Recent content by randytsuch

I recently converted to FIOS, and Frontier gave me a couple of Eero's routers. The Eero's have better coverage than my Asus, so I use them both. Here is a discussion in reddit how I setup. Reddit Setup Story Please read the entire thread, I made changes as described at the bottom. I have wifi...

We cut the cord a couple years ago now, had cable then directv before cutting. Now we have netflix, hbo, prime, hulu and disney and still saving money. I live in the hills so OTA won't work for me. Had to buy nfl game pass last year to watch the games. This year is NFL+ and price is less...

Been spending some time on my home automation stuff, and fixing/updating documentation on it. Randy's Smart Home You can find the info in my pages, but wanted to say the the IOTstack software I'm using to help install everything on the pi makes installation and keeping software up to date so...

I have my BI PC on a smart switch. So if I'm not at home, and BI is not working, I can cycle power on the PC. You're really not supposed to just turn off power like that to a PC, but I don't do it very often, only when I need to fix my PC and I'm away for an extended time. Having a smart...

I recently changed to Frontier Fios, they just installed in my area. Have the 1G plan, same price as Spectrum was (at about 200 up, 12 down), $75/mo. I consistently get over speeds of over 900 up and down. Had 850 up once. They give you a pair of Eeros routers when you sign up for 1G. I...

Thanks for confirming my instructions are good. I thought they were, but its nice to know someone was able to follow them without issues. FWIW, I turn off VPN when I'm not using it, but I guess it really doesn't matter. Pretty easy to turn on and off on my phone where I use it. Randy

I'm back with an Asus router, bought a RT-AX86U on Friday, installed over the weekend. Was fairly straightforward to get OpenVPN working with it. Didn't work the first time I tried, not sure if it just needed more time, was less then an hour after setting up openVPN. Or if the Home Assistant...

Thanks, but I'm in So Cal.

Can I ask who you used to install? I've been reading some threads at solarpaneltalk, and they stress to use a good installer that's been around for a while. Randy

Nice link, thanks. I started looking a solar too. I signed up with energysage.com, and was sent 7 quotes. The nice think about energysage is they don't give out your email. So energysage can send you emails, but the companies that estimated can't. They can only send messages through...

I pretty much followed this: Break in portable generator No idea how you'd adjust for a built in generator. But it makes sense to me that you'd let it run a while with no load, then change the oil before running it under load. Obviously more work, but hopefully its worth it down the road. Randy

The link I posted be Looking at the link again, I think this is correct, the script acts as an interpreter between the Ring API and MQTT. So it lets you talk to Ring devices using MQTT. I don't plan to buy any Ring devices anytime soon, but if you already have them, this seems like a nice way...

The one time I had to use my generator, it was a while between losing power and getting the generator online, probably over an hour. Next time hopefully its sooner, but I'm not sure if it will be soon enough that they both don't come on right away. I agree that if you do it right away, its...

When I was looking at generators, I used the power numbers that from the fridge's manual. When I measured actual power later with my kill a watt clone, the actual numbers were much lower than the manual numbers. There are also a bunch of websites that provide estimated wattage numbers to help...

Every once in a while we lose power, so I bought a dual fuel portable generator. Was a low budget project, so got a relatively small one, 4600 watts on propane. Note that you get about 10% less watts on propane. I plan to only use propane so I won't have to worry about gas getting old, and...