98" Television

 

I always wanted a "movie theater" environment. Before I was able to build a movie theater in one part of our lower level, I ran across a good offer for a 98" smart television. I thought it would fit perfectly in our already buildout lower level. When it arrived I was blown away how big it actually was. It took both delivery people to carry it down the stairs. After several days of having the TV setup on the floor, I had a chance to add mounting brackets on the wall and install the proper outlets and connections. Of course, I had to enforce the wall otherwise it would not stay mounted on the wall.

It was not until February that I had enough man power in the house for the Superbowl game to hang the TV. It took two people to lift it and another two to spot the hanging devices behind the TV. The additional Dolby Atmos soundbar gave the setup the finishing touch for the entertainment area.

WYZE cam (another follow up)

Yet another disappointment. The Wyze camera I raved about started spinning out of control. Even after several attempts to connect - it did not. No recording on the SD card either, just happily spinning around and around.
Now what?

TPMS (follow up)

Very much to my dismay the tire pressure readings from the ODBII sensor are way off. Excited as I was at first to see the pressure reading on the monitor I was skeptical. The readings showed the front tires 10 PSI higher than the actual reading was, whereas the rear tires supposedly were under inflated.
After I visited a Ford dealership the guy told me that he reset the light - not. So I went out to purchase a digital tire pressure Gage to double check and the readings confirmed that the tire pressure was normal for the front and the rear tires (hot and cold).
So now what?

TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitor)

The TPM light is blinking and staying on in the dash display indicating that there is either low tire pressure or one of the sensors is malfunctioning. I had the tire pressure checked and it was at the required PSI. My new system has a TPM display but failed to connect to the existing sensors. After some searching on various forums I came across the proper setup for the Torque app to show the tire pressure via the ODBII/EDU connector. Unfortunately I only copied the formulas and forgot to copy who wrote and published it - thank you for sharing this information.

I still have to figure out how to fix the indicator after all attempts to reset the TPM failed so far.

Left Front Tire Pressure (Driver Front) - Uses the vehicle's TPMS to read your tire pressure. GREAT for constant readings and to see how much PSI increase (or possibly decrease if tires get damaged) when driving! Each tire will get its own menu. All four listed below.

PID: 222813
Long Name: Left Front Tire Pressure
Short Name: Tire PSI (LF)
Maximum Value: 70
Unit type: PSI
Equation: (((256*A)+B)/3+22/3)*0.145
OBD Header to use: 726

Right Front Tire Pressure (Passenger Front)
PID: 222814
Long Name: Right Front Tire Pressure
Short Name: Tire PSI (RF)
Maximum Value: 70
Unit type: PSI
Equation: (((256*A)+B)/3+22/3)*0.145
OBD Header to use: 726

Right Rear Tire Pressure (Passenger Rear)
PID: 222815
Long Name: Right Rear Tire Pressure
Short Name: Tire PSI (RR)
Maximum Value: 70
Unit type: PSI
Equation: (((256*A)+B)/3+22/3)*0.145
OBD Header to use: 726

Left Rear Tire Pressure (Driver Rear)
PID: 222816
Long Name: Left Rear Tire Pressure
Short Name: Tire PSI (LR)
Maximum Value: 70
Unit type: PSI
Equation: (((256*A)+B)/3+22/3)*0.145
OBD Header to use: 726

The improved (another follow up)

I had a bit of time, which is rare these days, and tackled the USB port installation. This turned out to be a bit of an undertaking since there was no clear path from the top to the bottom of the dash board. I had to take off the radio enclosure and the switches for the fan and temperature Gage to get the USB cables to the proper location. At the end it did work out.

I also installed the front dash cam, not in the location I wanted it to be but it works as well where it is at the moment. Perhaps at a later date I will move it into the enclosure above the rear view mirror.

The improved (follow up)

To my dismay my existing ODBII connector did not work, besides, it was to bulky anyway. A quick order with Amazon fixed that issue. Now the connection comes up flawlessly on the Torque Pro app (included with the ATOTO system) and shows all the relevant, and not so relevant information.

Other than that the entire system works perfectly. Maps, radio, Pandora, telephone, equalizer, dimming of display, multiple screens to switch to, car information, and a multitude of other goodies which still need to be explored. The GPS system works well. I also added a WiFi hot spot to the car which allows for a flawless internet connection. To round it all up,  a power inverter allows for a laptop or even a battery charger for the power tools to be connected.

I still need to install, or rather extend the USB port which requires some drilling into the existing panel. The plan is to split the USB inside and have a dual USB flush mount in the dash board.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

It has been 90 days and roughly 4,000 miles since I purchased the Ford Transit 150 Cargo Van. I have to write that I'm very happy with the purchase decision. However, since I was not able to finish the build out in the first go around, mainly due to the cold weather, there are some observations I would like to share.

The good

More room - a two sided sword.

On the one side, it allows me to carry a myriad of tools without making several stops during the week to reload or reconfigure the car for specific jobs. Furthermore, it allows for more accessories to be carried which in turn makes jobs easier to complete. On the other side it makes a mess since all of it is organized in bins at the moment and not in designated shelve units. Some sharp turns, sudden stops, or acceleration can cause some of the smaller bins to topple over and the contents is all over the place despite the lit.

The extra room also allows me to transport left overs or trash easier and faster to the designated landfills or dumpsters. Below is an example of carrying about 2,100 pounds of tile plus several bags of other stuff, or a cement Grinder ( a million pounds if you ask me).

Yes it is a mess but it worked. I'm not sure if I will be able to do that after I finish the build out, whenever that is.

The bad

The van, like all the other vans in the same class, only averages 14 miles per gallon. I drive mostly back roads or city traffic which does not help, neither does the weight of the tools. My previous car averaged about 17 miles a gallon which is not that much of a difference, however, with the gas prices going up again it is about a $100 per month increase. Although the van is not that long, the height prohibits to park in most garages, public or private. The car still is easy to maneuver and park, just not inside. 

The ugly

Opening the doors is like a box of chocolate, you never know what falls out first ... It is ugly inside and looks very unorganized. Dust and other debris is all over the floor. I have to clean the dash board every morning before I start the drive due to the dust accumulated on it. Hopefully this state of looks will improve in the near future.

The improved

This heading is not mentioned in the title but I upgraded the "entertainment" system in the car. I know that there are several upgrade videos online, everybody with their own opinion and style, so I will not go into the nitty gritty details and just show what I did to my van's radio upgrade. Should you be adventures and go for a complete build out, not just a work van, visit this site which has the most detailed and well thought out description of how to do it.

While I was at it I added some desperately needed floor mats for the front. 

I ventured out in the infinite world of shopping to find exactly what I wanted in terms of performance. The particular piece I was looking for was an Android system with most of the bells and whistles for the least amount of money. After weeks of research and comparisons I stumbled upon the ATOTO ANDROID IN-CAR ENTERTAINMENT system which addressed all the items I wanted in my dashboard, above all, it had the right price tag namely $179 on Amazon. Adding a new dashboard kit from Metra, wire harness, connectors, and adapters the entire new system was less than $240.

Since my soccer team had a bye week this Saturday I took the time to tackle the install. First I removed the existing top and front panels.

   

Second, I attached the wire harness and connected the cables in the order of ground, power, left and right speakers.

   

I turned the ignition key to turn on the power system and the system came right up - success.

Now came the fiddling with the brackets to align the screen with the panel. The small piece in front of the screen had to be cut so the unit slides to the back where it is fastened to the existing dashboard.

After mounting the side pieces, enlarging the opening of the screen front panel to fit the screen the unit was nicely in place and was working perfectly.

I will eventually write how the system performs in terms of radio, GPS, USB, Bluetooth, and OBDII.

Wyze Cam

Another curiosity purchase resulting from a review and a great price on Black Friday. WYZE Cam.
Their claim is 1080 High Definition Video, 120 degree Wide Angle Lens, High quality Audio, Enhanced Night Vision, 360 Pan Tilt Range, tracking of motion, 3.5mm focal length. F2.3 aperture. 120º wide angle lens. Enhanced 1/2.7″ CMOS sensor. Wyze Cam Pan delivers 1080p HD images with stunning clarity. 15 FPS, 8×DIGITAL ZOOM,1920×1080 RESOLUTION, automatically records a 12-second Event Video when it detects motion or sounds. Turn on push notifications to stay on top of things without having to constantly monitor the app. - and believe or not it is all true.  All of those features for

$29.99

I was amazed at the quality of the video, day and night time, even remotely. Speaking of which, no fiddling with port forwarding etc etc, simply connect to the router and voilà you are there no matter where you are. The playback is equivalent to upscale cameras, select playback and time and there you are.

Highly recommended over other WiFi cameras.

Nigel (one more time)

Alfred was fired due to performance issues.

 After some research I decided to give the "robVac servant" another try and decided on the Neato D7 with all the bells and whistles.

Then there was Black Friday offering coupons, discounts and all that jazz. I managed to wrangle one Neato D7 out of the online store for almost 50% off, still a lot of money but, but, but ...

Setup, again, was a breeze, no surprises there. The big aha moment came after I turned the roboVac on. Contrary to the first Neato bot, were the startup noise was compatible with a jet engine, the D7 in Eco mode was a low humming which brought a smile on my face right away. So far so good. I downloaded the Neato App and it connected to Nigel (notice it has a name now) right away. Contrary to Alfred I was able to setup the cleaning schedule with ease. Then I left him alone in anticipation for the next scheduled cleaning day.

Monday came and went, I forgot about Nigel until I arrived back home. Then my curiosity peeked. I opened up the app to see if things worked out the way I wanted to. Sure enough they did. There was the floor plan with the areas Nigel reached for cleaning, there was the dust bin filled with, well, dust and stuff. The first go around worked well. I was somewhat skeptical due to some of the reviews indicating that this and that did not work - must have been user errors I presume. After emptying the dust bin I decided to just let the program run its course. By the end of the week I had statistics about area cleaned, time taken to do so, and a clean living environment.

One more item I wanted to mention which comes with Nigel is the fact that it interfaces with Alexa, and it actually works right out of the box.

The upgrade 

After picking up an announcement about zone cleaning on Flipboard with the new version of the software I was feverishly looking forward to test that feature. However, annoying things like work prevented me from further testing the "no cleaning zones" or the "zone cleaning" itself. Comments to come soon.

 

Alfred follow up

After endless weeks of getting used to the erratic behavior of  the robotic vacuum cleaner by KOIOS aka Alfred I came to the conclusion that this was definitely a waste of money. Not only did he do the random bouncing around cleaning, but he also took two hours to do it, sometimes more. The last straw was the sudden turning right, after turning right, after turning right and then he stops.
Although, if he cleaned, it was somewhat okay. So, cleaning the dust of the vacuum cleaner and put it to work with some elbow grease.

SONOS

In search of a suitable device as an extension for Lois the infamous sentence exclaimed by Julius Caesar came in mind "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears." (Why? idk just did)

As usual the inquiring advice from the almighty search engine spit out the optimal device to be connected to an existing network to play music from any capable device in the household:

SONOS Play:1

Today I wanted instant gratification. I visited Best Buy to find out what the price was, turns out to be the same as on Amazon - instant gratification.
Setup is a breeze, plug the power in, download the app, follow instructions - 3 minutes later

BOOMING SOUND  

meet (potentially) Alfred

After a long debate with myself and the bank account I decided to hire Alfred. Alfred is a robotic vacuum cleaner by KOIOS. The advertising as well as the description puts many claims forward. One of them is that the noise the robot makes during vacuuming is less than 65dB, the other claims state that the suction is 80% higher than the competition, and boasts an infrared-sensor for evading obstacles. The main factor for me was, of course, the price, $199 on Amazon.
Scheduled delivery was Monday, but it showed up two days early - excellent delivery service. Of course I had to check it out right away although it was past 9 PM.

The package

Expecting an overnight charge like my previous robot vacuum, I positioned the machine (it has to prove itself before it gets a name) in the docking station and started fiddling with the remote control. To my surprise the machine was already fully charged which I discovered after I hit the clean button on the remote and the robot zoomed off. It turns out that the first claim about the noise was completely right, in contrast to the previous one (the machine aka Nigel) this vacuum robot only emitted a low humming sound while scuttling at various speeds throughout the house.

Day 1

I programmed the machine to start at 10 AM although it was Sunday. The predecessor was not allowed to work on the weekend due to the noise.
The robot started right on time under my watchful eyes. First thing I noticed that the machine did not run into objects, instead it stopped short if it was within the infrared-sensor. My second observation was the fact that the vacuum did not get as easily tangled up in the fringes of the carpet. However, the brushes on the right and left side skidded under the carpet when the robot was trying to switch from the hardwood floor to the carpet and caused the machine to back off or, in some cases, get stuck. Although the cleaning result was adequate, I still had thoughts; a long term employment might not be in the cards for now.

Day 2

How time flies, it is 10 AM again and the KOIOS vacuum has started its round. I set the program for a full house cleaning, in an relentless effort and multiple passes through the rooms the robot finished the work and docked for reloading for the next day. It seemed that the hardwood to carpet transition was resolved for whatever reason. I got the feeling that it did not depend on how much the machine cleaned, since it does multiple passes for each room, but how low the battery is. Also it seems that the cleaning pattern is somewhat erratic. For short periods of time it covers an area in a parallel back and forth pattern, then it rolls somewhere besides the end of the area which was just cleaned and repeats the pattern. I don't think it tracks what areas have been covered and which ones have not been treated.

Day 3

Today was the first day when the robotic vacuum was on its own. I left all the areas open to see what the robot can do. Occasionally I peeked through the surveillance camera to see how the machine performs. Sure enough the wheels were spinning and a little black dot was going back and forth. I returned late in the afternoon just to find the little guy tangled up in the fringes of the carpet. After I freed the machine it continued with the cleaning without hesitation - for two and a half hours. That is either dedication or bad programming. 

Day 4 

I moved the docking station to the same position the previous vacuum (Nigel) was in anticipation of a different route and/or behavior in cleaning.
The usual start 10 AM on the dot. However, after 2 hours and 45 minutes I finally had enough of the humming and the occasional cry for help. I stopped the vacuuming and send the cleaning robot to its room aka recharging station, which did not work. After guiding it with the remote close enough so it can sense the recharging station it was incapable of docking, instead, it ran into it several times and backed out. The machine does not have any guidance system whatsoever to know if it was in the room or not. I'm all for cleanliness but if you work from home it would be preferable to endure the humming for an hour or so (the place is not that big) and not 3 hours with repeated visits. Yes indeed it cleans, very well I must say, largely due to the pattern. The first one is sort of straight, the second and third cross wise. The latter leads the bot into other room openings and it starts the pattern or continues the pattern again until the forward movement leads it out the door again.

Ricochet Pattern (bouncing off the wall)

This is the auto clean setting which is completely annoying because the gizmo does not know when to stop. Tomorrow I'll try the one room setting, according to KOIOS the pattern is only up and down and not cross wise as shown above. On second thought what good does that if you have more than one room? One more feature I miss from the Nigel bot is the scheduling of the cleaning, KOIOS does not have that, it is a 24/7 operation. If I have a machine like that I would like to be able to program it to my needs. I don't really care for somebody else to think that this is what I need or that this is the right way to do things. To answer the invisible question: "yes, I can return it", "yes, I should have read their thoughts behind the machine" ...

Rethinking the concept here

MOCCAMASTER

After 20 plus years of serving coffee every morning "Anna" our Krups coffee machine decided that it is time to retire. I scrambled, after a week of manually brewing the invigorating morning drink, to find a replacement. The agency aka Google introduced many candidates and after some intense interviewing we decided on the MOCCAMASTER coffee maker.

Why this and not that?

A delicious cup of coffee starts with fresh water, quality beans, consistent grind, and correct grounds-to-water ratio for a flavorful and complex brew. A brewing temperature of 196° - 205° F is necessary to release coffee solubles essential for a savory outcome.
Entering the MOCCAMASTER, a handmade coffee machine made in the Netherlands. Their claim for fame is the unique copper boiling element which is guaranteed to reach the aforementioned temperatures as well as an optimal pulse-drip method which allows for the perfect coffee bloom and saturation time, in this case between 5 and 6 minutes.
The flavor of brewed coffee is determined by how many solubles are extracted during the brewing process. This is measured by the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) coffee to water ratio. Moccamaster brewers produce the perfect TDS yield of 18% to 22%, as required by the European Coffee Brewing Centre¹.

The machine itself is absolutely quiet during the brewing process thanks partially to a funnel on the coffee pot lit which reaches down to almost the bottom of the pot.

I have to admit that the MOCCAMASTER is a bit on the pricey side, but it does come with a 5 year warranty, and above all, it produces great results. We wholeheartedly welcome "Alice" to our family.

"life is too short for bad coffee"

¹ Explanation from the moccamaster website.

... and how are your eggs?

Christmas is here and the stocking need to be filled...
I ran across a gizmo made in Germany called the "Beep Egg" by Brain Stream, a singing floating egg timer. Sounded good so it ended up in the stocking.

This morning we tried it out, skeptical at first, but to our surprise a total success.

Here is how it works: you store the egg timer with the eggs so it has the same temperature as the eggs. Start out the usual way, put the eggs in the water and turn the heat on. This particular egg timer emits the tune of "Oh Susanna" when the eggs reach the soft boiled stage, "Take me out to the Ballgame" at the medium-boiled stage, and finally "Hail Hail the Gangs All Here" when the egg is hard boiled (German humor I suppose). Other melodies are available as well.

As you can see the water never comes to a boil, yet the eggs are perfectly cooked.

Guten Appetit!

blind sided

Our "faithful" cleaning companion lost his sight several weeks ago. Due to more pressing issues I was not able to come to the immediate aid. Then I finally had some time to dedicate to Nigel. Oh what a pain it was to determine what exactly caused the blindness. Several iterations of cleaning yielded in exactly - nothing. Upon further mechanical inspection I discovered that the "seeing eye" was not moving at all. This discovery resulted in a complete dismantling of the vacuum bot to search for the faulty part which, of course, was in the deep inner bowl of the machine (when its working its Nigel, otherwise its a machine).

Here is a several hundred dollar machine totally disabled by a non functional

$2.95 fan motor

Net Weight: 41g; Package Content: 1 x Micro Vibration Motor
Model: RF-500TB-12560; Main Color: Silver Tone, Beige
Voltage: DC1.5-12V; Speed: 2700RPM
Shaft Size: 2 x 7mm / 0.08" x 0.28" (D*L); Main Body Size: 32 x 19mm / 1.2" x 0.75"(D*T)

Chapter 2 - Replacement Parts. A couple of years back it would have been a simple trip to the nearest Radio Shack to remedy the problem; but no Radio Shack no remedy. The much disliked and treated response to "order it online" was the only option out. No immediate gratification for me today. First stop the search engine. 231,000 in no time at all, encouraging. I started to order it with Amazon just to find out that the delivery would have been several week. Onward to other vendors, Sears had a delivery date of 5 days, so I took it, excited that the machine would be up and running in no time. BUT WAIT, there is more...
The delivery date came and went - no product. I decided to inquire about the delivery of the product just to receive an email with a tracking number which led to nowhere fast since it was not updated. Several days later another inquiry, this time the response email asked me allow 72 hours to complete the investigation. After three days I inquired again, the response was almost hilarious - please give us a bit more time... Eventually, after three weeks I did receive my package in the mail. Bygones...

Chapter 3 - Remembering the reverse order to assemble the machine. Yes, I managed to get the entire mess back together, and, more importantly, working. I hooked it up to the USB diagnostic port to find out if the laser guiding system is working and it was. Satisfied with the progress I loaded the batteries overnight.

Chapter 4 - Letting Nigel loose. Of course I could not wait to hear the roaring of Nigels brush scuttling around cleaning every inch of our living environment. I was not disappointed, the noise was there, the movement was there... Then alas - the treated "Please clear my path" message although nothing is in the immediate vicinity appeared and Nigel/machine stopped.
Hard reset - soft reset - yelling, softly encouraging the little guy to find his way. Battery calibration, another hard reset, another soft reset - he is on his way. A foot later and several chasing your tail movements "Please clear my path". I figured I take the soft route instead of kicking him as suggested on YouTube, soft reset, clean the house, "clear the path"; soft reset, clean the house, "clear the path" 

PATIENCE 

Sure enough after several iterations of aforementioned steps he started to make his way around the house again, for now. Then, after all this trying to figure out were to go, clear the path, etc Nigel depleted his power source and started complaining about it. Reload !

MORE PATIENCE

Chapter 5 - Alternatives. New Batteries or no new batteries, dealing with customer service or skip it. Questions which gave me visions of robot vacuums dancing in my head. Perhaps do it the old fashioned way and use the vacuum which started to collect dust of all things. Then again, perhaps I should invest in a new Nigel which is not only a luxury but almost the equivalent of several car payments. What to do?

Dashcam

A recent trip to Georgia via a very scenic route required too many stops to take pictures, begging the question to move a dash cam to the top of my to-get-items list. Upon my return the research began. Pricing was obviously an issue, followed by functionality. I decided to give Thinkware Dash Cam F-50 a try, it seemed a perfect fit for the first time try. It is very small and fits right behind the rear view mirror, hardly visible from the front. There is enough cable provided to connect it easily to the cigarette lighter outlet. This is the basic model which requires that you take out the microSD card to view the videos. More advanced and more expensive devices have a Bluetooth link to the phone, which in my case defeats the purpose completely since I have to use the phone to look at the video.

Thinware F-50 dash cam

The dash cam records video in one minute increments to avoid the potential corruption of large files created by continuous video recording. After the initial  testing with the provided 8 GB card, I decided to expand the memory to 128 GB to assure a full days worth of recording. Initially I just plugged it into the cigarette lighter with another gizmo a cigarette lighter double port USB adapter that enables you to transform you cigarette light into a two port USB charger (highly recommended). Perhaps I will connect it permanently to take advantagevideo surveillance feature for parked cars

Dash cam mounted

Of course I was skeptical of the high definition video advertised for the dash cam, but was pleasantly surprised that it actually did have high definition. Granted that you have a clean windshield of course, otherwise you have a high definition video with smudges in the foreground.There is one oddity which is the date time management. You can plug the microSD card into the computer and manage the storage as well as the setup. Although I used the system timing to set the clock with the software, the dash cam recorded videos showed a different date and time. The setup was for UTC -5 but the recording was still at UTC time and 5 days behind. Perhaps with a permanent connection it will be on continuously and maintain the date and time - no big deal at the moment. The 128 GB card works beautifully and does record a full days worth of driving.
Here is where the fun for me comes in. I always wanted to record a video driving through a hectic city with calm guitar music or such in the background. I went a bit further and added a frame to my first video plus background music and credits. OK, I promise to get a life right after those messages from my non existing sponsors.

Since all the videos are in one minute increments it allows for easy editing. Here is the start of a collection of what the dash cam sees.

The Circle

WOW, impressive movie with a myriad of ways to interpret the underlying meaning.


Although it is almost impossible to take the movie as an entertainment face value given today's advances in technology.  Contrary to past "futuristic" environments this movie almost documents the current environment we live in.

Not to spoil or give away the plot line, here are some thoughts you might ponder after the movie.

Back in the 1960’s after the erecting of the Berlin wall it took an army of secret police, in this case the STASI (Staatssicherheit or State Security), to spy on the East Berlin population. 

In tandem, today for example there are 500,00 cameras in London, one camera for every 16 people. Greenwich  Village and SoHo have about 1 camera per 84 residents. None of the counts include private security cameras, police body cams or police cruisers equipped with license plate scanners and dash cams. Dash cams are becoming more and more affordable for private cars and being used on a regular basis, not to mention the obsession of the smart phone cameras and other surveillance cams such as baby or nanny cams, and last not least the fear of FOMO. The latter is simply footage voluntary provided by the public to the public which could in some cases back fire. Granted of course is the fact that it is not all about spying on the population but sorting out the bad, the good, and the ugly.

Along the same theme line there were some movies which appeared a while ago, such as “Enemy of the State”, featuring the intrusion of private lives. Edward Snowden showed the world that this was not so far fetched with his revelations. Perhaps it would take a scenario as depicted in the movie “Transcendence” to change the entire world the way it is.

To take it a step further, entire behaviors are being recorded in the name of “deep machine learning”, providing corporations with brilliant statistical evidence about certain behaviors. To single out some algorithms, being accident prone for insurance companies, or a person relying on credit cards because of their spending habits, for the medical field the makeup of the DNA, shopping habits, targeted advertising, predicting sales, the stock market, and many more - benefiting entire industries . All part of using an objective, neutral, and cold entity analyzing a person and drawing conclusions as a general blanket for all. This data is taken mostly from payment methods and/or reports.

Now imagine live video footage of every single moment of your life with anybody watching.

... and there are people (perhaps me included) who try to sort through family pictures and events - forget that -  just ask Google or Facebook, either one can give you a slideshow of your life - free of charge. Search yourself and find all the foot prints in the virtual sand...

What to do?

Over the years you learn a thing or two about computers, however, you must be up to date with the intricacies of hardware and software. 

Case in point: If Windows did not boot up or you were in need of running in safe mode you simply pushed the F8 while booting. Well, if you have Windows 10 installed that might not be the case anymore. According to the developers Windows 10 is too fast to boot and pressing the F8 key might not hit the mark. Although some times I have the feeling that molasses flows faster than the boot process takes place. 
In any event, yesterday was such a day were I actually had to look up what the story was with the boot process. The good news is that, after holding the shift key (either one) and click on restart, there are more options for the user to rectify the situation than before. 
To make a long story short, I discovered that the master boot record (MBR) was not willing to cooperate. Even going to the command prompt and trying to do a fix it with chkdsk /f did not accomplish anything. 
Finally, I had to reinstall Windows 10. Luckily there is an option which allows me to keep my personal files so I don't have to go through the backup restore etc etc process for the files. The downside is that I had to reinstall all the programs I use frequently. Hours later I'm back up and running, surprisingly enough much faster (I wonder why?) ...  

WALABOT

Curiosity got a hold of me again. I do many handyman tasks and some times I'm in need of a stud finder and occasionally it is a cement wall, in which case its pure guess work what is behind the wall or inside the wall. 

The other day I stumbled over an ad online for WALABOT, an 3D imaging sensor which lets you see what is inside a wall (for my purpose). 


Simply connect to an Android telephone, calibrate and voila the display shows studs, pipes, cables and what ever else lurks inside a wall. Besides the image of the object in the wall it also displays how far away it is from the sensor - definitely useful information. 

Best part - it worked flawlessly right out of the box. 

The company also provides a developer kit with a myriad of possibilities for the use of this technology, but that is for another day...

https://walabot.com/

Mirror Mirror on the Wall ...

About two years ago or so I was visiting a friend of mine who showed me a picture of a mirror in a hotel with a date, time and weather display. So we thought "what a great idea" - almost a must have (or not).

Something like that

Fast forwarding to present times - there is a hole community of magic mirror enthusiasts as I found out via Pintrest. Mostly done with a raspberry pi and a two way mirror, lots and lots of DIY videos and a dedicated magic mirror builders page.

Which brings me to another gizmo - the raspberry pi. Developed in the UK, the raspberry pi has been around since 2012 and is a single board computer. It developed to the current form for many uses. However, I never saw a real need for it up to now.

I decided that I wanted to see for myself what it looks like. 

Something like that

Once I'm done with the back frame to hold the display, the mirror will be a great addition to the living room.