126: Smart But Not Cloudy

126: Smart But Not Cloudy

Released Friday, 28th June 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
126: Smart But Not Cloudy

126: Smart But Not Cloudy

126: Smart But Not Cloudy

126: Smart But Not Cloudy

Friday, 28th June 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
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Episode Transcript

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0:00

It's self-hosted 1.26 and this one's

0:02

a little different because our buddy

0:04

Alex is back in the motherland

0:06

visiting family. But our buddy

0:08

Brent is here. Hello Brent. Good to see you

0:10

and hear you again. Hi Chris.

0:12

It's so good to be back on self-hosted. Well

0:15

it's a perfect week for you to be here

0:17

because you've been diving deep into a question I

0:20

have had forever since we started the

0:22

show. And that is, is there a

0:24

way to self-host and track fitness data

0:27

where I can have a device but I'm not necessarily

0:29

syncing it to Google or Apple? So

0:31

we're going to talk about that today with you because

0:33

that's where your head's been at recently. And

0:35

then it's kind of ironic that Alex isn't here because

0:38

he recommended I

0:40

try the Aquara G4 Smart

0:43

Wireless Video Doorbell. Because

0:45

he knows it was right up my alley. It's battery powered.

0:47

It's something that can replace the ring. And I've had, shamefully

0:50

had a ring on this rig for a long time

0:52

because I do want to monitor what's going on near

0:54

the door. And he said,

0:56

Chris you got to try this thing. It's like it's perfect for you. I

0:59

don't think I've ever known you without that doorbell

1:02

to be honest. You know when

1:04

you're like, you got your rig at a campground,

1:06

because I have it on the RV right? So

1:08

you're at a campground or you're boondocking somewhere and

1:10

you leave. There's

1:12

a peace of mind knowing if the camp

1:16

showed up and they knocked on your door and they needed

1:18

to talk to you. Or there's people that have been walking

1:20

around your rig when you're parked there. So you need to

1:22

know, okay, I got to go home and move. There's just

1:24

a bit of a security to it. And that's

1:27

kind of what I use it for. And then ironically when

1:29

I'm home, I don't really want

1:31

it. So the

1:33

ring has this removable battery that's kind of

1:36

like a drill battery. It's my favorite

1:38

feature of the device. And you can just pop it

1:40

right out. And so when I'm home, I'll often just

1:42

pop the battery. Oh wow. So you like physically disable

1:44

the device. Yeah, that works fine that way. How

1:46

have I never noticed this? Like I've lived with you for weeks

1:48

and I've never noticed you do that. You must be really slick.

1:51

I generally just leave it disabled for weeks at a time.

1:53

You know, it's more like I'll pop the battery in for

1:56

special times really. It's how I've treated it. And that's, you

1:58

know, because I don't want to do that. really

2:00

trust the Ring security

2:02

model. It's owned by Amazon. They're known to

2:04

kind of work sort of lackadaisily with the

2:06

police. There's just a lot of it. It

2:08

feels like surveillance capitalism, all that kind of

2:10

stuff. But

2:12

it's also very useful. Can I

2:14

ask you a question about that? Like, I'm curious

2:16

how your feelings have changed about that specific device

2:19

from like the day you bought it versus how

2:21

you feel about it today? I

2:23

bought it when it was brand new. Ring

2:25

was a young startup shortly

2:27

after they pitched on Shark Tank

2:30

and they became a company. Wow, really? I

2:32

didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. So

2:34

I was sort of disappointed when Amazon picked them up, but

2:37

I think it would have gone the way of surveillance either

2:39

way. And they do have

2:41

a very compelling suite of products. Got

2:44

to give them credit. Like the Ring stick up cams

2:46

are also really good and have

2:48

been useful. And again, use the same battery

2:50

system. So it's that same drill style battery

2:52

for their other remote cameras. Really,

2:55

really nice. So you're just swapping camera batteries

2:58

as you need. You would with like a

3:00

professional camera or a drill. And

3:02

so I really thought they've nailed that. But, you

3:06

know, with Amazon, they've dropped the price to 50 bucks, too.

3:08

So they're becoming more and more appealing. So I thought it

3:10

was time to try to find something. And when Alex recommended

3:12

this to me, I had to go for it because now

3:14

it's under $100. The GeForce Smart camera

3:17

for your for your door, 97 bucks,

3:19

no subscription, local storage, 1080p video,

3:22

162 degree field of view,

3:26

16 by nine aspect ratio. So good

3:28

optics, pretty good optics in this category.

3:30

Not the best by far, but definitely

3:32

not the worst either. And the

3:35

thing that really sets it apart, in my opinion, and if

3:37

you're going to write in and tell me what video doorbell

3:39

you use, this

3:41

is the differentiator. It

3:43

will run wired or on six AA

3:46

batteries. That's huge for me. Wow. And

3:49

it seems like you get about four to five

3:52

to six months, depending on how much activity the

3:54

device has. Okay. I'd like to know what, you

3:56

know, is this an unusual device in this space

3:58

with having some of these? features

4:00

for instance or is this like pretty

4:03

standard and this device that Alex recommended

4:05

to you is like just the

4:07

best in class of that specific you know the ones

4:09

with double A's and stuff it

4:11

is really hard to do a good

4:13

video camera that picks up on stuff

4:15

on time can send that video back

4:17

and and run off batteries because

4:19

if you think about it you're connected to a

4:21

wireless network you're doing data transfer you're running a

4:23

camera and an encoder it's

4:26

actually it's kind of it's kind of a it's

4:28

a power intensive job yeah and

4:31

so to do all of that and run

4:33

off of batteries is kind of getting more

4:35

and more rare like real link has some

4:37

really nice looking video doorbells the

4:40

good ones with good resolution they're running 5

4:42

gigahertz Wi-Fi they're all wired I

4:44

haven't seen a wireless one yet Wow and

4:47

maybe that's you know for 80% of people that's just

4:49

fine before I want to put this thing there's no

4:51

power there so for me that's huge and

4:54

you know the price right under $100 yeah the ring you can

4:56

get as cheap as 50 but

4:58

it comes with all the downsides plus to

5:00

really take advantage of it needs a five

5:02

month monthly a $5 a month subscription this

5:05

has none so that to me was pretty big and

5:08

if you have home kit like if you're in the

5:10

iPhone ecosystem the

5:12

Aquara G4 is a slam dunk underscore

5:15

exclamation mark your home pods elect

5:17

as doorbells the video feeds will

5:19

pull in super fast it supports

5:21

all the home kit features like

5:23

face recognition and location awareness and

5:25

all that stuff it integrates very

5:27

tightly with home kit if

5:30

you're not on home kit well stay tuned

5:32

I'm gonna address that but I'll tell you about my

5:35

setup and here's what I did Brent since I did

5:37

have that ring I decided to do like a little

5:39

a B comparison of these two devices I love hearing

5:41

this so I took the G4 and

5:43

I just installed it right above the ring the

5:50

motion alerts are quite good if not

5:52

a bit faster on the Aquara and

5:56

I'd say if you're using it home kit

5:58

they're even faster the ring camera does offer

6:00

a few more tricks. The

6:03

Aquara might if it's wired, but, you know, these

6:05

are both on battery. The, the ring camera has

6:07

this little trick where they've

6:10

put in a second camera and

6:12

it's a crappier black and white, low

6:14

frame rate, junk camera that they can

6:16

run continuously in a little buffer and

6:18

just drop. And so they have,

6:21

you know, the, they have this neat little

6:23

trick where they have a few extra seconds

6:25

of footage right before the

6:27

motion event was triggered. So when you

6:29

go to review the ring camera, you see like a

6:31

couple of seconds of this black

6:33

and white grainy footage, and then it snaps

6:36

into the, Oh, I was activated. Here's the

6:38

good footage that I took. That's actually kind

6:40

of brilliant. It is nice because a lot

6:42

of times these battery powered cameras just missed

6:45

the very beginning and ring came up with

6:47

a very clever solution for that. The Aquara

6:49

does not, does not offer that, but

6:51

they do offer a lot of fun things like in

6:54

their app, they have a voice changer mode. So you

6:56

can do the two way voice stuff with a robot

6:58

voice if you want. It lets

7:00

you switch out the ring tones to a lot of different ones

7:02

or set your own with a custom MP3. So

7:05

these things, you know, it's kind of a give and take,

7:07

right? What, what you really want from it, from a camera

7:09

like this, but for a guy like

7:11

you, Brent, let's say you wanted to have, uh, you

7:13

know, on your cabin, you wanted to add a doorbell

7:15

because you don't have a doorbell on the cabin right

7:17

now. Right? No, I don't even, I

7:19

don't even really have locks on my doors. Right.

7:22

Okay. So let's just say for, you know, reasons you

7:24

wanted to add a doorbell. So that way when you're

7:26

working, you know, and family comes

7:28

over, they could hit that and then notify you.

7:31

I don't think a guy like you is going to

7:33

be inclined to buy any of the ring kit. Right.

7:35

You know me so well. Right. So

7:38

the question I had is what a guy

7:40

like Brent be interested in the Aquara setup

7:42

and kind of guy like me, who's always

7:45

looking for the totally offline option, be

7:48

satisfied with the Aquaria G4 wireless

7:51

doorbell. And I, I

7:54

think it's a complicated answer and

7:56

it really, it really depends on

7:58

how bad. you want

8:00

it. And so you really have to

8:02

understand the value proposition of a video doorbell to begin

8:04

with. And I would say

8:07

number one of them is just being aware, situationally

8:09

aware of what's going on at your house. If

8:11

somebody's lingering at your front door, if a package

8:13

has been dropped off, if

8:15

somebody came by and knocked on your door while you weren't

8:17

home, if just

8:19

animals are walking by, it's interesting. Like the situational

8:21

awareness is the number one reason. So I know

8:23

what's going on with my home when I'm not

8:25

there. Or if I'm in bed and I

8:27

hear somebody knocking at the door, I can pull these things up

8:29

and I want to be able to pull them up as fast

8:31

as possible. Ideally for my requirements, I'd

8:33

also like it integrated into Home Assistant. So

8:36

that way I could just pull up a

8:38

dashboard in Home Assistant and get my individual

8:40

camera feeds. You

8:42

know, maybe long term, I'd like to plug it into other

8:44

things too, like a on

8:46

premise video DVR solution.

8:49

And so I wanted to look at it from all

8:52

of these individual angles. And

8:54

I think it gets pretty close. But if

8:56

you don't have HomeKit, you're going to have to

8:58

do a lot of extra work. So this

9:01

is what I kind of want to prepare people for. Get

9:05

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9:08

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9:11

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9:13

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9:15

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9:17

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9:20

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9:22

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9:24

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9:33

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9:39

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9:46

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10:07

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10:16

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10:21

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check it out support the show get grist

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comm self-hosted All

10:37

right Chris, so let's let's go with this let's run

10:39

with this concept so here at my cabin where I'll

10:41

probably mostly see elk I want

10:43

this device, but I don't have the home kit

10:46

Lifestyle at all so what are you

10:48

proposing like what what's the setup here?

10:51

There will be a journey that is a

10:53

bit treacherous I have found and it depends

10:56

on when you're listening to this it may

10:58

be resolved But it seems

11:00

that the Android app the aquara Android app

11:02

that sets up the G4 doorbell might have

11:04

a bug When it

11:06

is first it joins it to the network and then

11:08

once it's joined the doorbell to the network and I'll

11:11

explain a little bit more about that here in a

11:13

second it then tries to bind

11:15

the doorbell to your aquara account and That

11:18

seems to fail every single time on

11:20

the Android app now I am on

11:22

graphing OS, but it you know I

11:24

have all the special like stuff turned off And

11:28

I've seen other people report that if you downgrade like

11:30

you go find an old apk of the app you

11:32

might be able to Get it to work. I tried

11:34

that I went back to like July of 2023 and

11:36

I still could not get it to buy into my account I Think

11:40

there's ways around it though Depending

11:42

on how ambitious you are or

11:44

if you have access to an iPhone you can temporarily

11:46

assign it to home kit and Then

11:49

export it out of home kit, but

11:51

it's that's a rigmarole too, but there's another Pitfall

11:55

in this journey that you need to be aware of the

11:58

aquara probably for battery life and cost-reloading reasons

12:00

only supports 2.4 GHz WiFi. Now,

12:06

a lot of us have an AP that broadcasts 2 and

12:09

5 GHz simultaneously. On

12:11

the Android version of the setup, if

12:14

your WiFi AP is broadcasting both 2 and

12:16

5, it seemingly just doesn't

12:19

see it. It just doesn't see the

12:21

AP at all. Oh, no. So

12:23

you have to temporarily disable

12:26

the 5 GHz network. So

12:28

it can see the 2.4. Nobody wants

12:31

to do that. No. Also

12:35

not an issue when you do the iPhone side

12:37

of the setup. Like it's just because of the

12:39

HomeKit stuff. It just seems to just handle it.

12:42

Not really a lot of fun. What I did to get

12:44

around it and you know

12:46

hit or miss really is I set

12:49

up a temporary AP on my phone running it

12:52

to for how to get that to get the

12:54

information and then in the settings changed it later.

12:57

So there are ways around it, you know, but you're just going to

12:59

have to be clever. It's

13:01

not ideal. I think the probably

13:04

most likely path is

13:06

right now an iPhone and HomeKit

13:10

and that's just going to be like the note you're going to have

13:12

it up and running in five minutes and

13:14

it's going to be great and it's going to have all the features it says

13:16

on the box. Once you

13:18

go outside that route, I think it gets less

13:20

and less great. And then

13:22

ultimately you're still going to have a little bit

13:24

of trouble pulling it into Home Assistant. Now

13:27

through this process, I discovered

13:29

a new app called Go

13:31

to RTC and they

13:34

describe themselves as the ultimate

13:36

camera streaming application with support

13:38

for RTSP, WebRTC, HomeKit, FFmpeg,

13:40

RTMP and more. And yeah,

13:42

you heard it in there,

13:44

HomeKit. Wow. Okay. All

13:46

right. So I need to know more

13:49

about this because it sounds like this

13:51

would solve your exact problem.

13:53

I'm guessing you gave this a try.

13:55

Yeah. Here's the secret setup, Brent. to

14:00

be the HomeKit server. That's

14:02

so awesome. So

14:04

you pair it using the HomeKit stuff

14:06

to Home Assistant. Then

14:09

you use Go to RTC to

14:12

bring in the HomeKit video feeds from your

14:14

iCloud account. And you can bring in any,

14:16

I guess, video feed. I don't have any

14:18

other ones. But you could bring in

14:20

other iCloud video feeds through the same application

14:22

into Home Assistant. Home Assistant just looks at

14:25

it like an old standard RTMP video feed.

14:28

That's awesome. Although it

14:30

does sound like then you need some

14:33

connectivity. Yeah. You do have

14:35

to solve the Wi-Fi stuff temporarily. You've got to

14:37

have that up and running. But you can re-enable

14:39

your 5 gigahertz once you have it connected to

14:42

the Wi-Fi. The

14:44

nice thing about Go to RTC

14:46

is it's kind

14:48

of the ultimate give me any kind

14:50

of video. And I will ingest it

14:53

and normalize it for you. So

14:55

I have it running now on my

14:57

home system. And it seems to support

15:00

WebRTC. So if

15:02

you wanted to just take a WebRTC video

15:04

stream of anything, you could bring it in.

15:07

But also Wwise. So I think

15:09

this might be able to replace my Wwise Docker

15:11

Bridge, especially now that

15:13

Wwise has made some API account changes. It

15:15

seems like this supports that stuff a little

15:17

bit better and normalizes that video feed. So

15:20

this I might eventually end up replacing

15:22

my Wwise Docker Bridge and use Go

15:24

to RTC for both the

15:26

Aquaric video camera and my Wwise

15:29

cameras and maybe any other random

15:31

ass camera I set up and just get it

15:33

on WebRTC or RTSP or whatever.

15:36

So I think ultimately, although I had to

15:38

go through quite the journey, discovering

15:41

Go to RTC was

15:44

worth it in spades. Because this is one of those

15:46

applications that's going to be solving problems for all different

15:48

types of cameras that I use down the road, giving

15:51

me standard normalized video feeds for all of them

15:53

that I can ingest into anything I want that

15:55

accepts that. It's

16:00

tricky, but the short version is, is have

16:02

Home Assistant pretend it's your HomeKit hub, then

16:05

join the Aquara G4 doorbell

16:08

to your Home Assistant HomeKit, and then use Go

16:10

to RTC to bring in the video feeds. And

16:12

then the last bit, I'll just share with you,

16:14

if you're curious about this doorbell, just so you're

16:17

aware of how this works, this

16:19

doorbell comes with a speaker, the

16:21

chime, and it's a loud son of a

16:23

gun, and it's got USB-C, it needs constant

16:26

power, and this is really the brains of

16:28

the operation. This is actually what

16:30

your parent, a HomeKit, or however you decide to

16:32

do it, is actually the chime. The chime is

16:34

the brains that talks to the doorbell and synchronizes

16:36

all the stuff. The chime is

16:38

where the SD card goes, if you wanna do

16:41

local recording. So you need to have

16:43

it within range of the doorbell so the two

16:45

can talk to each other. You gotta keep that

16:47

in mind. The chime is actually what you get

16:49

on the wifi network, then it communicates using their

16:51

own proprietary stuff or whatever it is to the doorbell

16:54

directly. And that's also just a little hint on how

16:56

this whole thing works. Overall, once

16:58

it's all up and running, and

17:01

so we'll see, you know, if I get four to

17:03

six months, like I said, of battery life, I think

17:05

I'll be pretty satisfied with this. I

17:07

could see myself getting those rechargeable double

17:09

A's and just rotating through those pretty

17:11

easily. And then last but not

17:13

least is they have said, Aquara has said

17:16

that they're gonna have matter support for the

17:18

G4. Matter support

17:20

could change the game on how you connect to

17:22

the Home Assistant and could conceivably make that a

17:25

lot simpler. We'll have to

17:27

see. I don't have any matter devices

17:29

at this point, so I haven't really invested in that.

17:31

But, you know, if matter support made

17:33

it substantially easier, maybe I would consider getting my

17:35

first matter radio. So you

17:37

teased us, Chris, with this side-by-side comparison or

17:40

up and down, I guess, in your case. And

17:43

I assume you've been using that for a

17:45

couple days now. I'm so curious, how did

17:47

the side-by-side go? You know, I think the

17:50

ring might have the slight

17:52

edge for utilitarian just

17:55

ease of battery swapping because

17:57

on the Aquara, you have to open up a

17:59

little. side port, remove a screw

18:01

and then kind of pop the chassis up

18:04

off of the back plating, which is a

18:06

fixed to the wall. And then

18:08

you get the batteries out where the ring is, you just pop

18:10

a battery out the bottom. It's really smooth and really nice. But

18:12

in terms of optics, I, the people online

18:15

say the ring has a better camera to

18:17

my eye, the Aquara had a

18:19

better camera. So it's clearly, it's at the point where it's

18:21

kind of just a matter of taste. Ultimately,

18:23

I got the notifications faster from the Aquara

18:26

than I did from the ring. Unless I

18:28

started turning on some of the fancy home

18:30

kit features. And then,

18:32

of course, there's the speed of notifications, which really

18:34

matters on a doorbell type device. You want it

18:36

to be as fast as possible. The

18:39

Aquara does seem to have a slight edge there

18:41

unless you turn on some of the fancier home

18:43

kit features, because that is done locally on your

18:45

device and has to do the face recognition on

18:47

your phone, I believe. That adds a bit

18:49

of a delay. But if you want that feature, it might be worth

18:51

it. The side by side was

18:53

good in the sense that I felt like

18:56

the Aquara was catching everything, you know, it had

18:58

the same kind of reliability that the ring had.

19:01

And, you know, optics,

19:04

matter of taste. I do

19:06

have a question for the audience, though. Do you

19:08

know of a better doorbell, maybe one that is

19:10

also wireless? Or is there a better way to

19:12

just do cameras at the door? I'd

19:15

like to hear what you think. Boost in and let us know.

19:17

I know the real links are supposed to be pretty good. So

19:19

if anybody has any experience with the real links, please,

19:22

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19:24

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19:26

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19:29

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20:07

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20:14

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20:18

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scale.com/self-hosted. So,

21:05

Chris, I recently got into a

21:07

lifestyle that I never thought

21:10

I would. And that

21:12

lifestyle is fitness tracking.

21:15

Oh, Brent, welcome to the

21:17

world of consequences from sitting at

21:19

a desk all day. So

21:22

for the last year, I've been

21:24

at NextCloud, right? And I'm like

21:26

feeling the desk bod syndrome setting

21:28

in. So that's part of the

21:30

incentive here. Yeah. And, you

21:33

know, I've heard you say in other contexts, and so

21:35

I bet you apply it here too, is you

21:37

can't what is what do you say? You said something

21:40

like you can't change what you don't measure or something

21:42

like that. I've heard you say something that affect a

21:44

couple of times. So it's true with fitness, too. Yeah,

21:46

I think it's like Peter Drucker or something says like

21:48

what gets measured gets managed or all of that. Yeah,

21:51

that that sounds like it. And

21:54

so I one of the main

21:56

reason I never thought I would get a

21:58

device like this and is privacy. And

22:01

I have much more to say about that, but we'll leave that

22:03

there for now. But

22:05

the other reason is that I

22:09

didn't completely make this decision.

22:11

This was a gift from a self-hosted

22:13

listener, Tom Ash, who is a friend

22:15

of mine, a great friend of

22:17

mine actually. Every time I go to Europe, we hang out a

22:20

whole bunch, and he's a

22:22

triathloner. And so he knows his

22:25

fitness tracking devices. And

22:27

he's been trying to convince me, literally, since I've known him for

22:29

a year, since the very first time I met him, he's like,

22:31

you got to get one of these garments, you got to be

22:33

part of the team. And

22:36

so he was kind enough the last time

22:38

that we spent time together to gift me

22:40

with a Garmin 4Runner 255, which

22:44

is like a middle

22:46

of the ground, as far as I understand,

22:48

a fitness tracker that has all the great

22:50

sensors but is a reasonable price range. And

22:53

I'm telling you, this thing is starting to change my

22:55

life, and I did not expect that. I

22:58

love this. So he had a good insight there.

23:01

If I just get him one, if I just get

23:03

him one, then he'll start to understand and appreciate it.

23:06

I have been there with my friends so many times.

23:08

I'm like, I'm just going to get him one. Well,

23:10

and the extra fascinating thing is he and I are

23:12

the exact same height. And well,

23:15

I will say, we're the same build. But we're not

23:17

really the same build, because I've got the desk body,

23:19

and he's got the triathloner body. We're

23:22

built the same, and it's like, oh, I

23:24

could be something like that over there. And

23:26

this is the first step towards realizing my

23:28

full potential. So I dabbled in

23:30

these before, Brent. I had the first Fitbits when

23:33

they came out. And then I

23:35

switched to the Apple Watch when that came out.

23:37

And I found that to be a pretty good fitness tracker and

23:39

also a sleep tracker, which is a big thing for me because

23:41

I have sleep apnea. And I like to

23:43

keep an eye on the blood oxygen level while I sleep. I like

23:45

to keep an eye on the heart rate and just my overall sleep

23:47

quality to kind of get an idea of how the old sleep apnea

23:49

is doing. And so the

23:52

Apple Watch has worked pretty well, but obviously there's

23:54

that Apple lock-in. And I've been

23:56

paralyzed and haven't really moved anywhere else now

23:58

for years. because anything

24:01

else I switch to feels like it

24:03

has this massive, invasive privacy system where

24:06

it's going to upload all of my sleep

24:09

data and all of my activity data to

24:11

Garmin or to Google or whatever

24:13

it is these days. That

24:17

has really slowed my role on this. I'm

24:19

wondering how you've dealt with that because I

24:21

know you're also very privacy conscious. Yeah,

24:23

I've been mixed feelings about this new device in

24:25

my life. I think I've had it about a

24:27

month now. And yeah,

24:30

step number one, very excited

24:33

about tracking the things, but

24:35

then immediately thinking, geez, it's

24:37

tracking GPS of

24:39

all my movements. It has the possibility

24:42

of just sending anything to a company

24:44

I don't really know. And

24:46

that usually for me is like

24:48

an instant no-go. Right?

24:52

So I have, because I

24:54

am brand new this fitness

24:57

tracking ecosystem and lifestyle, I

24:59

guess, if you want to put it that way, I

25:01

just thought I'm going to dive right in and

25:03

see what it's all about. And then

25:05

I can start looking for alternatives. And I

25:09

got to say, I found an alternative.

25:11

And I think it's actually pretty cool.

25:14

I found something called Gadget Bridge. Now, some listeners are

25:16

probably like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've known about that

25:18

for a long time. This project's been around since like

25:20

2015 or so. It

25:23

has something, it supports something like 120

25:25

different gadgets that are in the working

25:28

well category, but in total, something like

25:30

2017 gadgets. And

25:32

they call them gadgets because you

25:34

can connect fitness watches and

25:37

trackers and stuff like that, or

25:39

headphones, but they have some

25:41

weird devices. You can even connect like a multimeter

25:43

is supported on this thing. So they're trying to

25:45

support a whole bunch of different devices, which I

25:47

think is actually a really cool idea. And

25:50

scooters and clock scooters. Yeah,

25:53

the the self the self flow or

25:55

solo. Yeah, self flow scooter is supported.

25:58

FM transmitters are supported. by Yame, which

26:00

I didn't even know they made FM

26:02

transmitters. Thermostats, the

26:05

Freometer is supported by Gadget Bridge. So

26:07

it is. And

26:09

then also there's a series of headphones.

26:12

And so it's a whole range of

26:14

products. I know also

26:16

that a lot of people that are pebble

26:18

fans use Gadget Bridge to make their pine

26:20

times and whatnot still work. So

26:22

I'm brand new to Gadget Bridge. And when I first got

26:24

the device, I went this

26:27

direction immediately. What can I get

26:29

that might do this? Because surely I'm

26:31

not the first person to think about this. And fitness trackers

26:33

and stuff have been around a long time. So dear,

26:36

wonderful open source community. I know you've come up

26:38

with something. So I found

26:40

Gadget Bridge a couple weeks ago. And I

26:43

installed it all kind of excited. But then

26:45

my watch wasn't getting picked up. And I

26:48

thought, OK, well, maybe this watch is a little newer.

26:50

Or maybe the project just hasn't got around to it

26:52

yet. I mean, the way they're doing this is basically

26:54

reverse engineering some of the protocols. I think

26:57

they even use Wireshark to get packets and

26:59

see how it's all put together, which is

27:01

kind of fascinating. And they describe all of

27:03

that. I'll leave a

27:05

link to them describing the Garmin protocol. And they're

27:08

like, oh, yeah, this is exactly how it works.

27:10

And here are the weird idiosyncrasies of this protocol.

27:12

But we know about that. And

27:14

here's what each Garmin device shares. But every

27:16

device does things a little differently. It's really

27:18

fascinating to just read about that. But

27:21

I bounced off it immediately because I could

27:24

connect to the watch. But then it

27:26

just had zero data. And it wasn't

27:29

an officially supported device

27:31

when I first connected to

27:33

it. So I spent

27:35

20 minutes with it. And I was like, oh, that's too

27:37

bad. I got the wrong watch. But

27:40

then a week later, I had this brilliant idea. And

27:42

I remembered seeing that they have nightly builds of

27:45

GadgetBridge. And I was like, I'm just going to

27:47

try that. Who knows? And I installed it. And

27:50

sure enough, the device is

27:52

supported in the nightly builds. And pretty

27:54

well, too. I sent you a bunch of screenshots

27:56

of some of the tracking it's doing. And it's

27:59

doing so. So I'm now on this

28:01

new path to like, investigate

28:05

what I'm losing if I go with

28:07

the open source alternative. Because

28:09

you always lose a little something, but I'm really impressed with

28:11

what it offers too. Yeah, the screenshots

28:14

felt like it was very comprehensive. You

28:16

could see in there it was pulling in all your

28:18

health data and even some of like

28:20

the composite information that

28:22

Garmin seems to do, like estimating your stress

28:24

level and whatnot. It's still pulling that into

28:27

GadgetBridge as well. So you

28:29

get basically, I mean, everything I think you

28:31

and I would want. Yeah, Chris,

28:33

you're right that you and I are

28:35

so similar because I like your camera

28:37

setup for your doorbell. Was

28:40

able to set up GadgetBridge in like duplicating mode so

28:42

it doesn't pull the data, it just leaves it on

28:44

the watch. So you did a side by side? Yeah,

28:48

I'm doing a side by side right now. Good.

28:50

You know, because like, if you have the

28:52

choice. And it's been fascinating. Like,

28:55

obviously the proprietary Garmin Connect app does

28:57

all the things they want it to

28:59

do. And it has like the modern

29:02

features. One thing I like about

29:04

this watch is it's already gotten new

29:06

features that weren't available when I first got it. And that's only been like a

29:08

month. And one of those actually

29:11

is a jet lag tracker that can help you

29:13

like deal with it. Fascinating. And I

29:15

was like, literally on

29:17

the plane back from Germany

29:20

with this watch on for like, you know, I was

29:22

like day three with the thing. And

29:24

I was reading about this jet lag thing. I was like, I

29:26

need this right now. But it didn't roll out till like a

29:28

week later. But it's nice

29:30

to know that some of these features are

29:32

coming to the watch and you can use

29:34

this watch without any connective application on your

29:37

phone. You just end up getting extra features

29:39

when you do the connection. So it's neat

29:41

to have some options. I

29:43

will say I'm finding

29:45

that some of the Garmin proprietary

29:47

stuff is actually really helpful for

29:49

someone like me who like doesn't

29:52

quite know how to interpret the

29:54

data always. So there's some like

29:56

hand holding. Oh, so like

29:58

they're giving you information. like in a graph

30:01

or something like how they display it? What do

30:03

you mean? Yeah, some of the graphs are really

30:05

nice because they're displaying like multiple pieces of

30:07

information at the same time and Gadget Bridge does

30:09

that as well. But as you might imagine, it's

30:12

just a little bit more polished, which I'm

30:14

not surprised by and I'm sure I can

30:17

get used to the Gadget Bridge stuff. But

30:19

I more mean that there

30:21

are certain functions partly

30:24

on the watch itself, which is nice,

30:26

but also in the companion app that

30:28

are doing

30:30

some work in the background to analyze

30:33

that data and to just give you

30:35

like, hey, you had a really stressful

30:37

day today based on, you know,

30:39

XYZ data points. And so like here's a

30:41

recommendation for how to wind down your evening.

30:43

And that's the kind of stuff you're not

30:45

necessarily going to get with Gadget

30:48

Bridge because it's pretty much providing

30:50

you all the info that you

30:52

want, but it's up to you to kind of, you

30:54

know, make those

30:56

analyses. So there's some

30:59

lifestyle niceties about the proprietary app, which I'm

31:01

not, I'm not, I don't think any of

31:03

us are surprised by. But I'm,

31:05

I gotta say, I'm quite impressed.

31:09

It is like way more advanced than I thought

31:11

it would be. So I would say Gadget Bridge,

31:14

if you have one of these watches and it

31:16

was like, like I said, a ton of supported

31:18

devices, if you've got one and you haven't checked

31:20

out Gadget Bridge yet, give it a

31:22

try. You can run it side by side. It's just

31:24

an option in the settings to let it kind of

31:26

sync to both apps at the same

31:28

time. And totally worth checking out. I'm really impressed by

31:31

the project. I've been really

31:33

considering getting one of these, the Garmin

31:35

255 S in particular,

31:37

right? Because it just

31:40

seems like a good alternative to the Apple

31:42

watch if the sleep tracking and fitness stuff

31:44

is the core functionality of the Apple watch.

31:46

And because I'm on Graphene OS, I

31:49

don't have tap to pay. But Garmin

31:51

adds tap to pay through

31:54

their Garmin system, I guess. I don't really know

31:56

because I haven't looked into it much. So I

31:58

would essentially beginning tap to pay back. using the

32:00

watch, which with all the

32:02

credit card skimmers at gas stations and stuff that keep cropping

32:04

up, I'm starting to just think maybe that's the way I

32:06

want to do my payments. Nice. So

32:09

that seems very tempting. I

32:11

think I would be torn between using

32:14

GadgetBridge and Garmin Connect, because one

32:16

thing, and I don't know if this really matters, and maybe

32:19

if anybody listening has any input or has done this and

32:21

tell me if it's worth it, I'm

32:24

considering the Garmin Connect integration with Home

32:26

Assistant. And

32:28

it's in Hacks, and it's really easy to

32:30

install. And then you pull in all

32:33

the sensors in the watch

32:36

into Home Assistant. Everything from your

32:38

steps to your stress information it collects

32:40

to your oxygen levels

32:42

to activity time, everything

32:44

it collects is now a sensor

32:46

in Home Assistant. That sounds nice.

32:49

Yeah, because you get charting for one. You could just look

32:51

at charts if you want. But two, you

32:54

could start building automations and

32:58

just different things around this data. I

33:00

hadn't even considered that. It unlocks a whole

33:02

world of possibility. Yeah. Wow. You're exploding my

33:04

mind right now. Maybe one little subtlety you

33:06

do is one of the lamps in your

33:09

living room is red

33:11

when you're under a certain step threshold. Just as a subtle reminder

33:13

that, hey, man, if you're going to watch TV, just so you

33:15

know, you didn't have to look at your watch, you didn't have

33:17

to look at any graphs. You don't even have to know what

33:19

the number is. You just need to know you're below your threshold.

33:22

That's one example. But I also think I

33:24

could see this being really good for logic,

33:27

for automations, ways to

33:29

figure out when to trigger an automation and whatnot,

33:31

just another bit of data that I could use

33:33

to help with that kind of

33:35

thing. So I'm

33:38

deeply seeking the audience's opinion on

33:40

Garmin Connect versus GadgetBridge and ways

33:42

to integrate a watch like that

33:44

with Home Assistant and if it's

33:46

valuable. Because this is one

33:49

of the last bits in my journey away from

33:51

Apple and the iPhone is I've been tethered to

33:54

this Apple Watch, which is tethered to an iPhone,

33:56

which is tethered to an iCloud account, you know,

33:58

like the need for that. bones

34:00

connected to the the Appletite and

34:03

this Garmin this Garmin looks like maybe gadget

34:05

bridge seems like a maybe my final solution

34:07

to get rid of that or

34:10

at least one of the final solutions so I'm

34:12

really glad you had a chance to play with this and

34:14

I imagine Brent you're gonna have to at some point well

34:16

maybe not but I imagine at some point you're gonna have

34:18

to make a choice maybe you don't

34:21

maybe you just keep putting into data in both places

34:23

but are you going to turn off Garmin Connect or

34:25

gadget bridge are you gonna leave them both running indefinitely

34:27

like what's your plan there well that's

34:29

a good question I don't know how to

34:31

make this decision yeah I could see that

34:33

being a tough one for me too yeah

34:35

I think part of it is like gadget

34:38

bridge or even what you're suggesting here Garmin

34:40

Connect for the home assistant allows you to

34:42

like get history your own data history and

34:44

keep it instead of being tied

34:46

to some service that is extremely

34:48

attractive so if if that's the only reason

34:50

to run both I think that's a winner

34:54

but the other question that you kind of ask

34:56

there is like will I get rid of Garmin

34:58

Connect and I don't I

35:02

find that unfortunately very difficult

35:04

to commit

35:08

to and it kills

35:10

me because I've I you

35:13

know I've been such a privacy advocate and

35:15

I feel daily discomfort

35:17

about what's being sent over

35:20

there but I also

35:22

have to say like it's improved my

35:24

life in the 30 days that I've

35:26

kind of interfaced with this ecosystem and

35:28

I don't want to

35:30

be the person saying that because these are like

35:32

the slippery slopes that we start to go down

35:36

especially with data privacy or like oh

35:38

it's it's I'm just gonna do that

35:40

for a bit and then eventually you

35:42

end up sliding but so

35:44

I got some tough decisions to make I think I'm

35:46

gonna run them both maybe for another

35:48

month that way I can have even more data to

35:51

compare but I I would imagine

35:53

you and I both know I'm just kicking the can down

35:55

the road I gotta make a decision here at some point.

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Chris, you just mentioned the watch is one of the ties

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37:39

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37:41

issues with iMessage and getting away from that.

37:43

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37:45

when the whole beeper thing was going down and

37:47

deeper mini was announced? Man, I was watching that

37:49

hope when they would somehow pull that out and

37:51

be able to stick around. And

37:54

maybe that would be a solution, right? Because the

37:56

idea with beeper was that you ran

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a client on the Mac or you ran a Mac.

38:00

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cases even like an old iPhone that was like hacked or whatever and

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it would synchronize iMessage to the client

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and that seemed like something I could live with

38:12

and then you could run the client on Android

38:14

and essentially have blue bubble iMessages and

38:17

participate in iMessage group chats and all that

38:19

kind of stuff but you

38:22

know Apple is the eight hundred pound gorilla

38:24

and they knocked that out but in the

38:26

ashes of that for

38:28

that beeper mini we

38:30

have blue bubbles and blue

38:32

bubbles is an open-source cross-platform ecosystem

38:35

of apps that aims to bring

38:37

iMessage to Android, Windows, and Linux

38:39

and the web and they

38:41

say with blue bubbles this is on their github you'll

38:43

be able to send messages media and much more to

38:45

your friends and family and it's

38:47

the same kind of deal Brent you need

38:50

a Mac and an

38:52

Apple ID and it could be a

38:54

Mac and a VM or it could be an actual

38:56

physical Mac and needs to be running 24-7 with

38:59

their software on it not

39:01

awesome not awesome but actually quite doable

39:03

for me because we have a soundboard

39:06

system in the studio that just is

39:08

a Mac in the corner that runs

39:10

24-7 kind of headless and

39:13

so I just put it on there because it was already signed into my

39:15

iCloud account and so with blue bubbles

39:17

after you set it up it

39:20

runs you through this wizard on the Mac and

39:22

I'm doing all of this through Rustdesk because it is literally

39:25

you know it's in the corner headless and

39:29

it runs you through a wizard and you

39:31

got to like connect it to your Google

39:33

account oh and I'm like okay so

39:35

what's it's connecting and I got to

39:37

give it all these privileges on the Mac like full

39:39

disk access and the ability to integrate with iMessage and

39:42

I also have to give it access to my Google

39:44

account like what's going on here well they're

39:47

spinning up a Firebase project for you

39:49

through this wizard on your Google account

39:51

that then kind of runs on Google's

39:53

infrastructure and handles the messaging and notifications

39:56

for you I have very mixed

39:58

feelings about this because it's It's a little

40:00

wonky. Yeah, it's a fascinating way to solve

40:02

this problem. But also then you end up

40:04

with your data in both camps?

40:08

Yes, and it's a little different because it's

40:10

not like using the Google Play notification system.

40:12

You're like standing up your own. And

40:14

I do think there are ways to manually solve

40:17

for this that don't use Google. And

40:19

it also uses Cloudflare tunnels to

40:25

get you back and sink through the NAT and all

40:27

of that. Now, there's also ways around that. But by

40:29

default, it uses Cloudflare tunnels. So the wizard sets all

40:31

this up, a Google Firebase project for you. You have

40:33

to authorize it to your Google account. Then

40:36

it sets up Cloudflare tunnels for you

40:38

and gets it all talking. And

40:41

then it tells you if you want

40:43

to get more advanced features, it needs to get

40:46

really deep into iMessage. And to

40:48

do that, you have to turn

40:50

on these private APIs. They've written

40:52

this standalone Objective-C library that's busting

40:54

into iMessage's memory space or something.

40:56

So you have to disable protections

40:59

in iOS and macOS, which means like

41:01

rebooting into recovery mode and running commands

41:03

and doing all this stuff on the

41:05

terminal. It's not like super in-depth,

41:09

but it is very invasive. I haven't

41:11

done that yet because I've only been

41:13

running this for a few days. So that's

41:15

optional, but that's one of the things you can do.

41:17

And then you get tap back and other special things

41:19

like FaceTime availability and things

41:21

like that inside Bluebubbles. So

41:24

you get this server running on the Mac. One

41:26

of the more modern version, like the last three releases

41:28

of macOS. Then

41:30

you synchronize it to the Bluebubbles client,

41:32

either on your phone or on your

41:34

desktop. And then the

41:36

two start talking, and I'm doing

41:39

iMessage. I've been iMessaging with the wife

41:41

and kids this morning. I

41:43

can create new chats. It pulled in and synced old

41:45

chats. And I said, just pull in the last 25

41:47

messages. It's

41:49

really great because I can have a conversation on the

41:51

phone on my Pixel. I

41:54

can set the Pixel down and launch

41:56

the Bluebubbles app on Linux, which is

41:58

packaged in Flatpak. up on flat

42:00

hub and now I'm chatting frickin

42:02

iMessage on my frickin desktop using

42:05

Linux and my keyboard. This

42:07

is the dream come true. It

42:09

really is Brent, it really is the dream. And

42:11

yeah you know it's fragile in the sense that

42:13

if that server software on the Mac were to

42:17

crash or if the Mac were to reboot

42:19

because of some automatic update and not properly

42:21

log in, which

42:23

that Mac does, it's all set up to do that because it's

42:25

a soundboard machine so it actually does do that already, but if

42:28

it weren't then I wouldn't get messages and

42:30

I wouldn't know, right? I don't think it tells me that

42:32

the maybe it would tell me but yeah

42:35

so there's you know it's not it's gonna it's

42:38

not super solid and when it comes to

42:40

family messaging you know once

42:42

a year maybe there's like a real urgent message that

42:44

comes through that like you never want to miss and

42:48

so hopefully it's not down when that happens.

42:50

This is kind of what we get

42:52

ourselves into by doing alternative this is

42:55

definitely an alternative method of doing iMessage,

42:57

right? I'm

42:59

really impressed I gotta say because when

43:01

Beeper was doing this like it sounded

43:03

also just as magical but you had

43:05

to trust another you know third-party company

43:07

as well, right? But Blue Bulls here

43:09

is open source we love that check

43:12

you know it's quasi self-hosted I

43:15

guess and it's got

43:17

clients on Linux and all the places that we

43:19

love so you know this is feeling pretty magical

43:21

to me. It's

43:24

for somebody who's been trying to figure this out for

43:26

a little while it is really nice to see and

43:29

the secret sauce they did different than

43:31

Beeper than Beeper Mini is Beeper Mini

43:33

had figured out how to interface at

43:35

the network level and

43:38

you would spin up on their cloud instance the

43:40

support for your iMessage account they didn't

43:42

have to install a local server software

43:44

on the Mac that ran 24-7 they

43:47

were doing it they had figured out Apple's

43:49

communication protocol and they were doing it at that level somehow

43:53

and Apple was able to block that you know

43:55

at the network level but because this is

43:57

running on the back that is legitimately running iMessage

43:59

and is just essentially interfacing with the

44:01

local iMessage application, there's really no way

44:03

for Apple to detect this at all.

44:06

So there's no way for them to shut it down. That's so smart. That's

44:09

so smart. And then I was

44:11

shocked to find out. I mean, maybe not shocked

44:13

actually, but pleased to

44:15

find out that it actually has

44:17

a few features that are better

44:19

than iMessage for iMessage. It's

44:23

hilarious how this stuff happens. So

44:25

this is coming to iOS in the next release,

44:27

but Bluebubbles already has it. Scheduled

44:30

messages. You can schedule messages.

44:34

Ah, obviously, it seems so

44:36

simple. Right? One

44:38

of the things you get is you have a server that's

44:40

running. So now you can kind of do stateful things because

44:42

the server can queue these things up. Also,

44:44

maybe you can do this in iOS, but

44:47

I don't know how to do it per

44:49

chat notification settings. Nice. Yes.

44:51

Very nice. Essential, really.

44:54

Scheduled messages. So you can go in a message.

44:56

You can be like, remind me about this note

44:58

from Brent in two hours. Why

45:00

is it that maybe that's in messages? I don't know how to

45:03

do it. And then the

45:05

one that's clearly Android only, and you could see where

45:07

you could really go next level with this. Tasker

45:10

integration. So if you're a tasker

45:12

guy, you're now, you know, doing all kinds

45:15

of automations and things based on your message statuses and

45:17

who you get messages from and what's in the contents

45:19

of the message, et cetera, et cetera. It's got tasker

45:21

integration. Okay. I got

45:23

a couple of things here that are like coming to the surface

45:25

for me and I feel excited. So maybe I'm talking a little

45:27

faster than usual, which is a good sign. Okay.

45:30

Number one, open source is amazing.

45:32

This is why we love open source. I

45:34

feel like we're in like this. We're approaching

45:36

this golden age of open source where like

45:38

everyone is finally coming to realize how amazing

45:40

it is. And this is a perfect

45:42

example of that, like solving an issue

45:45

that so many of us have, but

45:47

in a really elegant way. And

45:50

it seems like a really mature project as well. They got

45:52

something like 62 releases of this thing,

45:55

which brings me to my next question, which is like,

45:58

how did we not know about this?

46:00

before this moment because it's obviously

46:02

been around, right? You know, I've seen it, well,

46:04

it's kind of new-ish, but

46:07

I've seen it percolating for a bit, and I

46:09

wanted to let it, you know, cook and

46:12

kind of like work out some of the kinks

46:14

and also just see if like they got a

46:16

cease and desist or something from Apple Legal, you

46:19

know, give it a minute. And it's been

46:21

a minute. It's been a little bit,

46:23

and it seems like it's sticking

46:25

around. And so I'm starting to let myself use

46:28

it, you know what I mean? Like when

46:30

you're kind of apprehensive, like, is this thing too

46:32

good to be true? Is this going to go

46:34

away? Okay, so I wonder if we have

46:36

the same theme going on. Are

46:39

you running these both side by side and

46:41

making comparisons? Well, yeah, for sure right

46:43

now, just to make sure I'm getting everything. Like I had

46:45

my kids like, hey, send me a text message. I want

46:47

to make sure the notifications are working, right? I've been like

46:50

doing all of that. That's fun. And I'm not entirely convinced.

46:52

I think if I read it in blue bubbles, it

46:54

doesn't necessarily mark it as red in iMessage. Oh. So

46:57

that can get a little annoying because you get

46:59

duplicate notifications. So you got to get rid of

47:01

iMessage. That's what I'm hearing here. Yeah, well,

47:04

the iPhone. You just got to get rid of it and just only

47:06

use blue bubbles, obviously. That

47:08

brings me to another thought, Chris. I

47:11

saw, you know, Apple had this kind

47:14

of a big event recently, and

47:16

they mentioned on the down low, like, RCS

47:18

support. Mm-hmm. How does

47:20

that change your opinion of like a project like

47:22

this? Because does it negate

47:24

this eventually? I wonder. I

47:27

was thinking, could I, you know, could I just hold out

47:30

and just keep carrying both devices until

47:32

iOS 18 rolls out and

47:35

then everybody has RCS support? But the reality is

47:38

it's going to be a while until everybody has

47:41

upgraded to iOS 18. Mm-hmm. Okay. And

47:44

I don't even know how that, you know,

47:46

we don't really have a good picture of what features are

47:48

going to work and what features aren't. But

47:51

if RCS does seem to be fairly good and

47:53

I get kind of like every, like my kids

47:56

and I, we use tap backs a ton. Like

47:58

if they, if we send like an FYI. message,

48:01

we don't need to send each other like, okay, got it.

48:03

We just do a tap back and say, okay, you know,

48:05

Roger that received. That's the functionality of this

48:07

kind of like core to how our family chats

48:09

and if RCS would support little things like that,

48:12

then I think the protocol would be you go

48:15

into your iPhone settings, you go

48:17

into the iCloud settings or wherever it's at and

48:19

you turn off messages. And

48:21

when you do that, it sends a signal to

48:23

the Apple servers to stop redirecting every SMS you

48:26

get to iMessage, right? And then it would go

48:28

back in to default to the SMS network, which

48:30

would in theory be RCS at that point. So

48:33

I think I would be my walkout procedure

48:36

if if everybody if I

48:38

just keep using iMessage in the meantime

48:40

until everybody has RCS support and then

48:42

I go intentionally disable iMessage support in

48:44

the iPhone settings, then

48:46

I think it would just fall over to using

48:49

RCS. Yeah, I'm not sure

48:51

you know, because also

48:53

then a benefit of this Brent is if

48:56

you get fancy, you can combine

48:58

multiple phone numbers and iCloud

49:00

accounts into one blue bubbles

49:03

thread. Oh, which

49:05

is something I'm taking advantage of I'm going

49:07

to take advantage of so I'm not yet

49:09

but something I will take advantage of is

49:11

combining that. So can you say blue bubbles

49:13

three times fast blue bubbles, blue bubbles, blue

49:15

bubbles, blue bubbles. Nice. Well

49:18

done. Well, I think this is a topic we're

49:20

gonna probably hear from you in a while, you

49:23

know, maybe try it for a month and get

49:25

back to us. Yeah, I will keep using it

49:27

for a bit and follow up and see how

49:29

it goes. But between blue bubbles, and

49:31

the Garmin stuff, especially the gadget

49:33

bridge stuff, man, I

49:35

might be finally at that spot where

49:38

there's nothing that requires iOS anymore. Only

49:40

a two year journey. Yeah. Now before we get out

49:43

of here, Brentley, we have some boosts. And

49:45

our baller booster this week is the one

49:47

the only the legend hybrid sarcasm coming in

49:50

with 30,000 sats and he says happy

49:52

Father's Day, gents. Oh, lovely. Thank you.

49:55

Well, thank you, hybrid. That is really nice. I

49:58

had a good Father's Day and we don't. talk

50:00

about Brant's Father's Day because he

50:03

doesn't acknowledge those children. Hey,

50:05

they're feline children, so it's a little bit of

50:07

a different holiday. Remaking Eden

50:09

sent in 30,000 sats.

50:13

After a hiatus in streaming, I wanted to

50:15

send a boost I've been wanting to do

50:17

for a while. This show in particular, and

50:19

JB in general, are a big reason I

50:21

managed to get into tech five years ago,

50:24

and recently how I managed to make the

50:26

leap to contracting. Even if

50:28

the bottom has fallen out in the UK. Keep

50:30

up the great work. PS.

50:33

I mentioned Music Assistant a while back

50:35

and wanted to reiterate how great it

50:37

is. I'm using a Squeeze amp in

50:39

each room for synced Sonos-like experience. You

50:41

should give it a try. Oooookay,

50:46

thank you for the Squeeze amp, Tidbit. So I've been,

50:48

I'm all in Music Assistant for a little bit

50:50

because my wife has a new

50:52

clinic and she would like to have just kind

50:54

of like some low key chill music playing in

50:56

a couple spots throughout the clinic. And she's been

50:58

asking me like, what's the best way to achieve

51:00

this? Because back in the day, she

51:02

bought like iPods and speakers and just like plunked

51:05

them in and then just, you know, hit play.

51:07

And I figured we could do something with Music

51:09

Assistant and I just hadn't figured out the other

51:12

end of it. So maybe Squeeze amp is

51:14

the way to go. But Music Assistant on my shortlist,

51:16

if anybody has any tips or advice, please send them

51:18

in because I'll be getting deep into that the next

51:21

couple of weeks. Thank you,

51:23

Remaking. Appreciate that boost. And I really appreciate

51:25

that tip too. Bear454

51:27

comes in with 25,000 stats and says, Hey

51:29

guys, I'm sorry if this is kind of

51:31

a downer subject, but I feel like it's

51:33

a really important factor in self hosting that

51:36

really doesn't get much coverage. How

51:38

do you plan to ensure the legacy of your

51:40

self hosted solutions? Well, to put it more bluntly,

51:43

if you died tomorrow, what happens to the

51:45

services your family relies on? I

51:47

know Unplugged covered this a bit sometime back,

51:49

but I don't recall finding any real satisfactory

51:51

solutions. I'm dealing with this

51:53

in a very practical way and just not

51:56

finding any satisfactory solutions. This is

51:58

currently driving me to divest from self-hosting. solutions

52:00

to other reasonably open and private secure

52:02

solutions. For example, I'm moving my calendaring

52:04

from Next Cloud to Proton, which

52:07

we already use for email. Thanks in advance for

52:09

your input. You know, I'd

52:11

love if anybody had suggestions here.

52:14

Bear has been a fantastic member of the

52:16

community, not only a contributor to SUSE and

52:18

OpenSUSE of course, but also

52:20

the goat of Linux Fest Northwest for so

52:22

many years. He had to

52:24

retire this last year because he's not

52:26

doing so well, but the

52:29

like contribution he made there was so quintessential

52:31

and important to make Linux Fest happen. So

52:34

if we could solve this and help him

52:36

with this, I'd be really,

52:38

really grateful to the audience. In there, I

52:40

put a couple of links in there being the show

52:42

notes. One of them is a

52:44

thread started on Reddit by an estate planner

52:47

who says don't use a safety

52:49

deposit box unless you're very clear with the

52:51

documentation. It can actually be a huge issue.

52:54

Bitwarden has an emergency access

52:58

area in the application, which could be really,

53:00

really useful and something that's worth looking into.

53:03

And then I have a template

53:05

for what is kind of being

53:07

called an end-of-life disaster response letter.

53:10

It's basically like an IT format

53:12

on GitHub that you go through to kind of document

53:15

yourself in a DR kind

53:17

of context. And that

53:19

could be stored in Bitwarden emergency

53:22

access. And the idea is that it's

53:24

a document that is easy enough

53:26

for your intended audience to kind of review

53:28

should something happen to you. And

53:30

I think combined with Bitwarden, that could be kind of

53:32

a powerful, safe way to do it. This

53:35

is something, though, that I think we could probably do a

53:37

lot better on and something I think about

53:39

with my family, too. It's such

53:41

a tough topic because if our

53:45

self-hosted infrastructure was stable, then

53:48

it would be easier to write these

53:50

letters and have these details that are

53:53

pretty straightforward. But as you know, if you're

53:55

listening to the show, you're probably tinkering with your

53:57

home network and your self-hosting and all your devices.

54:00

on a regular basis. So

54:02

it's just like an ever-changing ecosystem.

54:04

And as we all have seen,

54:06

documentation is one of the things

54:09

that is hard to keep up

54:11

to date, especially when you're just one

54:13

person doing this at home for your family. So

54:16

I don't, this is such a

54:18

difficult problem, even if you don't self-host, this

54:21

is a difficult problem to solve with all of the

54:23

technology that we have in our lives now and all

54:26

of the different accounts and passwords that we have

54:28

on 300 different websites and

54:32

services and stuff. So I

54:34

would love to hear what people are

54:36

doing. We, as you mentioned,

54:38

touched on this, I think a year ago on

54:40

Linux Unplugged and got a bunch

54:42

of great suggestions, but same. It was

54:45

like none of us really landed on

54:47

like, what's the solution? And we

54:50

need a solution. And I hope

54:52

we can work towards that and find something

54:54

that is helpful. Because I think

54:56

about this surprisingly often. I was just talking to

54:58

my brother the other days like, hey,

55:01

you're going to help me out, right? If

55:03

something happens, I was like, I don't have any of

55:05

your passwords for any of your like password database or

55:08

anything like that. Like how do we solve that? So

55:10

it's good to think about this early and to think

55:12

about it often, I think. Yeah.

55:14

And I wonder, you know, if you stick with the kind of

55:16

IT context mindset, maybe what

55:18

you would do in a business if

55:21

one person was too important to fail

55:23

is you'd hire a backup and you'd

55:26

train that backup on some of their responsibilities.

55:29

And I wonder if the analogy

55:31

to everyday life is a friend,

55:33

you know, like if something happened

55:35

to me, you Wes or

55:37

Alex, you know, would be pretty familiar

55:39

with my setup because we all have very

55:41

similar setups. And one of you could

55:44

probably help Hadiya get to something or find something,

55:46

right? But you guys would need access. But if

55:49

you had access, you

55:52

would probably be able to solve it for her, right? And then

55:54

get it into a state that she could use ongoing.

55:57

So maybe that's, you know, it depends on

55:59

what you're for? Are you planning for something in

56:01

the next few months or are you planning for something that

56:03

might happen one day down the road?

56:05

And then I think maybe it's also two

56:07

different kinds of problems you're solving there. But

56:09

depending on which one it is, that might

56:11

work is have a backup friend or family

56:13

member, like a brother or a family member

56:15

that's that's technical or a friend that's technical,

56:18

even if they're remote, right? Just have them be familiar

56:20

with the system and how to access it and maybe

56:22

a login or an emergency access to Bitward and something

56:25

like that. And then they

56:27

could act as, you know, sort of a

56:30

technology ambassador to your family and help

56:32

them get the system sorted. It's

56:34

a bit of an ask, but that might be a possibility. This is

56:36

an area, though, I'd love to get more input from the audience on

56:38

and we can keep relating it back to bear. Thank

56:40

you for that boost, Baron. Thank you for, you know,

56:42

bringing up a topic that's not always easy to talk

56:44

about, but one that we really do need

56:47

to take very seriously as things like

56:49

our photos and even money like, you

56:51

know, sats and all these things

56:53

become digital and become very precious. I

56:56

want to say thanks to bear on a personal note. Linux

56:59

Fest Northwest is the whole reason I'm sat

57:01

in this seat today. So I want to

57:03

extend like a personal thanks to bear and

57:05

the team for everything they've

57:08

done over the years to just impact so many

57:10

lives. So thank you. That's

57:12

a huge legacy already here here anonymous

57:14

comes in with 11,000 sats and just

57:16

says, Hey, I forgot about y'alls for a bit when I was off

57:18

the grid, but I'm excited to catch up. We

57:22

go off the grid too. We get it. Yeah, good

57:24

for you. Do it again. Nomadic

57:27

coder sends in lots of fives, five,

57:29

five, five, five sats. I

57:31

had been driving a 24 year

57:33

old sedan, but switched to a

57:35

pre car play nine year

57:37

old SUV better suited for where I

57:40

live. No cash for

57:42

clunkers for me, Alex, I'd

57:44

rather have a less capable entertainment system

57:46

with an aux plug than one that

57:48

is connected to the cloud and tracks

57:50

and spies on me being privacy focused.

57:52

I shop cars for what they don't

57:54

have. Isn't that interesting? That's becoming more of

57:56

a thing. Brent, you and I've been talking about that off

57:58

air. Yeah, my cars. starting to

58:00

rot itself. And so I'm in the

58:02

stage of denial where I probably need

58:04

a car soon and you and I

58:06

have been sort of talking about like,

58:09

how do you know, you're just going to cut

58:12

out the last what, five, seven years worth of

58:14

vehicles if you care at all about your privacy

58:16

in this kind of tracking stuff. It's

58:19

not like the old days where if you didn't like your

58:21

car stereo, you can just kind of swap it out because

58:23

they were all pretty standard these days like

58:25

what you get is what you get and you can't

58:27

do much about it. So I completely

58:30

understand this sentiment. And yeah,

58:33

if anyone knows of some great, great

58:36

vehicles for mountain driving that adheres to

58:38

these rules, please send it along. Torb

58:41

comes in with 5,150 sats. I was recently

58:43

toying around with the idea of hosting ODIC

58:45

over Torr. This would allow anyone to self

58:48

host their own identity without revealing their own

58:50

computer to the public net and without purchasing

58:52

a domain name. I'll report back if the

58:54

testing goes well. All right.

58:57

Nice little experiment there. Nice Torb. Yeah, Torr we

58:59

could talk a little bit more about is using

59:01

it for self hosted, I suppose. Simon

59:03

sent in 4,444 satoshis over two boosts. That's two rows of ducks.

59:11

On the topic of whole

59:13

car Spotify and GM shenanigans,

59:15

my current car, the Opal

59:17

Insignia 2018. Well, it's

59:20

a voxel to you, Alex. Oh,

59:22

yeah. But new at the

59:24

time and it has a fancy sticker

59:26

saying it's connected. There's an app to

59:29

lock and unlock, see some vitals and

59:31

provide the passengers with Wi-Fi. In a

59:33

2018. Oh, boy. Mm hmm. Until

59:37

two years later, when GM sold Opal

59:39

to PSA and pulled the plug on

59:41

OnStar without any will or way to

59:44

connect the car again, where

59:46

I am. Oh, zip code. I

59:50

see 41105. The Wi Fi service

59:52

was never even launched. Coming soon

59:54

trademark as they say. Oh,

59:57

that's the worst. Now my quote unquote.

1:00:00

Smart car is as dumb as any from the 90s. App

1:00:03

is dead, no internet, well, never got

1:00:05

it in the first place, no

1:00:07

guided service assistant, and perhaps worse, no

1:00:10

crash support. So, no ambulance for

1:00:12

me if the brown hits the

1:00:14

fan. It's a

1:00:16

great car, but couldn't they just

1:00:18

have had replace the SIM card

1:00:20

instead of built-in OnStar module? Jeez.

1:00:24

You know what I love about that is, it's,

1:00:26

you know, even though it's completely dead, there's no

1:00:28

back end anymore, it's still sitting there sipping power.

1:00:30

You know, so like, if you're in a parking

1:00:33

lot and you're listening to the radio and

1:00:35

you got your accessories on, that freaking module

1:00:37

is taking power. It's still trying to connect,

1:00:40

you know? Sitting there for

1:00:42

the rest of its life, trying to find network and find

1:00:44

home. It's so sad.

1:00:46

It's so sad. He

1:00:49

also was laughing because Alex used a figure of

1:00:51

speech called On a Rainy Tuesday, which reminded him

1:00:53

of Can't Print on Tuesday's Bug that was open

1:00:55

in Ubuntu and open office in cups, which

1:00:58

was a hilarious edge case, which we saw that bug go

1:01:00

by and had a good laugh. Oh, that's great. Can't Print

1:01:02

on Tuesdays. You know

1:01:04

what, that's fine. Take Tuesdays off, I say. That's

1:01:08

quite the story, and Simon, quite an

1:01:10

annoying, frustrating experience. At least you still

1:01:12

like the car, though. Thank you for

1:01:14

the boost. Podbun comes in with

1:01:16

5,000 sats. Thunderbird

1:01:18

2's Hangar, that brings me back. I

1:01:20

have not seen that show in years.

1:01:22

There was a live action movie sometime

1:01:24

after the original puppet show. I

1:01:27

think I've got a Thunderbird toy in a box

1:01:29

somewhere. So this Thunderbird cartoon

1:01:31

show, I'd seen it before. Yeah,

1:01:33

same. You know, because it's like that, yeah,

1:01:35

it's like this, yeah, puppets. Well,

1:01:38

you know how you hear people all the time

1:01:40

say, like, Google's listening to my conversations, and I

1:01:43

always roll my eyes at that? Uh-oh.

1:01:46

Brent, Brent, Brent.

1:01:49

I got home the night after we recorded,

1:01:52

and YouTube up in the top recommendation bar

1:01:54

has like a 24-7 stream of Thunderbirds. What?

1:02:00

such an obscure topic. I

1:02:02

mean, it nailed it. I'm like, yeah, I'll watch this. This

1:02:04

is great. But like I

1:02:06

did not look it up. I don't think they're

1:02:08

listening to me, but man, that was crazy. That

1:02:11

was one of those times where I definitely had a double take. That's

1:02:13

one of those like inconceivably accurate recommendations,

1:02:16

right? And now because I've watched

1:02:18

it, it's been up there for

1:02:20

two weeks. It's

1:02:22

still on my recommendations right now. Mentat

1:02:25

came in with 8080 sets. I

1:02:29

also had a few issues with Next Cloud

1:02:31

hanging for minutes at a time recently. I've

1:02:33

been trying the FPM image over the past

1:02:35

couple of weeks, and it's a night and

1:02:37

day difference in speed. My entire

1:02:39

setup is Podman Pod with

1:02:41

Next Cloud 29 FPM, Postgres

1:02:43

15, and a Redis container.

1:02:47

Using Caddy for reverse proxy and

1:02:49

a fast CGI as well. Next

1:02:52

Cloud folder seems to be mounted into

1:02:54

the Caddy container so that it can

1:02:56

actually see the PHP files. I've also

1:02:59

disabled the new AI integration apps, which

1:03:01

may have helped. I'm probably

1:03:03

not, right? They're probably only really putting load on there

1:03:05

when you go to use them. But I bet you,

1:03:08

first of all, a new clean setup is always going to

1:03:10

be kind of snappy. Oh, yeah. Brent

1:03:12

and I have now double checked

1:03:14

that when we do that next

1:03:16

next next cloud module that also

1:03:19

deploys Redis correctly. That

1:03:21

seems to be one of the biggest noticeable

1:03:23

improvements to speed. Like you just did a

1:03:25

setup recently, Brent, just to double check this

1:03:27

and verified. Yeah, Alex mentioned this in

1:03:29

the last episode. I stood

1:03:32

up like the most basic VPS that

1:03:34

I could get my hands on and

1:03:37

set up this Nix Cloud setup

1:03:39

that we built in Linux Unplugged

1:03:41

recently. And

1:03:43

I wanted to compare, well, I really wanted

1:03:45

Alex to compare them side by side. He

1:03:47

said he didn't really notice much of a

1:03:50

difference, but I think he's forgetting that his

1:03:52

like super fancy hardware versus,

1:03:54

you know, my little tiny,

1:03:56

very budget VPS. Yeah,

1:03:58

exactly. So I think he... Give

1:10:00

it a try and help us validate this because we've now

1:10:02

shown it to three folks and they all agree It's the

1:10:04

fastest they've ever used but I'd like to

1:10:07

get more opinions on the matter because I think it's blowaway

1:10:09

faster But you do have to give

1:10:11

it a shot, but please do boost and tell us how it

1:10:13

goes and good luck. Mr Squanch. We had

1:10:15

14 total boosters We don't read everything that gets

1:10:17

sent in because we have a 2000 sack cutoff

1:10:19

for time and all of that But we do

1:10:21

save all of them in the dock and we

1:10:23

stacked a hundred and thirty nine thousand six hundred

1:10:25

and fifty one sats This week Thank You everybody

1:10:27

if you got a little value from the show

1:10:29

want to keep it going and use an independent

1:10:31

Totally open source peer-to-peer network to boost us and

1:10:33

get your message on the show Well,

1:10:35

then go get a new podcast app at

1:10:37

podcastapps.com or you can boost with fountain FM's

1:10:39

website You don't actually have to switch apps

1:10:41

anymore You just need an app that can

1:10:43

do the lightning network like strike Which

1:10:45

is now available in the UK as of this week strike

1:10:48

is launched in the UK and it's one of the best

1:10:50

apps And the best companies out there to

1:10:52

buy Bitcoin We have links in the show

1:10:54

notes if you'd like to participate and also thank you

1:10:56

everybody who streams those sets and a big

1:10:59

shout Out to all our SRE subscribers.

1:11:01

You guys are the foundation that makes

1:11:03

the show reliable and possible You can

1:11:05

support the show with a membership if you prefer

1:11:07

by going to self hosted show slash SRE You

1:11:10

get an ad free version of the show and you get a

1:11:12

little extra content. You get that post show Brentley,

1:11:15

thank you so much for joining us this week. Is

1:11:17

there anywhere you want to send people to get more

1:11:19

Brent? Yeah, I think there's a couple places but I

1:11:21

think the main spot is Linux unplugged

1:11:24

I think that's a great spot to hear us kind

1:11:26

of jump into a whole bunch of

1:11:28

Linux and open source topics That's

1:11:31

a nice companion to this here self-hosted. I

1:11:33

will you know what? I'm gonna plus one that go

1:11:36

check out that Linux unplugged show Why not?

1:11:38

You can also find Alex on

1:11:40

I think he's unmasked on as ironic badger I

1:11:42

know he's on the weapon X is ironic badger.

1:11:44

Of course the show is that self-hosted show I'm

1:11:46

at Chris LES and if you want to try

1:11:48

the noster thing go to Chris LES calm You'll

1:11:50

find my public key over there Thanks

1:11:53

so much for listening to this week's episode of

1:11:55

self hosted that was self hosted show slash one

1:11:57

to six The

1:14:00

GPU is not something I've been looking for,

1:14:02

at least not yet, we'll see. No. But

1:14:05

it did get my ears up and I

1:14:07

thought of you immediately because I know you

1:14:10

went on a little bit of an external

1:14:12

GPU like, let's

1:14:14

call it a roller coaster ride a couple years ago. Yeah.

1:14:18

And, but these devices, at least

1:14:20

this series from Minis Forum is

1:14:23

targeted at like the gaming

1:14:25

side of techies.

1:14:28

So those who need to get stuff done during the

1:14:31

day and need to be pretty performant, but also want

1:14:33

to like really nail on this thing in

1:14:36

the evening. So I think

1:14:38

for that reason, they've, they've

1:14:41

really pushed on the cooling. This

1:14:44

the one I'm looking at, which I mentioned is a little

1:14:46

bit older. This is like the

1:14:49

third iteration that they come out and specifically

1:14:51

targeting making the cooling better. I mean, these

1:14:53

small sub leader PCs, always

1:14:56

one of the main challenges you're going to have is

1:14:58

cooling, right? It's a little bit of a better situation

1:15:00

than laptops because you can shove

1:15:02

a lot more air through these things, but that's

1:15:05

always a challenge. These days it sounds like

1:15:07

from what research I've been doing on a

1:15:09

whole bunch of forums, looking at different models

1:15:11

and different brands that at

1:15:13

least these UM series from Minis Forum, they've

1:15:15

been putting a lot of effort into the

1:15:18

cooling and it's to a place

1:15:20

where it's actually pretty good. So I am

1:15:22

feeling jazzed about this thing. I

1:15:25

wish I hadn't gotten the B link, although the B

1:15:27

link is working super well for me and I got

1:15:29

it for like $280 and an Amazon lightning deal. It's

1:15:31

like a Ryzen seven series, I think, or something,

1:15:34

you know, it's decent and it plays the video

1:15:36

games I want cause I'm using a 1080p screen

1:15:38

and it's fairly quiet, but I think it's cooling

1:15:40

system is not great

1:15:42

because I've noticed if I'm doing

1:15:45

a lot of things, like I'm installing software and

1:15:47

I'm maybe I'm remote desktoping into something else and

1:15:49

I have a lot of things going on on

1:15:51

the computer. You know, I'm doing video games. It

1:15:54

seems to just kind of have a hard time

1:15:56

keeping the temperature down and

1:15:58

kind of seems to get to heat saturation. point

1:16:00

and it just sort of levels off

1:16:02

there. Where this unit, the machine you're

1:16:05

looking at, it's taller. And

1:16:07

they've used up some of that space to

1:16:09

have larger cooling fans and larger heat

1:16:11

sinks. And they're using liquid metal instead

1:16:14

of thermal paste. So it's like really

1:16:16

supposed to transfer that heat pretty well.

1:16:18

So they've thought a lot about that. I know you were

1:16:20

doing some research on reliability. How do they seem reliability

1:16:24

wise compared to the B-Link? Yeah,

1:16:26

what triggered me to do that research

1:16:28

was that I was seeing these two

1:16:30

brands, B-Link and these mini forums kind

1:16:32

of keep coming up in conversation. But

1:16:35

you had a bad experience with your B-Link. It kind of

1:16:37

died on you I think a week or two in, right?

1:16:40

And you had to get a replacement. Is that true? Oh,

1:16:42

it sucked, man. Because it was right before a live

1:16:44

show. I was out in the woods

1:16:47

too. I was out in the woods and I turned

1:16:49

the B-Link off and I turned it back on. And

1:16:52

it just would never power back up when I tried

1:16:54

to turn it back on. That's so sad. Oh, it

1:16:56

stinks, man. But thankfully, the

1:16:58

nice thing about these B-Link's is they

1:17:00

are on Amazon and you can get them

1:17:02

overnight shipping in my area. So we ordered

1:17:04

one and had an overnight ship to the

1:17:06

studio and then took off from

1:17:08

the woods, drove the two hours in each direction to

1:17:10

go pick it up. Had to do a special trip,

1:17:12

yeah. The worst timing

1:17:14

ever. I stayed up all night. Yeah,

1:17:17

I stayed up all night reconfiguring the machine, setting

1:17:19

it up, reloading my OS, and all that kind

1:17:21

of stuff. But it worked. So there

1:17:23

is utility to something that's super accessible like

1:17:26

that. That's true. But

1:17:28

just buy two. And

1:17:30

these Mini Forms are available in the same way,

1:17:32

like they're available on Amazon. Even in Canada, I

1:17:34

know. We're getting lucky over

1:17:37

here. But

1:17:40

you asked me about quality and

1:17:42

what I had found. And what

1:17:45

I discovered is that, at least

1:17:47

for modern models, it

1:17:49

seems like people are liking the Mini Forms

1:17:52

ones a little better, from what I can

1:17:54

tell. The

1:17:56

B-Link's have had a few more

1:17:58

dead-on arrivals. And this is kind

1:18:00

of not

1:18:02

quite anecdotal and not quite scientific. Somewhere

1:18:05

between those two, I've just been browsing forums

1:18:07

and trying to take people's opinions. But

1:18:10

it seems like the mini forums once have

1:18:12

a little bit of an edge of having

1:18:14

fewer issues. It's not zero issues, that's for

1:18:16

sure. It's kind

1:18:19

of the reason you should get it through Amazon

1:18:21

instead of through them directly is for that return

1:18:23

policy too, so you can get one pretty quickly.

1:18:26

But I'm feeling good about this. So

1:18:28

I'm going to give it a try. I will

1:18:30

report back, of course. But I

1:18:33

also want to mention where I heard about this thing

1:18:35

first, because I think the R.O.D. audience would really appreciate

1:18:37

it. So there's a

1:18:39

YouTuber who I ran into

1:18:41

recently who is a Rust

1:18:44

developer. So I think

1:18:46

we love that already. But

1:18:48

also is a massive Linux

1:18:50

fan. And I don't know if they're a listener. I

1:18:53

would be interested to know. But the

1:18:55

channel is No Boilerplate.

1:18:58

And I would really recommend it. He dives

1:19:01

into topics like NixOS in

1:19:03

a really brilliant way, topics

1:19:05

like productivity and

1:19:08

what you need to get stuff done.

1:19:10

And it's the kind of person where

1:19:13

their philosophy really matches up with mine. And

1:19:15

so I've learned a lot from this particular

1:19:17

person. They suggested, if you

1:19:20

want a deeply Linux compatible

1:19:22

machine that you pay way

1:19:25

less than the Apple tax for something that is

1:19:27

going to perform much better and is upgradable, this

1:19:30

is the thing to look at. So

1:19:32

he actually recommended the Generation Up, which

1:19:35

is the UM790S. But

1:19:39

I'm going for the 690 because I don't think I need

1:19:41

all that performance. So I'll send a link

1:19:43

to that as well because I think some of you

1:19:45

might be interested in this particular

1:19:47

person.

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