Year: 2023

Philips Hue vs Kasa

Are you looking to build a smart home. Should you go with KASA Blubs or Hue? Read below;

I’d still go Hue if I had to choose one or the other.

Not only is router congestion a possible issue but coverage is usually a much bigger issue. Most people have terrible Wi-Fi coverage. The Wi-Fi chip in the bulbs usually is fairly low power so while it may be able to hear the command signal, it may not be able to send the return signal acknowledging. This can lead to some frustrating troubleshooting when the Wi-Fi checked using a phone with a much stronger Wi-Fi chip. Zigbee on the other hand, is a mesh network that can make strong coverage easier to manage because each bulb is a repeater.

Hue also has an advantage on integrations. There are more Hue integrations in other ecosystems than Kasa by a wide margin. This is great if you’re not using something like r/homeassistant or Alexa as a hub.

Hue has brighter bulbs. Hue’s new ones go up to 1600 lumens where Kasa is still at 800 lumens last time I looked. Yes, the difference is noticeable even with multiple 800 ln lamps vs 1 1600 ln lamp.

Controlling the bulbs from the wall is easier with Hue. It can be done with Kasa but Hue’s dimmer switches are so much easier to setup. It took about a month for me to fed up with only being able to turn on/off my lights with my phone to get some Hue dimmers for my wall. There are light switch replacements that can work with Wi-Fi bulbs but they tend to be expensive and usually require a hub anyway. The majority of them are designed with Hue and Zigbee in mind.

If none of those bother you, then it doesn’t really matter which system you choose. If you do choose Hue, to make the prices more palatable, it’s better to buy them over time as the go on sale or used bulbs. It took ~6 years for me to switch out ~50 bulbs for Hues on my limited budge.

That all being said, I still like my Kasa smart plugs over the Hue ones, mostly because of energy monitoring options from Kasa. I run Home Assistant so crossing ecosystems isn’t a big deal for me.

What I like best about hue is the open API, I hate that Kasa’s API is available but not open/supported/published by TP Link and they keep threatening to take it away. What I hate most about hue is the expense.

Hue has motion detector gadget, which would turn on the bulbs when movement is detected and shut them off because motion is no more sensed.

Hue bridge uses Zigbee. Zigbee creates a mesh network, and so each lightbulb may function as a repeater, discreetly passing messages through to the other in sequence.

This allows the user to take Hue much farther than your router might normally allow, creating it much more practical to get initiated with Philips’ wide range, including its huge diversity of inside lighting systems.

Philips Hue Home & Away function is extremely effective if you enjoy living alone.

References

https://www.philips-hue.com/en-us

https://www.kasasmart.com/us

Computer Graphic Cards

DirectX 12 Ultimate is the new gold standard for gaming graphics on both PC and the next generation of Xbox consoles:

DirectX is a technical tool that helps game developers interact with sound and graphics cards. Although it can be installed on any computer, most users won’t ever need it. It runs when you play a game made with DirectX and that’s it. You’re only going to need to get to know it better if you want to program with it yourself. It has one of the most agile runtime processes amongst this category.

Reference 

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-12-ultimate-for-holiday-2020/

Proxmox alert configuration via gmail

A short list to configure Proxmox VE to send alert using Gmail account;

#--------- Proxmox email configuration -------------

# Install authentication libraries
apt-get install libsasl2-modules

Configure app passwords on your Google account

https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords

# Configure postfix
echo "smtp.gmail.com <youremail>@gmail.com:<app-password>"> /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

# update permissions
chmod 600 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

# hash the file
postmap hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd


# check to to be sure the db file was create
cat /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd.db

# edit postfix config
nano /etc/postfix/main.cf

# google mail configuration

relayhost = smtp.gmail.com:587
smtp_use_tls = yes
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_security_options =
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/ssl/certs/Entrust_Root_Certification_Authority.pem
smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:/var/lib/postfix/smtp_tls_session_cache
smtp_tls_session_cache_timeout = 3600s

# reload postfix
postfix reload

# send a test emails
echo "This is a test message sent from postfix on my Proxmox Server" | mail -s "Test Email from Proxmox" <your-email>@gmail.com
date | mail -s “test” <your-email>@gmail.com

# Now, fix from name in email

# install dependency
apt update
apt install postfix-pcre

# edit config
nano /etc/postfix/smtp_header_checks

# add the following text
/^From:.*/ REPLACE From: pvetower-alert pvetower-alert@<your-email>.com

# hash the file
postmap hash:/etc/postfix/smtp_header_checks

# check the contents of the file
cat /etc/postfix/smtp_header_checks.db

# add the module to our postfix config
nano /etc/postfix/main.cf

# add to the end of the file
smtp_header_checks = pcre:/etc/postfix/smtp_header_checks

# reload postfix service
postfix reload


# send a test emails
date | mail -s “test” <your-email>@gmail.com

--done

References

# steps reference list;
https://docs.technotim.live/posts/proxmox-alerts/
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-setup-for-gmail.13405/

Intel NUC’s on edge – Case Study

Edge computing, the idea of having cloud-native resources at the edge of a network, is an emerging concept in IT, and it’s having an impact at fast food restaurant chain Chick-fil-A. The restaurant chain is also making use of the open-source Kubernetes container orchestration system and the concept of GitOps to help manage its edge deployments with a DevOps approach.

Read more here