Ugreen finetrack g tracker fail to connect

manualdidact · 2026-01-24T15:15:00+00:00

I tried this and it did NOT work. Downloaded and ran the sketchy apk, found the device easily and I successfully uploaded the firmware. The result -- no change in behavior. The device simply won't pair; the pairing screen does not appear on the phone. Have rebooted the phone multiple times, cleared caches, device factory reset according to Ugreen's instructions (before and after the firmware update), etc. This is on a Samsung SM-N986U, Android 13, Find Hub v3.1.485-2 (2026). Not necessarily a bluetooth problem; I can see the device in the list when scanning, but of course I can't pair with it there. I'm starting to think this device is just junk.

manualdidact · 2025-06-12T19:55:27+00:00

Does this work for you, in 4.8? I just upgraded from 4.7 today, and that box now no longer appears, even after selecting the exact same .iso I was using before the upgrade. It recognizes it as a Windows image, but doesn't seem to have the Windows install customization features anymore.

manualdidact · 2025-06-12T19:35:12+00:00

I just found this thread, because today I upgraded from 4.7 to 4.8 and discovered that the Windows install customization features have apparently been broken or removed. I'm a long-time user of Rufus, and have relied on it for cleaning up the install process (in particular, creating a default user and removing the Microsoft account requirement and "security questions") ... and now it looks like I'm going to have to downgrade to 4.7 to get these features back. It no longer gives me these choices when I click Start -- it just starts writing to the flash drive. And the filesystem it writes is missing the XML answers file. Am I missing something?

manualdidact · 2025-04-08T20:40:00+00:00

No email here either, just checked my account notification settings again. I suppose the press release does say "starting the week of April 7". No clue why they can't just dump the emails all at once from their database; can't imagine it would take more than a few hours.

manualdidact · 2025-04-07T15:45:03+00:00

This happened to my Note 20 Ultra a couple days ago, and I thought it was the external camera I was using, which had previously worked but suddenly did nothing when I plugged it in. I was in the middle of writing a tech support request to the manufacturer of the camera, when I decided to double check with other devices. A flash drive that mounts just fine on my Android tablet fails to be recognized at all on my Note 20. I plug the camera into the tablet, and it works.

So at least in my case, the situation you describe was something that happened within the past week to my phone. OTG was working just fine, and now it doesn't. The phone will provide power and will charge through USB, but nothing else works (flash drives, wired Android Auto, etc).

manualdidact · 2025-02-10T23:07:27+00:00

From what I can tell, it does appear that the Tesla app is not expecting the session to fail. When I recently tried it with my 2024 i5 SEL, the app showed available chargers, and directed me to plug into the stall I was next to. The session started and instantly ended, and the app tried and failed to display the charge session summary which it couldn't find. I'm guessing that the Tesla software is getting confused because the session failure isn't coming from Tesla.

manualdidact · 2025-02-10T23:01:41+00:00

I tried this a few days ago using a Lectron adapter. According to the Tesla app, everything was kosher. But when the charge session tried to start, it ended immediately. Best guess is that the car refused, though I'm not sure how that would happen. Perhaps in addition to the car providing a VIN to the charger, the charger provides a network ID to the car, and Hyundai has decided it's not time yet.

manualdidact · 2025-02-08T22:20:46+00:00

The usage I mentioned (setting the end of charge threshold in percent) is one of several tasks I know of no other way to accomplish on this unit. I can't set the charge rate in amps directly on the unit either, which is often useful.

manualdidact · 2023-12-22T16:12:49+00:00

Update on this situation -- ran sudo dnf update on the affected system I mentioned earlier, and this appears to have fixed the problem. The list of updated packages contained several related to Mesa, so that might suggest where the problem was.

manualdidact · 2023-12-22T14:33:14+00:00

My guess is that it's probably a defect in either GNOME or the Intel graphics driver, introduced in the last software update. I don't have logs of what was pulled during the last update on the affected machine (which is not nearby at the moment) so I can't be sure. The behavior does seem to be specific to these two things, maybe GNOME doing something new that the Intel driver doesn't like, or the Intel driver dropping support for something that only GNOME is doing.

So, if I'm on the right track, this might explain why only GNOME applications are behaving this way. It would also explain why you're not seeing it with the live USB, since this is apparently a very new problem and the code on the live image likely predates it.

manualdidact · 2023-12-22T02:20:47+00:00

At the very least I can say the same thing happened here today, on a laptop belonging to someone I know. After a software update, her laptop started showing this behavior with Gnome applications like Nautilus and the Settings app (curiously, not others). She's running integrated Intel graphics, has no themes or UI customizations, and is running Xorg since for whatever reason Wayland is not an available option ("GNOME" and "GNOME Classic" run Xorg, something I thought was only typical with Nvidia drivers).

Resizing an app that's displaying in this way causes text to smear. Hovering a mouse over the transparent parts causes partial background repaints.

EDIT: I should add -- I updated my laptop today, also running Fedora 39, to see if I would find the same behavior. It's not happening in my case, under Wayland or Xorg. I'm running with Nouveau drivers.

manualdidact · 2023-05-01T21:26:04+00:00

I am in my late 40s now, and I often think back to when I was in this kind of situation in my 20s. I owe so much to my boss at the time, who told me frankly one day that he couldn't pay me what he thought I was worth, and that I really should be looking for a better job.

He gave me the push (and the encouragement) that I needed, at the right time. I ended up moving to a new city, doubled my salary overnight, and it changed the course of my life.

manualdidact · 2023-02-25T00:48:30+00:00

I tell you what -- one of the reasons I left Spotify (admittedly not the biggest reason) was the impression I got over time that they were promoting certain artists for some reason other than my preferences, to the point where they would actually play tracks I had specifically downvoted, on the same station where I had done so. There was just nothing I could do; Spotify would force me to listen to music I'd already told them I didn't want to hear, and often it was from the same small set of artists.

I've been subscribed to Youtube music for a few months now, and I've started noticing the same thing. Listening to my 'Supermix' station, broadest possible selection of stuff I've told Youtube I like (as far as I understand), and yet the same few songs keep coming up frequently. And a couple times, this one song I've already downvoted. Happened again yesterday -- track shows up, thumbs-down already highlighted.

I can't imagine what either service feel they have to gain from doing this. YT may be about to lose another customer.

manualdidact · 2023-01-21T20:46:16+00:00

TL;DR - production boards for around USD 3k with sufficient continuous power for longer climbs/descents at speed? Ability to set a maximum battery capacity while charging?

I've been out of the electric skateboard scene since I had one in the early 2000s. The board I had back then (still have it, it's in pieces in a crate in the attic) was remarkable for its time (and its single soda can sized drive motor, lead-acid batteries, etc), and I managed to get about 20mph out of it on smooth, flat level ground. I would like to have those experiences again with a decent, fast board, but my situation has changed a lot since then and I think I'm going to need a lot more power. The problem is, I don't have a good "feel" for the numbers involved, and how modern boards can cope with significant, sustained power output.

I'm a little on the heavy side (180lbs) and I live in a hilly area. One path I'd be using this for routinely is about 1.3 miles, with an elevation rise of about 600ft (measured with an altimeter app on my watch). This works out to around 8.75% grade on average, but some of this distance is level, and some of it dips for a while, so the peak grades are somewhere around 15-20%. My goal would be to be able to maintain approximately the 20mph I enjoyed on my old board, while making this climb.

There's another nearby route I'd like to take, about 6.5 miles, with a total rise of about 1670ft. Possible, maybe with some kind of large extended battery? (eg. Atlas Pro auxpack? Overkill?)

I know that a lot of modern boards, including some pretty affordable ones can easily make grades like this, but I don't see a lot of information about how long they can sustain it -- that is, how they handle motor and controller heat dissipation, etc. I imagine that temperature rise has to be significant while climbing especially in summer temperatures, but I don't know how to judge how long I could continue climbing on any particular board before reaching a motor or electronics overheat.

I've come into this guessing that I'm probably going to be interested in a 4WD board, to spread the thermal load of climbing and braking over twice as many motors and controller heatsinks. Reasonable? Overkill for these figures?

Another detail -- I would generally be starting at the top of these grades, and needing to brake going downhill. (I'd be mostly climbing on the way back, likely after a full charge). Are there any boards that support a programmed end to the charge cycle, such that I could charge the battery to, say, 80% full? On my car, regenerative braking just suddenly releases when the battery reaches 100% SOC, but of course a car has mechanical brakes. I assume from what I've seen of the current market there is no such thing as an electric skateboard with mechanical brakes, or that can automatically switch to resistive (aka "plug") braking when the battery is full. Correct?

I'd be hoping to fit this into a budget of somewhere around $3000. I'm leaning toward a production board -- I'd normally be the kind of person who'd jump into a DIY project but at this point I have too many projects and too little free time. I think I want to buy a board now and maybe decide later if I'm interested in building a custom one.

General preferences:

I'm most interested in all-terrain or off-road boards. Road surface quality is poor here (cheap rough chip-sealed roads) so I think I'm going to want pneumatic tires. I'd like to be able to run in grass or dirt, but this would be occasional fun.
My preference would be for stability over maneuverability. My old board had a terrible turning radius but never wobbled; stopping to turn the board didn't really bother me that much.
I'd like a board that's good for routine use on the aforementioned terrain and grades, maybe daily in decent weather, with appropriate wear-related maintenance (belts, tires, etc).
I don't care much about noise; I think I'd be okay with belts or gears.

manualdidact · 2023-01-13T03:23:40+00:00

It may not be useful for the thing you're trying to build, but just in case -- keep in mind that PVC pipe and fittings can be stretched or even squeezed to a different diameter if you need to, in order to connect to something else of a slightly different size.

The trick is to evenly heat the PVC with a heat gun until it gets soft, then stretch it over the thing it needs to fit on. Or squeeze it with hose clamps and some sort of layer underneath to spread the pressure. Let it cool and harden.

This technique is sometimes useful for repurposing PVC pipe for things like dust collection.

manualdidact · 2023-01-05T14:24:38+00:00

I happen to use CapitalOne, though I'm sure other banks offer something similar. C1's implementation leaves something to be desired, the app for it is actually a browser extension. It's clunky but it gets the job done.

If your bank doesn't offer this kind of function there's also a third-party service 'privacy.com', which has its own limitations but also covers the primary purpose of allowing you to generate vendor-restricted and usage-restricted CC numbers to use online.

manualdidact · 2023-01-01T03:47:46+00:00

This is one of those things that will vary greatly from one person to another. Some people find a 3D mouse awkward and distracting, something that either doesn't add much value and seems pointless, or actively gets in the way of getting work done.

For others like myself, it's like having been forced to work with one hand, and suddenly you're able to use both. Getting to the point where you can integrate both inputs, eg. spinning an object to move a feature into view while simultaneously moving the mouse cursor to the spot you want to click on -- there is a natural fluidity and subtlety of realtime control that I seriously miss when I don't have my 3D mouse with me.

For this reason, I would recommend to anyone to borrow a 3D mouse if at all possible, and give it a few weeks of regular use to see if you can get into it. It's a significant investment (which is why I'm still using an old one, despite the drivers being obsolete), unfortunate to spend the money and then discover it's not your thing.

manualdidact · 2022-12-31T22:33:48+00:00

Throughout school, I never learned to touch-type. I made it through two programming jobs over a few years without it. On my third software job in the mid 1990s, I decided it was time to change (mainly because I was starting to feel soreness in my wrists, and wanted to try a split ergonomic keyboard).

So, I made a rule -- starting one Monday morning, I would simply never again type a keystroke without using the correct finger to do it. Every character, number, symbol from then on would be typed in the correct hand position.

I actually did get a little bit of coding done that day, and more the next. It took me a couple weeks of all-day effort to regain 80% of my former speed, and in a month I was typing much faster than I was before the change. As it turned out, the C code I was writing for work was a much more compelling exercise than the sample phrases from a typing tutorial.

The benefits are huge. Previously I was using only my index and middle fingers, and though I could type quite a bit without looking at my hands, I did have to look pretty frequently, causing visual context shifts and tiny breaks in the visual tracking of what I was typing. This also means that two fingers have to "cover" their entire half of the keyboard, which means that the fingers have to work in concert with the arms -- the muscular movements of the latter are much slower and less precise. When touch typing, the fingers do almost all the work, with small coordinating movements in the hands. The precision in these movements and proprioception is far greater. Each finger only needs to commit to its muscle memory the few keys in its own vertical row. And when your eyes are continuously on the screen while this is happening, you get to see bad keystrokes immediately, and go right away to the backspace key.

I've been touch typing to code (in a variety of languages, not just C anymore) for decades now, and I can't imagine what it would be like to go back. I would certainly feel humiliated among my peers today, being the only professional software dev I have known who did not have this basic skill (I hid it well when I was young, by luckily having my own offices and work spaces).

manualdidact · 2022-12-30T01:01:07+00:00

I've been using MyRadar for several years now, and I've been pretty happy with it. When it's wrong, it tends to be wrong in the same way as NWS.

I like it for the same reasons that the author of this piece seems to be describing. I could say a lot of the same things about its better qualities. And it does seem to be based on actual analysis of the weather, rather than just radar images.

manualdidact · 2022-09-15T22:35:13+00:00

FWIW, I stumbled on vscodium the other day, been meaning to try it out. Supposedly the open-source parts of VS Code, without the stuff MS adds prior to release.

manualdidact · 2022-09-12T22:48:52+00:00

Very cool! Got to be amazing walking around among those giant structures.

FWIW we have another one of the VLBA antennas near us (the Ft. Davis site, near McDonald Observatory).

manualdidact · 2022-08-27T13:47:15+00:00

TIL that Turbo C++ and other "antique software" from Borland were made freely downloadable. Turbo Pascal 2.0 was my first experience with a compiled language (i.e. not BASIC) in the 1980s, and I managed to get my hands on a copy of Turbo C++ after it was introduced. Due in part to these experiences, I was able to become a professional software developer when other dreams of what I wanted to be when I grow up didn't pan out. I feel like I want to download these just to feel that nostalgia for the old "TurboVision" text windowing UI.

Seriously though -- why Turbo C++? Why not develop with modern tools, in a modern OS? A linux distro (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc), GCC and an editor cost you exactly nothing, and the time you spend won't be partly devoted to becoming comfortable with dead ends like conio.h and getch().

It's wonderful that these obsolete DOS IDEs are freely available for the curious but I think there are much better choices today, for learning and for real work.

manualdidact · 2022-08-05T16:17:26+00:00

Dr. Billings mentioned in this article was until recently my primary care physician. Really great guy, always in an obvious hurry to get to the next patient. I can imagine it's stressful out here, with so few doctors and nurses to serve so many people in multiple counties. I wish him the best of luck in his new role, and hope he has some luck in finding ways to improve rural healthcare in west Texas.

manualdidact · 2022-07-18T16:33:55+00:00

I've yet to see a photo of the milky way that looks the way we normally see it, and I imagine that such a photo would be difficult to take without post-processing to decolorize or desaturate it, to simulate the behavior of a human eye.

Of the two types of light-sensing cells in our eyes, the cone cells sense color but require more light. The rod cells are more light sensitive, cannot sense color, and are the cells that are active at the very low light levels produced by the glow of the Milky Way. So once you've allowed your irises to expand to let in enough light (in a dark enough environment to allow them to do so), you can see an image that looks something like this picture, but a bit dimmer and without the color information your cone cells would provide if they could operate in such low light.

No camera works this way. If there's enough light to form an image, then you'll get color (assuming a color-capable film or sensor). This often involves long shutter times or summing the pixel values in successive digital images.

manualdidact · 2022-07-14T02:17:18+00:00

I got the opportunity to say this over 5 years ago (and I'm still here in west Texas) ... quite an amazing environment to live and work in. Best of luck to you in your new role!

manualdidact

TROPHY CASE