u/HelpMe0biWan

I’m looking at buying a portable unit for the garden office but ideally want to integrate it into the smart home somehow. I have a Tado setup for heating and they seem to have an air con controller that might work but wondering if anyone has found another solution that works? Maybe a HomeBridge plugin for a particular brand?

I really don’t want an IR controlled solution that doesn’t let me see the current status of the unit.

I have a mixture of OG’s, Mini’s and Gen 2 HomePods dotted around the house. I use them in a few different ways, stereo pair minis for bedroom TV’s, big HomePods for multi-room playback, a few minis for the kitchen and hallway for Siri commands etc.

I love them but more often than not, I revert to Siri on my iPhone for commands because it gives me instant results, particularly for smart home control whereas commands to my watch or HomePods are just a touch slower. Why is that? If I use Siri on my Apple TV’s it’s just as quick as my phone (presumably because they’re all on Ethernet) but for whatever reason the HomePods just have a second or so delay. Is it just old chips in the HomePods? Is it the off loading they do? Will a minor refresh even make a difference here?

I want to ‘upgrade’ from a Z6iii to a Z8 to occasionally make use of 45mp for a recent interest in wildlife photography. The caveat is, my full time work has little need for the extra megapixels so the larger file sizes would actually be inconvenient for my day to day work. (more storage, poorer LRC performance etc).

I’ve been doing some research and it looks like a lot of people are reporting that the most compressed ‘High Efficiency’ RAW files are almost indistinguishable from the Lossless compressed files that are twice their size. Is this actually accurate? Can I really pull back shadows with no worry? Can I get away with just shooting in High Efficiency the majority of the time?

Anyone else using this Tele? Bought it to play with as it’s half the price of the Nikon and from the very limited reviews I could find had comparable performance at least in the centre of the frame. I’m yet to fully test it but have shot with it on around the garden and taken it on and off a few times and it just feels way too tight and like I’m going to break my lens or something. The side that attaches to the camera feels normal. Is this standard or teleconverters? Or this specific model?

I know your watch mirrors your phone for everything but surely they could make this work with a data only sim?

Your phone calls etc would still work on the watch provided your phone is nearby. If you left the house without your iphone, you’d still be able to stream music, check emails, use whatsapp etc on your watch thanks to the data only sim but you wouldn’t be able to make or recieve traditional phone calls.

I’m enjoying the betas so far and the extra Siri capabilities have been handy but as a UK user where WhatsApp is the default messaging app, I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of the benefits of having Siri being able to read through my messages to find info I need. Anyone figured out a sleek way of handling this? Maybe exporting chats to a folder daily that you can point Siri to?

I just upgraded from the Mini 4K to the Mini 5 pro mainly for the 1 inch sensor. As a photographer the bigger sensor is always welcome but I’m wondering where they can go from here while still maintaining a small-ish lightweight body. I’d love to have a full frame camera that I can fly through the air (sadly I don’t have £15k to spare for an inspire level drone). Do you think we might see a full frame sensor in a Mavic drone in the near future? Or maybe one day a crop sensor in an Air sized drone?

Going to upgrade to the Mini 5 Pro soon and can’t decide between sticking with the RC-N3 or going for the RC-2 option. It’s never really bothered me having to connect my phone each time but I guess it’d be nice to have it all in one? Beyond that convenience factor is there any other benefit? Exclusive features I’m not aware of?

I’m looking for a dummy battery for a Z6iii but can’t find any that are compatible? Looking at old posts it looks as though Nikon updated the firmware to stop third party batteries working about a year ago. Has anyone managed to get one working?