I drew the outline on with a pen, cut out the holes first, then carefully cut the pumpkin skin with a scalpel, and scraped it off.

They are more comfortable than they look. The lack of a second analogue stick is a big limitation though.

There was a prototype VMU MP3 player in the works before the Dreamcast was discontinued, alongside a music store.

Sega also produced a digital camera for the Dreamcast, the DreamEye.

The tech world could have looked very different if the Dreamcast went differently for Sega.

I haven’t done any channel optimisation so far, I probably should do. I have the P version of the Sonoff Zigbee dongle, I haven’t tried the E version.

I’ve also been careful with picking router devices. I’ve tried to avoid router devices that have poor reported compatibility with Aqara. There is a page/thread somewhere online where people were compiling lists of devices that do or don’t play nice with Aqara. IKEA devices apparently work very well with Aqara, I’ve been using their smart plugs wherever I can.

My Zigbee network also improved a lot when I set up some IKEA plugs in the loft. My house also has thick walls, but it seems Zigbee signal can propagate more easily through ceilings/floors.

Using quality brand batteries also seems to help a bit, at least from a battery life point of view.

I’m happy to see untracked energy devices covered in the energy graphs. I’d been using a Grafana dashboard to display more detailed energy visualisations including consumption of untracked devices before.

Still a win for Home Assistant to have a big brand like Aqara want to play ball at all.

if they are supporting the current Matter/Thread devices hopefully they will do the same for future devices, especially (if and) when they start to deprecate their Zigbee devices.

Aqara devices can be finicky with non-Aqara devices, especially router devices.

I’ve personally also had much better results with Aqara devices since switching to Zigbee2MQTT and a Sonoff Zigbee stick, I had a lot more dropouts with ZHA and a Conbee II stick.

The Pico 2 board is still using a Micro USB connector, would have been nice to see that changed to USB C.

Have you got any air quality sensors? Particulates, CO2, VOCs, CO, Radon, there’s a while bunch of sensors, and a variety of DIY projects to put them together.

It also has the practical benefit of maybe improving your health.

I’ve ordered various things from AliExpress before, I’ve never had any major issues. One item was DOA, and another never arrived, but In both cases I got refunded quickly and easily.

It seems no worse than any other online marketplace now.

I assume these 3DS units are some sort of refurb. Are they Chinese region units?

Might be worth looking into LoRa for longer range, it’s got quite cheap to play with now.

There are so many weird and wonderful BASIC dialects found on all sorts of platforms.

In Europe the PlayStation 2 shipped with a version of Yabasic on the bundled demo disc. It was an attempt to avoid some of import taxes by claiming the PS2 was a computer instead of a games console.

There is an open source implementation of BBC Basic for modern systems that’s being actively developed - BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0.

Modern websites are so complex and dynamic now it makes saving their state next to impossible.

For a while I’ve been longing for something similar, but for going forwards and backwards in a tab. There’s been too many times when I hit back to look at something I missed, only to find it was some dynamically loaded element that changes when the page is reopened.

It’s a real step up for managing Home Assistant. I was using it earlier to find some devices to reconfigure and it’s a lot faster. The xtra panels in the UI feel a little cramped on smaller screens though.

I wish they would implement a proper permissions system next, the lack of control is the other admin bugbear of mine with Home Assistant.

I always keep Home Assistant as up to date as possible. Home Assistant keeps improving a lot. Month to month each update goes fairly seamlessly if HA is kept up to date, but the further it falls behind the harder it is to catch back up. Recent optimisation improvements have also made the update process faster.

If you can make the time it’s worth the effort. Even if you have to “start over” somewhat there is probably a lot you have learned since that you can use to improve your setup.

One of my favourite games, it was a very impressive title for the Game Boy at the time. It had an interesting development story, it started as a Game Boy port of Link to the Past, developed in off hours as a sort of passion project.

I remember having to download a text file guide, with dungeon layouts drawn in ASCII art, to get through a couple of the tricky bits.

The Switch port is worth checking out too, the graphical style is adorable.

A shame they never continued the remasters to Red Alert 2 and Tiberium Sun.

Would be nice to see the Generals games get some attention too, they weren’t “traditional” C&C titles but were still fun to play.

Is it common for apartments to have shared extractor ducts? I’ve never heard of a setup like this before, and it sounds like both a pain in the arse and a potential safety issue.

Controlling the kitchen fan is probably the easier bit. Depending on the design of the hood, you might be able to control it with a smart outlet or relay. Turn the hood’s switch to always on and control it with the relay. The difficult bit would be sensing when to turn it on.

Cooking will often produce VOCs, and VOC sensors are easy to obtain, but they are also have other sources that are likely in your own apartment. Maybe try using temperature and humidity sensors int the duct to activate the fan when there is elevated temperature and humidity inside the duct?

Frigate seems fairly popular among Home Assistant users for security cameras.

I think ZoneMinder is still going too which used to be the go to Linux option for that.