Episode: 3354
Title: HPR3354: My Devices
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3354/hpr3354.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 21:32:34

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3354 for Thursday, the 10th of June 2021.
Today's show is entitled My Devices. It is hosted by operator and is about 24 minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summary is, I walk around my house and talk about any interesting
devices I have. This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honest host.com. Get 15% discount
on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15. That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at an honest host.com.
Hello everyone, welcome to the episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host operator.
I'm out here walking with my son Connor, say hi Connor.
All right, today we're going to be talking about devices and what devices I have just listening
to podcasts or an episode from, we got my current devices, May, to say who, sadly no open-source
handheld devices, but whatever. Let's see who posted this. Anyway, it's fine,
and it's not working very well. Anyways, May 10th. So I thought it would be interesting to go,
we're kind of what devices I have and how I use them and what I'm using them for. Mainly ones that
mainly software or devices that people wouldn't normally have. So first, I'll kind of kind of
maybe go through my day. I don't know how that would work, but I use Android for alarms,
for meeting alarms and things like that. Basic alarm on the phone.
And you can even when do not disturb is on, you can have your alarms bypass.
They do not disturb settings, so that's how I wake up.
I use, you know, a lot of Android apps for work, for two-factor and stuff, so there's not
anything super useful there. I use Firefox on Android with ad blocker with privacy badger and
you block origins, I think. And that helps mostly with ads. Then I did an episode not too
previously on DNS66, which in my experience, what I found is that you want to use DNS66
have it bypassed to start off. And if you want more details about it, it's basically for ad blocking.
It allows host files to be imported into a local VPN. So I use that for any other apps. This
actual, this sound voice recorder app that I'm using has ads in it. And if I use DNS66, it just
works and doesn't have any ads. It's great. So you don't need to root for it, you don't need any of that.
I use Google Voice, which they're getting rid of Hangouts Dialer, I think.
So I switched to Google Voice and I'm not using Hangouts as much if it all,
which is quite frustrating because MMS and SMS protocol is very limited. So
but I use my work phone for that, for my personal Google Voice number. So instead of having to pay,
we were paying $90 a month for two team mobile lines, limited data plan. Now we have basically
kind of unlimited data plan through work. And then I use Google Voice for my personal number.
And then also I use my wife is on Mint, which you can get mint for like $12 for one year or two
years or something. There's a lot of discount coupon codes out there and stuff. So I don't ever pay
full price for a minute. There's a couple other ones, team and whatever. So if you're looking for
cheap phone plan, that's what I use them, pretty much any Android device or whatever can join up
to their network. I use this team mobile back in at least for Mint mobile. Let's see,
where I use other devices. So I have CCTV system. I've got LinkedIn post about it. It's called
like 38% but less, less 30% vote. Anyways, the CCTV system with two cameras,
that's fed to zone minders. Zone minders got zones in it, exclusion zones and inclusion zones and
sensitivity for those zones. Then those motion events go to Darknet, which is an object recognition
thing, which I could do episode on, but I don't know enough about it really. So it could be its
own episode, but I would not do the justice and I don't want to do the research to figure it out.
But anyways, it does object recognition and I filter out based on cat dog house or cat dog car
truck. I think that's pretty much it. So we get alerts. Excuse me, for motion, motion events for
that type of stuff. That's the CCTV. I use Linux Cody for my media. So in our radar for
use net movies and TV. I have an Umbi request system, which instead of your brother-in-law
calling you or texting you or your wife telling you that your brother-in-law wants some series,
they can just use their Plex login to login to Umbi and request whatever movies or TVs they want
and then it comes in in theory. I spend about an hour, about an hour every month,
puts in with it or updating it or whatever, maintaining the packages and making sure everything
secure and all that. So that does my TV movies. That covers most of the media box. Got a couple of
weather station things. We have one of the the cheap and user. My radar or whatever
accurate weather stations. They're like a hundred bucks for something and they can be a little
thing. We've had it. Believe it or not, I've had it for, I don't know, five years or more now and
it's been running on it's two, three batteries or whatever and we've placed it every year or two and
to my surprise it's been working quite well under the elements. I'm sure it's not perfect or
dialed in but it's got water gauge and all that stuff. So that's weather. My wife likes weather
so I've actually looked at getting her real weather stations or I've actually looked into building
your own radar which that doesn't that's not a thing that we can do or afford. So that covers the
weather, weather devices I got, networking devices, packet captures. I can do but I haven't done yet
and I don't really plan to. I'm gonna be doing labs here in local, local area and might spend that
back up again and do some talks and episodes on blue team labs because nobody cares about the
offenders. That pretty much covers the entertainment system. We've got a cheaper
TV, HTTB. What you don't know is that a lot of them have these hidden menus now so basically to
turn off the Bluetooth which was brute forcing or denial of servicing some of our other devices.
I had to go into some admin mode on my TV and freaking turn off Bluetooth because it would try to
pair to the TV and just brute force and like denial of service my TV because it would kept popping
up, kept popping up, kept popping up. But that end I've got two Bluetooth headsets and the device
is called like a matrix, sorry it's not, it's not the Amazon.
I'm looking in my orders right now. Oh, I'm about to jump on the wireless.
Blue, Bluetooth. I'm also walking past somebody doing some one stuff.
Let's see if I can find it. I want to search my orders.
Anyways, it's a Bluetooth multi-home Bluetooth device. So I can connect up to two devices at once.
And it is called the one I got is Iroso NFC wireless Bluetooth headset.
Decent Bluetooth headset. They're not really that good actually. Lots of noise. It's all
out. It's analog. The Bluetooth receiver I ordered is called Bluetooth transmitter.
Can't key do. K-E-E-D-O. All the newer models are different. Key docs. K-E-E-D-O-X.
It allows you to sync two devices. So I take the receiver, plug that into the key docs.
The key docs let's me connect two devices at once. Then that was for when my son was really young
and we had stuff to head language. We could wear our headset and filter him out.
And he wouldn't hear the naughty language and stuff going on in there.
I got to walk up to the house here. So maybe that will give you some more insight.
Outside devices, we've got a
Burton. It's not the bird one. It's a better brand of water.
System. A sprinkler system. Rainbird. The brand I got is hunter. The timers are all garbage.
But the hunter one is actually pretty decent. It's stayed together. I've kept taking care of it,
taking care of the PVC that's under the ground. I want to run another one, but you know,
automatically water is the what little garden we have and plants we have.
I was about to see see TV. We can usually tell. We know we tell when somebody drops off packages and stuff.
Looking at devices car. I took my bluetooth or I took hijacked the audio from my
satellite radio, which I've never used. I hijacked that and I put it in the
made an auxiliary input for my for my own for my own whatever. So this Q40 has
the 2016 or I don't even know it's even newer than that. I don't even know. But for it being a
new car, it doesn't have any whatever. So I hijacked the audio from there and that's my that's how I do audio.
I have a Wii Wii U in a switch. Oh, I modded the switch. I paid about $100 more than I should have
and all lost $50 on a gamble. So it calls me an extra $150. I might have done one on it. No,
I'm not done one on the switch stuff in my experience with that. So I'm promising more episodes here.
So what are their devices? Do I have under the under the microwave? I've got these little LEDs
and I glued with Gorilla Glue. I glued these LEDs under the microwave to have better lighting. Well,
you add heat to that and all glues kind of start to break down over time and heat makes it even
worse. So they'll arbitrarily fall, which is not good when you're cooking because you don't want
something to fall in there and burst into flames and say you're helpful on fire. So we had to push
them back. So where if they did fall, they would fall like behind the oven and not in the range of
the thing. So I wouldn't recommend using magnets to put over your cooking stuff. That's how I do the oven.
Nothing super fancy over here. Nothing fancy in the kitchen. Got some dimmers, occupancy space.
Now I call this a charge master. It's 3000 and I'm not going to take any pictures of it. But it's
a drawer that I reclaimed and you know, you have devices everywhere in the house and you know,
the USB-C, USB micro, USB mini, whatever. I got tired of it and I ordered like a 24-port or
24 USB plugged everything into that labeled it mostly color-coded. It took all my other rechargeable
devices, shoved them on this drawer and set up a timer switch timer where you can press the button
and it'll turn it on for two, four, eight hours, whatever. I also included a fever.
We call this fire thing smoke detector. So just in case something does happen,
within four hour long end of charging, we'll know that something's on fire. Hopefully before
the smoke detector melts. So that's the dining room. Not thinking of some cutoff switches and stuff.
Devices, I got an airsoft gun with a electronic figure that doesn't really count as a device.
Speakers and printers, basic stuff. We, we, you, I've got the smart USB or smart battery with USB
connected to it with a Damon. It's called ACPD or something like that. A lot of
I actually shut the computer off. A certain amount of time goes by.
Surround sound, pretty standard, Cody setup. The onboard video is kind of garbage, but it works.
I have a non-traditional switch setup. I don't have the switch docking station because
they're expensive. So I have a legit Nintendo charger, which they say is, you know, not to be
messed with because you'll mess up the, you could fry the switch. I'm sure people, it's just people
putting like 24 volt chargers in their switch and then blowing them up, which I wouldn't do.
Let's see. Here's my workstation system. If you're going to get an indoor air conditioner,
don't get one of those portable air conditioners because the heat is all environment. You get a split
box. So the, the compressor is outside, and the heat part is in the cooling part is inside. So
once this portable air conditioner I got from Best Buy, I think, once it finally dies, I'll have
a split box one and run the compressor outside and it will be nearly as much waste of energy
because the portable air conditioners are waste of energy because they're creating all this heat
inside the room, which I haven't insulated. Am I just covering it with some drapery stuff?
I've done, or I've talked about my new, my fancy. I love them. The steel steel series.
Yeah, steel series headset that does all my audio stuff. So I just, all I have to do is turn
on the headset and my audio works. And it has an auxiliary inside of the dongle that will make
the speakers work when the headset doesn't work. So it automatically knows when the headset's on,
routes the audio to the headset. If it's not, it routes it through the auxiliary and then the
speakers work. These creative speakers are 10, 15 years old. We'll see if I can find a date on them here.
Man, these are old. Oh, what the dials will start to crack out after a while.
So what I'll do is I'll take a contact cleaner, which is the best stuff in the world.
And you don't hear any crickling crackling at all because what happens over time, these contacts
get oxidized. And then you hear that when you turn a dial on something, an analog thing,
that's what the contact cleaner will do. We'll clean that up. And I've done that four or five times
on these things and they still haven't died. They're just cheap little.
What are you? Two inch, three inch speakers with a trio.
Other than that, anything to add, a nixie tube clock kit from, I think it's called Robert G,
Rob G, ROBG, no spaces. That's from one of them spark fly or one of those sites. But if you do
Rob G and then nixie tube, you'll find his little link and it's a slick cheap, like 50 bucks
for the setup. The power for the air conditioner, my new is coming from my sun's room because
I'm already pulling 12 or 16 amps from the circuit for this parking station and all the other
shit in here. The clock itself is 120 volts. I don't know how the amps it is, but it's a lot of volts.
120 volts, 180 volts, some ridiculous. That pretty much covers the workstation. The occupancy
sensor for the nixie tube clock. So it plugs into the wall. So when I come in or when I move around,
the thing is on and when I leave, it's off. So I don't have to worry about turning it on and off.
I did have a manual switch and I said, this is retarded. There's got to be something online,
which for the simple use case I had, there's only like three options on Amazon, which is kind of odd.
Let's see, devices, devices, devices. That's pretty much this room.
My sun's room doesn't have a whole lot going on. He uses the Android tablet for his routine called
Brilly. So, you know, for executive function stuff, it's great. He can't argue with the tablet. So
if he has to do his brushes, teeth, he spikes and earns points, stuff like that. So if you have a child
that struggles with getting them to do things, which all children do, use Brilly with a star system,
and they get, you know, 16 stars a day, and then you can set up rewards and stuff like that.
But you got to keep it interesting and I'm trying to, trying to do that, but that's one piece of
a technology device that we use. He has a clock that's got a vibrator on it. It's called a
Sonic alert or Sonic, Sonic bomb. Really loud. I have it all the way down. He's also got a sound
machine and a little light here. But it has a little vibrator and you stick it between the mattress
pad and it'll vibrate. If you want it to vibrate and be me, even more obnoxious, you can put it
up against the wall and it'll just rattle up against the wall, make the God awful noise and scare
the crap out of him. But usually between the vibrating and the lowest level sound, he wakes up.
Yeah. I started to take nails from random places and use them as lock picks to pick the
door. So we're at that age. He's six and some change. So he's letting themselves into places he
shouldn't be in. Let's see. What else we got? No devices in the bathroom. We did have one of those
glow occupancy sensors for the toilet that would change the colors and make the bowl change
different colors. I don't know what that probably fell in the toilet. All these LEDs for everything.
We got chargeables for these LED candles. So we went through like one or two sets of batteries
for them and said, you know what? This is probably not the best thing to do for the planet.
And I've prepared two or three of them. Bedroom. We got a little chromecast we use for the TV.
It's actually good enough to pull 1080 at least devices. I have a, what does it sound called?
It's not even in a name on it. Pulse, a pulse oxometer, pulse ox for snoring. So if you snore,
you can get this pulse ox set kit that goes with the guys that create Android sleep or a sleep,
I think it's called. They compatible with this particular brand of pulse ox meter, which is like
150 bucks or something. I start talking and not breathing enough and start yelling. But
pulse ox meter was good. I only snore when I'm really tired or when I've been drinking
or I'm sick or have allergies or something. So thankfully that's whatever. Another device.
You don't have a tens unit. Get a tens unit. If you've got crack pain and you're 40 and old like
I am, get a tens unit, try it out. Do not overuse a tens unit. I sat on the couch, laid on the couch
and I was on bedrest for a week, an entire week or a week and a half at least, or at least a week.
It's not a week and a half because I overused it and it was basically like working out my
shoulders for a whole day and it screwed up my muscles and I was on pain killers and muscle relaxers
for a week and a half. We got a room up here that was given to by a spider mother, which
does a decent job. The older ones are the really the best. I don't make it, try to miss anything
in my bedroom or the office here device wise. Not here, it's for the winter and air conditioning
for the summer. I think that's pretty much it as far as the devices go. We do have these wireless
zircon, it makes these wireless, they're not cheap, they're like 40 bucks a piece but how much
does it cost to fix your wiki pipes? Of course this one's sitting on top of the, this one was sitting
on top of the sink, which is not going to help you when whatever goes, but it's wireless,
connects back and will send you an email when there's water and it won't have an audible alert.
They also have holes, if you have copper coming in or whatever, we have galodized coming in,
so we have to like cut it and like retrofit copper on there. But anyways, it's like a detector
thing that's got to be lay on there. So if you're out of town, you can hit a button and it'll turn
it off or you can tell it to like do a leak detector and it'll detect leaks, put a quote and it will
automatically shut stuff off, whatever. Next year, I want to do a year-round light,
but I want to find some good commercial grade ones that are very expensive and will last me a
long time instead of having to put up new lights every two years when they fucking go out and die
because they're just not made for anything. Bathroom, master bathroom, pretty standard, nothing.
Interesting and here device-wise. Yeah, I can't say other than nightlights and whatnot,
there's not anything super interesting in here. That's pretty much the house.
That's pretty much it. Nothing super cool.
We had a plastic bag over a clock for 10 years, but you can buy these little dim stickers.
So any device that emits a lot, you can just put some like your tape on there,
but if you want to be classed, you can get these dimmers that you can put on top of it.
It's just like a sunscreen, not sunscreen, but like a filter. We call that blackout, whatever.
Tinted, tinted, tinted, tinted stickers that you can put over your stuff that's bright.
So we did that for the clock. I think that's pretty much it for devices,
but the big takeaway here is contact clear is awesome, and Tins Unit, if you don't have one
and you have product paint or reoccurring paints, give it a go. Got chainsaws and I think I've
done a thing on chainsaws and blowers, bug stuff. So that's all been done before.
But yeah, let me know if any of these topics interest you, put something in the comments,
and hopefully I'll be able to hear it in the wrap up, the monthly wrap up thing and do a show.
But I can pretty much do a show on anything, on any of those topics more or less.
I hope that helps you out and helps, helps somebody for some. Anyways, ladies.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday, Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast and click on our contributing,
to find out how easy it really is. Hacker Public Radio was founded by the Digital Dog Pound
and the Infonomicon Computer Club, and is part of the binary revolution at binrev.com.
If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly, leave a comment on the website
or record a follow-up episode yourself. Unless otherwise status, today's show is released under
Creative Commons, Attribution, Share a Life, 3.0 license.