You, like me, might assume that when you write a docker-compose healthcheck, it does something useful with that information. So for instance you might add something like this to your docker-compose file:
You run your docker container in production and when the container is running but no longer working, your site will go down. Being a reasonable human being you check docker-compose ps to see if docker knows your container is down. Weirdly, docker DOES know that the docker container is unhealthy but seems to do nothing with this information.
Wait, so Docker just records that the container is unhealthy?
Apparently! I have no idea why you would do that or what the purpose of a healthcheck is if not to kill and restart the container. However there is a good solution.
The quick fix to make standalone Docker do what you want
I'm pretty new to the whole audiophile world. It wasn't until I started working in an open office in Chicago that the need for headphones became an obsession. One concept I've run across a lot is the idea of "endgame headphones", which are presumably the last headphones you'll ever need to buy. I don't know if the SR80e's are that, but they're damn close.
Wait, who the hell is Grado?
Don't be embarassed, I also had no idea. As someone who spent years going through Apple headphones, I'm far from an audiophile. It turns our Grado is a fasinating business. They are a US-based family business, based in south Brooklyn and you would have no idea what you were looking at if you drove by.
They've been making the real deal since the 50s and for the audiophile community and started out making phono cartridges for turntables. I strongly recommend reading through their company timeline which they've put on their website in a easy to read scrolling page. You can find that here.
What's not to love about a global HQ like this?
Packaging
The SR80e came in one of the strangest packages for electronics I've ever seen. I bought it from Amazon and got a very nice but extremely flimsy cardboard box with the headphones. It didn't bother me, but I am glad I bought a carrying case. This is the one I ended up with.
This is minimal packaging at its best. You get: Headphones, Warranty, Grado story-sheet, 6.5mm Golden Adapter and that's it. So if you need anything more, make sure you buy it. I recommend a DAC at the very least, which I'll have a review up later about the ones I tried. One surprising thing was the headphones are made in the US, which shocked me at the $99 price point.
Fit and Feel
First impression is these headphones remind me of my dads ancient hifi gear. They feel solid, with a nice weight that is good to pick up but isn't too heavy on the head. The headband adjusts nicely to my head and the cord is remarkably thick, like industrial thick. There is something incredible in this modern age of aluminum and glass to having something that feel retro in a fun way. Throwing it on the scale, it weighs about 235 g without weighing the cord. I found these a lot more comfortable to wear when compared to the AirPods Max I tried around the same time that weigh in at 385 grams.
The best way to describe these headphones is "professional grade". They feel like they could last for years and I have no doubt I could use these daily with no problems. The foam ear cushions are comfortable enough and I love that they are replaceable for when I wear them out in years. There are no bells and whistles here, no mic or anything extra. These are designed to play music.
I love the grill mesh look that lets you see the drivers. The ear cups are fully rotatable and you get the sense that if you needed to break these open and soldier a wire back, you could. The sturdy design philosophy extends to the cable, which clocks in at an extremely long 2m or 7 ft. However Apple designs their incredibly terrible cables, Grado does the opposite with thick cables and durable straight relief at the jack.
Sound Quality
These are some of the best selling headphones in the "beginning audiophile" section of websites and once you start listening to them, you can tell why. I don't "burn in headphones" because I think its junk science, I think you just get used to how they sound which is why people report an "increase in quality". Most of the headphones I've owned have had some sort of "boost" in them, boosting either the bass or the midrange.
It's hard to explain but this makes music sound "correct". There's a smoothness to the sound that reveals layers to music that I have not experienced before. I've always been suspicious of people who claim they could instantly tell the quality of speakers or headphones with music, mostly because sound feels like a very subjective experience to me. But when relistening to old favorite albums I felt like I was in the studio or listening to them live.
Common Questions about Sound:
Are they good for an open office or shared working space? No, they're open-back headphones which means everyone will hear your music.
Are these good for planes? No, they have no sound isolation or noise cancellation.
What kinds of music sound awesome on these? I love classical music on these headphones along with rock/alternative that has vocals. EDM was less good and I felt I needed more bass to really get into it.
A dad posted on a forum I frequent in Denmark asking for some help. His child loves Mister Rogers, but he was hoping for a way to download a bunch of episodes that didn't involve streaming them from the website to stick on an iPad. I love simple Python projects like this and so I jumped on the chance. Let me walk you through what I did.
If you just want to download the script you can skip all this and find the full script here.
Step 1: Download Youtube-DL
My first thought was of youtube-dl for the actual downloading and thankfully it worked great. This is one of those insanely useful utilities that I cannot recommend highly enough. You can find the download instructions here: http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html
Step 2: Install Python 3
You shouldn't need a super modern version of python. I wrote this with Python 3.7.3, so anything that number or newer should be good. We are using f strings because I love them, so you will need 3.6 or newer.
I'm checking the version here but only to confirm that you are running Python 3, on the assumption that if you have 3 you have a relatively recent version of 3.
version = platform.python_version_tuple()
if version[0] != "3":
print("You are not running Python 3. Please check your version.")
sys.exit(1)
Step 3: Decide where you are going to download the files
However if you just want them to download into the Downloads folder, uncomment the line above this one by removing the # and delete the line I show above. So you'll want path = str(Path.home() / "Downloads") to not have a # in front of it.
Download the script and run it locally. The script checks if it is the first or third Monday of the month and only runs the download if it is. This is to basically keep us from endlessly spamming the servers hosting this great free content.
The first Monday of every month will feature programs from the early years 1968-1975. The third Monday of every month will feature programs from the “Theme Weeks” library 1979-2001.
NOTE: If you just want to download 5 episodes right now, delete these lines:
today = date.today().isocalendar()
if today[2] == 1 and (today[1] == 1 or 3):
logging.info("There is a new download available.")
else:
logging.info("There are no new downloads today.")
sys.exit(0)
Step 5: Set the script to run every day
This script is designed to be run every day and only go out to the servers if there is a new file to get.
If people actually use this script I'll rewrite it to use celery beat to handle the scheduling of the downloads, but for my own use case I'm comfortable writing cron jobs. However if you run into issues running this, either add a comment on the GitLab link or shoot me an email: mat at matduggan.com.
While working on my passport renewal, I realized the US Government official PDF isn't set up as a form. I googled it and it seemed like nobody had made one of these available for free that I could find. Just a lot of spammy websites trying to get you to pay or make an account to access the form. Anyway, for those of you looking for just a simple PDF download of the form with all the fields set up correctly:
One of the more common questions I hear get thrown around expat groups is "what should I buy before I move" or "what should I send to a loved one who is currently living in Europe". While I am not an expert on what is available everywhere in Europe, here are some things I miss in Denmark and likely are hard for most expats in Europe to get. Hopefully this helps you pack or buy some great gifts.
American Plastic Food Wrap - Denmark has this stuff, but the domestic stuff is terrible compared to the American version. I have no idea why, I assume some sort of super dangerous chemical. Anyway buy it.
Taco Seasoning - I have no idea why, but the stuff they have here is terrible. It has almost no flavor except for salt.
Twizzlers - If you like them, buy them because you can't buy these in Denmark.
Poultry Seasoning - mostly for Thanksgiving but you can't buy that here.
Cream Of Tartar
Good Doritos - they have some Doritos but they don't have any of the good flavors, so no cooler ranch or nacho cheese.
Everything Bagel Seasoning - honestly there aren't a lot of bagel places, but this seasoning goes great with everything
Aspirin
Pepto-Bismol
Tums
Melatonin
Corn bread
Grits / pancake mix - you can find it but it costs 5x what it should
Maple Syrup is available but only the expensive real stuff
Old Bay
Peppers! Spicy food doesn't exist in Europe like it does in the US. The only stuff you can get here is like tobasco sauce and red pepper flakes. So get some guajillos, puyas, chiles de árbol with the stems if you can find them.
A surprisingly good value for retro-gamers of all ages.
The Good Old Days
Retro gaming as a hobby has exploded in the last ten years, as gamers turn away from modern releases and return to the games of their childhoods. With less complicated systems, familiar art and music styles and stories that were famous among kids our age, retro gaming has become a much more legitimate hobby. Part of the appeal for me is the depth by which you can get obsessed with the hardware, trying to squeeze every drop of nostalgia out.
The idea of a retro handheld device was new to me until the Analogue Pocket. This incredible looking fusion of the Gameboy of my past with the power and convenience of modern systems blew my mind. I had long coveted one of the Analogue retro consoles. They are famously based on Intel FPGAs which, when loaded with "cores" allow for a copy of old gaming chipsets.
FPGAs?
A FPGA, or field-programmable gate array, is a really fascinating piece of technology. So most things you interact with that have computer chips in them have integrated circuits in them. You've seen them in every piece of electronics you've dropped on the floor and seen fly across the room. Game consoles historically used these to make their machines and add specific functionality to them.
For a long time it has been possible replay classic games on modern computer hardware, but all this conversion has happened on something called an emulator. Emulators work by recreating in software what used to happen in hardware between the behavior of processors and systems like the sound or graphics chips. Basically given the advances in computer speed we had enough overhead to recreate how those old systems used to work.
It's important to note that for many of these older game consoles, the machines continue to work but we're running out of things to connect them to. Converting the analog signal to HDMI to connect them to a modern television is not as simple of a task as it seems. If you happen to still have your old console and games and want to play them now, your basically have three options:
Get a CRT television and stick it somewhere in your house.
Buy a device that can play the old cartridges but plug into your modern television.
Why Does It Matter?
Well it kinda doesn't. See above when I was talking about how retro gaming is becoming a hobby as much about the journey as the destination. The reality is there are a ton of ways to play old games through emulation that human beings would struggle to tell the difference with, but the gold standard has been and continues to be the FPGA machines.
Analogue is sort of alone out there making these machines and they have become the high end headphone/audiophile version of classic gaming. They've made NES, SNES, Genesis and it seems finally they've turned their attention to the portable market. This is the device I wanted to desperately buy:
The Pocket runs a pair of FPGAs handling a variety of duties. The primary FPGA appears to be the Altera Cyclone V FPGA, with the secondary Altera Cyclone 10
However they're impossible to get as you can tell from their website here. So since I can't get the real thing, I thought "let's try one of these emulators". I have to say, I have been really impressed with the RG 300. For software based emulation on a portable, less powerful platform, it has been a mostly positive experience.
RG 300 Appearance
The RG 300, or retro-gaming 300, looks something like the Gameboy of my youth if you didn't look at it very hard.
It costs a fraction of the Analogue Pocket, with the Pocket coming in at an intimidating $199 and the RG 300 squeaking in at $50. I purchased mine from Retromini and have absolutely nothing exciting to say about the process. The shipping was fast, everything showed up in good condition and it worked as expected with a few exceptions we'll get into later.
The buttons are excellent quality, with a very satisfying click when you press down on them. The shoulder buttons on the back are the best of all of them, with a feeling very similar to a mouse button click. This is actually due to them using the same switches as a gaming mouse, but I wish more games took advantage of these rear switches. The front button are good, with a great feeling D pad. The only complains I have about controls are the weird coloring and font choice for the X Y A B buttons.
For some reason they remind me of Xbox 360 buttons, which isn't really a bad thing but it is unusual. They're also kind of loud buttons, which doesn't seem to bother anyone in my household. Other than the buttons on the front you have a power slide button on the left side, a volume button on the right side and a headphone port on the bottom. The two small buttons in the middle control the brightness of the screen with the top one, and emulator configuration options with the bottom.
RG 300 Screens
I got the 3.0 inch IPS display with tempered glass and I'm in love with it. Games look crystal-clear, I haven't had any scratches even carrying it my coat pocket with other junk in there. The resolution is 960*480 which is plenty big for the games I'm going to play. You have control over brightness with the top small button in the middle of the front and I find it plenty bright even at 25% for normal gaming.
Internals
The RG 300 runs RetroFW, an open source firmware that seems to power all of these sorts of devices. In the portable emulator world if you have more CPU, you tend to run Android and one of the many emulators available for that. If you don't, which definitely includes the RG 300 with its JZ4760B chipset clocking in at a screaming 528Mhz with 2 cores, you run RetroFW. I had never heard of this chipset before now but it is an interesting piece of technology.
Despite its clock speed the JZ4760B is a formidable chip for not a lot of money. The CPU core is the XBurst processor engine along with a VPU and support for a variety of flash memory.
In terms of running RetroFW, its very fast. The device boots up almost immediately but unfortunately doesn't keep state. So if you are in the middle of playing a game, then flip the switch to turn it off and then turn it back on later, you aren't going to be back where you where. This is probably the worst part of the RG 300 experience, which is state management.
Classic game consoles are famous for "hit the power button and start playing". The RG 300 does have this experience when the device goes to sleep, which is what happens if you leave the device running and walk away from it. By default I believe it goes into "suspend mode" after 10 minutes of idle, but this is configurable in the settings. However when you hit the power toggle, you are basically exiting out of everything and when you return, you are back on the home screen. It's annoying.
While my version of RetroFW was pretty recent, I wasn't on the latest version of the firmware. Thankfully flashing the RetroFW was pretty simple. If you remove the battery cover on the back, you'll see a MicoSD card which contains the firmware and everything else.
I took this SD card out and taped it to the back of the battery cover. Generally I've had bad experiences with no-name MicroSD cards and I'd prefer to keep the original factory one untouched in cased I caused serious problems. The RG 300 actually has 2 SD card slots, one in the side and one behind the battery. I ended up going with a 16 GB behind the battery with the RetroFW firmware and the emulators, reserving an 8 GB in the side for content. However you can do whatever you want.
Flashing the new version of the firmware is quite easy.
Take the card out from behind the battery (the battery just pops out), and either store it somewhere safe or at least copy the contents to a folder.
Find out which RG 300 you have. There is a "Dim Screen", a "Bright Screen" and an IPS screen. If you purchased from my link above, you have the IPS screen and if you are considering buying one today in 2021, you should only be considering the IPS screen.
Assuming the MicroSD card you are going to use is still attached to your computer, download Etcher. Follow the steps to flash your MicroSD card with the new firmware.
You still need to download emulators. Once the card has been flashed you'll see it get mounted on your computer. You'll see a variety of directories here. Download the emulators you want from this list, put them in a top-level directory on the SD card (like data or opk) and then put the SD Card into your RG 300 and boot it up. If you scroll up to the top there are specific instructions to get the system to see the emulator depending on what kind of emulator you have downloaded.
Wait, this is too technical for me.
Don't stress, you don't need to do any of this to start playing. The RG 300 has everything you need already installed, so if this isn't for you just boot it up and start to play. I'll leave it up to other websites to tell you where to find software but there are a variety of nice open-source games on the platform you can play right away with no copyright concerns.
RetroFW Performance on the RG300
For this sort of thing you really need a video and unfortunately I'm not really interested in making one. I found this one excellent though.
RG 300 Battery Life
In my experience I get about 5 hours of battery life, but there is something really strange about the RG 300 battery. On it is printed BP-5L:
The BP-5L is a type of battery, but it isn't this battery. I have no idea why it has this printed on it. If you need a replacement battery, the kind of battery you want to buy is a BL-5B. Here is a bunch of eBay listings for them here. I don't know why it has the wrong label on it, but at least you know now.
Charging is done through the USB-C port on the bottom. I was surprised to see USB-C on a $50 device and the cord that comes in the box works well for charging and transferring data. You can play while you charge, but if you end up using the USB-C to transfer content (for instance, if you don't have a second MicroSD card) and charging, you'll end up having to select what you want the connection to do every time you boot up.
Conclusion
The RG 300 is an amazing device to hold you over until Analogue makes more of the Pocket, if they ever do. I was very surprised at how well put together this device is, expecting something that felt a lot more cheap at this price point. Comparing games between my Gameboy Advance SP and this, I felt the RG 300 was virtually identical as far as my eyes could tell.
It has become my most used device and one that I've really started to look forward to enjoying on the train or bus. It is so good, I'm not sure I'm going to buy an Analogue Pocket anymore, which is surprising to me considering my level of enthusiasm. Strongly recommend picking one up, especially at the $50 price point.
FAQ
How do you get cheats onto the system for Gameboy Advance games?
This is surprisingly confusing, but I'll walk you through how to do it. So first not all the Gameboy Advance emulators support cheat codes. You want to ensure you have the gpSP emulator installed. When it is installed, you will get at the top level of your SD card when you plug it in a directory called .gpsp.
This is not where your games go and a lot of instructions online tell you to place the cheat files with your games. This doesn't work. What you want to do is: make a file with the EXACT SAME NAME as your game, ending in a .cht extension. Then, take the file and put it into this .gpsp directory. Now because this is a . directory, it will be hidden by default from Mac and Linux users. For Mac hold down: cmd + shift + [.] (that is just the period sign) to see the hidden holder. Put the files here and you are good to go.
In my testing it does not, presumably from lack of USB PD negotiation capabilities on the chipset. So weirdly you need to use a USB-A -> USB-C like what comes in the box. I don't know why they bothered to include the USB-C port if it doesn't negotiate power from USB-C chargers, but just be aware you can't take this thing on a trip if you don't have a USB-A charger somewhere.
Being a DM is one of the more rewarding things you can do in the gaming space. It is the only opportunity I've ever had to truly create anything I want. After some time DMing you will struggle to enjoy videogames the same way, longing for the same levels of creative freedom. On the other hand, the pressure has never been higher.
Running a game can be very daunting for folks not used to it, so I thought I would put together some resources I've found extremely useful over the last 12 months of DMing. I'll try to update this post with new information as I find it.
Once you have all that, sit down and read through all of the basic rules. Feel annoyed and overwhelmed? Welcome to being a DM at first. Power through and then take a break and listen to a podcast.
https://www.jointhepartypod.com/ is a well-made DnD 5e podcast that explains all the rules as they go. This means you will get an explanation for what the characters did and why the GM did what they did.
After listening to the rules and the first 10 episodes of Join the Party, you are almost ready to start DMing. Here are some mistakes I made and what I should have done, so you don't make the same errors.
Don't let players roll their own characters at home. Make them do it in front of you because even otherwise good people tend to fudge some numbers and make some statistically unlikely characters.
Ask people to stick to classes and races in the PHB, or the players handbook, at first. This reduces the number of things you'll need to account for as a new DM and also prevents players who enjoy creating super-powered characters from taking too much advantage.
Do a few practice sessions of combat where you alternate between being the DM and being the player. It'll get you more experienced with combat.
Spells work under more complicated rules, so try a few of those out as well.
Have a session 0. This is where you all meet, chat about what you expect from the game and what you like. Here are some things you are going to want to discuss before you start playing together:
* Do you like exploration, combat or role-playing? See what parts of DnD your particular group likes
* How important is following the rules vs keeping the flow going? You are going to have to make judgement calls in the middle of games that might not be right or consistent with the rules. See if players are ok with this.
* Do you care if we do a custom campaign vs pre-written adventures? At first you'll want the security of the pre-written stuff
Post Session-0
Alright you professional DM, you are out there rocking and rolling, going through some pre-written adventures. Hopefully you are getting the hang of combat encounters and figuring out what parts of DMing you like vs which are a chore. For me I hate combat but love improv storytelling, where I try to say yes to the player whenever I can and build on top of their responses. But everyone is different.
Here are some things you will want to start to think about as you master the basics and begin to feel more comfortable in the chair:
Do you want to roll in front of players or behind the screen? This is a style decision and one I encourage people to think about. Rolling in front of players can be exciting since you also don't control what happens, but you need to be ok with what might happen as a result.
Start to add more flavor to your scenes. Maybe instead of "the sword misses" it "embeds itself into the stone". The more layers you start to add to the world, the more your players will get invested.
Don't be afraid to let things go off the rails. Games are often the most fun when players do something really unexpected, so don't be afraid to let that ride as long as it doesn't break the whole session. It is often as exciting for you as for them.
Maps! Visual aids help a lot when running a game. For in-person games I use a dry erase board and online I tend to steal maps from the following:
Q: Can I buy the PDFs of official DnD 5e adventures?
A: No, but you can buy them in the DnDBeyond app and search them that way
Q: How hard it is to write a custom campaign?
A: Totally depends! I recommend starting with a pre-made campaign and then if you feel more comfortable, writing small branching adventures off that main story. It takes some of the pressure off the daily prep work and lets you start to make a world.
I'm coming up on the halfway mark for this year of sponsoring a student from Norway. For those who stumble across this wondering "was the experience worth it" let me reassure you right away. It's an amazing experience that I wouldn't trade for the world. I was nervous with us being a childless couple in our 30s but it turned out to be a delightful learning experience for both parties. It pushes you out of your comfort zone and make you see your community and routine through new eyes.
One of my frustrations before my student came was how little information was out there. I hope people considering sponsoring a student will find some use in these tips. I'll continue to edit these as we discover more.
Registering for School Will Take Way Longer Than You Think
I was as surprised by this one as anyone. When we first accepted our I went to local high school and met with a counselor months before I needed to. I filled out a lot of his forms and was told "he's ready to go, just have him come back before school starts and we'll finish it up". Sounds good right?
What followed was a week of us being on the phone or at the school. We learned about the catch-22 of not being able to play in sports until you had a minimum number of course hours. There are questions about what grade he should be in. Every school official you meet is both eager to help and also telling you that you are missing some critical document or item. I provided many of the same documents several times.
All this means expect to spend some time in the school when your student arrives. Make a binder with copies of their important documents.
Have them cook once a week
One of the things I struggled with when our student first came was "what do I have him do". Some of the chores were pretty obvious. We asked him to keep his room clean and when he got home from school to walk the dog. I wanted something that would be more of a learning experience for both of us though. My wife told me about something she did when she was a foreign exchange student that I loved.
Put $100 in a drawer. Tell the student that once a week they need to cook dinner. They can pick the day but they need to go to the store themselves, pick out the items they need, get them home and cook them. It sounds simple but has actually proven to be one of the more useful exercises we've engaged in.
For the student it's a good immersion exercise. They need to plan ahead with a recipe, then go to the store with the limited funds and get the items they need. Finally they need to come home and have dinner ready by roughly the time the family eats.
Homesickness can sneak up on both of you
Homesickness is a constant challenge for foreign exchange students. We were ready for it around the 2-3 month mark. It didn't come though and it seemed like maybe our student just wasn't going to experience it. I chalked it up to social media ensuring he was still in regular contact with friends and family along with a deep passion for watching soccer and talking about it with his dad, a tradition he kept up.
Then the holidays hit. The photos of his family all together at the vacation cabin definitely caused him to experience some of the homesickness we had been ready for months earlier. It caught me off guard. It took me longer then maybe it should have to recognize what was going on and to help him deal with those issues. The point of this is a lot of the literature pounds into you that around 2-3 months they'll experience homesickness. That is by no means a hard and fast rule. Everybody is different.
You need more food
When you live with a partner in your 30s over time you start to mentally adjust sizes. You know how much laundry detergent to buy because you know in the back of your mind roughly how quickly you burn through it. Same with staples like bread and milk. These numbers start to become patterns on buying that you replicate every time you go to the store for grocery shopping. But with a kid you'll likely need a lot more food and it'll need to be easier to prep. I forgot how teenagers do not have things like basic knife skills and so prepping more complex foods is an time consuming process.
So for your first couple weeks keep an eye on what you are buying and what you are running out of. You'll start to develop the new list of things you buy along with the amounts you'll need.
IKEA Smart Home: Everything you love and hate about IKEA at once
Living in Denmark usually means I get everything late compared to the US. Movies come out a bit later, technology often isn’t available, etc.
So I delighted to learn (likely due to the extreme proximity between Denmark and Sweden) that I could get some IKEA Kadrilj smart blinds. After setting them up and having them work I have some feelings about the product.
The stuff I like
First IKEA couldn’t have made this process more simple. Out of the box, the Kadrilj blinds come with everything you need. There’s the signal repeater, the up/down button, the battery pack, the micro-USB cord to charge the battery pack and a USB wall plug. The instructions were pretty simple to install the blinds and I was pleased by how there didn’t seem to be any tricks to the installation itself. Working with the up/down button that comes out of the box was great. It was already paired to the signal repeater, so testing that basic functionality was charging up the smart blinds, plug in the repeater and then hit up/down to make them work. They also look quite nice and aren’t very loud which is a nice touch. The price is also excellent for what you get.
Outside of the blinds the IKEA gateway you need to connect the devices to Google Home, Alexa or Homekit is very simple to use. It is an ethernet-only device that only goes out to the internet to check for updates and update its time from NTP. Some people may see this as a downside but TRÅDFRI is pretty secure as far as IoT goes. The device itself is going to get an unencrypted JSON to download a signed file (so unless there is some local DNS hijacking this seems like a great approach). The local communication over your network is UDP but uses DTLS which means the UDP packets are encrypted. The key used for a handshake between devices is on the bottom of the device and seems long enough to be secure. I have a lot of experience with UDP but not that much with DTLS.
Above the networking layer for the gateway, the TRÅDFRI is running CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) which gives a REST API. In testing with simple scripts written in Python, you have a lot of functionality open to you that isn’t available in the app yet. It’s great to know that in the future if IKEA were to drop support for the device I could still write scripts to manage the device without having to worry about IKEA relying on server-side communication to keep the device working. I also appreciate how IKEA limited themselves out of the gate and gave us something that is designed for years of operation. The device itself is nice looking although it did irritate me that the lights telling you of the status don’t change colors when they are working. Instead “blinking white” means not set up, “steady white” means it is working. I prefer colors to tell me status but this is not critical once you grasp how it works.
If you are interested in exploring the product on your own I found the pytradfri library to be super easy to use out of the box. It was easier to get information about the status of the gateway and the overall state of the world through this library than through the actual app. I don’t know if I would rely on it to do anything critical but it does seem like the kind of thing if you ever need to tinker with the stack it would let you do it.
Because the wireless protocol is Zigbee you don’t need the IKEA TRÅDFRI gateway, but I don’t have anything else that can serve in that control function and I wanted to connect the devices to Google Home. Be aware you can save a bit of money if you already own a Philips Hue stack. Also props to IKEA for including the USB cable for power, the wall outlet, and the Ethernet cable with the gateway. It’s a small thing but it is nice to not have to go into a box and dig up another Ethernet cable.
The stuff I didn't like
On the blinds themselves, it was hard to get the two to line up length. You have to hit the down button, then hold it and wait for it to get close to the next one and let go. If you miss the blind needs to roll back up to the top, you need to reset it by hitting one of the buttons twice to reset the length, then try again. It’s a small thing but it seems natural to me that you might have many blinds next to each other and would have loved a way to sync length between them. I also didn’t love how the battery pack that powers the blinds doesn’t seem to give me any feedback on its charging status. Once again IKEA has decided to go with one color LED here, another white LED. So I don’t know how charged the battery pack is. You let it charge for an hour, shrug and then plug it in.
In the smart home section, while I like the technical design of the gateway the app has some problems. First, the way you connect devices is super confusing at first. You take the up/down remote, reset it by unscrewing the back metal panel, then hitting a small button 4 times to reset it. You then take it over to the gateway, hold down the same button, wait for the app to say it has paired with the remote, then repeat with the signal repeater. Finally, you do the same thing with the blinds. This takes a LONG time. I couldn’t get it to pair with the signal repeater on the first 10 tries. Then I took a break, ate some dinner, came back and got it on the first try. It’s not clear to me why I need to use the remote to connect these devices and wish there was a less manual way to add stuff to the network. But, I suspect this might be a security thing since it requires me to get within 3 cm of the devices to pair.
Integrating it with Google Home, once everything was set up in the IKEA app, was super basic and worked great. Voice commands with Google Home worked on the first try and I didn’t encounter any surprises. Timers and other functionality in the IKEA app also worked. Since there is no internet functionality would appear to live on my local gateway which is great. But, I am a little worried about this stack.
Since everything is set up manually with me having to get quite close to each thing, I’m not sure how comfortable I am installing a lot of lights. There are reports online of people losing all their stored devices with software updates (which get applied to the gateway without any user intervention). I’m confident I could block it from hitting the update server (or doing something with DNS to trick the gateway to going to a local copy of the JSON file with the current firmware listed) but I’m not sure if that is a good idea since there isn’t a change log and I have no idea if there are critical security updates going out to the devices with these updates. Setting up three blinds again would be fine but setting up like 20+ devices with light bulbs and everything else is a multiple-hour job and since there is no backup to the internet I assume if the gateway dies or gets a bad software update I need to start from scratch.
Conclusion
I’m pretty pleased in general with these blinds. They work well with Google, they weren’t too bad to set up and I appreciate that IKEA has thought this product through to be defensively designed, which is refreshing in a world full of IoT devices that suck at security. The downside is that you are reliant on the physical gateway box that you purchased to continue working to keep your configurations and you are reliant on IKEA, who is not a software company, to keep all this running. I suspect a lot of the way they designed this product was with the assumption that if it proved to not be profitable it wouldn’t be dangerous for users to continue to run for years. I also appreciate that they used open standards and stacks without any ridiculous restrictions on access. If you have the gateway, you have the secret you need to make API calls.
The only thing I’m worried about is the lifespan of the blinds. Who knows if I’ll be able to buy replacement batteries in the future or where I will be able to find them. The lack of ability to wire these devices into power means I can’t imagine they have a lifespan beyond 5 years which is a bummer both for sustainability and also as a practical thing (I doubt the motor in there is only rated to work that long). But you can buy more of the battery packs (I didn’t see any inside of IKEA but they’re quite good about replacement parts so I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt here). I’m excited though to start expanding my smart home collection with a few light bulbs and a few outlets. Yet, I wouldn’t put anything critical on this technology yet. It seems like IKEA is on its way to figuring it out, but if you were relying on this to keep AC going for people with medical conditions or other more niche use cases I would keep looking. The software isn’t quite there yet. For normal home use though it should be fine.
If you have a beard, you need to trim it. Like so many products in modern life, this is something that seems simple. You'll need a device that lets you select how much to trim off and it will need to be relatively easy to operate. You probably won't use it on a daily basis but a few times a week you will pull it out. This should be a product that is painfully simple to buy. If everything we think we know about mass manufacturing holds true, this should be something where I walk in, get what I need and leave.
So why have I owned so many of the things? I've owned this one and I've tried that one. These are good brands (or at least I thought) with reasonable features that seemed to meet every need I could imagine. They have lots of high reviews and the price seems right in line with what I would expect to pay for a small motor with guides. But I kept running into problems.
These devices just never seemed to work that well. Mostly the battery simply didn't last long enough to get the job done. So I did what anyone does. First I started by taking my Remington beard trimmer apart. How they work is pretty simple. The cam of a DC motor is inserted into the middle of the cutter assembly and makes a motion which then allows the blades to move back and forth. There are two blades in the cutter, one which doesn't move and another that does. All of this is powered by a pretty normal looking DC motor that (according to google) is rated to move around 6,000 RPM. All of these are pretty common pieces.
With the razor apart I focused on the PCB components and the battery. As far as I could tell, all the PCB was doing is regulating the power supply to the motor and charges the battery (along with controlling the LED that shows whether the thing is charging or not). The power supply in this case was a rechargeable AA battery. According to Google this battery takes 14-16 hours to fully charge and should run a motor like mine for 20-30 minutes.
This, to me, is the problem with these beard trimmers. Nothing about this list of features is wrong except it is asking me, as the consumer, to make peace with all sorts of crazy compromises. 14-16 hour charge time? That's not portable! I was thinking of this device like I would a laptop or a phone, but of course it isn't. I need to plan ahead in order to trim my beard. So either I leave the trimmer sitting on my counter all the time (that looks super nice, right?) or I plan ahead. I guess I should be putting reminders in my calendar for the night before.
The other issue is the run time. I don't think 20-30 minutes of running on a single charge works. It's clear this battery isn't powerful enough to keep this device running for years. In fact, everything about this trimmer is designed to have a very finite lifespan for absolutely no reason. This battery at its peak can trim my beard twice with a charge after a night of charging. The performance will, of course, decrease as cycles increases on the battery. But the motor is still working fine. The basic mechanics of how the blades work will continue to function with lubrication for thousands more hours than the battery will. I have two highly understood pieces of machinery held back on purpose by the limitation of the power supply.
Ok but what if we just ran off the battery when we needed to? This would meet all of our needs. As far as I can tell neither of these products do that. It's always running off of the battery even when plugged into the wall. This has left me multiple times with half a beard trimmed. It's not a simple problem but there are designs for power delivery that allow you to work off the battery when the power cord isn't connected and off the wall power when it is. This seems like such a common sense design that you would, of course want. Because I would argue the worst case scenario for a beard trimming is to be left in a half-complete state. I'd rather you not even try if I can't complete the operation.
So many modern products make me feel this way. A series of compromises that don't help me and seem to be exclusively designed in order to ensure that I gain as few benefits from the product as possible. They know the DC motor is the same DC motor that a more expensive trimmer uses. They know that if power was not an issue you would need to buy one of these trimmers in your life (short of accidental damage).
This isn't just a beard trimmer problem. My new phone doesn't have a headphone jack, ensuring I go out and buy bluetooth headphones with lifespans limited by the internal battery of those devices. My laptop doesn't have any ports I might need or a replaceable battery, ensuring I need to both buy new versions of the things I already have. In a world where we are increasingly seeing more and more signs that we must slow down the rate of consumption of natural resources, we are surrounded by products designed to have a finite end date.
So what did I end up doing for my trimmer? Well once I took it apart it turns out the problem was pretty simple. It has a 600mah battery. I swapped it for a 1900 mah battery (after taking the entire thing apart even though there was no reason to make it so complicated) and suddenly my device was working so much better. Now that the one restriction on the correct functionality of the device is removed suddenly this trimmer has at least another year of life in it.
You might ask then "What is the problem Mat?" You solved the problem. First, I solved the problem because I'm not afraid to take things apart. Nothing about this device is designed to be taken apart. The designers of this product might as well be screaming "Don't do it" with the way this device is put together. Second this feels like a "tech tax". We don't teach people how PCBs work or how to take things apart. I only know how to do this because of my personal hobbies. But people who, for economic reasons, can't afford to keep replacing these items with new ones every six months might not have that same information.
So I ended up replacing my trimmer with this one. It's a cheap unit that operates on most of the same principals we laid out before with the exception being that this one just pulls power from the wall. With a small amount of light machine oil this thing will last me for years and years with normal operation. I never need to think about whether its charged or what kind of battery it has in it. It isn't designed with the idea of "what is the bare minimum we need to ship as a product" but instead is a very simple to operate and maintain machine that does exactly what you want with a minimum amount of fuss.
I would argue we need fewer tools designed to fail and more items designed like this. It is certainly an older fashioned way to design products. It means fewer units sold year over year and will likely limit the potential future growth of your company. However we are coming up to a lot of hard decisions around the future of the human race in relationship to the consumption of natural resources and one of the things we need to start to do is design the items in our lives to operate for longer. There is no recycling program as effective as making something we never need to recycle (or need to recycle much less).
