@extectic.bsky.social
28 followers 38 following 710 posts
IT worker by day, rapidly aging gamer by night.
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Yeah I just run single colors. Added a Revo to it and it's very easy to live with. Not fast, but I don't churn out a lot of prints either.
Two weeks with a malfunctioning washer and counting. This sucks way more than I thought it would, especially in a place where the concept of "laundromat" simply doesn't exist.
You can get into decent quality printers for less now. I have an old Prusa MK3S+ that I use constantly and it is indeed a trooper but hard to overlook the likes of the Bambu A-series that's dirt cheap.
Since you say minis, you may be thinking of a resin printer, they're cheap; do keep in mind those are not suited for use in your living space. The resin is toxic, and the isopropyl alcohol you'll use in copious quantities isn't without its issues. You can print minis with FDM, though not as high res
Home Assistant + automation devices. UST projectors and ALR screens. Air fryers. Clothes washers with heat pumps. Sure, in capitalism, things that can make a buck get invented and the rest languishes but we're still making progress, even as civilization is collapsing.
Home Assistant is aggressively free and open, and using Zigbee and Z-wave nothing can even talk outside your home. Sure, there's a lot of surveillance and AI crap etc but that doesn't necessitate throwing out the baby with the bath water.
All (existing/old) IKEA devices are Zigbee 3.0. They're retiring them now in favor of Matter based items, however.
Even modest Mini PC's are often overkill for any single app, which is why I think using XCP-NG (or Proxmox), ie a type 1 hypervisor, and then installing services in virtual machines is better. They're more portable too. But yes, need to make sure there's enough memory and cpu to share.
Not a ton to learn tbh, not for normal home use. Download, install, and use. Linux has come a long long way. If you want to play around first, download Virtualbox, download the install .iso for Kubuntu from Kubuntu.org, attach it to a new virtual machine, install and you can see what it's like.
Kubuntu | Friendly Computing
Kubuntu.org
It's literally easy. I mean, there's even Zorin OS that makes you wonder if you're still on Windows. But several other distributions are very intuitive. The only blockers are multi-player games with anticheat, or if you must have something hyper specific like Adobe stuff etc.
This is why I'm finally swapping the last bastion of Windows use in my home, my gaming rig, to Linux, like Fedora with KDE maybe. Because Microsoft is just out of control.
Using wifi for home automation gadgets has always made me feel leery, my house runs on Zigbee and some Z-wave. That said it seems like perhaps your networking gear could stand to be swapped out for better more stable stuff. Ruckus for Wifi, maybe. Or at least Unifi. Consumer stuff is ick.
Yeah, I built on Zigbee and Z-wave just to ensure that they literally have no way to communicate outside of my home automation. I have had to add some wifi but I set up a separate VLAN for them that's cut off from the rest. But when a dishwasher demands wifi to enable eco mode, things are cursed.
As long as it has absolutely categorically no cloud access I'm fine with it. Ring has always been a hideous choice, even before now they've handed material to cops just for the asking turning all the neighborhood Ring cameras into a giant surveillance network.
Microsoft are just derailing entirely. What they're doing to Windows 11 is a travesty, and I can't wait to shift my machine to Linux, probably Fedora with KDE. I don't even have a voice interface to my smarthome yet though local LLM soon; I have a perfectly working keyboard here at the PC, thanks.
Just one of many reasons I'd rather just run my own local LLM. It will be limited of course since I don't want to pay for kilowatts worth of processing but at least it will be local.
FreeCAD is extremely easy to use to create simple geometric models, I find. I'm not a great CAD guy to say the least, but the process is literally begin a sketch, draw out the item, add holes where you want them and then use the pad command to make the drawing X mm thick. Export as 3mf, print.
An Elegoo Mars 4 resin printer is now $150. The washing and curing station you need another $100. Plus resin and isopropyl on top of that. Still not a ton of cash, but has to be used in a well ventilated area, all the materials are poison.
Some time back before I got my own printer I used Shapeways, they can take your part and print it in any number of ways and materials (or at least they did then). However, they will most decidedly want money. PCBWay, same thing, will print, want money. Online obviously, not LA.
I'd be surprised if any libraries had SLA printers. Toxic resins that stink up the place are finicky. FDM printers printing PLA doesn't smell and you don't need poisonous resin and huge vats of isopropyl alchohol.
Gotta love Light Switch being turned on by default, spent some time trying to figure out why the f... my Windows install kept auto switching to light mode. Just routinely upgraded Powertoys, as I'm sure many do.
Damn, that was annoying. #PowerToys got a new "Light Switch" function that Microsoft turned on automatically. My Windows install started swapping to light mode and then did it again after I manually swapped back. Took a little time to track that down to PowerToys. I need to expedite my Linux move.
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