The "New Toys" Thread

Colleague at work has a USB fan that shows up messages like "I love you" and the temperature. Well I decided to get one but upgraded to the programmable one and it arrived today, first time I plugged it in the LEDs flashed and then magic smoke came out.

I guess it didn't love me.

There's something odd about it anyway. Windows detects the 'device' when the USB cable is plugged in, even if the bloody fan isn't on the end of it! :rolleyes:
 
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Keylogger.
 
Galaxy Tab A 8" 16gb open box at Best Buy for $139.99, and the1st party magnetic "book cover" case from Office depot on clearance for $18. Not a bad piece of kit for the price. Wi-fi only, sure. But I have my phone as a hot spot, and the screen is bright enough to even see OK in daylight. Way better than anything else I found for the price...although i couldn't put my hands on an Asus ZenPad, or the Lenovo one.
 
And I ordered a 750 80+ Gold rated power supply, and this case.

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I am waiting on a UEFI update to see if the RAM issues improve, and I will grab an AIO, fans, and the RAM. In the meantime, I will investigate modding the case. Muhahaha. :D
 
Adunaphel said:
Ordered some more stuff for my PC:
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I have the Define C without Mini so it's the ATX version. I like the easy cable routing, the part where the drive bays usually are helps a lot with that. :)
 
It's acceptable for now. Gonna order some neater PEG and ATX power extension cables to really tidy it all up, and I have a second LED strip that's supposed to be delivered "soon" (thank you, dx) which I am still not entirely sure about where I'm going to put it, if use it at all.
 
The earpads on my headphones were starting to fall apart, so I ordered these...

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Recently acquired "toys":

Air source heat pump (aka. electric HVAC unit) for the house:

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Remote for said HVAC:

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But... a remote? Who wants something that dumb these days!

So, cloud-based WiFi control unit (picture not mine):

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Controlled with this cool webapp that runs responsively on desktop and mobile:

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As you can see it has all the features of the unit; heating, cooling, air circulation mode, dehumidifier mode, adjustments for said modes, air direction controls, presets and statistics (graphs).

It's also a portal that allows for building your very own "infrastructure" of Mitsubishi devices in your buildings. No HomeKit support though :(

Then, this:

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Plus some extra sensors. Allows for cloud-based monitoring for temperature/humidity, built-in controls for outlets (like for lighting) and also some ITTT scripting of attached devices. For now I use it for temperatures:

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Neat. But why?

1. Because it's neat
2. Easier to see when downstairs/garage and other less visited places require heating (in the autumn/winter). Normally they don't have any, so need to know when the need arises. The ultimate goal of course is to prevent / slow down freezing or mold growth in those rooms.
3. I couldn't really see the humidity here before, now I can, it's quite useful since I now have the possibility of dehumidifying
4. Don't have to lift my lazy ass from the computer to see if my bedroom is at a sleepable temperature, now I can just sit here and check the temperature and humidity and set it just right with the cloud HVAC controls
5. There's future expandability for neat lighting solutions, and stuff like motion sensors for anti-theft, and so on. Plan is to look into these later.
 
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I'm on the fence of getting a multizone mini split like that or going for single zone traditional central A/C and do a duct calculation so that I can reduce hot and cold spots.

The second would almost be better because, I could put a return duct in the basement so that air is pulled trough my basement so that the basement's conditioned and I can pull cold basement air into the rest of the house on moderately warm days. Since my house never had ducting for forced and has baseboard radiant heat now, running ducts and finding a place for the air handler would be difficult. I'd have to put the air handler in the attic which isn't a bad thing but, now have ducting that'll get dirty over time and have to cool the entire house when in reality, at bed time, all I need is my bedroom cooled.

It's also been a while since I've done a Manual J load calculation and I'm not entirely trusting a local HVAC contractor would do one or not put in a lot of fudge factor to avoid a callback on a really hot day. I want my A/C unit to run full tilt on the hottest of days because it's more efficient. My currently boiler system almost does that on the really cold days. When it's 0? to -5?F the boiler is off maybe 10 minutes between the 20 minute cycles. Being single stage, I expect that. I plan to get either Bosch or Viessman condensing boiler when the funds become available. I'm more serious on the A/C because I have a crappy window unit that has a bad fan bearing and is way over sized so it runs sparingly at the moment.
 
I got a deal on a lightly used video card that I will be using as a stop gap until I can get what I want. It was bought as part of a console sized system in April, used for 3 days, then replaced with a 1080ti. So I get a gtx970 for $75 to use for a few months.
 
Raparperi said:
That's a lot of bang for that amount of bucks. I think they still go for double that in euros over here (used of course).
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It is from on online friend. I will also be sending him more $ after I sell it. Hopefully, by September, after I get a more powerful card.
 
In preparation to this year's roadtrip I just bought a phone holder, let's see if the promise of not having a clip but a sticky surface to attach the phone holds up...

 
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