u/SQLDave

Had a new (to me) experience recently.

Moved into new house with vaulted ceilings. Wife wouldn't let (old) me go on a ladder that tall so we had an electrician install a new ceiling fan. The (already installed) ceiling electrical box had 2 power sources going to it (each with its own wall switch), one for the light and one for the fan motor (as one would expect).

However... we got a c/f with a remote (not on purpose... wife just like the looks of it) and apparently you can't "really" operate them with 2 wall switches because one of the power inputs has to supply the receiver (with the other powering the light). So the upshot is that one wall switch is like a "master" to the whole unit and if it is on, then the 2nd switch will turn the light on/off. If the "master" is off, the 2nd switch does nothing.

So we can leave the "master" on and control the fan with the remote and the light with the wall switch -- not ideal (for unimportant reasons) but that's apparently the only option with this configuration. Our other option is to replace it with a c/f that does not have a remote (and, therefore, no receiver meaning one switch can power the fan motor and the other can power the light), although that means we have the dangling chain to control the fan speed... oh well...

Does that all sound "right" to you guys? Are you reading this and thinking "well, duh, everybody knows that"? Do they make a remote-controllable fan that can also take 2 independent power inputs? Seems like a "smart" receiver could be created to handle that -- but I have no idea, or even how to search for such a thing if it even exists.

Hopefully my description is not too convoluted. Clarification questions welcomed.

Thanks for any and all input.

I've never been a "soundie" (my affectionate nickname for people for whom sound quality is almost as (or more) important than video quality. For years I've just used a Dell AS501 sound bar. All I want in sound is "crispness". I don't even need stereo. This is for my home desktop PC and the only sound use I have on it is Netflix, Youtube, etc.

We recently rearranged things and I'm trying to reduce the number of wires going all willy nilly, and a wireless speaker seemed like a low-hanging fruit way to do some of that.

So, with that in mind: Any recommendations for a simple, basic, wireless speaker that "just works"? While $ is always a factor, it's not the top one here... I'll pay a little more for something decent. Do any of them have, for example, some kind of auto-off feature? Auto-on (that seems unlikely, unless we're talking about WiFI and Wake-On-LAN which also seems unlikely)? Also, is there a reason to go with Bluetooth over WiFi, or vice versa?

Thanks all!

I still might. It seems that the 2 "best" non-Ring options are Reolink and Eufy.

My only hesitation with Reolink revolves around remote access. For context, I'm just a lowly database administrator for whom "networking" has always been one of the twin dark arts of IT (the other being "security").

My needs/wants are dead simple: A doorbell with a camera that records video locally (like with Home Hub) and which I can access remotely.

The "features" list on Reolink's site has green checkmarks next to "Remote Access" for all products I'm looking at (just doorbells), but I got to wondering how that worked without some kind of cloud interaction.

So I did some searching and it seems like you have to have a PhD in network engineering to set it up and troubleshoot it. OK, I greatly exaggerated for comic effect, but I really have no appetite for anything above "install devices, add them to my home wifi, and configure options and passwords and such". I keep reading about Home Assistant and Nuba Casa and firewalls and ports and network lion and network tigers and network bears, oh my.

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Can it be as simple as I described -- or close to? Or should I look closer at Eufy? (Or something else?)

Thanks for any input.