The bulb resets are known to TP-Link and they created a firmware version that fixed it. The company didn’t release the update and now TP-Link support reps deny that the new firmware exists, so obviously the communication failures and resets are design intent.
https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/666612 - post #7
Just bought some Third Reality bulbs to replace TP-Link wifi bulbs a couple of weeks ago. (The TP-Link bulbs require continual communication with TP-Link’s Chinese servers or they reset every few seconds.)
Zigbee2MQTT detects the Third Reality bulbs immediately and they have been working perfectly. The same goes for TR power monitoring smart plugs.
CopyQ is an advanced clipboard manager. Gimp is great but Pinta is easy for quick, minor image adjustments. System Monitor is an applet that displays system information by double clicking on a taskbar icon. If you use VPNs, the IP Indicator applet shows the country of your public IP or customized icon when matching ISP is found.
Nor do Lemmy users need to help monetize his Youtube videos.
Mint has a convenient desktop app included called Disk Usage Analyzer that makes checking what’s using your storage space quick and easy.
That seems like you’re just replicating what the AC’s thermostat is doing.
In my experience the thermostats of window units are crappy at regulating room temperature. Even so, did you miss this part of the post?:
Even if the compressor is not running the fan runs 24/7 until it is physically switched off.
The OP is planning on letting the unit run for 10 minutes and then turn it off, a much less effective solution than setting up a remote temperature sensor and power monitoring switch, and much better than having to control room temperature by adjusting knob that’s “labeled from 1 to 8 with 1 being warm and 8 being coldest.”
If I had that setup, I’d use a power monitoring plug with a room temperature sensor. The combination of power monitoring and a temperature sensor would provide an amazing amount of flexibility.
For instance you can monitor when the compressor shuts off (because the current draw will drop significantly) and use the plug to shut off the entire unit, then power it on when the room temperature rises to a set point. I’d change that temperature setting depending on the time of day and possibly add a occupancy sensor or use light switches to enable and disable the AC when someone’s there. It would take some tweaking to get it working properly, but you should be able to make your room more comfortable and save energy with this kind of setup.
Had a backup so it was not a big deal. Only one major issue in a decade is more than reliable enough IMO.
I’ve revived a Dell Venue battery the laptop reported as dead. Connecting several alkaline batteries in series to provide a voltage slightly higher than the Dell battery’s rated voltage and using them charge the Li-ion battery did the trick. After charging the Dell battery for about 10 minutes I reinstalled it, the laptop recognized it and it worked normally from that point on.
It could happen with anything, but since Mint 17.3 (2015) the only serious corruption I’ve experienced is during a major OS upgrade. I had far more problems with Windows.
HA Supervised running under Debian 12 on a mini laptop with an N200 processor takes about 3% CPU. With the Frigate NVR add-on running 2 security cameras it uses about 10%.
Great guidance here and I know you want to stick with Ubuntu, but but if you tire of trying to fix it try a different distro before you give up.
Lots of people swear by Ubuntu, but for others (like me) it’s nothing but trouble. For instance, I get errors when running the latest version of Ubuntu on a current laptop that runs Debian 12 perfectly, and a previous Ubuntu load on one of our laptops (tried with a new SSD) had so many issues that I gave up and restored the Mint backup.
By contrast, we have 2 different laptops and one old desktop that run Linux Mint almost flawlessly. “Almost” means a system lock up every 3-4 months and the inability to wake from sleep for the desktop. Debian 12 was a bit more difficult to get fully working, but since the initial install it has been been completely stable with zero problems. We have one laptop that is running Windows 11 and it has more problems than any of the Linux machines.
Fixing problems is a great way to learn, but if it’s not the way you want to spend your time you may be heading down the wrong path. Unless you have a hardware issue you should be able to find a distro that has few or none of the problems you’ve been fighting.
I started with a Clonezilla USB a few years ago, but Ubuntu is more flexible and can be used for everything with both VNC and SSH. The GUI is easier for some tasks, and Nautilus, Disk Usage Analyzer, Gparted, and other utilities are all available on the same SSD used for backups.
Power loss protection on SSDs is an interesting addition I hadn’t come across before.
We live in a very windy area and power blinks are common. A high endurance MicroSD was in use the first time the Pi wouldn’t boot, but I was in town and it was just annoying. It was a big issue when the Pi wouldn’t boot from the SSD while I was out of the country.
We don’t have high bandwidth demands so any decent OpenWRT router works fine and supports both Adguard Home and Wireguard. What I really like about putting WG in particular on the router is that if the router is up, WG is working, and the routers come back up without fail after every power outage. A 2nd Wireguard instance still runs on my Pi but since switching to WG on the router a year ago there hasn’t been a reason to even connect to it.
My problems with the Pi had me looking for other solutions and I ended up with a mini Dell laptop running Debian. (Can’t easily run WG on it due to some software conflicts.) It alleviates the need for a UPS and runs for 6+ hours if the power goes out, rather the minutes provided by my small UPS.
One of these days I’ll find a bogus reason to talk myself into upgrading the router with more powerful hardware. Mikrotik looks like a great option and I’ll take a look at RouterOS. Thanks for the info.
Besides adding a UPS, how do you deal with power failures? Are you somewhere where they’re not much of a problem?
In my experience mini computers don’t handle power failures nearly as well as purpose-built hardware.
After several power failures the SSD on my Raspberry Pi became so corrupted it wouldn’t boot, and I was 250 miles away at the time and lost access to my home network for weeks. Overlay file systems work but are a PITA to maintain. By contrast my routers have never had a problem even with repeated power failures, so instead of relying on the Pi I’ve moved my DNS and Wireguard servers to my router.
I’ve been using DuckDNS on a multiple platforms for a couple of years and it works great. Never had a problem.
Sounds like you’ve got a good handle on most of it. FWIW, here’s how I deal with some of the same issues:
For Windows apps I’ve found a virtual machine is the easiest solution. It’s set it up to share folders between Linux and the Windows VM so moving things between OS’s is easy. I’ve tried other methods like Wine, and for the Windows apps I need the VM works best by far.
Did you mean Timeshift? (Time Machine is Apple software.) Timeshift works great for incremental backups and is easy to use so you should get it working, but in my case I also do full system backups every few weeks because setting up my systems from scratch is a PITA and really time consuming, especially for my server.
For those full backups I’ve set up a bootable persistent live USB SSD with Ubuntu. The persistent SSD is fully configured with all software, including VNC, SSH and Clonezilla. Creating a backup requires plugging in the SSD, rebooting and running Clonezilla either locally or remotely. Clonezilla is also also preconfigured so it requires only a few steps to start the backup. Full system backups take about 20-30 minutes to complete but my SSDs aren’t that big.
Enjoy your move to Linux. It’s well worth the effort.
Some Bluetooth/wifi adapters are a real[tek] pain in the ass. The adapter in my HP laptop is constantly trouble and well known for it, but the Intel adapter in my Surface works without any issues at all. At some point I’ll replace the Realtek in the HP with an Intel.
I agree it was somewhat cumbersome to set up Linux initially, but the excellent guide by the Linux Surface folks on Github made it just a matter of following the directions. For me the biggest annoyance was having to use a USB keyboard and mouse until the Surface kernel was loaded. The good thing is once the kernel was loaded everything just works and has for years.
The battery on my 3 year old AMD model lasts 6+ hours on a full charge.
I’d be happy to see ads from individuals here.