GreatBlueHeron

I grew up on a farm, and in a small town service station, where I had access to MIG and oxy acetylene. My father taught me to use both. A bit later (in my mid 30s) I did a one day MIG course that basically reinforced what I'd been taught as a kid.

It's now nearly 30 years later and I'm wanting to weld some exhaust pipe on a bike I'm resurrecting so I bought the cheapest, nastiest, little flux core welder on sale - reduced from $249 to $149. It's not my father's Kemppi, but it melts stuff so I figure I should be able to get it done.

My big issue is - I can't see shit! As soon as it arcs the lens in my (cheap, nasty) hood goes dark and all I can see is a haze of smoke. My memory is really bad but I'm pretty sure I remember being able to see a pool of molten steel and moving the wire around in it as needed.

Did I buy the wrong lens or is flux core just like that?

I recently bought a '90 Yamaha XV535. I cleaned the carbs and was able to start it. I then decided to pull the tank and flush it out, replace the fuel filter etc. While the tank was out I took the opportunity to weld a little tab that holds one of the side covers back on with a little flux core welder. At the time of welding the battery was out and all the connectors around the fuel tank were disconnected. Now I've put it back together with a new battery and everything works - except spark!

I'm here kicking myself really hard for being so stupid - welding with the ignition module still connected. But then I did some reading and most stuff suggests that just disconnecting the battery is enough.

I'm going over it again today cleaning and reconnecting all the connectors but I'd welcome any input. Have I fried my ignition or is there a chance it's just a dirty connection?

I'm in Atlantic Canada and apparently this shouldn't be here today! Merlin would not ID it but Google image search suggests Sandhill Crane.

I've tried NextCloud before and didn't really love it and I'm now happy with a combination of syncthing and LibreOffice. But my wife wants the full google drive, with sheets, docs etc. without the google, and I think NextCloud is my best option for that.

I'm and experienced *nix admin and already have a Linux server running with both VMs and docker containers and also have a working OpenVPN setup for remote access. But I found the NextCloud setup frustrating. We had a discussion about it (here I think) and determined that this was because NextCloud would rather sell their hosted service, so they don't go out of their way to make the self hosted option easy. I get that and don't hold it against them at all.

But, now that I'm wanting to try it again, I'm looking for pointers to guides for setting up self hosted NextCloud. I've searched, but nothing I found seemed like "the one".

I've just bought a Yamaha YP-D6 turntable. It's had a hard life, but seems to work ok. I'll replace the stylus before playing any of my collection. Problem is that it has a Shure RXT-4 cartridge which takes a N97HE stylus. A quick bit of research suggests I'll be paying well over $200 for even a cheap N97HE clone. This seems a bit risky when I don't even know if the cartridge is functionally "good".

I'm not looking for the best possible performance from a turntable - it's just to be able to play my collection for nostalgia etc.

I think I'm better off replacing the cartridge with something like and audio technica AT-VM95E.

Interested to hear any thoughts, including suggestions for other budget friendly cartridges.

Edit for anyone that finds this later: my problem was that I was missing a route in the VMs to send traffic for the OpenVPN subnet to the main host bridge interface. So, it was using "default", which sent it to my internet router.

Maybe better to ask this in a Linux group, but trying here first.

I'm running a Linux server with Home Assistant in a VM, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

I recently moved my OpenVPN server onto the same physical box as Home Assistant. OpenVPN runs native on the host OS in tunnel mode.

OpenVPN works fine - clients can get to the host running OpenVPN, to applications running in docker containers on the same host and to other hosts on my network (once I update their routing to send traffic for my VPN network back to the OpenVPN host).

OpenVPN clients cannot get to my Home Assistant VM.

If I use tcpdump to watch the VM network interface (vnet0), from the host, and ping the VM from a VPN client I see the echo request go in and the reply come out. If I do the same, but watch the OpenVPN interface (tun0) I only see the request go in, but no reply. It's like the kernel doesn't know what to do with packets from the VM addressed to the VPN.

There is no firewall running on the host. This is not specific to my Home Assistant VM - I bought up a vanilla Alpine Linux VM and had exactly the same issue.

I've used a home espresso machine, with built-in grinder, daily for at least 10 years. I'm generally happy with the results - there's some variability but most everything I make is acceptable, and I fairly regularly get something I feel is good. Recently I've been getting a lot of "acceptable" and it's been a long time (many months) since I've made one that I'd call "good". They're missing that bit of oily lustre that I feel really makes it perfect.

• I drink a single shot over a small amount of hot water
• I get my beans from a local (same province) roaster that say they roast to order
• I like dark roast beans - the roaster calls it their Italian roast
• my house water comes from a well and is naturally a bit hard, but we have a whole house softener
• I've never de-scaled the machine because of the water softener - there's no build up or crusting at any orifices
• I don't make any attempt to get perfect extraction quantity - I grind, tamp and trim with the tool supplied with the machine. When I first got this particular machine (about 4 years ago) I programmed the extraction time, but a can't remember the "recipe" I used
• I've tried beans from one other local roaster (via a grocery store) with the same results

My experience says it's stale beans, but I'm buying roast to order, so I'm confused.

I run a small home lab - number of servers varies from time to time. Currently five, all Linux.

When I heard about log consolidation I imagined that I would get a nice dashboard type view where I could see a consolidated, real time, view of all my server logs go by. Victoria Logs does that for me. I also imagined that there would be a way to flag particular log entries as "normal, and expected" so they would be excluded in the future - the goal being to get this dashboard to a state where if anything appears, it's probably bad. I can't see a way to do that in Victoria Logs. Do I need to try harder? If Victoria Logs won't do it - is there anything that will?

I dumped Windows about 6 months ago and have not had a moment of regret. But our volunteer fire department just started using a Windows (only) tool for managing call outs etc.

I'm running Debian 13.3 and the Wine 10.0 from Debian.

I've played around a bit and worked through a few minor issues and can now run the various apps that ship with Wine - including iexplorer with network.

But when I try to run the one app I need, I get the following text:

[372:0115/144659.223:ERROR:network_change_notifier_win.cc(224)] WSALookupServiceBegin failed with: 0
[372:0115/144659.337:ERROR:network_sandbox.cc(302)] Failed to grant sandbox access to cache directory C:\users\[Redacted]\AppData\Roaming\fireq-desktop\Cache\Cache_Data: Procedure not found. (0x7F)
[372:0115/144659.338:ERROR:network_sandbox.cc(396)] Failed to grant sandbox access to network context data directory C:\users\[Redacted]\AppData\Roaming\fireq-desktop\Network: Success. (0x0)
02a0:err:ole:com_get_class_object class {7ab36653-1796-484b-bdfa-e74f1db7c1dc} not registered
02a0:err:ole:create_server class {7ab36653-1796-484b-bdfa-e74f1db7c1dc} not registered
02a0:err:ole:com_get_class_object no class object {7ab36653-1796-484b-bdfa-e74f1db7c1dc} could be created for context 0x5
023c:err:ole:com_get_class_object class {aa509086-5ca9-4c25-8f95-589d3c07b48a} not registered
023c:err:ole:com_get_class_object class {aa509086-5ca9-4c25-8f95-589d3c07b48a} not registered
023c:err:ole:create_server class {aa509086-5ca9-4c25-8f95-589d3c07b48a} not registered
023c:err:ole:com_get_class_object no class object {aa509086-5ca9-4c25-8f95-589d3c07b48a} could be created for context 0x17
[372:0115/144659.459:ERROR:network_service_instance_impl.cc(265)] Encountered error while migrating network context data or granting sandbox access for C:\users\[Redacted]\AppData\Roaming\fireq-desktop\Network. Result: 11: Success. (0x0)
[636:0115/144659.710:ERROR:network_change_notifier_win.cc(224)] WSALookupServiceBegin failed with: 0
01c8:err:d3d:wined3d_context_gl_set_pixel_format wglSetPixelFormatWINE failed to set pixel format 1 on device context 000000000501005D.
[636:0115/144700.128:ERROR:tcp_socket_win.cc(861)] connect failed: 10051
[636:0115/144700.129:ERROR:tcp_socket_win.cc(861)] connect failed: 10051
[636:0115/144700.129:ERROR:tcp_socket_win.cc(861)] connect failed: 10051
[636:0115/144700.129:ERROR:tcp_socket_win.cc(861)] connect failed: 10051
[704:0115/144711.603:ERROR:crashpad_client_win.cc(844)] not connected

The application opens, but just displays an empty window. I'm guessing it's trying to connect to their server before doing something else.

I believe the app I'm trying to run is electron based and my searches show that this has historically been an issue and I've tried a few of the hints I found - even though they were years old and for old versions of Wine.

I know it's a long shot, but do these error messages suggest anything obvious that I should try?

A while back I ditched Windows for Linux desktop (long time Linux user, just not desktop) because I've learned to hate Microsoft.

I have 2 Sengled WiFi bulbs that I thought were useless now that Sengled is dead (although the app seems to be able to login again now, I'll never trust it). But then I found Sengled Tools which, among other things, documents a very simple way to communicate with Sengled bulbs using JSON over UDP. The sample light custom component is only ~100 lines of Python and adding the UDP and JSON from Sengled Tools would be maybe 50-100 more. I took this as an invitation to improve my Python and rescue the bulbs so I started reading up on Home Assistant development.

I now have this overwhelming VS Code install with devcontainers etc. etc. which seems crazy overkill for the task at hand and I really resent AI being shoved in my face every time I try to do something - especially when the main purpose of the exercise is to learn.

I run Home Assistant in a VM and I worked out I can virsh console hass and then docker exec -it homeassistant sh. I think there's maybe a sshd addon I could use and there is also the File Editor addon.

I guess I've answered my own question, and maybe I just wanted to have a rant about being "forced" back into the Microsoft ecosystem in order to develop for Home Assistant - but I would be interested to learn about other options.

Edit to add my solution for anyone that might come across this post in the future:

As usual, I rushed in without reading the documentation properly. I just started reading from the top and following the VS Code instructions. If I had scrolled down the page a bit I would have found the "Manual Environment" section. There are no instructions for my specific distribution, but it was clear enough that it could easily be adapted. I now have a copy of Home Assistant that I can simply run in a terminal and kill and restart etc. without impacting my "production environment". I've already installed vscodium, so will probably keep using it, but if I read the instructions properly I would probably just use vi.

I've been running Home Assistant for a while and have wifi, zwave and zigbee networks. My zigbee is on a ZBT-1. I was happy until this week.

I bought some ESP32-C6 development boards to learn about ESP32 etc. with the goal of making some zigbee lock sensors (mechanical switch to report if a deadbolt is closed).

When I put the sample zigbee code on the board it won't connect to the network from my study, but if I take it closer to the coordinator it will connect and it continues working if I take it back to my study. The desk in my study is only about 16' from the coordinator but it is through 3 wood framed, gyprock lined, walls.

I know the answer is "probably, maybe", but I'd be interested in any insight people have about optimizing Zigbee networks. I could remove one of the walls from the equation by using a longer USB cable and bringing the ZBT-1 out of the utility closet? I already have routers close to 2 of the 3 doors I want to put my sensors in - I could maybe add a Zigbee lamp near the 3rd location?

I've got an IKEA Tradfri LED driver and a Rodret dimmer. When I first installed them I thought it would be good to also control some non-IKEA pendant lights with the same dimmer, in sync with the cabinet lights connected to the Tradfri - so, I created automations in Home Assistant corresponding to each of the actions the dimmer can perform and this is working fine. However, we've decided not to control the pendant lights in sync with the cabinet lights so it's now unnecessarily complicated. I plan to remove the automations and link the Rodret direct to the Tradfri again.

I understand that I can do this by following the IKEA procedure to pair the devices. But I'm also curious about the option in Home Assistant to bind devices.

Finally to my question - are these two methods to achieve the same result, or is IKEA pairing somehow different than Zigbee binding?