u/wivaca2

I've been shopping for outdoor cameras and there seem to be a proliferation of dual lens cameras right now claiming to be 4K.

I have some single lens 4K cameras with 170° FOV that are exceptional both in clarity and night vision from Amcrest. The reviews of 4K dual lens are consistently complaining that resolution isn't very good or that they can see the gap/overlap between the cameras when something is moving across the FOV.

I'd just get another one like I have but it is PoE without wifi and I need this in a remote location with power and no wired network. (I know I can inject PoE and bridge wifi, but I don't want my garden shed to need a network closet for all that gear).

I'm not sure I want a very wide aspect ratio in the first place because in my application it would either monitor areas I'm not concerned about or redundantly cover zones of other cameras or even just look at a wall, but in any case, are these really just two 2K cameras being sold as 4K?

Vertical resolution matters, so 4K that's double wide and half as tall is not going to give you the same clarity as a single 4K image.

I have a small fountain with two warm white submersible uplights and a submersible ring light through which the water comes up and spills over. It's a small fountain and each light is about 2.5" in diameter, so I'm not looking for anything too big.

While plain white lights would work, I was going to push my luck and find out if anyone knows of a set of fountain lights I can control with WLED or some other controller I can integrate with Home Assistant with RGB?

Not to be too picky, but the ones I have all run off of a single transformer on a smart exterior plug, and I'd prefer actual powered lights rather than solar powered ones both for brightness and because the location is shaded over half the day.

I have a small fountain with two warm white submersible uplights and a submersible ring light through which the water comes up and spills over. It's a small fountain and each light is about 2.5" in diameter, so I'm not looking for anything too big.

While plain white lights would work, I was going to push my luck and find out if anyone knows of a set of fountain lights I can control with WLED or some other controller I can integrate with Home Assistant with RGB?

Not to be too picky, but the ones I have all run off of a single transformer on a smart exterior plug, and I'd prefer actual powered lights rather than solar powered ones both for brightness and because the location is shaded over half the day.

I've recently been printing some items that I needed to stick to metal surfaces. The first magnets I bought were 10mm x 2mm, but I just bought whatever was cheapest. A neodymium magnet is a neodymium magnet, right?

I was very unimpressed with their power and just thought it was because magnets this small can't be that powerful. I needed 5 just to keep a print with an embedded 1.25" aluminum medallion to stay put on a metal file cabinet.

It came time for me to buy some 8mm and 6mm for other projects and I started looking at why some were $20+/100 versus the less than $10 I paid for the 10mm. N52 seemed to be on all the expensive ones.

After researching, turns out that N52 is very powerful and about the highest grade that is common (there are higher but harder to find grades). I bought N52 for my 6mm and 8mm. Wow. These little beasts are a lot stronger than the 10mm.

So, if you're a noob to buying magnets for projects, don't just consider price unless you're able to make a lot of magnet holes in your print.

My PC is running mostly fine, but I'm having problems with Macrium Reflect X freezing and causing a blue screen when it starts. This happens for a while, then it suddenly works other times for a few weeks and then stops again. All drives check out with CHKDSK, SFC, DISM, and S.M.A.R.T. as being 100%.

I've found a post where someone has said they got rid of the freezing /reboot problem by updating their firmware on the Samsung 990 4TB.

If I update firmware on a NVMe drive, will I still have the partitions and data after the update? What are the chances I may have to reinstall and restore from my old Macrium backup? Has anyone updated Samsung NVMe firmware before on a boot drive, and what was your experience?

I've had a John Deere JS63C gas mower for over 25 years and the thing starts with a single pull even after sitting in the shed all winter.

I started it yesterday and began cutting the lawn. I stopped it to empty the bag, and all of a sudden it won't start. Usually once it's warm it's even easier to start with even a half-hearted pull.

As far as maintenance, this spring it had the usual oil change, fresh gas, new air filter, and new spark plug.

I haven't really opened it up but was just doing a quick examination I noticed there may be a missing part connected to where the red arrows are pointing in the pic. Is there supposed to be a spring or some adjustment there to regulate the choke?

Despite being warmed up, it acted like a cold engine that has no choke or no spark. Just seems like I can pull and rotate the engine without any sign of combustion and wanting to run.

Plenty of fresh fuel, oil is good, engine isn't seized or anything serious. Haven't tested for spark because I need someone to pull while I watch, so just asking about these suspicious linkage points doing nothing and can't find any good pics of this engine at this angle.

https://preview.redd.it/59v54ijwykjh1.png?width=1670&format=png&auto=webp&s=2495324e8f11bc35103b5047686d0f4a2b3bd07a

Internet tells me this is a Briggs & Stratton Model Series 121602, Intek 6.75 hp engine.

About a month ago, anything I order on Amazon is followed up by the expected order confirmation email, but with strange icons in the text and product images that don't match anything I ordered.

This order is for small hobby electronics parts - a control board and some servos - neither of which is technically electrical or heating, and which look nothing at all like the images sent.

https://preview.redd.it/zo0ztx7c2nih1.png?width=599&format=png&auto=webp&s=52a193a207ccd5ccc613534a28c0890ae0ea60c8

Two weeks ago, I ordered Amazon Basics air filters for my Mom's HVAC unit and this was the order confirmation (looks like maybe health goods or grocery items). Back in July I ordered electronics and got pictures of screws.

https://preview.redd.it/v8oywih23nih1.png?width=586&format=png&auto=webp&s=2117da2f27e3afd198758c2f501c927652246a5c

This all started July 15th. What the heck are they doing?

Here's an order from July 11th, before this started happening that shows the item I bought.

https://preview.redd.it/q5t0axr74nih1.png?width=593&format=png&auto=webp&s=f87633369a63344e9d12db8f14ec86f331c4110f

I set up Frigate in a Docker Container on Ubuntu today to replace my BlueIris NVR. The host machine is an i7 3.4GHz system with 32GB of RAM. The only other thing it is doing is running Home Assistant. BlueIris service is shutdown.

I have 7 cameras and when I open Frigate, I can see them, but not before waiting nearly 3 minutes for the images to change from black rectangles reading "No frames have been received" to the camera images.

After it settled down, I walked around the house in plain view of every camera and it caught absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, looking the host machine's task manager, my CPU is maxing out at only 31%, and memory is at 66%. (22GB out of 32GB).

What could I be doing wrong? This same system ran these 7 cameras on BlueIris before I shut it down. The CPU was frequently a lot busier than with Frigate, but it's like Frigate isn't using the horsepower available.

What should I look at?

I have a RAID 1 built on twin Toshiba HDWR180 8TB Drives. AMD RAIDExpert indicates the RAID health is good. S.M.A.R.T. for each drive individually show they are always passing every test. I have backups so in addition to the RAID, I'm not too worried about failure except for having to buy a replacement at ridiculous costs right now.

Oddly, though, these drives ran quietly for years until about a week ago. Now I will suddenly hear (at least) one of them produce a very regular click for anywhere from 5-20 seconds at about 3-4 clicks per second. It's not the sound of random read/writes and I'm not actually accessing anything on it - so if it is not the drive hardware, it would have to be indexing or something like that.

The RAIDXpert SMART info allows me to select the drives independently, but is there any reason to believe SMART data coming through RAIDXpert is less than fully trustworthy?

I've been considering moving to AT&T Internet Air from an old DSL line. My AT&T 5G cell phone is getting about 125Mbps down using SpeedTest.

Since AT&T Internet Air uses cell towers in the vicinity to provide service, would a speed test using my AT&T cell phone on the cell network only (not wifi, of course) and positioned where the AT&T Internet Air modem would be placed, be representative of the speed I would get with AT&T Internet Air?

Do they do any throttling or adjustments to make AT&T Internet Air operate faster/slower? Does anyone know if it has a substantially better (or worse) antenna that a Samsung phone?

Looking for comparisons from anyone who has both an AT&T Internet Air solution and AT&T smart phone.

Also, the Internet Air Modems have RJ45 wired network jacks on them? I have a Ubiquiti whole-house mesh, so I'm not interested in using a wifi on the box AT&T provides.

I have a RAID 1 built on twin Toshiba HDWR180 8TB Drives. AMD RAIDExpert indicates the RAID health is good. S.M.A.R.T. for each drive individually show they are always passing every test. I have backups so in addition to the RAID, I'm not too worried about failure except for having to buy a replacement at ridiculous costs right now.

Oddly, though, these drives ran quietly for years until about a week ago. Now I will suddenly hear (at least) one of them produce a very regular click for anywhere from 5-20 seconds at about 3-4 clicks per second. It's not the sound of random read/writes and I'm not actually accessing anything on it - so if it is not the drive hardware, it would have to be indexing or something like that.

The RAIDXpert SMART info allows me to select the drives independently, but is there any reason to believe SMART data coming through RAIDXpert is less than fully trustworthy?

I have a Roomba J7+ and though I haven't changed any automations, it's been announcing it's done every time it returns to the dock, even for a mid-mission recharge. Both my wife and I swear it used to only announce that at the end of the job.

The only available statuses I see are docked, error, idle, paused, returning to dock, unavailable, and unknown. None of these are helpful in differentiation between docking at the end of a job versus a mid-mission recharge.

There is a Total Missions value I suppose I can save to a helper and compare each time it docks, but something has changed because I never had to do that before. My automation was just looking at "Vacuum cleaner is docked" condition.

TBH, it's been a long time since I set it up and this may have changed some time ago. Am I missing something and can others point me to a better solution?

I've just completed my third four-leg trip with Southwest since the new boarding process and policies went into effect.

Don't pay to check roll-on baggage at Southwest. Take everything to the gate. 12 out of 12 times so far, gate staff announce ominously that they will not have enough space on board for everyone's roll-ons and baggage and checked bags at the gate for free.

I was pretty pissed that I had paid $90 round trip to check bags the first two times. Oddly, even though I was at the tail of in boarding group 7 on a couple of flights, there were several entirely empty overhead bins near my seat. Even as the last passengers boarded, many still had room for a few roll-ons or backpacks.

Southwest for some reason is completely overreacting, and on the most recent flight, checked every bag for group 8 and worked from start of the jetway for group 7 until they had some unclear number of roll-ons checked. On the plane, they closed at least four partially filled overhead bins within my view from row 20.

I'm not a fan of taking every bag on a plane and hassling with it myself, and when everyone does it, it slows boarding and deplaning. Still, now that they're charging $45 each way for first bag, if you want to save $90 on a round trip, just roll yourself to the gate and when they ask, volunteer your roll-on for checking. Worst case, they won't need it and you won't have to wait at a baggage claim at your destination.

I'm in a house built in 1998 that has hard-wired smoke alarms with 9V battery backup.

While installing new backup batteries recently I realized that some of them are now making pretty weak noises when I push the test button: Like "won't wake you up" quiet. They're also not wired into an alarm system, just a stand-alone smoke alarms interconnected by what appears to be 110V wiring, so if they did go off while we're not home, I'd never know about it.

Bottom line is they're due for a replacement. I'd like to get new ones that are either hardwired or not and work together as an independent system from HA, yet also communicate with HA, but I want some that DO NOT need a phone app to setup and of course no ongoing cloud, either.

I see some Zigbee ones, but can I just enroll them like any other Zigbee device? Looking for someone who can point me at some that meet my criteria of not needing an app for setup and I can just do it right in HA.

I also have ZWave and a SLZB-MR1 that does the Zigbee and Thread, but have nothing going on Thread.

Another question I have is when these mesh with each other, are they also using any other Zigbee non-smoke detector devices as their mesh?

With thousands of hours in the game, I just took a beat and built a priority pipe of my own to study the fluid modeling for my own edification. I've seen strange things before, but this setup really illustrates them. Still, I think CSS did a pretty decent job of modeling fluids.

The water extractor is running at 100% and all the water leaves it as soon as the extraction cycle ends. Flow goes through the straight pipe past the junction and around the U turn nearest the camera. It makes the flow/fill gauge work as expected, expanding from nearest the camera to the far end indicating flow toward the input-only fluid buffer. This never stops while there is room for more water in the fluid buffer but, at about half full, the fluid buffer has negative flow. It's a dead end so that means it's heading back toward the extractor. All the pipes are full, but for several minute-long intervals, it's not gaining even a 120/min average of what comes out of the water extractor. Yet, the water is not overflowing the riser either, so where does it go if the flow gauge is showing it heading toward the buffer? Has to be the pipe in between, but the pipes without the flow gauge shows flow when you interact with them (can't tell which direction). It can't be toward the buffer, but it can't be back to the segment with the flow gauge showing flow toward the buffer. It also logically could be filling the riser if it were not for the open valve which prevents backflow to the junction.

If I stop the water extractor while the buffer is less than full and let everything settle, flow stops in the pipes and the fluid buffer stabilizes to no flow. (I've seen them continue to have flow even when entirely disconnected from outside pipes). It's the slosh we all talk about, but there is magical fluid involved since pipes are already full and you have contradictory flow..

Restarting the water extractor, some water tops the riser like a pressure surge, but after it runs for a minute that stops and water continues to flow only to the buffer on the right.

Once the fluid buffer is full the 10m headlift of the extractor clears the riser and flows to a second fluid buffer behind the red/white pole.

Say what you will about weird fluid behaviors, but apart from some mystery fluid, all in all that seems to be a pretty good real-world approximation overall.

https://preview.redd.it/48rnz3rwqedh1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=04476e2f308c38aa9741b156e2fc5f1be542a482

What fluid issue bugs you that I should try modeling?

In response to the Nord Stage 4 360, here's the Stage 5 Backside Rodeo 540 Sean White Edition due out soon.

Seriously, u/jimwatsonmusic's post is really well done and so believable looking. Unlike this. Just having fun.

https://preview.redd.it/nbg10h0pqbdh1.png?width=1310&format=png&auto=webp&s=034822c9c5ea87624399505610e068a7da972d64

I'm making this weather vane that looks like an airplane, but I need a light weight solar panel and battery that charges in the daytime and can run LEDs for maybe about 6 hours after dark. I want to run red/green LEDs continuously that look like navigation lights on the wings to show me the wind direction at night. A flashing red beacon light on the tail would be a nice extra.

I've looked at RC airplane lighting kits, but they usually run on a battery only, and it can be quite heavy because it's running other servos and things.

What I'm looking for is probably not too different from some landscape light that runs on solar, but are there any boards or battery/board combo kits available you'd recommend that could run 2-3 LEDs for 6 hours?

Because this has to be mounted to the weather vane and turn with the wind, being light weight is important. I can't mount the solar panel or battery on the base without some kind of contact that can turn continuously and not deteriorate in weather.

Question is all there in the title.

Does this require an engineering plate or can it be printed on others?