Phatty's Tech Talk

  It's been a while. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf again this year. I've built a new planner, I'm working on my North Star goals, I've uploaded a few TikTok videos with more to come, I've done some yoga, and begun a mindfulness practice ... It's only January 4 and this year has been pretty good so far. So, I'm not setting any unrealistic goals for me to achieve in the next few months like "$10 monthly income from secondary sources!"  This year my goals are more general. I want to improve my relationships with God, myself, my wife, my kids, my friends, and others in that order.  That breaks down to a bunch of small things completed on regular intervals. I'm hoping that includes more study and prayer, more healthy choices, more blog posts, more videos on YouTube and TikTok, more personal interactions, more writing love notes to the love of my life ;-) ...  So I am throwing this out into the universe. Don't be surprised to see some up...

Why don't we use Python more? Python is a great language.  It is a scripted language derived from C like the C++ we use in our Arduino IDE, but it is much more flexible and much easier to read . Python is strongly typed, and allows for complex classes and Object oriented programming. Python uses a very straight forward human readable syntax , and has tons of shortcuts and built in libraries for nearly anything you can imagine. Its only real downside as far as I am concerned is using whitespace to delimit blocks just like YAML, but if your editor is configured correctly to change tabs to spaces, it is not a problem. Did I mention that it is easy to read ? Python is also one of the building blocks of Home Assistant, all of the components and lots of the core code is written in python, so if you learn it, you can contribute back to the community. Finally python is available for our favorite items like ESP8266 based Sonoff devices, NodeMCU and D1 mini's and even Node-Red func...

This post really needs a video, and that is in the works but I really want to compare lighting systems. I have a lot of "smart" lights: Hue (three bedrooms, and my office) Lifx (the 9 Can lights in the kitchen, and 3 minis in my entry way) Merkury (all the outside lights) Yeelight (the living room and another bedroom) Ikea (bathrooms) (not in this review) And some smart switches that make dumb lights smart. So how do you compare all these lights? The first criteria is cost: Per bulb cost, infrastructure costs, and use costs (it's not awesome to have your lights burning 40 watts all the time). The second criteria is functionality: Do they do colors, if they do are they brilliant, if they are white, do they handle a range, are the bright enough, et cetera. Maintenance: It's cool to have smart lights but if it takes you 35 tries to tell Alexa to turn on the light, or if you have to sign into a server in china to turn it on or off it may not be worth ha...

If you are like me, you got everything you asked for, and a bunch of stuff you did not even realize you could have asked for, and some cash!!! You also, realized way to late to ask, that there were a few things you should have asked for but did not. So if you are going on a Boxing Day buying frenzy like  I did, here are a few things to think about. First, anything from my gifts for geeks list would still be great! This shirt from amazon is almost as cool as the one I got, but the sentiment is the same: My first order was the one that everyone was too scared to get because they were afraid to get it wrong: This digital soldering station with all the tips, and a heat gun for desoldering and melting shrink tubing will be getting a review shortly, and set me back less than $60. I also picked up the 3rd hand from my gifts for geeks post again, because even though I spelled it out, people felt that was a little too personal of a decision. next, can you ever have enough S...

This was an exciting adventure. I got these switches for $10 from someone who failed to make them work at their own house. They are JMH CD303 Tuya switches.  You can get them on Alibaba here:  https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2018-US-Smart-Switch-WiFi-Tuya_60764782124.html?spm=a2700.details.maylikever.8.287e3376iYLvTg  Initially I was just going to use the https://github.com/clach04/python-tuya method to integrate these into HA with local support. but then I got looking at that chip and it looked like an ESP8266, so I did a little digging. I was able to flash the Tuya TYWE3S module with Tasmota. Travis from digiblurDIY updated the Tasmota wiki with all the relevant information: I soldered up my TYWE3S just like he did here: The switches work perfectly with following settings: They need to be set to switchmode# 3 in order to maintain the state.  Switchmodes 0-2 acted like switchmode 7 usually does. With some tiny tweaks to the h...

It's that last week before Christmas, if you are like me, you are just about to start your holiday buying. Most of these are easy to get before Christmas if you have prime shipping and all are under $30 Using these links helps me out by improving my Amazon Affiliate status. Start with a killer shirt. This one rocks in hot my favorite hot pink: https://amzn.to/2SaVQp7 If your geek just got started into soldering, this $30 iron holder, with a third hand, flux, sponge and cleaning ball is the bomb: https://amzn.to/2EARHaw If they have most of that stuff already, one can always use another hand and for $15 this is a great pair of them:  https://amzn.to/2S30aGD If they already have all of that, you can't have enough soldering matts This one is a great design with spots for everything you need, holding those tiny screws safely for only $9:  https://amzn.to/2S3c6bn this is a similar one from a different vendor  https://amzn.to/2S7iBKo It is important to ...

Little did I know that when I tried this the first time on Ubuntu I would be taking the easy way...having since tried it on a few more distributions and Operating systems it has been less trivial. That being said, one has to use at least 3 different instructions in order to get it done so I am going to try to get it all in one place.  Most of this should work for any debian based distribution that uses systemctl . For example these instructions do not work on a mac that uses launchctl or Alpine Linux that uses OpenRC . First Get docker-ce Full instructions for setting up docker-ce are here:  https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/ but hopefully These will be sufficient for you like they were for me. Get rid of any current docker installation: $ sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io Set up the docker repository: Make sure apt is up to date $ sudo apt-get update Make sure apt works over SSL $ sudo apt-get install \     apt-tr...