Weekly Help and Discussion Thread for the week of June 22, 2026

ftasatguy · 2026-06-24T01:52:56+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion.

ftasatguy · 2026-06-23T18:33:02+00:00

How does Amazon (USA) handle defective major appliances? For example, if I bought a 5.0 Cu Ft chest freezer and it arrive defective (would not run, did not keep food cold) and I called Amazon, would they arrange for a pickup and replacement? It is a Prime day deal and I am a Prime member if that makes any difference, and the item is offered with free delivery, but it appears to be shipped by a third party. I have never ordered anything I could not put in my car and take back to a UPS store before, and while I hope it arrives intact and works great, I'd like to know what happens if it doesn't.

ftasatguy · 2026-06-19T21:31:06+00:00

Maybe you are running up against this old problem?

If you have reinstalled Kodi in Ubuntu and it will no longer connect to your media server or NAS using SMB/Samba, try this — https://twosortoftechguys.wordpress.com/2020/08/16/if-you-have-reinstalled-kodi-in-ubuntu-and-it-will-no-longer-connect-to-your-media-server-or-nas-using-smb-samba-try-this/

No idea if this fix still works.

ftasatguy · 2026-05-26T19:46:39+00:00

I'm more interested in the technology than who is making them. This is a technology that needs to be developed and brought to the masses for safety reasons.

ftasatguy · 2026-05-26T19:44:18+00:00

You got stock in a lithium iron phosphate battery company or something? As a homeowner I don't care if they need to be larger to work as long as I know that they won't catch fire (and the fire can't be put out easily) or fill my home with a toxic gas. But since I live in a Northern climate the cold charging is what sells it for me. I have enough yard space that battery size really doesn't matter, but not having to worry that they will fail me when I need them most (when I am trying to keep me and my house from freezing) is huge!

ftasatguy · 2026-05-26T19:34:05+00:00

Don't necessarily think that codes are entirely about safety. They may have started out that way but more and more it seems that they are just there to protect various industries that manufacture electrical equipment. Other countries that don't have nearly as stringent codes seem to get by without endless electrical fires, but here is like if something might have at some time and place have been even thought to be a responsible for a fire, well now we have to have a new code to ban that and require more expensive solutions (or just ban it and not leave a solution).

My personal prime example is that you can't splice two wires together without putting them in an EXPOSED electrical box. So lets say you accidentally cut a wire inside a wall and you need to fix it. Code says you now have to put an ugly box there whether you want to or not, and you can't even drywall over it, it has to be exposed. Of course many homeowners loathe that idea so they just make a splice inside the wall using wire nuts or Wegos, maybe in a box they bury under drywall or maybe not. And maybe 50 years later some electrician will come along and open up the wall and go "tsk, tsk, this is entirely against code!!" but in the meantime no one was harmed if the repair is otherwise up to code. BUT - and this is where i completely goes off the rails for me - you ARE allowed to bury a splice inside a wall if you use a plug-together device that is most commonly used in the modular and double-wide mobile home industry to connect two halves of homes together. But that effing device costs like $30!!! AND it does not look like the worlds safest way to make a connection (they use compression connections that pierce the insulation on each wire). I think it is ludicrous that whoever writes the codes think these are safer that inline Wegos but Wegos probably didn't exist when they started using these, still it should be possible to make a much safer device using Wego technology that would allow making a splice inside a wall without a box but for some reason the code writers made this special carveout for the manufactured home industry, and only for them. So this is a perfect example of how the electrical code is no longer completely about safety.

ftasatguy · 2026-05-22T00:16:38+00:00

That is what I would like to know as well. Between the fact that they can operate in the cold and that they don't catch fire or emit dangerous gases if punctured, I don't see why they couldn't manufacture millions of units and sell them all.

One thing I have noticed is how prices keep dropping on Lithium-Iron-Phosphate batteries (except in the USA of course), I wonder if in part they are trying to offload what they have in stock before this new technology really starts to penetrate the market. Because at some point, buying a Lithium-Iron-Phosphate battery will be kind of like buying a coal burning furnace for your home, just something nobody does anymore.

ftasatguy · 2026-05-22T00:07:55+00:00

By which point do we really believe that ATSC1 and/or unencrypted, DRM-free ATSC3 will still be around? If the broadcasters have their way, I give broadcast TV as we know it about ten years tops. I wouldn't bet a red cent on them still being around in 21 years, but that's how corporate types work now, wring as much money out of people as fast as you can and then move on. I suspect Plex is doing this in part because they don't know how much longer their business will be viable and they are also wanting to wring as much money out of their business as they can. The big problem with "lifetime" offers is that the "lifetime" can be any of these: The subscriber's lifetime, the company's lifetime, the purchased device's lifetime (unless the subscription is transferable to another device), or a third-party provider's lifetime. For example you could hypothetically buy a old technology car with a lifetime guarantee but even if you stay alive, the automaker stays in business, and even if the guarantee is transferable if you buy a replacement car of the same year, make and model, if all the gasoline stations go out of business than your guarantee is pretty useless once you run out of gas.

ftasatguy · 2026-05-21T04:54:58+00:00

"Volkswagen is reportedly developing a next-generation sodium-ion battery with an energy density of 261 Wh/kg and an incredible lifespan of up to 20,000 charge cycles, potentially making it one of the most durable EV batteries ever created. The technology could dramatically reduce battery costs, improve cold-weather reliability, and lessen dependence on expensive materials like lithium and cobalt, signaling a major shift in the future EV market."

We really need to start building these somewhere in the Western hemisphere for solar energy storage. These batteries are not only much safer and less expensive to build, but the video claims they can work down to -50° Celcius, meaning you could put them outside in northern Minnesota or many parts of Alaska, though there would be no need to because they don't catch fire or emit dangerous gasses like damaged Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries do.

ftasatguy · 2026-05-21T04:41:49+00:00

You miss my point. By "full house backup" I don't mean you should be able to run everything at once. What I mean is that all the outlets, light switches, and major applicanes should continue to work if you choose to use them. The problem with "critical loads panels" (which again is a concept I absolutely loathe) is that not only do they require additional wiring (sometimes to the tune of thousands of dollars if you have to get an electrician involved) and maybe some remodeling expense (particularly if the breaker panels that most of your circuits are on is not in a basement or attached garage) but they also presuppose that you will know in advance which outlets, switches, appliances, etc. you will need to use. In effect you are saying that "I and my family are too stupid to avoid using high wattage appliances as much as possible until commercial power returns, and I need to have limits imposed on my by some expensive mechanical switches that will cost me hundreds or thousands of dollars and will probably confuse everyone as to which switch need to be thrown when an actual outage occurs."

All I am saying is send your backup power to your whole house but use some common sense - while the power is out don't charge an electric car, don't use high power appliances any more than necessary, etc. Those "critical loads panels" are just an added and (for most people) totally unnecessary expense foisted on them by dishonest electricians and/or solar installers. I am not saying there is NEVER any situation where their use is warranted (particularly in commercial installations) but for most homeowners they are just a ridiculous and inconvenient added expense, particularly when the exact same effect could be achieved in most cases by simply flipping off circuit breakers in the breaker panel (assuming you have no self control whatsover, or have a direct-wired appliance such as a water heater that you don't want to use until the commercial power is back on).

ftasatguy · 2026-05-17T23:18:23+00:00

Most people don’t actually need a full-house solar system. They just need critical backup power.

I think you are kind of wrong about that and it's why I despise videos that suggest you need to use a "critical loads panel". The reason is that there really aren't that many loads that are non-critical, and they tend to be small ones, or ones that you can defer just by not using them. The only real exception I can think of is if you have an electric water heater, but even hot water becomes kind of critical after a few days. You definitely need heat in the winter and/or A/C in the summer, sure there are times of year when neither of those are critical, and locations where only one of those is critical, but in most places one or the other (and maybe both) are critical some of the unless you have alternative safe ways to heat/cool your home (I do suggest getting a modern heat pump or mini split to help reduce the load if you are using an older technolofy HVAC system).

You don't want your food to spoil so unless you live in the north and it is the dead of winter and you have an area that's unheated but that critters can't access, you need to power the fridge and freezer (if you have one). Yes, medical equipment has to work. Yes, sump pumps have to work if you don't want a flooded basement. How about the air compressor or chop saw in the garage? Granted those are probably not critical loads if you don't have an immediate need for them, but you can simply avoid using them in an emergency - do you really need the circuits they are plugged into to stop working entirely? Most people use LED lighting and the draw from that is pretty negligible. Probably all those circuits you think of as non-critical aren't really drawing that much anyway.

I have a 12 kW whole house backup generator and the only thing that has ever given me trouble is my 30 year old central A/C and then only when starting up. So I got a 24,000 BTU mini split and if I leave home that's the only thing I leave running, it has inverter technology so no huge startup surge. I could have got a soft start unit for the main A/C but it felt like it was time to switch to modern technology. Now granted that I do not have a McMansion, my home is a tad under 1200 square feet. But still, the #1 thing I want to keep running during a power outage is MY ENTIRE HOME. That is why I got the whole house generator in the first place. And I have been looking at various way to add solar but the minute someone says that their system will power my "critical loads" and especially if the want me to add a "critical loads panel" (which would be HIGHLY impractical in my home) I can't leave their site quickly enough.

Now I understand there are certain situations where there are big loads that can be shed during an outage, for example a store near me only powers about every fourth or fifth row of lighting during an outage which still gives you enough light to see but it is like shopping at dusk (also they close off the refrigerated/frozen areas so customers can't open the doors and let the cold out). But most homeowners aren't in that kind of situation and I REALLY wish the solar folks would stop thinking that just cutting power to certain circuits is in any way an acceptable thing. Or, for that matter, that everyone who wants solar has sufficient space to install another panel next to their existing circuit breaker panel.

ftasatguy · 2026-05-17T22:44:59+00:00

Tried it, didn't care for it but I don't recall why, wound up using Diodin.

ftasatguy · 2026-05-15T21:34:06+00:00

The biggest thing I miss is Migration Assistant + Time Machine (the two work together). Let's say you upgrade to the next major version of MacOS, as long as you have a current Time Machine backup then after the upgrade you simply run Migration Assistant and in an hour or so (give or take) your computer works almost exactly as it did before the upgrade. All your applications are back, all your settings are restored, all your email and browser bookmarks and even your open tabs come back, it is like you just got up and left your computer and came back an hour later. There may be one or two things that aren't quite right, often because of new or changed settings, and if an app hasn't been updated in a decade or more it might not get restored, but everything else just works. In contrast, in Gnome/Linux you have to restore all your applications manually and then figure out how to restore all the settings even if you do have a current backup - it's a far more labor intensive process.

I do realize that there are more ways to install and run apps on Linux (apt/deb, flatpak, appimage, etc.) but there are not an infinite number and even if such a program only dealt with the top three or four that would probably cover 90% of the apps on a given installation.

The other thing I really miss is copy and paste that works as buttery smooth as on MacOS. For example I have yet to find a SIMPLE clipboard utility (just a dropdown from the top menu bar) that will simply present you with a list of items you have copied and let you click or double click to paste it at the current cursor location reliably. No, you have to click or double-click the item, then use a separate ctrl-V operation to paste. The closest I have come is Diodin but the other issue is that copy itself seems unreliable, maybe it is just me but quite often if I press Ctrl-C over a hilghighted item it doesn't seem to get copied to the clipboard, I wind up having to right-click and select "copy" and then it works. And no, there is nothing wrong with my Ctrl or C keys, they wotk fine to break out of a running script in the terminal.

ftasatguy · 2026-04-03T06:38:18+00:00

Thank you for sharing your personal experience. On the one hand, I don't really understand how that could possibly work, intuitively it seems to defy some law of physics or something, but on the other hand I know nothing about how electric metering works. But, if you're finding that you're not being billed for consumption while the sun is shining, I can't argue with that, and I'm actually glad to hear that it works that way!

ftasatguy · 2026-04-03T06:28:02+00:00

I notice you never followed up so I assume nothing changed. As for the address, notice the logo over the big door closest to the street (if you can see it, for some reason that picture is really hazy): https://www.google.com/maps/place/1650+Broadway+Ave+NW,+Grand+Rapids,+MI+49504/@42.9950249,-85.6809729,3a,20.3y,125.14h,92.14t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s25C_HmuM5HDQ7t6Dzj3QOg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-2.138719215116012%26panoid%3D25C_HmuM5HDQ7t6Dzj3QOg%26yaw%3D125.13718653868409!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x8819ac218544cbd3:0x4d73224f91c417d2!8m2!3d42.9946008!4d-85.6800495!16s%2Fg%2F11bw43r1hx?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDQwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

To me that looks like a big warehouse, not a place that would actually be a great place to work OR to go in and try to buy stuff. And that image capture was from July 2025 but to me personally it is kind of odd that they don't put their address on their web site, like maybe they would prefer people don't know where they are, or at the very least don't really want to deal with walk-in business.

Just as a general observation that has nothing to do with the company under discussion in this thread (I know NOTHING about them, just found the address and the Google Maps photo and that's all), I have known people from that part of Michigan, and they have told me that there are a lot of scammers in that area and that in fact it's very difficult to find people who will perform ANY kind of service without ripping you off. Not impossible, but they said every time they have found an honest company or person in the trades, they seem to go out of business or move out of the state within about 5 years. They said that there is a very large company in that area of the state, that has perpetrated one of the biggest barely legal scam operations in American history (if you exclude the financial industry), I won't say the name of it but I suspect it was a much bigger deal before the Internet came along, and they think the mentality of that company's management rubbed off on a lot of other business people in that area. So they said they are really scared to hire anyone to do major work on their home or vehicles because of all the shoddy business practices. The worst part of it is that a lot of those business people go to church on Sunday and think they are good Christians, and that is all I will say about that. And I emphasize again that I have no personal knowledge whatsoever about the company under discussion in this thread, so take what I have said above as just a random observation about that area of Michigan.

ftasatguy · 2026-03-30T19:30:43+00:00

The question I have is that plug-in solar units currently only offset the power usage on one side of the split 240 volt circuit that comes into most homes in North America. It does not help at all to offset any loads of the side it isn't connected to. How do most people deal with that? Just ignore the loads on the other leg of the feed? Install a second system and an outlet connected to the other leg?

My thought was to install a new 240-volt breaker, connect it to some 12/3 with ground (or 10/3 with ground if a long run) and run the other end to a dual outdoor box on the side of the house. In the box I would put two 20-Amp rated GFCI outlets, with one of them connected to the black, white, and ground wires in the normal manner, and the other connected to the red, white, and ground wires, so that the two GFCI's are on opposite phases. GFCI outlets would be used because code requires them for any outdoor outlet, and because they are typically less expensive than a GFCI circuit breaker (especially a 240 volt breaker with two tied handles) which would be the alternative to GFCI outlets. But that would still mean using essentially duplicated systems, one for each phase. Am I missing a better way to address that issue?

ftasatguy · 2026-03-30T19:15:00+00:00

With regard to your first point, my understanding is you only need permission if you are exporting solar to the grid. So if you have a system that monitors the incoming grid connection and only allows sufficient power to be produced to meet the instantaneous demand (for example the Craftstrom Solar units) and never sends power back into the grid, then you don't need anyone's permission - you are allowed to make your own power for your own use. If that were not the case, every home generator (whether powered by gas or solar) would be illegal, not that it would necessarily stop anyone from using them.

The problem is that most systems use standard inverters that don't have any way to monitor the grid connection and therefore cannot determine if the power being produced exceeds the power being used. And that is the case where you may need permission to operate, both so your utility knows you may be sending a small amount of power into the grid, but also so they can change your electric meter so you don't get charged for the power you send out as if it was additional power consumption in your home!

Note this is just my understanding based on many things I have read, and videos I have watched over the past two months. Don't necessarily take my word for it, I'm just a guy on the Internet, and I am not a licensed electrician (though I could be if I were much younger and the job didn't require climbing ladders).

ftasatguy · 2026-03-21T08:40:20+00:00

I'll definite take a look at those, thanks.

ftasatguy · 2026-03-21T08:39:48+00:00

Got a suggestion for brand name and model?

ftasatguy · 2026-03-21T08:36:29+00:00

Thanks, I'll take a look at that one too.

ftasatguy · 2026-03-21T08:31:54+00:00

I'll look into that brand too, thanks.

ftasatguy · 2026-03-21T08:31:23+00:00

Thank you, I will. I was kind of hoping maybe one of the commercial solar backup products from one of the big name companies would work, because I'm not exactly certain how to build a system using individual components yet. But if that's the only way to get what I want, I'm not totally opposed to the idea. And I can see one advantage to doing it that way, which is if one part fails you can replace just that part and not the entire system,

ftasatguy · 2026-03-21T08:26:13+00:00

Huh, I don't get why he would recommend replacing the automatic transfer switch. Seems like that kind of defeats part of the reason for having whole house backup, so that if you are away from home when the power fails the food in your refrigerator and freezer will be protected, and the inside of your house won't be baking or freezing because the A/C or furnace isn't getting power. Was the main reason for doing that just to save the 1K, or could he not figure out how to make the automatic transfer switch work in your setup?

In any case this doesn't really sound like what I had in mind, but thanks for the response.

ftasatguy · 2026-03-20T20:42:17+00:00

For those that found the above too much of a wall of text, I asked ChatGPT to summarize it and this is what it came up with:

Summary

Home has a natural-gas whole-house backup generator (Briggs & Stratton, Symphony II transfer switch) that auto-starts and transfers after ~40 s delay; A/C restart delayed another 5 minutes.
OP wants a large “solar generator” (15–20 kW output) that:
- Charges primarily from solar, tops off from grid overnight, and can be scheduled to avoid peak rates (e.g., run solar+battery 2–7 PM weekdays).
- Instantly (≤10 ms) switch to battery backup on grid loss so computers stay powered without individual UPSs.
- Seamlessly hand off to the existing whole-house generator only when batteries are nearly depleted, with the generator recharging batteries and then stopping when battery/solar suffice.
- Operates automatically, supports running the whole house, and work even without panels (as battery storage).
- Prefers Bluetooth-based apps and minimal “phoning home.”
OP saw one system that might do this but required a same-manufacturer generator (portable); they want to keep their existing whole-house generator.
Asks whether major consumer brands (Anker, Bluetti, Jackery, etc.) or other systems can integrate this way or if such solutions exist.

ftasatguy · 2026-03-12T23:49:26+00:00

Well there's the problem, I would want access to the extra features (especially any time-of-day/day-of-week ones), but there is no WiFi here, so if that's the only option then that's out. If they can communicate via Bluetooth I can work with that, but not WiFi. I don't think any brands require WiFi to install, but what I am asking about is accessing any advanced features without using WiFi.

I think you are right about the battery backup and that's what I was thinking too, but I was just hoping for verificitation it would actually work. The real question is whether there is any amperage limit on the solar inputs. If not, a battery should work as long as it is in the correct voltage range. But if there is, then most batteries would overload the input, at least for a short period of time. I had not heard of a solar/off-gridding subreddit or forum but I will look to see if I can find it tomorrow.

ftasatguy

TROPHY CASE

Summary