[Drezha]

We’re potentially looking at a second car if my interview from this week pays off which would be a full EV, as it would be primarily used for a commute – though an electric bike might be on the cards as well, as it’s a 10 mile trip each way. Covid has done a number of me and I’ve been struggling to ride more than once a week to my current job, which is 5 mile each way.

Our Puma has an average MPG of 41.65 according to the app we’ve been tracking it with. It’s been good – but not quite as good as the Yaris – but then it’s a bigger car etc. It deals well with the little one in the back! Boot space is great – we’ve driven down to Devon today and had no issues with boot space.

EdP – that makes sense, as they do say that heating the person rather than the air is more efficient. I worked from home with a heated gilet (using a USB battery pack) rather than heating and it was pretty good at that.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

<p>Thanks for the links. I’ll have a look some probiotics – I’d already purchased and started using vitamins when the test came back as positive, so I’ve been using those since.</p>
<p>Other than that, I’m trying to keep active to a degree but nothing to over the top at the minute and hopefully it’ll pass. According to the NHS website, I’m not considered to have long Covid until after 12 weeks.</p>

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

<p>Family is OK – I had been hit the worst. Been back at work this week, but have a real brain fog and pretty fatigued. I did cycle to work today but used my wife’s eBike as I thought I would need the assistance and I wasn’t wrong!</p>

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

<p>I ordered mine on the 1st Feb – decided to give myself a birthday present and a post Covid treat (as I’ve just been bedridden for a week and barely operating for another week). That and I really had an itch to play Advance Wars but the the Gameboy versions I’ve got, the battieres have died in the cartridge, so the save games no longer save, so Steam Deck and some emulation and I should be good to go.</p>
<p>That and the weekend before, I decided to sit downstairs to play some games in the lounge where everyone else was, and ended up having to cart the laptop downstairs, the power brick (which is as heavy as the laptop) and then had to get a mouse etc as well. This would be a lot easier to sit and play.</p>

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I currently use Kaspersky, but would love it if Synology (or someone) could come up with a password manager that sits in my private Synology cloud.

I assume you’re aware that they have a password manager (though it appears to use online storage)?

I currently pay for 1Password, which I’ve been happy with. I used to use Keepass, which was very good, and was offline and relied on me syncing the file between devices myself, but it didn’t play nice with iOS Autofill. It’s making me reconsider – but I need a software that I can run off a USB stick with no admin rights (usable on a work laptop) and works with iOS.

Enpass currently looks like a potential viable alternative.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

If I hadn’t bought a gaming laptop in 2020, I probably would have got one of these and I think I’ll get one in the future to replace the laptop, but that’s a few years to go – espeically with the dock, so it can just get hooked up to the PC. Only issue would be the non Steam games, but most of my purchases are on there. I guess the exception would be some of the Far Cry series which I’ve been enjoying but are on Epic.

Upgrade of the SSD looks reasonable from what I saw online as well.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Wifi issues are currently resolved by ditching the Synology and just using the WAX to provide the wifi. Plugs connect fine with no issues. Only issue is that all the guest devices are now on the same subnet but a different wifi connection.

However, a working system for now. Until I save enough to decide to change it.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I’m coming to the conclusion that it *might* be the devices themselves. I’ve just setup the Guest and Wifi networks up on the Synology again and half the plugs reconnected fine, the other half have not. But checking my Home Assistant install, one of them went offline overnight before I even started playing with the devices!

I then spent the rest of the morning trying to speed up my network downstairs to the Apple TV, before checking Apple and finding it’s limited to a 10/100 Ethernet connection, so I wasn’t going to get anything quicker, other than sticking it on wifi! However, for now I’ve had to tick the box that allows me Guest network to access my home network so that all my devices can be accessed via Home Assistant – making the guest network fairly redundant!

Wifi now seems to officially be faster than my powerline networking plugs as well, so it looks like that might be redundant going forwards – now it’s only purpose is to provide internet for the Hue and Hive boxes which are located downstairs, purely to free up plugs in the office!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I think I see myself getting a Draytek at somepoint. Perhaps when my last lot of expenses are paid or I get a refund of my Zigbee solar power meter.

In terms of keeping work and home seperate, I’ve just realised the benefit of that – I’ve been using my home PC for work and when I’ve logged on to change my Microsoft Authenticator, it appears I can wipe my devices (though I don’t recall ticking them box to allow my workplace to manage my device). I mean, when I started working from home it was due to Covid and I didn’t have a laptop for work at the time, but no real excuse now not to be working from it!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

The WAX has wifi seperation, so that the wifi devices can’t access the wired items but I’ve had to disable that. Because the WAX is being used as an access point, it’s grouping both WiFi’s on to the same subnet – I guess the Synology sees it all from the same port. If I had it as a router, I think it would be fine. I know the Synology supports seperate subnets for the Guest wifi as that’s how I had it working before I moved it upstairs. Putting the Home Assistant machine on the same subnet could prove problematic, as I think the Synology only does this via the Guest Wifi as you say, rather than hard wired.

The interference between Zigbee and the Synology certainly seemed real – when I turned the wifi off, my Zigbee network sorted itself out. However, that was when I had maybe 2 repeating devices on the Zigbee network – I’ve now added all the Hue bulbs in then house to the same Zigbee network and am controlling them via Home Assistant, rather than the Hue controller, so I’ve a fully functioning mesh network around the house now, so could potentially try and see if there’s interference now.

I did consider getting some Draytek or Ubiquiti as they support VLAN’s, which I thought would be the way forward – It’s clear that the Draytek could have the Home Assistant machine setup on both VLAN’s at once from my reading of this.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Ed P wrote:

IIRC one of the early Bond movies showed a nuclear reactor and this blue light.

The first Bond movie (Dr No), as the antagonist ends up getting boiled in the cooling pool at the end of the film.

😉

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

No idea what happened, but the plug was setup the other day and then I’ve plugged it in today and its instantly connected!

Perhaps I’ll try that in the future – setup on a separate network and then change the network to the correct one and then leave it for a day!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

DHCP is enabled on the MR220ac. There doesn’t appear to be a full IP address list – however, I will check to ensure that there’s enough space to allocate more – I have recently seen a router only try and allocate IP’s to the x.x.x.100-255 range, (which should still be enough!)

However, I’ll have to check tomorrow as I’m busy this evening out the house.

I believe it’s fine though, as I had one briefly connect yesterday at .2 and another at .119, so seems like lots of space.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

No, no difference as far as I’m aware. I’ve even tried connecting the wifi in the same room as the access point, so that would be the same ring (downstairs sockets).

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

It is auto – and it does cut out at lower speeds if my foot’s on the brake.

Benefit of auto was the traffic jam assist whilst I was stuck on the M42 on Friday. Car would basically drive itself through the jam, starting and stopping as needed. Impressive technology these days!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Ed P wrote:

Drez, have you tried the cruise control in different driving modes yet?

I’ve not tried the different driving modes yet! Its on my plan to do, but I just got in and drove.

Wasn’t aware I could change the braking regen – I might have further look at the settings!

Only thing I do miss is auto handbrake. I also find it a bit odd that the auto start/stop only works when I hold the brake pedal down, so if I pull up at lights, put the handbrake on and then take my foot off the brake, the engine starts again.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

 

So it’s been a few weeks since it arrived. We’ve done over 500 miles in it now, across country down to Devon. On the motorway, it was fantastic – far more power than then Yaris, even with it’s 1L engine. MPG was about equal to the Yaris as we’d normally fit the roof box to the Yaris to visit my parents for a week, and we didn’t have to. To early to tell standard MPG around the town etc, but Fuelio will give us that data over time.

Adaptive cruise control is fantastic – I’ve missed that. Spent 6 hours travelling today on the motorway and rarely had to touch the brake or accelerator. Far more comfortable over the distance as well. The lane assist (or whatever the function is that keeps you in the lane), as that turned on with the cruise control was almost like self driving!

Will see how it gets on with local town driving over the next couple of weeks – we had it for week before going to Devon, but I’ll need some more time to see how I feel in the town with it.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 is my upstream DNS connection from my Pi Hole. No complaints here to be honest – does the job. I fancied using something other than Google’s and that fit the bill.

However, currently away from home for the week in Devon and therefore no Pi Hole, so I’m using NextDNS.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I believe the government have already confirmed the my local coal power station is going to continue operating at full capacity (as they were due to shutdown part of it this year).

Incidentally, Germany just nationalised the owner.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

JayCeeDee wrote:

Check out that YT channel I linked to earlier, he didn’t only go OTT on the panels, he also has on stats, spreadsheets and automating everything. He has one with temperature ( and humidity? ) in the individual rooms through the day!!👍🏻

As do I 😉 Home Assistant covers everything now – all the different types of smart home equipment I’ve bought in the past, it’s now all controlled through one app – which has meant my wife is totally on board. So my Hue bulbs work perfectly alongside my Kasa/TP-Link smart switches as well as my temperature/humidity sensors in each (main) room.

Current automation I’ve been working on allows me to scan an NFC tag next to the bed when I want to charge my bedside equipment – this starts the attached process, which then waits until my inverter is kicking out 100 W and then turns on the switch. I get Telegram messages to confirm it’s primed to start, and then it charges until sunset and it switches off. If the value of the invester hasn’t got to 100W after 5 hours, I get a message so I can manually enable charging.

I’ve not bothered setting it to switch on and off with the solar, as I want it to charge really, so I’m happy for some grid use – however, I’m trying to maximise the solar used.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Author]

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