Upgrading my computer’s primary storage from a hard disk (HDD) to a solid state drive (SSD). Really young folks on here have no idea how amazing it was for computers to go from taking minutes to start up to taking seconds.
Buying my first cell phone, which was a Nokia smartphone, in 2003. Having email and useful applications in my pocket, including maps and web search.
I feel like the sheer jump in performance from throwing an SSD into an old system was akin to what people would have expected from the “download more ram” scam ads of the 00s.
TBF, before win95 there was definitely legit software that you could buy (not download) that would compress memory, amongst other tricks, to effectively give you more RAM.
QEMM was the shit!
himem.sys
Really young folks on here have no idea how amazing it was for computers to go from taking minutes to start up to taking seconds
Pretty sure we don’t have such an young audience here on lemmy haha
Pretty sure one of the devs is still in high school.
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I upgraded mom’s PC from HDD to SSD, no regrets
I was thinking and nothing was to big a deal but you are right. ssd and before that optical mice were major upgrades relative to price (price being the factor when I finally bought them.)
I find that my M.2 SSD (with Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC) is weirdly slower at booting up than my SATA SSD (Win 10 Pro) was. I’m not sure why, since the hard drive itself should be faster. BIOS itself seems to be slower.
I also can’t currently get it to even start if I have a hard drive plugged into the power supply and any of the SATA slots on the motherboard. IDK why. It reads the hard drives when I have them plugged in to an external bay and connected with a USB cable. It’s super-frustrating. I’ll try a SATA SSD and see if I have the same problem. If so, then I guess I’m stuck using M.2 drives. :(
You may have an issue with the boot order in your bios. Might be worth looking into. Your bios may try to boot from every other device connected to it before it tries the M2 SSD.
There’s literally nothing else connected to it though; no USB drives, no other hard drives, etc. When I tried to plug in my old 2tb 7200rpm drives from my last computer, it wouldn’t even power on to boot up.
Doesn’t matter, it will still scan for those devices
With encryption it still takes a bit, but I love the silence.
GPS was life-changing. (Yes, I am that old.) It used to be necessary to find printed maps of wherever you were going, which wasn’t always easy. Then you had to figure out a route. The hardest part was often the last bit of the trip, since you weren’t likely to have a detailed map of your destination city. An if you got lost, figuring out where you were was sometimes quite difficult.
People tend to think of it as mostly affecting longer trips, but finding new addresses in a city was at least as much of an issue. When I lived in the bay area I had a Thomas guide that was 3/4" of an inch thick, just for finding my way around town.
I worked as a delivery driver before GPS.
If you think looking at your phone while driving is dangerous, we were looking at a folding paper map.
I also had most streets in a major metropolitan area memorized.
But more times than I can count I navigated by the sun or the north star until I was back in an area I recognized.I gather that to get a London cab license you have to pass a test that requires you to know pretty much every street, alley, and major building in the city. I can’t imagine how long it would take to get all of that into your head.
MapQuest ftw! Did so many car trips that way.
Got lost so many times that way.
Better pray sweat/drink condensation/ANY moisture doesn’t get on that map, otherwise you’re toast!
I got lost leaving prom because I’d only had my license less than a year and didn’t know major highways. The printed instructions were illegible at night without your cabin light on, and that was dangerous too!
My first “GPS trip” was using Microsoft Streets and Trips 2007 on DVD-ROM with USB GPS adapter, with my WinXP laptop in the front seat powered by a 12v inverter from Radio Shack.
A buddy of mine was still doing this in 2015
3-5 minutes to catch a signal. Ahhh, those were the
goodold days.
First time I ever saw in-car GPS was arrive 2003 when I was hitchhiking in Japan. Heading the car just give directions was mind-blowing; it was like being in a William Gibson novel.
GPS and navigation was a life changing thing for me as I am, how shall I put it, geographically challenged.
Give me the option of turning left or right and I will constantly choose wrong. I tested this with my family, who thought I was being dramatic and hyperbolic, and they witnessed my failures in all glory. Since then I am no longer allowed to ‘just wing it’ when we are on route…
I can’t left or right, but am well centered in North, South, East, West and can give directions like that. Those stay put. I hate navigation software though, the ones that talk at you, hate so much. Would rather get lost, usually, but have lived in the same city a long time and always know where north is.
This. Going from pace notes to GPS navigation for delivery was a big improvement. Then going from laptop in the seat to in-dash nav (chinese head unit contoured to fit the car) was the next level. Now, we have android auto/apple carplay, the final evolution. AI voice command is so much better than trying to type on a touchscreen while driving
Bidet attachment for a toilet. Absolute life changer.
Hell yeah bidet.
It’s sad how there are people out there who look down on the bidet. It really is a game changer. I still use toilet paper, but the process is so much cleaner and easier.
When putting it in, an older family friend (male) asked me, “oh you got that for your lady friend?” No…I want to save money and have a cleaner experience as a male.
Wait you have to put it in?
I have the “portable” kind where you can just put it under the toilet seat you have and it connects to your toilet’s water system that brings in water. It was about $30 off Amazon.
It is really straightforward, but my issue was that after I installed it, I had unknowingly unscrewed one of the components in the toilet and it was leaking and I needed some help to figure that out and get it fixed correctly. It was when I was screwing in the new T shaped pipe that it was unscrewing something in the toilet.
There are also the kind that can come built in a toilet, usually on the higher end toilets, or you can get one of the dedicated bowls that is like a secondary toilet seated next to your toilet too.
A wrench and a screwdriver. That’s all you need
I hate bidet hate. If I upend a bowl full of brownie batter on a shag carpet, I’m not going to “clean” it with dry paper towels. Use your heads, people!
The downside to installing a bidet is I now hate pooping without the home court advantage.
Truth, it ruins you for all the other toilets.
Ah, a person of culture. A most pristine brown eye.
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Nah. Anything on Amazon should be fine
Heated water and heated seat are fucking amazing if you got extra budget
Bidet. Not even the fancy ones. Like the cheap ones that are no more than $20-30. Every poop, I’ve got a squeaky clean butthole.
Totally agree; I hate pooping without it. Though I did upgrade a while back from a $20-30 one to this: https://luxebidet.com/pages/neo-185-plus-highlights
I took the old one off to really clean it and that sold me on this new flip up one.
I clicked on this thinking it was going to be a link to one of the $200+ electric models, but this is actually a relatively inexpensive upgrade I can get behind (pun?) It looks like it’s a lot easier to keep clean. Thanks for this.
I got a couple of these about two years ago. They work great and we’ve had no trouble with them. 10/10
I’ve been using simple cold water models for over 10 years now. But I really like this upgrade in design. Same basic simplicity, but it looks a lot easier to keep clean.
Almost never having to cram paper in between my buttcheeks is fucking heaven. No more shit smears!
Fitting username.
haha!
As someone with a currently chapped asshole, squeaky is not the kind of clean you want for it.
Used one for the first time recently. Seriously considering getting one of my own.
That’s what happened to me. Used one for the first time at a hotel — bought one not long after and will never go back. Got like a $30 one and am still using it over 4 years later. I’ll probably upgrade when I have the extra money, realizing just now how long it’s been since I got it
A countertop water boiler, I have one of the Zojirushi 4 liter units. It turns out I drink 3/4 of a gallon of tea or so per day. So not having to boil a kettle for every round is oddly luxurious.
I usually microwave a mug for 1.5 minutes, but this could also be nice
Are you from the US?
I remember Technology Connections doing an episode on the Electric kettle. Its fascinating. Microwaving is still the fastest around the house, but I like being able to make more than one cup at a time.
I actually did a little research and apparently it’s sacrosanct to a Britton to even suggest heating water in a microwave.
I think you mean “Sacrilege” or maybe “Sacrilegious.” That means “The violation of something sacred.”
Sacrosanct means “sacred and beyond question,” which is related, but kind of the opposite of what you mean.
You’re 100% correct.
You are correct. I had a British coworker. He gave me the fish eye when I did it the first time. I personally don’t care as long as it gets hot.
What?
And they are super efficient, and insulated. If you have the counter space it’s a good kitchen tool.
Maybe I’m just tired, but I’m struggling to think of other uses in the kitchen beyond just a warm beverage? Maybe for instant noodles or warming a bottle?
I have one close to this and it’s been amazing. Great Christmas gift idea too.
Bought a dishwasher.
Life changing improvement. Don’t be afraid to use the pots and pans setting for everything.
You don’t need fancy soap and remember to top up the rinse aid.
(Also every 6 months run a special cleaner through it)
And remember it has a filter you need to clean once in a while
Not all models have a filter to clean. But those that do… definitely remember to clean it. They can get nasty if you don’t.
Probably should run the clean cycle monthly.
A goddamn dishwasher. I used to wash a lot of dishes by hand growing up so it took until my 30’s before i realized that dishwashers are a wonderful invention.
For me, it was a Quest 3. The first VR headset to cross my personal threshold. My main requirement was that when I wasn’t playing actual VR games, the headset was worth using as a virtual computer monitor from the comfort of my recliner. While Quest 3 doesn’t quite have enough pixels to truly display my 4k screen at a 1:1 ratio, it is close enough that with the perceived clarity boost from the micromovements of your head meaning the same set of pixels is never sampled twice in a row and the headset running at 120hz, my 60hz real life 4k screen looks exactly as clear in real life as on the headset.
I also have a supplemental completely fabricated virtual 4k 120hz screen in the headset that I use for any games that are easier to run and benefit more from framerate than perfect individual frame clarity. The screens are 20 feet away, but each take up 80 degrees of field of view, twice what is considered comfortable, but I have always preferred what I guess in that context can only be classified as “intimate?” distance from my screens. I only use one screen at a time, the other is stored just out of sight up above. I can still look at it comfortably, and there is a button to swap the monitor locations when I want to change which one is being primarily used.
I also have my real world surroundings in the headset. So the screens are just floating within reality. I can still engage with my family, and thanks to the clarity of the passthrough cameras, I can watch TV with them too. Clearly enough to read the closed captions. The TV screen is about 30-40 degrees of my field of view, and is thus only represented as about a 720p screen, but with that same “temporal antialiasing” the clarity is boosted up to about 1080p level.
So, with all that, I spend about 14 hours a day in my VR headset now. Wirelessly, with a magnetic battery swap every 2 hours. Sometimes standing up and playing real VR games, sometimes reclining in a super comfortable chair playing desktop games. With the bobovr system, or whichever option you prefer, the headset is comfortable to wear for an infinite amount of time. And when I visit my real computer monitor now, I just leave my sit/stand desk in stand mode and no longer have a computer chair.
It has basically replaced every other screen in my life, except my phone. Which is still a main sticking point of VR. They will concievably replace the phone too eventually, but there is alot of software and hardware infrastructure needed to get there. At least Quest 3 is finally a headset clear enough to use your phone without taking it off or peeking through gaps. But only just, a phone tends to take up about 20 degrees of your field of view when used comfortably, even holding it twice as close as that is only 720p(temporally upsampled to 1080p) so holding the phone closer is still only about half the resolution of your phone. Assuming you run your phone in 4k normally. It’s probably fine for people without a gaming phone that likely already only run it at 1080p, then they might have text large enough to resolve at a comfortable distance in VR. But anyway. It’s not too bad now, so hopefully next headset is enough to completely solve that too, while we wait for it to not even be necessary eventually.
I’m basically retired, built up a big enough money ball that my passive income from it slowly increases, so this is the rest of my life. Slowly getting better and better VR. And while it started at Oculus DK2 for me, all the headsets before Quest 3 were only fun toys that I played with alot. Steadily increasing in capability, but not crossing the threshold into permanent screen replacement. Quest 3 did it, it crossed over that line. While the size of screen I use to represent my 4k TV is only actually physically covered by about 1440p worth of pixels, the free temporal upsampling makes it as good as 4k(2160p).
Though it will take double the current resolution for people that want a 4k screen at 40 degrees of field of view, for now people that like that distance (most people) would have to make due with it looking 1080p. Which might be fine for most people, it is still the most widely used screen resolution.
Edit for plugs for anyone that wants to do this too:
Outside of the Quest 3 itself, I use the third party comfort and runtime mod “M3 pro” from BoBoVR(dumb name, quality company), and Virtual Desktop software to stream my computer screen and create the better supplemental virtual screen out of thin air. I also use Virtual desktop to play my PCVR games when not just running something natively on the headset. Having a good network setup is pretty important too, especially in my case where the aforementioned recliner is on a different floor of my house than my computer. I have a background in networking, so in my case I’m able to setup my router in such a way that I can comfortably stream VR while we have 50 other devices on the router. But for most people, either a second dedicated router or specific VR streamer is going to be a better route. My router was 600 dollars, these bespoke units can be as little as 100 dollars and give you almost the same experience. Plus they are pre-configured specifically for VR streaming. Otherwise there can be alot of configuration changes needed.
I apologize for my verbosity, I hate to leave any details out, even though someone could just ask if I forgot to cover something. I am, unsurprisingly, Autistic. Communicating clearly is a common problem for us. Never know what knowledge I have that isn’t common and needs to be conveyed. And I don’t change mental gears well, so I like to get everything out once, if possible, to reduce the likelihood of having to get back into this mental space again later.
Wow. Thanks for sharing.
Give VR sim-racing a try (Assetto Corsa), if it strikes your fancy, at all. It’s a downright miraculous experience (especially with a wheel) and THE greatest thing I’ve experienced in VR. I literally learned to drive a manual in Assetto Corsa before going and driving a real manual Porsche race car.
Flight Simulator in VR is also very impressive.
Oh yeah, I’ve played pretty much everything over the past 10 years in VR. In your same vein, I would recommend Elite: Dangerous. I played it for about 3 years with just mouse and keyboard, then another 3 years with stick and throttle, I still never got quite as good at combat on stick and throttle, but the game was more enjoyable to play overall that way. I haven’t tried the expansion yet. When it came out, it didn’t run great in VR, and part of its features weren’t VR capable. It should run good in VR now, but I don’t think they plan to bring the on-foot stuff to VR.
The base game without the expansion is still fine to play. And with the expansion, the on-foot stuff will just be played on a virtual flatscreen instead, still fine, better than not having access to it, I suppose. But I just kept holding out, hoping it would be integrated with the rest of the otherwise amazing VR experience the game is. If I play the game again, I’ll probably just buy it. I still haven’t tried it since Quest 3 and my new computer upgrade. It’ll probably re-blow my mind.
I have a basic HOTAS for when I reassemble my VR setup and Elite: Dangerous is definitely on my list.
Space Engine in VR, though not really a game, gave me existential terror in a way I imagine Elite: Dangerous might. Accidentally sending yourself zipping through the vastness of space and right up beside a accurate-scale star rocked me in a way I thought an “educational” app never could.
I think it won’t be quite as existential, despite how well they make it all feel rooted in reality, it’s still pretty easy to keep in mind that it is a videogame. And with default settings and leaving “flight assist” on, the space ships handle more like planes. You can always disable flight assist, or have it on a toggle, or “disable when button held” setup too. Or, enable when held, if you want to be free flying most of the time, but still have a “stop” button when you want to cancel out your inertia, or more accurately match it with your current frame of reference.
Basically, by default, you don’t have to think about your frame of reference. The fact that it is a videogame basically takes care of that. It’s a convenient way to hide that the instance you are in is faking(incredibly accurately) everything else that is not in your current frame of reference. Despite space travel feeling pretty seamless, it’s just cuz they hide the load screens and instance transfers as just part of navigating space. Any time you are unable to touch the controls, that is a load screen. Even if it otherwise looks the same, most notably when entering or exiting a planets frame of reference and switching between the “space” graphics of the planet to the “terrain” graphics. When approaching a planets gravity well, you basically do an uncontrolled glide that transitions you from space appropriate speeds to surface appropriate speed. That speed transition is the loading screen.
Probably the only thing that might give a similar sense of existential dread for a few seconds is if you jump to a binary star system at a time when the star you aren’t jumping to just happens to be in the same direction you just jumped in from. It will look as though you flew through that star. The odds are pretty low, even full time explorers rarely see it, but it is something that can happen.
I really want to get into it and have for years and you only confirm it. Unfortunately, I only got my HOTAS after I sold my VR headset, so I need to get it all back.
Most people still play it on a monitor, but yeah, it’s great in VR. There can be a bit of a learning curve on monitor. Kind of like the difference learning to drive rally on a monitor versus learning in VR, you can just tell when everything is going right without having to train yourself to notice little signs, you just feel it intuitively. Having said that, I still recommend going through all the training, and when you are done the training, stay with the free beginner sudewinder for a while. Make sure you can afford your first ship a few times over before you upgrade, so you have a cushion if there is anything important to learn.
You don’t have to be good at elite for it to be fun. And you won’t be good at it for a while. But you will eventually be good at it, and it will be all the more fun then. The first time you slip an agile ship into dock in a smooth motion, amazing feeling.
IRacing with VR and a rig is literally the best video game experience out there.
But boy is my wallet angry at me
It really is. Everyone should try it. I’ve done it for hundreds of hours and still think, “THIS IS THE FUTURE,” every time I do it.
I was too intimidated to try iRacing, but hope to. I drove thousands of miles on the night-time Tokyo interstate/Shutoko map (mod for Assetto Corsa) by itself. Often in the rain with the mod that allowed me to control my Spotify from inside the car.
Sold my rig when I moved, but hope to rebuild it even better ASAP. It certainly isn’t cheap, but my first rig was very DIY (including two-directional physics output to my seat via SimHub, which added even more to immersion, only cost $75-$100 to add a basic version) and I was able to cobble it all together for under $1,000 by waiting for deals, etc…
I should probably get some hours in on shutoko revival, now that Genki is making a new Tokyo extreme racer.
now that Genki is making a new Tokyo extreme racer
Whaaaaaat. I had no idea, that’s amazing. I’m watching info about it now.
And yes, it’s a fantastic track with multiple great layouts. It became my go-to track to test new cars, race ideas, or just cruise. It’s one of the few times I dipped my toe into multiplayer, as there were some open lobby Shutoko servers where people would just cruise around and it was hilarious and a blast.
I would love the Quest and have multiple if it weren’t for the Facebook requirement.
What do you mean? There is no facebook requirement. I don’t have facebook.
But I do agree that Meta is the sour note. Luckily, there hasn’t been any practical effect on the headset, or at least not a downside. Meta has had plenty of effect, mostly by way of investing unbelievable money into it. There is a reason no one else can keep up.
Basically if you are at all interested in the quality of experience in VR, you have to go with Meta, and maybe at some point they’ll take advantage of that, but it hasn’t been yet. And if they ever do, I have no problem cutting ties.
There was a period when new users had to have a facebook account, but it didn’t last long. As you can guess, you were not the only person who didn’t like that. I already had an oculus account before that, and I was able to keep using that the whole time. The name has been changed to a Meta account, but nothing else about it changed. It’s just a renamed Oculus account now.
Did a little digging and it seems like the main barrier to entry in the way of plug and play would be setting up a Meta account and using your smartphone to set it up. From what I know about Meta automatically making an account for every human they are aware of and the fact that all Androids (and iPhones?) have Facebook pre-installed with pre-loaded wide permissions, that’s effectively the same as handing Zuckerberg all of my personal information by buying a Quest. While researching, I found it incredibly difficult to find anyone serious about privacy discussing the matter without getting shut down with a “Who cares? They have your information already just give them more.”
Soft pass until I know how to do it without leaking my life to the Meta gods.
Back in the day, people wiresharked it all and said nothing untoward was going on back then. And a meta account in this regard is just an Oculus account. It has nothing to do with facebook.
But yeah, ultimately, I don’t care if other people don’t want to use it. I only care if I want to use it, and I do.
Also none of my androids came with facebook and still don’t have it. But I don’t buy subsidized from carriers, I just buy the phone I want and use the carrier I want separately.
They got rid of that requirement a few years ago
Steam deck finally got me working through my steam backlog again.
Might have played everything before I die now
Is it as good as they say? I really want one
As someone who buys a lot of gadgets and quite often barely uses them afterwards or has mild buyers remorse… I have never once regretted buying a Steam Deck. It really is an amazing piece of technology.
Yes!
The Steam Deck often feels criminal to me.
I used to be into game console hacking, and because you were going outside the walled garden, everything was always unstable and your butthole would clench every time you did something new.
Then there’s the Deck, which is just. Not a walled garden. It’s a full computer that doesn’t antfuck over what you do with it. I’m finally playing a bunch of titles from my Steam Library, yes, and it IS neat that Steam Cloud synchs stuff back to my PC so I can alternate between machines effortlessly.
But I also have mods on my games. And I have a bunch of tiny games like fangames and one-person indie titles from itch on it. And I ALSO have all my emulation stuff on it. AND sometimes when out travelling I don’t take a laptop, just the deck and a keyboard/adapter.
And a part of me looks at it with its comfy console form factor and says “… This shouldn’t be allowed. It’s too good to be true.”
Aw man I’m definitely going to get one, this sounds like a dream
I don’t use mine super often but every time I do I’m glad I have it. It’s a very nifty machine, and you’ll find excuses to use it.
Internal SSD with the operating system on it. No other upgrade I’ve made to my PC has ever been so substantial.
Wireless ear buds.
I was pretty adamant that I was absolutely never going to get any, preferring wired and really looking for a phone that still had the jack. Then when new phone time came, I ended up having to choose between a micro sd card slot and the headphone jack. I tried for a bit with a USB-C to headphone adapter but ended up seeing some ear buds on sale and giving them a shot.
They last way longer than I expected, and the carrying case as the charger means I hardly need to worry about keeping another device charged. The freedom of not having the cord is really nice, especially when going for a bike ride or jog. I upgraded to a pair with a little over-the-ear hook and use them probably 10hrs a day every day they are great
I’m the opposite. I have to have music, and Bluetooth just sucks on Android. I’ve used Bose, air pods, Samsung beans, generic, etc, on multiple versions of Android, and they just suck so hard. lag all the time, can turn my head to the right without connection stuttering. I’ve tested pockets, hoodies, with and without my watch, naked, nothing works. Bluetooth just blows.
recently got a pair of jvc explosivs that I had a decade ago and couldn’t be happier. and I used my Bose headset with the cable too.
Samsung S9 for anyone wondering. have gone through multiple Samsung phones, an LG, tablets, etc.
have wiped. removed belt buckle, changed pockets. it does work better in back right pocket, but that’s my wallet pocket. I’m just so confused why it sucks to badly.
I haven’t noticed Bluetooth being that bad on either pixel I’ve had, 3a and now 6.
I certainly get lag in my pixels but no disconnects.
Bluetooth has a general lag of several milliseconds, tens of milliseconds probably, for me. But it’s close enough to not bug me when watching videos. And I never have cutouts, not unless I walk very far away. Just tonight at work I was using my pixel buds, left my phone on the desk, walked to the bathroom probably 40 or 50 feet away and through at least 3 walls, didn’t miss a beat 🤷♂️
My old BT headphones back in the day couldn’t go 20 feet across the room line of sight.
BT has definitely gotten way better in recent years.
yeah, no dcs, but man it stutters bad. can’t turn my head or walk
Getting nice in-ear monitors with replaceable cables is so much better than wireless for me. Great sound quality and they weak link that always breaks (the wires) is now no longer an issue. I’ve had the same IEM now for 10 years and just change the cables every couple of years.
I still have a 5 year old Jabra Elite Active 65t that is still trucking. I had a few glitches starting a year ago like the right earbud dropping in volume or it being stuck in a hung mode where they had to be completely depleted over a few weeks to reset them, they wouldn’t even charge.
However, they still work fine and are super convenient with hear-through for office work compared to wired IEMs way better for all fitness activities too, just not as good for really listening to music.
Battery life is still 3-4 hours after 5 years not including the case recharge (the case battery has degraded significantly more than the earbuds themselves, probably due to the high quality VARTA cells in the earbuds)
I am going to wear them into the ground, but jabra is doing a stock sellout before their new version of buds come out, so I bought the €140 Jabra Elite 4s for €60 for when these bite the dust, but they seem to be going strong still.
dunno how old you are but all my friends that were heavy audiophiles with headphones are near def now.
Constant Glucose Monitors compared to the archaic finger stick monitors was like getting a blow job after spending a lifetime hacking it with sandpaper.
iPhone 3G. I’ll never forget the day I put the internet in my pocket
I bought one but didn’t have a data plan. Jumping from WiFi to WiFi still felt like magic. It was a laptop that fit in my pants.
Lighting system as a wake up tool.
Have now been using a light or lighting system as a morning wake up for over 15 years. It’s life changing.
Lights start off dim and red/orange, and brighten very slowly to warm white. Works every time.
I wake up without the jolt of an alarm at home.
In fact - automated lighting in general - just so good.
A raspberry pi.
Installed Pihole on it and now get almost no ads on all devices at home.
SBCs are pretty cool. ESP is pretty cool too.
