ESPHome - Fine, I'll build my own IOT devices.

Natural progression for someone doing Home Assistant home automation is probably going to be jumping into ESPHome and ESP8266/ESP32 based devices. ESP devices and accessories are shockingly cheap for what they can do. and they’re already integrated into a lot of WiFi smart devices as is today. Dev parts are readily available, they just require a bit of knowledge on how they work and a drive to learn/troubleshoot.

I decided to pick up some goodies to get started on a few little projects that couldn’t easily be solved with existing products - Namely my basement automator. My first order was a bunch of M5Stack gear from Digikey, along with some D1 gear from Universal Solder and AliExpress. The M5Stack stuff has been a touch more expensive than regular ESP devices, but it’s polished hardware, very plug and play with all accessories supporting grove connectors, and I personally find it’s relatively well documented. So I built my first few devices out of that. I got started with a simple CO2 sensor utilizing the M5Stack CO2 sensor and an AtomS3 Lite:

This was just placed inside a cheap project box - The CO2 sensor is secured with a couple M3 bolts. Since this was sitting in the living room, I also added a bluetooth proxy function to allow access to BLE devices from Home Assistant. My code for this is below:

esphome:
  name: "livingroomco2bluetoothproxy"
  friendly_name: BluetoothProxy
  platformio_options:
    board_build.flash_mode: dio

esp32:
  board: esp32-s3-devkitc-1
  framework:
    type: esp-idf


# Enable logging
logger:

# Enable Home Assistant API
api:
  encryption:
    key: "APIKeyHere"

ota:
  password: "SecretPasswordHere"

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password
  manual_ip:
    static_ip: IPAddressHere
    gateway: GatewayHere
    subnet: 255.255.255.0

esp32_ble_tracker:
  scan_parameters:
    #interval: 1100ms
    #window: 1100ms
    active: true

bluetooth_proxy:
  active: true

i2c:
  sda: 2
  scl: 1

sensor:
  - platform: scd4x
    id: scd40
    automatic_self_calibration: False
    co2:
      name: "CO2"
      accuracy_decimals: 1
    temperature:
      name: "Temperature"
      accuracy_decimals: 2
    humidity:
      name: "Humidity"
      accuracy_decimals: 1
    address: 0x62
    update_interval: 10s

I was originally only able to get this working on the Arduino framework, but adding the board build flash mode of dio let me boot esp-idf. This little thing sits plugged into the soundbar near the TV, and reports on CO2 levels in the common area. I’ve built an automation that triggers the HRV to kick into high mode if CO2 level is detected above 1000ppm, until it falls below 800ppm. CO2 is likely the fastest way to determine if a room is packed, and having more frequent air exchanges is a good thing to keep air fresh. It also functions as a bluetooth proxy, letting me tap into current and future BLE devices and patch them into HomeAssistant (Hello, Inkbird wireless BBQ thermometer!). The only issue I want to try addressing is the extra heat generated by the ESP32 chip itself is throwing off the temperature readings. I may look at some sleep options and maybe reduce the checks down to every minute or so.

I may have mis-drilled my junction box.

Of course to control the HRV override I needed to build something out. I had a few things to accomplish in the basement:

• HRV override with a relay.

• Dehumidifer control.

• Temperature/humidity readings.

• Bluetooth proxy.

Again, no precanned device on the market, so I built something out with some M5Stack products and threw it in the junction box above! I utilized:

• M5Stack AtomS3 Lite

• M5Stack AtomPortABC

• M5Stack Mini 3A Relay Unit

• M5Stack ENV IV Sensor

• M5Stack Mini IR Unit

Everything was connected with grove connectors/cables, so wiring it was incredibly easy, and all parts were secured with M3 bolts. The finished product isn’t quite ready for shelves yet, but it looks considerably cleaner than just having things hanging off a power bar. My code for this is below:

esphome:
  name: basement-automator
  friendly_name: Basement Automator
  platformio_options:
    board_build.flash_mode: dio

esp32:
  board: esp32-s3-devkitc-1
  framework:
    type: esp-idf
  variant: esp32s3
  
# Enable logging
logger:

# Enable Home Assistant API
api:
  encryption:
    key: "SecureKey"

ota:
  password: "SecurePassword"

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password
  manual_ip:
    static_ip: IPAddress
    gateway: Gateway
    subnet: 255.255.255.0
  # Enable fallback hotspot (captive portal) in case wifi connection fails
#  ap:
#    ssid: "Basement-Automator"
#    password: "SecurePassword"

captive_portal:
    
i2c:
  sda: 38
  scl: 39
  scan: true
  id: bus_1


sensor:
  - platform: sht4x
    temperature:
      name: "Temperature - SHT40"
      id: "temperature_sht40"
    humidity:
      name: "Humidity - SHT40"
      id: "humidity_sht40"
    address: 0x44
    update_interval: 10s
  - platform: bmp280
    temperature:
      name: "Temperature - BMP280"
      id: "temperature_bmp280"
      oversampling: 16x
    pressure:
      name: "Pressure BMP280"
      id: "pressure_bmp280"
    address: 0x76
    update_interval: 10s

    # Relay, toggle it on / off
switch:
  - platform: gpio
    pin: 5
    id: Relay1
    name: "HRV Override"
    inverted: False

remote_receiver:
  pin:
    number: GPIO8
    inverted: true
  dump: all

remote_transmitter:
  pin: GPIO7
  carrier_duty_percent: 50%

climate:
  - platform: midea_ir      # adjust to match your AC unit!
    name: "Basement Dehumidifer"

esp32_ble_tracker:
  scan_parameters:
    #interval: 1100ms
    #window: 1100ms
    active: true

bluetooth_proxy:
  active: true

The pins required for the specific headers were well labeled, so all it required was adding those to the above config. I ran some 18 gauge wire to the overrides on the HRV, and secured the junction box to the wall. I have yet to build the basement dehumidifier automations but that’s a next step. For right now, the build can turn the HRV override on/off depending on washroom humidity, or CO2 levels in the house.

ESPresence

I’ve also scattered a bunch of these AtomS3 Lites around various rooms in the house loaded with ESPresence - these just look for BLE beacons and determine distance a device is from them, which can let me determine which room devices are in - primarily phones. This is a work in progress and I’ve yet to implement these into any automations, but so far with a bit of tweaking I’ve got pretty consistent results for what room my phone is in.

Future Projects

I’ve got two things I want to play around with:

• Ikea PM2.5 sensor mod

• Ultrasonic distance measure for the garage

For the Ikea PM2.5 sensor, Ikea has a really cheap “dumb” PM2.5 sensor with an easy to mod board. I’d like to do a proof of concept on one of these and would love to wire in a BME680 and a SCD40 for additional readings. I need to find the ideal board but I’ll probably leverage a very tiny ESP32-S3 board, I just need to find one I can use that supports 5V in.

For the ultrasonic distance measure, this one is a bit lazy, but I do plan on using it to detect if I’ve brought in the compost bin or not after garbage day. I like the idea of building this one from components that aren’t plug and play, but I’m going to need to see how I can fit it into an existing project box.

We’ll see what’s after that for the future - I think I’ll be looking to custom build more things on perf board that’s designed to fit into junction boxes, and I want to try figuring out what’s a solid connector option for these little projects as well - Molex or otherwise.

Rage Against The Garage Door Opener

Admittedly I wasn’t too hit with the Chamberlain MyQ internet rage as I only have dumb controls connected to my Chamberlain garage door opener, but it got me looking into options for adding some additional controls to my garage door. So taking cues from the internet, and with a little review of my garage door opener (It’s Security+ 1.0) I went ahead and ordered a ratgdo.

What’s ratgdo? It’s birthed out of the Chamberlain MyQ API closure, and involved reverse-engineering the communication protocol for the garage door opener and getting that integrated into a little ESP board. The solution can be tied into MQTT, Homekit, or ESPHome, and it’s all open source and offline, no cloud required to access the features. When connected to a garage door opener without a control panel, it emulates one, giving you access to a ton of additional features like wireless remote lockout, door position, light control, etc.

My board just came in yesterday after a short 2 week wait for transit from the US, and I flashed it this morning and went through the install process. For the software side I just used the web flasher, and within about 10 minutes I was able to get the device adopted into my ESPHome install.

Probably should have wiped down the cover first…

On the hardware side, it was just as easy and over in about 10 minutes. With tool-less terminals on both the garage door opener and the ratgdo board I connected the 3 wires from the wiring harness into the garage door opener, and decided to pass the wall button through the wall button terminals on the control board. All that was left was to secure the board to the light cover with a zip tie, and connect the power. The only additional thing that needed to be done was to calibrate the door opening and closing, and that was accomplished by opening and closing the door.

I may still consider a small 3D printed case to better secure the board to the outside of the opener and improve the cabling, and maybe trim my leads for my wall button, but the recommended method is to zip tie it to the light cover, so we’ll keep it like this for now.

Home Assistant controls

I’ll be building automations over the next little bit, but I think the big planned one is going to be notifying if the garage door is open for more than 5 minutes, along with an action on the notification to close the door if necessary. There’s consideration in putting in a check that if one or both of us is at home, send the notification, otherwise if we’re not, just close it. I’ll probably also put in a check during our bedtime automation to ensure the door is closed as well.

Home Server 2024: Shifting Services

With great power comes great responsibility. Or something like that. I’ve been shifting services between nodes to try optimizing a bit. I’ve shared my current build above!

There’s a few big changes, mostly related to shifting VPN and my Home Assistant installs over to my secondary node. I’ve also added an MQTT server in an LXC, along with adopting Frigate, also running in an LXC with Docker sitting on top.

Migrating Virtual Machines and Containers

Shifting the VPN LXC and the Home Assistant VM were fairly trivial, I just performed a back up of them via the Proxmox GUI, then used SCP to move those files over:

scp -pr /var/lib/vz/dump/* username@ipaddress:/var/lib/vz/dump

After completing the SCP process, I just restored the backup from the Proxmox GUI, confirmed the restore was working okay, and deleted the backups, old LXCs, and old VMs.

For HomeAssistant, I ended up shutting the VM down and removing the Zigbee dongle that was passed through prior to backing up. Once it was restored on the secondary node it was as simple as plugging the dongle in and passing it through to the restored VM.

Frigate, MQTT, and beyond

Along with the move of services from the primary node over to the secondary, I also finally added a local NVR - Frigate. Along with Frigate I needed MQTT, which was a pretty simple install and setup process so I won’t bother covering it.

For Frigate, I’ve added a 2TB TeamGroup NVME SSD for footage and (finally) a Google Coral USB tensor processing unit for faster local object detection. I’m patching in 2 WyzeCam v3s, along with my Reolink doorbell. For Wyze, I’m leveraging Docker Wyze Bridge in Home Assistant currently, however I’ll be moving over to Wz Mini Hacks directly on the cameras which should allow full offline control.

On the software configuration side, this is running out of Docker Compose on top of an LXC with both the Coral TPU and a folder on the NVME drive mapped to it. I’m setup with Go2RTC grabbing all the feeds in Frigate and then re-streaming on localhost to reduce connections to the cameras. Other than figuring out the specifics on motion mapping, zones, and a missed line on my Go2RTC settings that prevented me from getting a feed while outside the network, it’s been smooth sailing. All notifications are setup through Home Assistant and have been working reasonably.

I will say the local object detection and faster notifications has been great compared to what Wyze was feeding me on the app. I haven’t been using a lot of storage space with this either - My retention settings are pretty restrictive currently, so I’m likely to extend the numbers a bit now that it’s been in place for a few weeks. I’ll probably cover my config in a bit more detail once I’ve moved the Wyze cams over to local, but for now suffice it to say I’m happy, but still tweaking.

Dev?

After moving all of my important infrastructure services from the primary to secondary node, I’m left with a whole lot of available memory and a fair bit of processing power. I don’t have any current plans for DEV, but I’ve been throwing around ideas like:

• Ansible for Infrastructure as Code

• Application Evaluation

• Windows home lab

I’m not sure when exactly I’ll get started on this stuff, but I’ve got about 28GB of RAM sitting free, so there’ll be a lot of room! Stay tuned!

Reolink WiFi Doorbell - Exposing the Chime API

I finally got a new doorbell! I settled on a Reolink WiFi doorbell and other than figuring out some of the mislabeled or unlabeled wiring in the house, install was a breeze, and Frigate/HomeAssistant integration was super simple (more on Frigate and home infra updates in a later post).

Reolink does offer a pretty robust local API to the device, and it’s well documented, but unfortunately the chime settings are not currently exposed. I wanted to setup an automation to disable the chime at 10PM and re-enable it once we get back up for the day, and I sure wasn’t going to use a smart plug for it.

After referencing the API documentation here, I was able to determine a few things:

• The local API supports a debug mode, letting you see all the functions and the JSON sent during the REST calls. Once enabled you can see output in the developer console of the browser. All you need to do is append your camera’s URL with ?debug=1.

• It’s very easy to build a token - Either securely or via the quick method (user/pass in the URL). For my example, I’m using the user/pass in the browser.

• The JSON documentation is really well structured so it’s easy to build out your own.

So after a bit of snooping (Log in to the debug URL, open developer tools to console, then navigate to Settings > Chime and adjust the chime volume) I was able to come back with something similar to the below string:

"request params: [{\"cmd\":\"DingDongOpt\",\"action\":0,\"param\":{\"DingDong\":{\"channel\":0,\"option\":3,\"id\":123456789,\"name\":\"Reolink Chime\",\"volLevel\":4,\"ledState\":1}}}]"

So I formatted it into structured JSON:

[
    {
        "cmd":"DingDongOpt",
        "action":0,
        "param":{
            "DingDong":{
                "channel":0,
                "option":3,
                "id":123456789,
                "name":"Reolink Chime",
                "volLevel":4,
                "ledState":1
            }
        }
    }
]

And did a quick test with a REST client knowing I have to hit the DingDongOpt endpoint:

http://192.168.0.12/api.cgi?cmd=DingDongOpt&user=admin&password=WhateverYourPasswordIs

And it worked! So from there I added the rest_command service to my HomeAssistant config along with the two commands for chime volume 0, and chime volume 4, with an example below:

rest_command:
  chimevol4:
    url: "http://192.168.0.12/api.cgi?cmd=DingDongOpt&user=admin&password=WhateverYourPasswordIs"
    method: POST
    headers:
      accept: "application/json"
    payload: '[
      {
          "cmd":"DingDongOpt",
          "action":0,
          "param":{
              "DingDong":{
                  "channel":0,
                  "option":3,
                  "id":123456789,
                  "name":"Reolink Chime",
                  "volLevel":4,
                  "ledState":1
              }
          }
      }
  ]'
    content_type:  'application/json; charset=utf-8'
    verify_ssl: false

And now I can tie the chime into my automations - off at 10PM, and back on when we get up in the morning! Of course since it’s an undocumented API endpoint, there’s no guarantee it’ll stick around, but for the time being I’ll take the convenience.

Stecker App - Automating Screen Brightness

I occasionally undock my Macbook to take it to work, or out for a weekend, etc. I have the battery settings setup to automatically dim the screen when on battery, and this works great. Unfortunately Apple doesn’t seem to include an option to max the screen brightness when connected to power again, so for a while on re-attaching to my Studio Display I was manually adjusting brightness back to max to (roughly) match the output between the two panels.

I looked at a number of options to accomplish this - Building something myself as a shell script, shortcut buttons, or other paid products like Power Manager, however I came across Stecker while doing my research on launch daemons to handle this and decided that simple might be the best.

Stecker is an Apple silicon native app that allows you to run shortcuts from the Apple Shortcuts app on connecting/disconnecting various USB devices. It looks for IOKit notifications for the triggers, and it’s incredibly lightweight. In my case, the only time I really cared about maxing the brightness was when my Studio Display was connected, so it was pretty trivial to just setup a shortcut for 100% brightness and run it on connecting to the studio display. Voila, problem solved.

Now, it won’t detect me just plugging in a USB-C charger, which means I can’t automate this for every scenario here. However I’m only really using this to match display brightnesses - On the go just charging the Macbook it doesn’t matter as much. I’d love to see the developer extend this to also detecting power source for the additional flexibility, but that’s more of a nice to have.

Anyway, check out Stecker - It’s free! Lots of flexibility with it too!

Tech Pick Ups: Return of the iPad

Yeah, I got another iPad… That took a lot less time than expected.

I grabbed a 2021 iPad Pro 11”, 128GB, cellular, in silver. It was from an open box company here in Canada, and the cost on it was less than half price. On receiving it, the unit is clearly a demo model, but a demo that’s never been taken out of the box… Battery health is still 100%+, no scratches or marks at all on the unit. I’m guessing a store here in Canada received this for display but never ended up putting it out. My gain I suppose. Only issue is expired/no warranty coverage. For the extreme discount, I don’t mind this.

This came in just before going to Toronto last week, so I threw it in my bag with me. While there I grabbed the pencil for 30 dollars off at Best Buy, and an Apple Smart Cover in black from The Source for 50% off.

The specs? Basically my old iPad Pro, but swap out the A12Z and 6GB of RAM for an M1 and 8GB of RAM. Otherwise it looks and handles the exact same. Going from 256GB of storage to 128GB isn’t a big deal with how much I leverage cloud storage. Cellular is a nice touch, though I’m not 100% sure if I’ll add it to my cell plan - It’s going to depend on how much it goes out with me in the near future.

Why did I pick this up? Well, it all started with a killer deal on an iPad Mini 256GB with cellular that I failed to jump on in time. Seeing this wasn’t much more, I decided to buy this as a salve for missing out on such a solid deal on the Mini. Would I still prefer the mini? Undecided.

What am I going to use it for? We’ll see. I want to get back to some journaling (Notability, Apple Notes) and doodling (Procreate). Tactile, hands on note taking (Again, Notability). It’s a lot smaller and lighter than my Macbook Pro too with a load of power in it thanks to the M1 chip, so I’m hoping it’ll be a nice in-between when travelling without a requirement for a laptop. Lightroom performance is astounding, as always. It’s a nice stand in for a portable speaker. It’s going to make for a capable secondary monitor for my Macbook Pro while on the go. Around the house it’s going to make for a solid little web browser/news reader. You know, normal iPad things.

I’ll probably write something in the next few months on how it’s going. For now, I’m happy with it.

Office Setup 2024: Nice-To-Haves

I think anyone on the internet has been bombarded at some point with Grovemade ads, and would have probably jumped on something from them if the shipping cost to Canada and conversion rate was reasonable at all. I knew I wanted felt and some desk organization for this setup, so I went searching. I came across Beaver Peak on Etsy which checked a lot of boxes, so I ordered their largest cut felt desk pad, and an oak valet tray with a felt insert. I’m glad I took the time searching because this stuff is great - Oeko-tex certified merino wool felt cut in Canada, along with Canadian oak for a reasonable pricepoint. The felt really adds a nice warmth to the space, and breaks up the giant desk pretty well. If I have one point for improvement it’s the sizing on the valet tray - I wish it would fit the iPhone 15 Plus vertically while the tray is horizontal. The tray still works really well for my setup, so I can’t complain too much!

Along with those two felt pieces I also added some thicker cork coasters - My older ones were thin and deformed and I felt something thicker would really complement the chunkier wood tray. I also added a bamboo tissue box/desk organizer from MobileVision (First photo). I like to keep tissues close at hand, but the boxes they come in are pretty gaudy in the setup. This little bamboo organizer will function as a nice drop spot for odds and ends that are within arms reach, and it has a slot on the side for holding stuff like kindles, tablets, books, etc. The build seems really good and it fits any of our larger tissue boxes pretty well.

I’m still adding odds and ends here and there, but for the time being this is the setup. I’ll probably let it stew for a month or so then re-evaluate, but so far it feels really nice working in this space.

Office Setup 2024: Studio Display Day 1

The display arrived yesterday morning and I wasted no time setting it up! I attached my Philips Hue light strip onto the back with some command hooks designed for light strips and reconfgired my automations. So far so good. Couple 1-day notes:

• Packaging was stellar, really above and beyond on engineering the box.

• Setup was issue free as expected - Plug it in and… It just works.

• Speakers are pretty on par with the Edifier R980Ts that I had on the desk before. Great clarity and solid bass response.

• The webcam is pretty much as disappointing as most make it out to be. Center stage is nice however, and honestly the exposure is solid. For most calls topping out at 720p compressed streams, it’s more than adequate. My Logitech Stream Cam was better, but the all in one solution is a big appeal.

• Included Thunderbolt cable is really nice - Heavy weight, braided, feels rock solid. Unfortunately it doesn’t feed through the cable run in the back of the stand well, so I swapped it with my 1m Pluggable Thunderbolt 4 cable that I was using previously.

• Colors and brightness pop! This thing is gorgeous in person. Love how it matches up well with my Macbook Pro display. Lightroom photos look awesome on the scaled 5k output.

• I was able to achieve expected internet speeds via the monitor using a Plugable USBC-E2500 2.5gb ethernet adapter into one of the type c ports. This is due to the Realtek RTL8156 chip in it, which allows hardware offload. The more common RTL8153 you see in a lot of gigabit adapters on the market isn’t capable of that currently on MacOS due to driver issues from what I’ve read, so you tend to only hit half rated speed.

Overall so far happy. I’ll be tweaking the desk layout a bit over the next few months, first and foremost a desk pad that I can set everything on which should be in by Friday. Stay tuned for more updates!

Office Setup 2024: Laptop Stand

I haven’t covered a lot of my evolved desk setup since moving back to the Maritimes, but it’s been a slow climb with a lot of slow changes. I started with an 8 foot bamboo countertop and a standing desk frame from MotionGrey, and basically just transplanted my existing setup onto it. I added speakers as I have the desk space for it, and the Skadis peg boards from Ikea keep things off the desk and functional and clean.

I’ve worked through enhancing the lighting - My office has a single, small north-facing window, which doesn’t get a ton of direct light. With Philips Hue bulbs, HomeAssistant, and the Adaptive Lighting plugin, I’ve been able to automate a daylight curve on my ambient lighting in my office, helping me both ramp up and wind down for the day without any thought.

I’ve been working off my Macbook screen a bit more lately however and it really made me wonder why I’m just throwing my macbook into clamshell under my monitor day-to-day, so I went on a week-long review search of stands. I eventually landed on the TwelveSouth HiRise Pro, and after a quick order to the Apple store - Oddly the cheapest place I could find it in Canada - it came in last week.

I chose the HiRise over other stands due to reviews of stability, ease of adjustment, and the fact that it had a purpose-built space for my MagSafe charging puck, finally! Overall it’s been incredibly easy to adjust, covers a great range of heights, and it seems rock solid. The finish matches the silver on my Macbook Pro pretty much perfectly. It’s been nice to have yet another display beside the super ultrawide for odds and ends like music and Discord too.

I’m still on a quest to optimize and minimize however, so my next post should be covering the replacement of my trusty U4919DW with something a bit higher resolution - The Apple Studio Display.

The concept with the studio display is I should be able to effectively remove my dock, speakers, and webcam from my setup, reducing cable clutter. I’m also going to be able to leverage some of the quality of life features like true tone, auto-brightness, and color-matching of the Macbook Pro display.

We’ll see where it goes - It’s going to be technically a downgrade in available screen space, however I’m very much looking forward to the nice things that come with keeping stuff within “the ecosystem”.

Stuff I Like: Miyoo Mini

I’ve had my eyes on a Miyoo Mini for the better part of a year, casually at least. They sold out almost as soon as they became available through the manufacturer for a while, apparently due to sourcing issues for the high resolution, 2.8” IPS screen. I stumbled upon them in stock on the Miyoo aliexpress site shortly before Christmas, and snap-bought the transparent black model. It arrived 2 weeks ago and after a quick trip through installing Onion OS and throwing on some games, I’ve been enjoying jamming some old favourites during bits of downtime. Figured I’d throw down some thoughts below!

• The screen is very high resolution and beautiful being IPS. No issues with it at all.

• Buttons are nicely made, though the triggers on the back are mediocre - That’s more due to how compact it is, mostly.

• Battery is reasonable, nothing to write home about. I haven’t clocked it, but I can get probably 4+ hours of play on it.

• Plays just about anything up to PS1 without issues. GBA games have been solid, and jamming a bit of Pokemon Emerald and Advance Wars so far has been super fun. A recent beta of OnionOS actually includes a DS emulator, and a number of titles work great.

• OnionOS was a very easy install and significantly improves the experience over stock.

• I was worried about the lack of RTC (real time clock) impacting my experience in games that are reliant on it such as Pokemon, but the OnionOS implementation of skipping a set number of hours each boot of the device works perfectly fine with how causally I play.

• It’s about the size of a pack of cards, so fits great in my tech kit, my sling, or my chest pocket on some of my shirts. Will be great for travel vs the Steam Deck - Any larger in this form factor I wouldn’t want to go with.

• It really does capture that retro feel with the body shape and design - Miyoo slammed it out of the park.

• The save on shutdown implementation works great - On boot it just loads you back to where you left off.

Although the Steam Deck is pretty much the ultimate emulation/gaming hand held, it’s not super portable, and with the few weeks I’ve had the Miyoo Mini I feel like it’s a solid low-end companion device that lets me fill 15-20 minutes I’d normally spend doom-scrolling. I think there’s still room for a middle device somewhere between the Steam Deck and the Miyoo Mini, but I’ve gotta figure that out.

End-Of-Year Tech Pick Ups

Kindle Paperwhite 11th gen 8GB

I’ve always had a soft spot for ereaders, starting a long while ago with a Sony and eventually moving to a 2018 Kindle Paperwhite. I had that for a number of years before selling it for some moving money, and just used my tablets or phones for reading. I haven’t read as much as I did with an ereader though, and I jumped quick at the opportunity to pick up an 11th generation Paperwhite on clearance.

Compared to my old Paperwhite, the screen is a bit bigger at 6.8”, it’s got an adjustable warm-to-cool backlight which works on a schedule, and it charges with USB-C. The battery life is rated a lot longer at 10 weeks (of course, that’s WiFi off, brightness 10, and 30 minutes of reading a day) vs 6 weeks on my old Paperwhite. 8GB will be tons for my usual fiction reading. I’ve blazed through a few short stories since getting it in and I remember why I enjoyed reading on eInk so much - So much easier on the eyes than reading on a tablet.

The unassuming Flipper Zero. I will at one point look for a black shell for the thing.

Flipper Zero

It’s an electronic multi-tool! A software defined radio in a cute little package. It’s all about sub-GHz with this thing and it interfaces with a lot of stuff. NFC, RFID, Bluetooth low energy, Infrared, iButton, even a full suite of GPIO pins on the top. The USB connection acts as a Rubber Ducky, allowing you to execute scripts as though it’s a keyboard connected to a computer. It’s extensible and open source. I grabbed this as a cool little learning tool to start digging into the various wireless home security devices around the home that were left there from the previous owner. It’s astounding just how much there is around us that operates at sub-GHz frequencies though. Looking forward to where this takes me.

The Tech Kit

I covered my charging kit, but how about a comprehensive tech kit? The kind of kit I take with me when I take my full technology load anywhere? Well, here it is. With some return to office this kit follows me a couple times a week now. All these goodies live in a Peak Design Tech Pouch, which holds it all with space left.

Cables

I’d probably buy a Powerline Flow Thunderbolt cable if they made them.

Since I’m 99.9% USB-C now, this one is pretty easy. I carry a range to ensure I have fast charging cables for everything, plus a couple higher speed cables just in case I come across a Thunderbolt dock or need to do some high speed transfers. I like a mix of cable lengths as using just really long cables can feel a bit unwieldy.

• 2x Anker 643 Powerline Flow 100w 6ft USB-C to USB-C cables

• 2x Anker 643 Powerline Flow 100w 3ft USB-C to USB-C cables

• 1x Pluggable Thunderbolt 4 100w 3ft USB-C to USB-C cable

• 1x Samsung 1.5ft USB-C to USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 cable

Adapters and dongles

Again, USB-C, so super simple stuff. This covers plugging in pretty much whatever to my device without a full-on dock.

• Apple USB-C Digital AV Multimedia adapter

• DLink 2.5gbe USB-C ethernet adapter

• Google USB-C to USB-A dongle

• Apple USB-C to 3.5mm headphone adapter

Charging

Hilariously the battery matches the sofa.

There’s a theme here, and it’s USB-C. I’m looking for no type I searched long and hard for no type A port adapters, and this is the smallest most powerful hardware I could muster in those categories. With these I can fast charge my Macbook alone, or split the charge amongst three USB-C devices. And yeah, that’s from the wall charger OR the battery!

• Satechi 108w 3 port GAN charger

• Mophie Powerstation Pro XL 25000mah 120w battery

Others

Others covers the rest of the stuff that’s good in the bag! Backup data, backup audio, and a great mouse round things out well.

• Samsung T5 2TB USB-C SSD

• Logitech MX Anywhere 3 mouse

• Apple 3.5mm Earpods

Future adds

Everything here works pretty well, very few complaints with what I drag along with me. I’ve been on the fence about adding a bus powered thunderbolt hub to replace the dongles, but the dongles are honestly very nice and cover most of my usages. I’d see a bit of value in adding a Type-C flash drive, or maybe upgrading the SSD to something faster/larger capacity. I’d also consider adding an additional SD card, mostly as a backup to the one in my X100V. For now I’m pretty happy with what I have going on though - This is comprehensive and does everything I need without compromise.

iPhone 15 Plus - The Coles Notes

I’ve had the 15 Plus for a few weeks now and I figured I’d throw together a few bullet points on my findings on this. After coming from an iPhone 12, this thing is a lot better, but it feels a lot like changes in a car. It’s all small increments now.

• The size change is fine. I don’t notice it any longer, and the larger screen is nicer to read on.

• The screen is definitely brighter, both sunlight visible and even at minimum brightness. I wouldn’t mind if it went a bit darker for morning/night viewing but otherwise I’m happy.

• The speakers are a lot better than the 12.

• The smooth touch glass back and rounded frame really make this feel like a newer, more premium device.

• The dynamic island is fun but mostly just gimmicky. It’s a nice way to hide the camera/face ID gear.

• The LED for the flash is a more neutral white, leaning toward the warmer end of the spectrum. Looks good.

• USB-C, finally. I’ve already removed all my standard lightning stuff and updated my charging kits.

• Note on the USB-C, if you’re charging your phone with MagSafe, you CAN use the USB port to charge an Airpods case! Neat!

• The 48MP main sensor is a big jump. Size wise it actually produces real separation. Night mode isn’t triggered nearly as early. The sensor shift image stabilization helps a lot for night photos.

• The regular 24MP images coming out of the main sensor are very nice and detailed, great jump from the 12. Getting the option for a full 48MP HEIF is great too, and the 2x “optical zoom” crop you get now in the camera app makes this feel like a 3 sensor device.

• The wide angle feels about the same as the one on the 12… Which is to say, not great. Not terrible. It is nice and wide though.

• The new image processing tricks are great. Deep Fusion, Photonic Engine, etc all result in more detailed photos than my iPhone 12 was able to provide, and in even lower light scenarios.

• It’s fast. I guess that should be expected from the A16 Bionic. The iPhone 12 was still plenty zippy but this is noticeably faster.

• Goodbye battery anxiety, hello “When do I actually charge this..?” anxiety! I think depending on my usage this is a 1.5-2 day phone. I find most days I’m still sitting north of 50% battery, even with 5+ hours of screen time during the day.

So yeah, that’s the Coles Notes. It’s a solid upgrade, highly recommend.

Right, but I have a 1D.

After years of joking back and forth with my best friend over this clip from VEEP, I finally did it. I bought a Canon EOS-1D - A Canon EOS-1D Mark ii. I managed to haggle one off eBay with a 50mm lens for about $150CAD shipped.

This is not a good camera by today’s standards. It’s an 8.2MP sensor. It has an extended ISO range of 50-3200, with a regular range of 100-1600. There’s no auto-ISO. It can only throw about 20 RAW files into the buffer, which isn’t a lot when it can slap along at 8.5fps. The screen sucks. Navigating the menus suck.

…But man, is it ever fun to shoot with. Here’s a few shots from a walk today.

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For the lack of modern niceties, this close to 20 year old camera body was a pleasure to use. The focus is still fast, the shutter has a satisfying clunk to it, and the lack of features actually made me concentrate more on taking pictures rather than making sure I got the perfect shot. The sheer weight of the body makes it feel like a tool, rather than a toy. It’s just nice in a way you don’t get with smaller bodies.

I’m looking forward to making some images with this over the next while. I may even go out of my way to get some more glass for it. Until then though, I’ve gotta go - I’m taking hundreds of pictures of herons catching fish, afterall.

Charge Kit - 2023 Update

I really overthought my previous charging kit, but it was the absolute best for my use cases - Small, supported power delivery, and could get me through even the hardest days and make sure my stuff was topped up overnight. It could freely charge all my devices, supported fast charging from the battery and from the wall, and was composed of the minimum number of components I could manage with a split between Lightning and USB-C devices. It was also really slim and light - pocketable or easily tossed in a sling.

The old rocks of the charging kit.

• Anker PowerPort Nano III Slim 30w

• Mophie 6000MAH Universal PD with Lightning Input

• 3ft USB-C to Lightning and USB-C to USB-C

• Incharge X (On my key chain)

The thing that made this setup work is the battery supported priority charging - I could have the wall adapter connected to the battery, and the battery connected to my phone, and overnight it’d make sure the phone was topped up before charging the battery. In the morning I’d end up with a full phone and a full battery, and all was great! Single port charger suddenly became capable of charging two devices. I wanted to get in the ballpark of that setup while losing lightning with my new setup, and I feel like I made a reasonable jump with my new setup.

The new rocks of the charging kit - The Anker Nano 3 47w and the Mophie Powerstation.

• Anker 523 Nano 3 charger, 2 port, 47w

• Mophie 10000MAH Powerstation (2022 Apple Exclusive)

• 2x 3ft USB-C to USB-C cables

• 1x 1ft USB-C to USB-C cable

This setup is a bit larger than the previous setup (About 30%), but has ~50% more charging output at the wall, an extra USB-C port, and about 66% more battery capacity. I’ve also moved to a single cable type, which is really key!

The new Mophie battery seems great, it’s dual USB-C inputs/outputs, supports priority charging like the old battery, and is still relatively compact. The Anker is of course awesome, supporting 27w on one port and 20w on the other, or 45w output when a single port is used - Enough to charge my Macbook Pro relatively well. I can easily top up my battery overnight while charging two devices, and now that both the battery and wall plug are dual USB-C ports, I can pretty much always charge two devices at once.

Overall this newer kit has really added flexibility to what I carry, and more importantly let me slim down on cable types. I can highly recommend Mophie products for use-cases like this, they tend to be a bit more expensive but the build is good and the features make it worthwhile for niche use-cases like mine.

If I could make any changes to what I’ve got going on however, it’d be dropping the 1 foot cable for a Nomad USB-C ChargeKey on my key chain, however living in Canada the shipping kills any hopes of getting this product for a reasonable price. I may end up sticking with the Incharge X on my keychain and dropping the 1 foot cable, as the Incharge is well built and flexible. There’s something to be said about keeping everything in one spot though.

Goodbye Lightning, I won't miss you.

Finally upgrading to a new phone - 3 years seems to be my cut-off if I’m buying my own devices. This year I’m going with the iPhone 15 Plus. Top 3 reasons for upgrading from my iPhone 12 below:

• USB-C - Finally. Goodbye Lightning, I won’t miss you. The one pain point of switching over to an iPhone has been Lightning, and now that’s gone.

• Improved main camera on the base line iPhone 15 models. Finally a jump to a higher res sensor. Photonic engine, a 2x optical quality “zoom”, and a whole bevvy of other camera upgrades should make this feel like a newer device.

• Larger device means much better battery and larger screen. Not only are we cutting down a cable, we’re cutting out a battery pack and getting rid of the iPad Mini! Goodbye to battery anxiety, and hello to a lighter carry.

Why the Plus and not the Pro models?

• Price point is considerably higher on the Pro models.

• Extra features like the telephoto, ProRAW, ProRES recording to external storage, USB3 speeds, hardware ray tracing, etc don’t feel like they’re something I would use regularly enough to justify the purchase.

• Long lead times for shipping - I’m a sucker for getting my device sooner, it’s why I went with the regular 12 instead of the 12 Mini at the time!

Along with the new phone I grabbed the 2nd Generation AirPods Pro with the USB-C case, those should be arriving today. This is both an effort to eliminate Lightning, but also the battery in my first gen Pros is getting a bit short after 3 years. I’m looking forward to hearing the improvements in sound quality and testing out adaptive transparency and the speech detection features.

Overall the phone upgrade has become a bit pedestrian at this point. We’re really at the point of small incremental upgrades like cars see year over year, and the desire to jump to something new is not at all as strong. I’m happy the chase is finally over.

A Fortnight of Pigs.

In May of 2023 I shot my first self-portraiture series in quite a long while, which I titled a Fortnight of Pigs. A Fortnight of Pigs is a series of self-portraits documenting the mundane, daily grind of existing with two Ikea Knorrigs. But more so it’s a series about coping with absence, and maybe a little about getting through a creative slump.

Shot on the Fujifilm X100V using available light. The image is both balanced for symmetry in the framing and asymmetry in the subjects.

In May of 2023, my wife took a trip to the UK for 10 days. This is fine, she loves travelling, and she especially loves solo travelling. I wouldn’t ever take this away from her, considering how hard she’s worked to get to the point of being able to do this. I built myself a task list for the 10 days she’d be away, and set away digging an herb garden, buying parts for kitchen shelving, meeting with friends, and doing a lot of cooking. But her absence was felt as a knot in my stomach. It’s the lack of routine, the lack of easy company. I’m generally fine on my own, however routine disruption can creep in as anxiety, and I know I was feeling it here. I decided to channel those feelings into a creative outlet, and mine is photography.

Shot on the Fujifilm X100V using available light. Subjects at the frame edges were used to invite tension into the image, but the lighting portrays relaxation.

Subjects and purpose can always be hard - It’s fine to take a general self-portrait, but I wanted this one to mean something. Our two Ikea pigs that we share the bed with - Porkey and Pemblokto - were unable to accompany my wife for the trip, so I felt tying this series into a status update on their day-to-day made for a purpose behind the series, and doubled down by letting my wife know I was doing just fine.

Shot on the Fujifilm X100V using available light. The candid feel of this image is the first thing one notices but the various levels of sub-framing with the door frame and the mirror draw the eye in.

And I suppose through all of this the process was to tell myself I was doing just fine. I could still make images I was happy with even with a period of stagnation. I could still have fun with photography.

Shot on the Fujifilm X100V using available light. Symmetry is leveraged in this image, and the light provided by a white image displayed on the television creates a natural vignette.

Getting lost in the process, even for just a little while, helped clear my head and gave me something to look forward to each day.

Shot on the Fujifilm X100V using available light. Pose and dramatic lighting add tension to the image.

All images were shot using available light, and taken past sundown. I love low-light photography and have spent years walking town streets at night capturing images with available light. This was an easy extension of that. Scrounging for scenes and framing throughout the day and working with the camera timer (Fuji had just released a new and functional camera remote for iOS/Android a few days after I finished this series…) kept me engaged.

Shot on the Fujifilm X100V using available light. Symmetry and odds are leveraged in this frame, with some weight in the image thrown to the right with the arm position.

I’m looking forward to doing something again like this in the future. And I’m happy to have made this series. It made my wife incredibly happy, and now I have something to look back at when I feel that pit of anxiety in my stomach again.

Packing List - Onebag to New York City

It’s time for travel this year, and the destination of choice is New York City. Like Portugal we’re aiming for lazy tourism and as much good food and drink that we can pack in within a 5 day period.

Bellroy 20L Classic Backpack - The perfect size for a warm and dry trip.

Since we’re going for just 5 day and in pretty temperate, dry weather, I chose to pack up my Bellroy 20L Classic backpack. This thing is the perfect size with space to spare for a lean packing list and should keep me very mobile through the city. I enjoy the understated look which doesn’t scream Travel.

We’ll start with worn clothing, keeping it pretty cozy for a quick flight to Montreal followed by a short layover before heading over to New York. No surprise, keeping it monotone, with everything here being black!

Seagale Action Merino Tee - Plain black tee, great fit, solid performance. Super soft for an against-the-skin layer.

Uniqlo Merino Crew Neck - It’s generally a little chilly on flights and in New Brunswick, so this will get me through that and also act as a super compact layer for cooler evenings in New York. This was really nice on the Staten Island Ferry, with the wind coming off the water.

Lululemon ABC Joggers Skinny - Basically sweat pants. One of my two pairs of pants for the trip. Wore them in the mornings when getting coffee and during the flights.

Saxx Ultra Brief - Moved over to these lately. The viscose is actually a lot better at managing moisture than the nylon/poly of the Quest series, and I’m a big fan of the cut for less fabric which means I can pack more of them.

Smartwool No Show Socks - I’ve been wearing these for a while. They fit well and perform great with about 60% merino content.

Allbirds Tree Runners - Since Vessi removed the all black option I decided to give Allbirds a go. They’re no where near waterproof which is fine. They breathe better and are comfortable for long walks. They’re also machine washable which is neat. The understated look can pass for a shoe for most occasions.

Packed is a bit of a mixed bag, and I could probably cut this back a bit more, but I have the space and the flexibility. We’re expecting most days to be north of 25c, and some days to be even north of 30c, so I kept that in mind and primarily packed black clothing. All this fits in a Peak Design medium packing cube (not pictured) with room to spare.

Seagale Action merino tees (3) - One black, one light grey, and one dark grey. I could probably cut this back to two extra shirts but they don’t take up much room and with the temperatures I don’t mind having the extra. I did end up wearing all 4.

Ministry of Supply Apollo raglan sleeve button down - Perfect untucked button down in a very easy wearing fabric. Grey brushed. If it did Michelin starred restaurants in Portugal it didn’t have any issues in New York City spots. I was able to tuck it into my sling after a lunch on a hot day, and it came out wrinkle free.

Saxx Ultra brief (5) - What can I say, I don’t want to wash underwear this trip! Underwear is one thing I do not re-wear. It’s 5 days and they don’t take up any real space compared to boxer briefs. I have tested hand washing these and they generally dry overnight in a standard air conditioned room.

Smartwool no show socks (3) - I trust these to get 2 wears a pair, especially with the Allbirds being so breezy. Having an extra pair for the trip home was nice.

Uniqlo Airism Boxer (2) - Sleep pants. Incredibly quick dry so I can wash in the shower in the morning and they’d be good to go by the evening.

Lululemon ABC pants skinny - Black pants! They fit well, stretch well, and look like skinny jeans. When cuffed they have a fairly modern look and they were breathable enough for hot days.

Lululemon T.H.E short 7” - I didn’t actually end up wearing these - The only item I packed that I didn’t wear!

BRISIRA 5” swim trunks - Last minute pickup on Amazon, they fit slim and are lined. They got a single wear to the pool on the roof of the hotel - I’d love to get a pair of Lululemon pool shorts to replace, but I’ll wait.

Electronics has been kept slim as the focus of this trip is food and lazy tourism mostly. I’m still packing a camera, and the single focal length should give me some nice creative constraints. All this fits in my Bellroy Lite Sling which will double as my day bag.

Tom Bihn Ghost Whale Small - This contains my charging and camera connectivity kit, and it’s a tight squeeze but everything fits.

Mophie 6000mah universal PD battery - Not the smallest or lightest battery, but it supports lightning input, and also does passthrough charging, which makes it the centerpiece for my tiny charging empire.

Apple Lightning SD card reader - This works, and works well. I didn’t actually import any photos from my trip while in New York, opting to wait until I got home to review and edit.

Anker Powerport III Nano 30W - Super slim, 30w charging. It’s been a standard for me for a while.

Anker Cables - 3ft USB-C to Lightning and 3ft USB-C to USB-C. Covers all my device charging needs.

Fujifilm X100V - Killer camera, compact, fun to shoot with. I have a Tiffen black pro mist 1/4 strength filter attached to it almost permanently. I’ve got a Peak Design leash on it this time around so it’s easier to keep out as it can hang on my body.

Extra Fuji battery - Neewer branded, I’m medium on actually needing this as I don’t think I’ll burn through ~400 shots in a day.

Extra 49mm filters - To give myself a bit more flexibility, I’m carrying filters in a filter holder which is metal screw on caps for either side. I have a NiSi True Color Pro Nano circular polarizer and a B+W XS Nano clear filter in case I want to pull off the Black Pro Mist.

Tom Bihn Utility Cloth - It’s a wool square! I already waxed poetic about this thing in my Portugal post so I won’t repeat here, but it’s just a really functional piece of wool. Honestly this just hung out in the hotel room most of the trip, I’d probably drop this.

Keys - Featuring an Airtag, and the final member of the charging gang, an InchargeX. I’ve also got a Nite Ize Doohickey on there for bottles and boxes. The Doohickey is awesome as it passes through airport security without issues and does a good enough job of what it’s designed to do.

Airpods Pro - Basically perfect headphones for short stints. Reasonable battery life, great noise cancelling, agreeable sound quality. Overall solid.

(Not Pictured) iPhone 12 - Still going strong but I may replace it this year with an iPhone 15 Pro Max (Another post, at some point…). Airalo eSIM bought for the US.

A quick note on my charging setup: The whole setup for charging with my InchargeX allows me to charge two devices overnight AND my battery off a single 30w slim wall adapter. This is about as close as I can get to a perfect tiny charging setup. The iPhone plus the battery is plenty enough to get me through even the heaviest of days, into a second day.

Various additional stuff I’m carrying is dispersed on my body or in the bag.

Tom Bihn Ghost Whale Super Mini - Bag of holding for…

Ray-Ban Folding Wayfarers - Matte black, high quality, compact. Non-polarized. Perfect fit in the ghost whale and always with me for sunny days. I’ve grown to keep these in any day bag I carry around now.

Apple Magsafe Wallet - Not much to say here, standard 3 card carry - ID, debit card, credit card.

Vapur Eclipse bottle - For water at the hotel. I could have skipped this as we had a daily minibar credit along with convenience stores/bottled water being cheap and accessible.

KN95 Masks (2) - Black, used on the plane.

Matador Packable Tote - Useful for day excursions and shopping. Fits in the Bellroy Lite Sling easy but I keep it in the bottom of the backpack for the actual travel part of the trip. I didn’t end up using this.

Passport - Well this is kinda needed for international travel.

Business cards - Just in case someone is interested in mediocre photography or bad tech opinions.

Microfibre cloth - Gotta clean that lens sometimes.

Heroclip - This is useful for hanging my bag when I’m in a place without bag hooks. I didn’t use this, but I’m happy to carry it for the odd bathroom stall that doesn’t have a hook.

For toiletries I’m trying out a Peak Design Wash Pouch that I picked up at a pretty steep discount. My initial impressions were that it’s… Large. A bit too large for what I need. That said, with the stuff I put in it the Matador roll top would require some finessing to get it to roll, so this is definitely an advantage. it’s also got a lot more organization which is nice, and the built in hook is great. I find it still squishes a bit to fit in bags but not as much as the sack that the Matador roll top is. After using it in the hotel though, I can see the advantage of it 100%! The hook was very handy for just hanging in the washroom and the organization/folding made it very easy to pull stuff out when needed. I think I’ll try the smaller version, and my wife may find the larger one helpful.

Wash pouch in action.

Exfoliating cloth - Nylon textured cloth that’s basically an unravelled loofah. So easy to get a lather and you feel a lot cleaner after a good exfoliating scrub. I use one of these at home too. I’d like to find a face cloth sized one for travel.

Unscented Company Shampoo bar and soap bar - Stored in Matador soap cases (Which are magic) these lather really well, clean great, and support my “all solids” agenda for travel. They work great for cleaning clothes too. I use these at home instead of liquids, and can’t complain. We were never without toiletries due to staying in a hotel however, and I only used these on the last day as I found they kept me cleaner for longer than the hotel provided goods.

Philips One Toothbrush - Fits in the toothbrush holder section but I need to remove the head.

Various OTC meds - Advil, Benadryl, and Gravol. Stored in a Nalgene container, these little things are waterproof and well built.

Hello brand toothpaste tabs - Toothpaste replacement - Found a bunch of them on clearance and they’re super minty and clean well. This was enough for both myself and my wife, and again stored in a Nalgene container.

Hair Bands - Long hair life.

Xiaomi Mijia S100 shaver - Really need to get around to doing a manual razor again… This still isn’t bad as long as I use it every 2 days or so. It struggles with much more than stubble.

Native Deodorant - Been my go-to for a while. I can’t seem to find a travel size of this scent in Canada, but this would be a huge space saver if I could.

Folding brush - I’ve had this for ages, and it’s been awesome. No complaints.

Neutrogena sunblock stick - Non-greasy application and a solid which I very much like.

Matador Ultralight shower towel - Wasn’t needed, but fits easily into the wash pouch.

Central Park, New York City.

What worked?

My packing list and habits have become incredibly refined and I feel like I can travel just about anywhere temperate on this size of bag. The fact that I wore all but one piece of clothing packed is a testament to that.

I was pleasantly surprised by the Peak Design wash pouch. The organization and hanging function was incredibly ideal in the hotel room and made the whole “washroom away from home” a breeze.

The Bellroy Lite Sling continues to be an MVP - This bag does it all and is just big enough.

What didn’t work?

Again with the overpacking in some spots, mostly with nostalgia. I could have left my wool cloth at home, but I really like it. I should have made the call too on not needing the packable towel as well.

I really need to figure out cutting down my toiletries as well. That was the largest piece in the bag, and I’d love to move over to the Peak Design wash pouch small, but I’ll likely need to cut down on a few things like soap bar size, deodorant size, and dropping the electric razor for a manual one.

Overall really happy with the trip and how things worked out! We got a number of good meals in along with some solid walking (Approximately 20000 steps a day), even in the dead heat of the last two days. Looking forward to refining further for the next one.

Camera Bag - 2023 Edition

I last wrote about my camera bag in 2020, and not a lot has shifted, but probably enough to have an update post about it!

Since my last time writing about this bag, I’ve moved from Android to iOS, and I’ve been shooting with the X100V for a lot longer. The Peak Design 3L Everyday Sling is still the bag of choice, holding just enough for my small kit. Here’s what’s in the bag now:

• Fujifilm X100V

  • JJC Filter Adapter and hood

  • Tiffen Black Pro Mist 1/4 49mm filter

  • 128GB Samsung EVO Select SD card

  • Peak Design Leash

• Fujifilm TCL-X100 and WCL-X100

  • B+W MRC Nano Clear filters on each adapter

• Fujifilm EF-X20 flash w/ case

• Microfibre cloth

• 2x Neewer Fuji batteries

• Business cards

• Airtag

• DIY flash gel kit

• Big Idea Design Titanium Pocket Tool

• GUS pill fob with some OTC meds (Ibuprofen, benadryl, etc)

• External straps for the sling

• 49mm filter holder

  • B+W MRC Nano Clear Filter

  • NiSi True Color Pro Nano circular Polarizer

• Tom Bihn Ghost Whale Small

  • Mophie 6000mah power bank

  • Anker USB-C to USB-C 3ft

  • Anker USB-C to Lightning 3ft

  • Lightning SD Card Reader

  • Anker Powerport Nano III 30w

• Tom Bin Ghost Whale Super Mini

  • Ray-Ban Folding Wayfarers

This setup basically affords me everything I need to shoot and edit remotely for an indefinite amount of time, and also doubles as a day-bag and a tech-bag while travelling with photography in mind. Lightroom Mobile and Adobe cloud really are game changers when it comes to keeping it light, and modern phones with powerful and efficient processors and great screens make it very easy to get solid basic edits while in the field.

I’ve got more tweaks to make (67mm filters anyone?), but for the time being I’ve been pretty content with the kit!

Home Server 2023: Secondary Node

My secondary DNS server was running on a Pi 3B+, however I really found doing a docker pull was taking a while to download and extract due to the limited hardware specs. In some cases I was seeing 10+ minute extract times… I decided to take advantage of another refurbished PC to replace the Pi, and managed an HP EliteDesk 800 G2 mini desktop for under $200 shipped with the below specs:

• Intel Core i5 6400T

• 16GB DDR4 RAM

• 256GB SATA SSD

It’s cool, it’s quiet, it’s compact, and it’s got a load of RAM for whatever it ends up getting used for other than secondary DNS. For the time being I’ve put Proxmox on it and had my secondary DNS server setup in with Docker in about half an hour. I may consider trying out Frigate on this with Intel GPU acceleration, and I will likely also use this node for a lot of dev stuff I want to try out rather than doing it on the main host.