Figured it was time to share an update on my two Eufy 2K Indoor camera that I’ve had outdoors for the past 6+ months. My first post on these camera can be found on Reddit HERE
Six months later both cameras are working just fine. A few days after installing the first camera I added a second on the front porch as seen in the photos.
I haven’t changed anything since the day they were put up short of minor camera angles. The one on the deck is cover more that the driveway camera with it not being any rain or direct sunlight. The camera that point out to the driveway though technically covered from the roof edge it does get direct sunlight, rain, snow and cold winds. During the summer we can Seel hurricane CAT1 winds and through the winter it came spike down to -20C to -30C (-2F to -22F) with wind chills.
I run them with Apple HomeKit which works perfect as I have the iCloud 2TB package which gives me unlimited cameras. With HomeKit they pickup specific movement if it’s a car, person or even a package delivery.
The only issue I’ve had with the camera is the nighttime sensor. Randomly the sensor picks up particles in the air that we cannot see. If it’s a bad night they can be seen with night vision. Almost looks like a snow storm. You can see my post with a video here https://youtu.be/nKb2Ymjw3aA Apparently there is a starlight sensor that tuft could enable/use that would fix this issue but again, these are indoor cameras so I expect a trade off so I can’t put that cameras down because of this.
With that said keep in mind that you still need a “Home Base” first in order to use the cameras. I’m on the fence to get one or not with it being holiday season which makes it harder to spend the money but maybe down the road.
On the heel of what has been a mosquito infested summer we’ve attempted to keep them away by spraying our bushes, trees and surrounding area with mosquito replant and for the most part it does work but it’s the application that gets tedious. While you can get a few good days out of spraying and fogging your yard it does need to be re-applied on a regular basis and more so if you get rain which will wash the repellent away that much faster.
We found that hiring someone to fog the property to have the biggest impact in keeping them away and for the longest amount of time but paying to have someone do so weekly or bi-weekly depending on how intrusive they can be can gets costly.
This is why I turned to Ryobi. They seem to have a tool for most applications when many other brands just do not have a tool for that specific area. As I already have some Ryobi batteries I figured I would order the Fogger with it being what looks like a reasonable price of $119.00CAN for the (Tool Only) RYOBI 18V ONE+ Lithium-Ion Cordless Fogger at HomeDepot.ca Might I also add that this tool can only be ordered online.
The tool itself out of the box is very straight forward in it’s operation. You have a 5gal tank with a clearly marked line for it’s max filling of the tank but I do wish they had made one section of the tank close to the fill line see threw to view the amount of liquid in the bottle. I keep an eye by looking through the inlet while pouring and you can slightly see the level through the bottle but not very clear and easy.
As for it’s operation you just need to pour in your liquid, slide in a RYOBI 18V ONE+ Battery and pull the trigger …. at least that’s what I was hoping.
In my case I didn’t find it to operate as expected. By looking at the photos online and the video on the HomeDepot website I was expecting to get a fog or at least a good mist but instead I got mostly air. If I moved the fogger around to slosh the liquid around it would cause it to squirt and spit a stream of liquid but no fog.
The only time I seem to get anything reasonably close to a mist or liquid was to tilt the nozzle upward but still no real fogging action and to try and hold the fogger in this position is hard and not the intended position.
I’ve gone over the Operators Manual that came with the tool and though there’s plenty of info that I would expect there’s nothing that points me in the direction that I’m operating it wrong.
It does mention to keep the liquid thin and with the amount of water and mosquito repellent I had in the tank it was still good and thin. As noted in the video I did NOT add any dish soap to the liquid. Dish soap is normally suggested when you’re using a pumping canister as it helps the liquid to stick to trees and shrubs but in the case of a fogger the goal is to create a fog or at the least a mist to help with better coverage.
The too itself with the battery inserted (2.0Ah) and water tank filled up to the max line feels good and comfortable in the hand and feels balanced. It doesn’t feel front or back heavy when walking around and besides it not fogging for me the tool is straight forward with how to use it.
For me I will be returning the tool back to HomeDepot and maybe down the road if they have a newer model fogger I will look at it again.
With the release of macOS Catalina 10.15 Beta we get a sneak peek at “Sidecar” which allows users to use an iPad as a display. What I soon learned was that my 2013 MacBook Air was not supported.
I then came across the article on AppleInsider that showed us a command to allow Sidecar on a Un-Supported Mac. This video shows how it works in just a few seconds.
The command was originally posted by @stroughtonsmith
Sidecar supports iMac 27" (Late 2015) or newer, MacBook Pro (2016) or newer, mac Mini (2018), Mac Pro (2019), MacBook Air (2018) , MacBook (Early 2016 or newer), and blacklists all the devices in the screenshot pic.twitter.com/DHNDyI98WV
— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) June 5, 2019
Here at work we have a 2008 Xserve and for the past couple years I’ve only used it as a simple file share server since the highest OS that could be installed was OS X10.7 Lion. I would love to use the server for more since it has plenty of HD space and when it comes down to it, the Xserve is still a powerful computer.
A couple weeks ago I decide to get the server running with OS X 10.10 Yosemite by doing a couple upgrades along with a OS X 10.10 modified install. At first I upgraded the ram to 16GB then installed OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite with the help of an article here https://github.com/TMRJIJ/OS-X-Yosemite-on-Unsupported-Macs that explains how to create an OS X 10.10 Install on a USB stick or drive that is modified to install on older hardware. Once I had the modified OS Install I plugged into the server and installed 10.10.3 without any issues until I realized how laggy the video was. This was both local video output and through screen sharing.
I think one of the big reason Apple removed Xserve from later OS’s past 10.7 Lion was due to the video card. OS X has become very dependent on the GPU and since the stock video cards in the Xserve are bottom of the line the cards they just could not handle 10.10 Yosemite. So from here I got looking online to find a fix.
After looking around I can across a video here https://youtu.be/9AZzSgIYIac where “N90X” decided to give this same project a try and he ended up swapping out the video card. With the help of this I was able to track down a video card off eBay that was originally a stock card for Mac Pro’s. The card I purchased was a “Apple 630-9643 Mac Pro A1289 NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB Video Card”.
As soon as I received the card I quickly installed it to now find the server running smooth video. Both the card video output and screen sharing ran smooth without any issues. So far everything looks great and you would never know this server was never supported.
The one issue I know of for this setup is OS Updates. If I were to update the server to 10.10.4 when it comes out the server will not boot as the update will replace the “PlatformSupport.plist” file which essentially tells the OS which hardware is approved to run. With that said, theres a quick fix, simply replace it. Just keep a backup of the file and once you do an update you can either throw the server into Target mode and replace /System/Library/CoreServices/PlatformSupport.plist or just add in the server model & ID info. For my setup I partitioned the primary HD and keep the old OS X 10.7 Lion install so I just need to boot into the old OS, replace the file then reboot.
All in all Yosemite works great on a 2008 Xserve after modifying a 10.10 Install and upgrading the video card. From here I will be installing Server App and using more features that Server App offers. It’s a great server for DeployStudio, OS Updates and more.
A few images of the server:
Install of OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite on Xserve
Xserve with upgraded ram to 16GB and the new/used video card
Old Xserve Video Card
New/Used Video Card that was needed to get the server running video properly
