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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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
please send that in too, just so I kind
19:24
of have that extra data. And if I'm wrong
19:26
about there, if there's a battery powered one, boost
19:29
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19:32
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19:34
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19:36
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19:39
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19:45
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19:48
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19:50
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19:54
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19:58
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20:01
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20:03
it's not about like hiding your browsing
20:05
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20:07
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20:09
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20:12
ways to get around also geolocation issues
20:14
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20:16
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20:18
VPN for connecting your devices securely. It's
20:20
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20:42
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20:44
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20:48
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21:02
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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37:36
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37:39
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37:41
issues with iMessage and getting away from that.
37:43
What's your plan? You remember
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.
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cases even like an old iPhone that was like hacked or whatever and
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38:10
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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