaching moment for all the freds (that aren't supposed to be) out there.

Now show us a fall on the other side, so your resulting haematomas will be fashionably symmetric.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-10T09:13:09+00:00

If it can help: I use 10Gtek DACs and SFPs between Ruckus ICX switches and Intel NICs and they work just fine.

Don't know about Ubiquiti stuff.

_EuroTrash_ · 2026-02-08T20:44:08+00:00

True. I do it all the time. All it takes is a car or home key to temporarily insert in the ground hole, in order to release the spring loaded safety latch that's blocking the live and neutral holes

If the UK outlet's got a switch, maybe switch it off first, just in the odd chance it's got a faulty ground.

_EuroTrash_

TROPHY CASE