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The "New Toys" Thread

Recently replaced my 15 (?) yo oral-b round-head spinny one with a 2100 series of those because the battery had finally called it quits and I couldn’t be bothered taking it apart to shove a new one in - cause that was a 20€ device and it would’ve taken me an hour at least.
The 2100 doesn’t have any fancy features except the timer, so starts you out full blast which can indeed be a little disconcerting. Also it’s less than 30€… but looking at the “most popular” sorting on Amazon and price comparison sites, people seem to mostly be buying the 150-200€ high end models? And like… wtf? Why? It cleans the exact same, all the added “comfort” benefits at that stage are complete bullshit like Bluetooth or whatever! Your choice I can fully understand, but the higher models just starts getting stupid…
 
My 9300 Diamondclean model lasted 12 years, ended up replacing it with the same model last year due to the noise it was emitting and the battery no longer holding much charge. I went for the expensive models ($180), because my "justification" was to not cheap out on healthcare- and with it lasting that amount of time, why buy a cheaper model many times over? I also don't buy the third party heads, because if it's something going in my body, I have concerns over the actual cleanliness of their manufacturing or the real components they use (asbestos bristles? idk). The (two) 9300s I've purchased have no bluetooth, pressure sensors, or any sort of smart features.. seems the newest revisions come packed with that stuff.

To your thought @eizbaer, I find they don't clean the same-- this one has the "just got out of a dental cleaning" feeling and my hygienist comments on the very minimal plaque build up between visits. Just a personal observation, could totally be overruled by more data points or sciences.
 
Me holding off making a toy purchase an investment: "I'm not in a hurry anyway, boating season is a month away and I don't have the permit to use it"
Me finally pulling the trigger on Tuesday evening, knowing that Good Friday is cutting the week short: "they better get it to me this week or else"
 
eizbaer said:
Recently replaced my 15 (?) yo oral-b round-head spinny one with a 2100 series of those because the battery had finally called it quits and I couldn’t be bothered taking it apart to shove a new one in - cause that was a 20€ device and it would’ve taken me an hour at least.
The 2100 doesn’t have any fancy features except the timer, so starts you out full blast which can indeed be a little disconcerting. Also it’s less than 30€… but looking at the “most popular” sorting on Amazon and price comparison sites, people seem to mostly be buying the 150-200€ high end models? And like… wtf? Why? It cleans the exact same, all the added “comfort” benefits at that stage are complete bullshit like Bluetooth or whatever! Your choice I can fully understand, but the higher models just starts getting stupid…
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For the lower models, Phillips says "3x", but the 4100 apparently has something that lets them say "7x" in regards to plaque removal compared to a normal brush.

As far as the app, yeah, it seems unnecessary. There's the feature that shows you a map of your teeth and points out places you may have neglected, which I suppose has some utility. Then there's the thing where it can ask you questions about flossing and other things to track your behavior for accountability. That's easy enough to do other ways without a connected toothbrush, but hey...you could manually count steps, but a pedometer with an app is more motivational, so I get it. The wireless charging glass of the more expensive bushes is super cool, though, NGL...but in my case, because my medicine cabinet has the USB power in it, and it only needs to be charged every 2 weeks or so, I think having the glass and a visible charge cable would be a down grade. But if my medicine cabinet didn't have it, that glass would have been very tempting.
 
S an Easter treat, I got us one of these ninja creami ice cream thingies (cause weird rebates and stuff, so 150€):
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Unlike a traditional ice cream maker, you freeze your stuff solid in one of those containers and it’ll basically shred and blend it up at high speed to turn it into ice cream. At which point you can throw and mix in add one like choc chips and such like.
First few tries worked surprisingly well and the recipes can be fairly easy and / or „healthy“ (we’re still talking ice cream). For example, the banana sorbet recipe goes: 4 ripe bananas, mushed into the pot 🤣
 
My sister has one, tried it last year and the results were really impressive. If you didn't know, the British are generally mad about 'whippy' ice cream and this gets pretty close due to the way it works. I'm not sure about the bananas though, because I don't like bananas...

I couldn't resist buying more Makita stuff, ordered a DUX60 36V split-shaft power head with the trimmer attachment, two 18V 5Ah batteries and the dual port charger. I've wanted a dual port charger for a while and this all added up to be a good deal, with the 15% discount code and the fact that the seller had the same kit at two prices, one quite a bit lower than the other.
 
Matt2000 said:
I'm not sure about the bananas though, because I don't like bananas...
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Yeah I’m not too fond of em either - I just found the recipe funny. Usually there’s at least sugar and other stuff, but here: just banana. Nothing else.
It’s true what the reviews sa: it does make an insane racket. Which is obvious, thinking about how it works - but somehow people still complain. We’ve hidden it down in the basement, so it doesn’t wake up the kid when we want ice cream after she’s gone to bed 🙈
 
One of the reasons I don't grind my own coffee is that the grinders all make a horrible racket which isn't what I want at 7 in the morning.
 
Perc said:
One of the reasons I don't grind my own coffee is that the grinders all make a horrible racket which isn't what I want at 7 in the morning.
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Luckily I don’t want ice cream at 7 am. Oh wait… maybe I do 🤔
Actually in the morning I don’t care and if going down to the basement to run the thing is the price I pay for nice ice cream in the evening, then so be it. It does run very long (like 2-3 minutes including re-spin and mixing in extras) compared to a coffee maker though - for a regular cup our machine grinds for maybe 10 seconds or so.
 
I didn't need a soldering iron right now but I also don't have one righ tnow, and Lidl's center aisle of wonders had a digital soldering station for a whopping €20.
How could I not, even if I make my living selling tools (among other things) and see them all day every day?


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eizbaer said:
Since my homekit-only driveway camera is acting up (constant disconnects, super long loading times for clips and the live view) and since I want a second camera for the front of the house anyway, I've decided to ditch the fucker and ordered a pair of cheap but cheerful reolink PoE dome cams, a fitting PoE switch (I also sort of want to switch to a unifi network once the bloody fibre connection is installed, so that should fit nicely) and a Google Coral accelerator thing so I can have proper detection going on without melting the Rpi4 that's supposed to run the whole thing in the process...
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WELL that took entirely too long but I split an existing Ethernet and power lines in a crawl space of our roof, inserted the poe switch in the middle… and left it at that. Now I just have to feed the two cables through the roof to the outside to run the cams.
… I may have forced myself a little by changing our SSID which more the shitty HomeKit can pack up completely. Won’t join any network anymore. Ugh. Good riddance I guess.

Also I got and installed a water meter reader thing, just for the hell of it. At 50€ I honestly couldn’t be bothered DIYing it. After it failed to update its firmware twice, failed calibration twice… it’s now running smoothly. No idea what was up with that. Oh well! Also: yes this is entirely useless information 🙈
 
At different times of the year I have different webcams that I want to watch - in December there's the Gävle goat that could burn down or be eaten by crows and right now through to June or July there's a webcam on an osprey nest not that far away from me.

Since installing the CCTV system in 2020 with only two cameras, I've wanted a way to connect a computer and use that as a source on the DVR, recording the source for me along with the CCTV footage. I never found a device that looked like it could actually work, as the DVR is AHD and that's not the most common thing these days. I finally found one on Amazon this week, but it was still a gamble as I didn't really trust it to work.

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Well, to my surprise, it works. It's happy with a connection to my iPad, it's happy with the output of my work laptop and after changing the resolution via VNC connection, it's happy with the Pi 4.

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It's not the best picture in the world because it's analogue HD and the Pi is too underpowered to reliably run the 1080p stream, but it bloody works and I'll take that. I'll probably get a new Pi or some slimline PC to put down there.

If anyone is interested, the stream is this:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxN8Sb_xHp0
 
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as I just quoted my annoyance about AVMs more recent product announcements in the random thoughts tech, I remember I didn't put these two toys in here. I got them already in preparation for the swap to unifi since they could be had for cheap (ish... unifi never is?) and my current dumb 8p switch has run out of ports already anyway. flex 16 poe and flex mini (runs off poe and look how tiny it is!). the big switch only has a poe budget of 42W, which isn't a lot, but I only plan on running two APs and the mini off it so I should be fine.
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Edit: aaaaand added a U6+ already since it was also cheap and I figure I will never need 6ghz in the basement.
 
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Is it a new toy if I take over someone else's toy that was being neglected?
Recently I got The Urge® to own a proper camera again, which led me to lust after the much hyped Fujifilm X100VI and even the Leica Q3...then I remembered we wife bought a Panasonic Lumix LX100 nearly 3 years ago, used it for 2 months, got bored/frustrated with it and it has been collecting dust ever since.
Yesterday I charged the batteries, put on an empty SD card in it and read the manual back-to-back.
It has 4 times as many features as I'd like/need but it was fun to play with it, specially considering it was "free" and she got it brand new on sale for €250 (down from €900).
 
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your money certainly is :p
 
Just ordered this stick vac from directtoolsoutlet.com , the outlet store for the TTI brands. Our 13" Ryobi 18v lawnmower was from here, and despite being "reconditioned", it looked good as new and has performed flawlessly. Hoping to get that quality again.

I've watched reviews of it, and people have said that it sucked up a baby sock without issue, so it seems like it should be more than adequate for our use as more of a "dustbuster" use.

We have an upright plug-in vac, but really hate digging it out every time we have a few dust bunnies, or an insect up along the ceiling. Spending $50-80 on a shitty hand vac seems like such a waste, given our bad luck with several of them being low powered and hardly holding any charge. This 50% promo was what sealed the deal, though this vac sold out last week, but happened to see it back in stock today, the last day of the sale.

Shipping for me in CA was an additional $15.

One of my favorite parts is the fact that it's a Ryobi One+ 18v tool, and I already have 9 compatible batteries.

My one wish was that the brush had some sort of self-clearing technology, since we both have long hair. The roller is super easy to remove for easy cleaning, so the lack of that feature wasn't a deal-breaker.

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