3D Printing a discreet wall mount shelf for the Aura Carver Mat
I got the Aura Carver Mat for Christmas. It's a nice 10 inch digital photo frame with great Google Photos integration - hook it up to an album, invite people to the album, add photos. You can also use the Aura app for sharing but a Google Photos album is way easier. I got this to replace an Echo show because I had started spending too much time switching off all the ads. Even after you've toggled off every bit of marketing fluff the thing still shows you ads. It's one thing if it was sold as ad supported but quite another to continually sneak them in via software updates. I like Alexa and so I replaced it with the Echo Studio (so much sound) and this frame which so far just works.
One minor detail is that this frame is designed to sit on a desk or shelf and does not contemplate living on a wall. I designed this discrete shelf for wall mounting. It's pretty small which is good, I'd recommend some double sided tape or similar to stop the frame from sliding sideways in case you're as bad at using a spirit level as me (or live in an earthquake zone, also like me).
OpenSCAD code below, or grab the STL from Thingiverse.
Related Posts
- 3D Printing a Window Mount for a Google Nest Indoor Wired Gen 2 Camera
- 3D DIY
- 3D Printing a Kong XL Holder
- Amazon Alexa Echo Wall Clock Review
- Echo Show Me The Door
(Published to the Fediverse as: 3D Printing a discreet wall mount shelf for the Aura Carver Mat #etc #3dprint #openscad #thingiverse #alexa #amazon STL and OpenSCAD for a wall mounting bracket for the Aura Carver Mat 10 inch Digital Photo Frame )
Echo Show Me The Door
I have had my Echo Show for a little over five years. That's an eternity in AI, you'd expect some amazing advances over half a decade but it's still a timer with a screen.
A timer that you can talk to while your hands are busy or dirty is actually an amazing thing, and it can switch off my Christmas lights without me having to vault a sofa and risk losing an eye. But apparently Amazon isn't making any money from it and so they're laying off staff and paring back their smart home additions.
Possibly they've been working on the wrong thing? When asking about dogs Alexa managed to put them firmly in the camp of things that can poop. ChatGPT says:
"A dog is a mammal and a common household pet, known for its loyalty and ability to be trained. It is a member of the Canidae family, which also includes wolves, coyotes, and foxes, and it is believed to have been the first domesticated animal. Dogs come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and they are used for a variety of purposes, such as hunting, herding, protection, and companionship."
That's just a funny bug somewhere. The real irritation is the device getting more aggressive every year. "By the way..." it says while everyone shouts at it to shut the fuck up. Worse, every couple of weeks now they push something new to the home screen. I just want to see my photos and there is now a list of 75,000 adverts to switch off first. And, they've started dropping promotions that can't be switched off in settings as well. So this thing that I bought is so aggravating now that I'll never buy another one.
It could have been different. No, I'm never going to say Alexa, buy me a printer (if you're using text to speech on this post my deepest apologies). But (just one idea) what if I could have a meal planning conversation that adds the ingredients to my shopping basket and the recipes to my home screen? I can then edit the cart before I order and have the instructions on a convenient screen while I cook and listen to a podcast.
Related Posts
- Amazon Alexa Echo Wall Clock Review
- Leaving the Nest
- 3D Printing a discreet wall mount shelf for the Aura Carver Mat
- Securing the Internet of Things
- Three reasons the dream of a robot companion isn't over
(Published to the Fediverse as: Echo Show Me The Door #marketing #amazon #alexa #ai Why I'll never buy an Echo Show again, and what Amazon could have done differently to make Alexa with a screen useful. )
Amazon Alexa Echo Wall Clock Review
It has one job and it's not great at it.
I've been itching to replace my kitchen clock. I stupidly bought a self-setting atomic clock and the instructions said (this was a few years ago so I'm paraphrasing) 'Install as high up as possible on a southern facing exterior wall - ignoring these instructions may interfere with reception of the time signal.' Of course when used in my kitchen it has no idea what the time is. Due to the fancy mechanism it's extremely painful to set the time manually - you push a tiny button and try to stay awake while the hands move round and ultimately overshoot. Repeat.
It really should be illegal to sell things that tell you the time without some self-setting mechanism that works. Would it be hard to encode this in the electricity mains supply for instance? Or acquire via wifi or bluetooth? Every time I get in my car it connects to my phone but the car clock is clearly some cheap crystal that drifts daily and has no idea about daylight savings.
So the Echo Wall Clock is appealing because it should keep the right time without effort in addition to it's main role - visualizing Alexa timers. It's a stripped down implementation of the smart Glance clock but $170 cheaper at $30. It looks like most of those savings went to finding the cheapest possible plastic body. The Echo Clock also skips a face plate, which is a risk as if you touch the hands it will die.
Pairing is easy (via bluetooth) and it does manage to keep the right time. It's a decent if unattractive clock.
The timer function has taken the easy way out. If you set a five minute timer it lights up the minute marks from 12 up and then counts down. On a clock that knows what the current time is. This means that if you want to figure out when something is ready you're going to have to think. You need to look at the lit segments to see how long is left on the timer, and then add this on to the current position of the minute hand. I don't think anyone is buying a $30 timer visualizer to do minute-math. It would be a much better device if it just added the timer onto the current location of the minute hand, which is so obvious that this is what I expected to happen the first time I used it.
Overall it's cheap, cheap looking and flawed. But still a huge improvement on my kitchen's atomic age.
Related Posts
- Echo Show Me The Door
- 3D Printing a discreet wall mount shelf for the Aura Carver Mat
- Leaving the Nest
- Baby tech should let everyone sleep
- Chromecast won't connect to wifi - finally found the fix
(Published to the Fediverse as: Amazon Alexa Echo Wall Clock Review #marketing #amazon #alexa #clock It's cheap and cheap looking. It has one job, and it's not that great at it. Still a huge improvement on my old kitchen clock. Read the full review... )
Nonfiction
The Kindle nonfiction list has become a bit alarming recently.
Related Posts
- Subscription Economics
- Goodreads Feature Request
- Reading list pro tip...
- Reviews for January 2023
- Excessive Book Reviews
(Published to the Fediverse as: Nonfiction #marketing #amazon #kindle According to the New York Times Nonfiction Bestsellers list on Kindle Stephen King and Margaret Atwood are no longer fiction... )
Securing the Internet of Things
We can’t trust manufactures to build secure connected devices and so routers need to be updated to solve this problem once per network.
The distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on Friday, October 21 was apparently caused by dodgy webcams. But next time it will be Nest or Alexa or Hue - not picking on Google, Amazon or Philips specifically here, those just happen to be the IOT devices currently plugged into my home network. My washing machine and drier would be as well but fortunately LG’s dismal app has saved me from myself by not working for toffee. Oh, I have some DropCams too. And my car is connected. The next attack will probably just come from me.
My fix: update routers to sandbox these devices. A Nest thermostat can only talk to nest.com. If it wants to DDOS Reddit too bad, no connection allowed no matter how badly the device is compromised.
When a new device is connected the router looks it up (MAC address registry?) and then puts it in the appropriate sandbox.
If Nest needs to connect to weather.gov to check the forecast then Google would need to proxy this via nest.com. If the device goes bad it’s only got one domain to attack (so there’s a pretty good incentive for the manufacturer to make sure it doesn’t).
The only downside is new routers or new router firmware. Given the current state of IOT I’d buy one.
As usual if any of my billionaire investor readers are interested get in touch.
Related Posts
- Routers to defend against rogue IoT devices
- Leaving the Nest
- Air Gap
- More on breaking the Internet
- Chromecast won't connect to wifi - finally found the fix
(Published to the Fediverse as: Securing the Internet of Things #marketing #iot #google #philips #lg #amazon A proposal to secure the internet of things via sandboxing to manufacturer owned URL by MAC address. No more DDOS from toasters. )
Chromecast won't connect to wifi - finally found the fix
I've struggled for a while with Chromecast. The idea is great. I love using my phone rather than a remote. I like the idea of being able to cast any screen or browser tab in principle (in practice I think I've only done this once). I like the nice curated background pictures and that I could get round to using my own photos one day.
But here is how it works in practice. Fire up app. Select Chromecast icon and watch it go through the motions of connecting. Nothing streams. Reboot Chromecast, phone and router. Hard reset Chromecast and configure from scratch again. Reboot everything some more. Disconnect house from grid for ten minutes and switch off gas mains as well to be on the safe side. Finally, streaming! Repeat.
It's miserable. With both a Chromecast and a Chromecast 2 (which I really hoped might fix the problem). I've been through two different routers and I've tried a bunch of different settings but nothing seems to make the thing work. I even renamed the device to remove spaces.
For a while I considered buying an OnHub. Maybe Google's router would work with Chromecast? But it can't be bothered with Ethernet ports for some reason and so I'd need a new switch and then I'd probably need another power port and how important is John Oliver right now anyway (very)?
As much as I want Chromecast to work I've binned the wretched thing and bought an Amazon Fire TV Stick. Same basic principle but with apps on the device rather than your phone and a remote control.
I'd rather not have another remote, but it works instantly and without risking an aneurysm. It's also available with voice control which lets you both search for programs and trigger Alexa (my typical morning is asking Alexa for a flash briefing and then sobbing quietly when a daughter yells 'Alexa, stop... Alexa, play Gangnam Style').
My only gripe so far is that the voice search doesn't search inside non-Amazon apps (Netflix, HBO, etc).
Related Posts
(Published to the Fediverse as: Chromecast won't connect to wifi - finally found the fix #marketing #amazon #google #firetv #chromecast After trying hard to make Chromecast work with my WiFi the only fix that works is moving to Amazon Fire (which manages to Just Work). )