Gmail problems for Google child accounts on Android

If you're having trouble sending and/or receiving mail on Android using a Google supervisied account or a Google child account, check "Parental settings > Filters on Google Chrome". If it's on "Only allow certain sites", change it to "Try to block mature sites" and this should resolve your issue.

Another thing to look out for is the 15 GB storage quota. Your kid account can easily reach that if you use Google Photos in original quality and once reached, Gmail won't receive or send email anymore.

DIY wooden playground

Find 10 mistakes in this plan :-D Answers in the end.

Free video editing on Android with Google Photos

A good video editor on Android is hard to come by. Most Google Play Store video editors are ad-infested, add watermarks, have terrible UI, work poorly or are sketchy clones of each other with fake reviews.

InShot is one of the best I tried but Google Photos is a simple alternative you probably already have installed:

1. In Google Photos, select videos you'd like to edit
2. Click + button and create a Movie
3. Click ♪ button to remove / change the music
4. Use scrub bars below to trim the videos
5. Click Save when you're done

This produces a Movie which you can download (mine was Full HD) - might have to wait a bit while Google generates the file on the server.

There are a few issues with this approach:

1. Without music, there's a 0.5 sec silence between the videos
2. Limited editing controls, no effects, stickers, etc - if you're into that
3. Output resolution / compression is not adjustable

Fixing the Bosch mixer shredder

We bought a new Bosch mixer a few months ago. Previous one died after few years but had the same problem as the new one: as soon as a bit of water gets onto the shredder head, it starts spitting rusty liquid into the shredding can.

How to fix a squeaking trampoline

It's our second year with Ampel 24 305 cm trampoline. First year, it started squeaking more or less immediately after assembly. I tired fixing that with spray lubrication, household lubrication oil and food-safe silicon grease. Nothing helped.

Grünbeck softliQ:SC18 - my experience

I installed Grünbeck softliQ:SC18 as a replacement for GENO-K4. Bought from egshop-ulm on ebay.de for 1479 EUR with a bag of salt included. Later I also bought and installed a special drain connector 188875.

Transparent PC case

My old PC was taking too much space under the desk. I decided to make smaller case for it. I didn't want to use cardboard or chipboard but went with the acrylic / plexiglas in hopes of getting a better look. It didn't quite work out though.

GENO-K4 anti-scaling system - my experience

Background

In our city the water is very hard - 19.3 dH according to one of my lab tests. During the first year after the home we live in was constructed we didn't use any water softening system and a few problem came as a result:

• Hot water tank outlet got clogged with the sediment resulting in a massive hot water pressure drop
• Hot water circulation pump got clogged up and has almost no effect
• Hot water automatic over-pressure valve is clogged and leaking since it can't fully close
• And of course a ton of mineral deposits on sinks, bathroom walls and taps

Disclaimer: this post documents my experience as a consumer and is not a professional advice. Things may wary based on behavior of a particular unit and water contents in your area.

Viewing your media library / Google Photos / Drive content in original quality on TV

I'm a big fan of Google Photos and Chromecast, taking a lot of photos and videos to view them on our home 4k TV. I always felt sad that I can't view my content in original quality though.

Here's my solution to the problem:

1. Get a Windows Mini PC with a decent hard drive
2. Install Google Backup and Sync on it, have it download and sync your Google Photos content to that hard drive
3. Install ArinaCast on it (requires VLC, ffmpeg and imagemagick to be installed manually)
4. Control what Mini PC is showing on your TV via your smartphone by going to http://192.168.0...:6567
5. Optionally, use Chrome "Add to Home screen" for easier access and a full-screen experience

It's amazing when you can get closer to the TV screen and see every little detail on your photos.

Cheaper Mini PCs can sometimes struggle playing back original files, especially 4k / poorly compressed ones from home cameras. Playing with VLC settings or getting a more powerful device can help with that.

Starting ffmpeg from Windows Explorer context menu

Need to quickly stabilize a shaky video or convert weird Handycam file to H264?

ffmpeg can do it, but sometimes it's just too cumbersome to fire up the command line and look up the parameters and file names, especially for non-trivial command series such as video stabilization.

Use https://github.com/kachurovskiy/VideoContextMenu to add the video stabilization and converting shortcuts for all file types.

Edit the BAT and REG text files locally to best fit your needs or add more shortcuts. Enjoy!

WeMos D1 mini 433mhz receiver - use D8 for DATA

It took me hours to figure out why my WeMos D1 mini + 433mhz receiver work normally when connected to a PC/Arduino IDE, but doesn't work when powered through a power bank or power pins.

Problem was that only D8 pin is pulled down on WeMos, others are not. Connecting DATA to D3 resulted in voltage not reaching 0 when it should have. D0 doesn't support interrupts at all, so RCSwitch wouldn't work.

Alternatively, manual pull down (connecting to group through a high-value resistor) on DATA line should also work.

Here's the basic code example, use "15" for D8 pin value.

P.S.: right GND marking (near antenna) on that 433mhz receiver is incorrect, it's likely to fry your Arduino if you actually connect it. Just don't connect it to anything.

Cheering people exploitation on YouTube?

There's an awesome "Primitive Technology" channel on YouTube run by and starring John Plant.

Primitive Survival Tool appears to be copying that content model, but instead of doing the work themselves, it looks like they hired 2 guys who are told to build some very labor-intensive and useless things like a mini underground swimming pool.

I don't think there's something illegal going on, it's just that judging by comments, most viewers don't understand what's going on. I bet TV channels would have hard time running a show like this, but on YouTube everybody assumes that the channel is run by the actors.

Recovering OSX / MacBook with damaged partitions

Summary

If your Mac / BootCamp Windows doesn't boot anymore and you must recover files from it's hard drive, don't use Disk Utility. Instead, get an Ubuntu USB stick with TestDisk on it and an external HDD to copy your files to.

Situation

My wife uses her MacBook Pro (late 2013) entirely as a Windows machine and never boots into OSX. She had very little of 123Gb actually available for her files due to both systems taking most of the free space.

I tried to solve this by downsizing the Mac partition through the Disk Utility. After several attempts to downsize the partition and doing "Repair Disk" operation, I tried to boot and OSX wouldn't boot. Windows boot option was not available anymore.

Overhead Desktop Video Recording

Inspired by Wonder Forest.

Clamp I used, not perfect but does the job.

The wood is held together with 4 70mm screws and 2 metal angles.

At 0:53, I use 6D Mark II with 24-75 lens at 24mm. Legs are barely visible, and them I move to ~30mm and they're gone.

There's a silly highlight on the sides, maybe I'll do something about it. You could shorten the LED strip and not run it all the way to the bottom to avoid this.

Another nice touch would be a safety string for the camera to make sure it doesn't fall down if something goes wrong. Yet to find a good solution for this.

Sound-controlled LED strip

Double-clap to toggle the light. Costs between 6 and 30 EUR to build depending on how you count and what's already lying around.

Using ATTINY85 which I love for it's minuscule power consumption. For this build, I couldn't even measure it with a USB power meter since it's just 0.001Ah. This particular LED strip consumes 0.85Ah from power supply and 0.63Ah in my circuit. The difference is likely due to imperfect soldering and thin wires.

You could use a P-channel MOSFET and interrupt the positive LED line. See the parts list.

The code mostly works but triggers e.g. when someone talks in the room :-D Please post your improved version if you got one.

Since custom PCBs these days are dirt cheap, it would be awesome to design one for this project as well and fit this whole thing into AA battery sized footprint with USB and micro-USB ports on opposite sides.

Thanks!