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Seems like a cheap way to get a smart thermostat: find one cheap on eBay and install your own firmware.

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/105162

If you have a Nest thermostat of the first or second generation, you probably noticed it recently became dumber. Google decided to pull the plug on the servers that operate these devices, turning them into — well — ordinary thermostats. Lucky for us [codykociemba] has been keeping up with various exploits for hacking the thermostat, and he started the NoLongerEvil-Thermostat project.

If you want to smarten up your thermostat again, you’ll need a Linux computer or, with some extra work, a Mac. The thermostat has a DFU-enabled OMAP loader. To access it, you have to plug it into USB and then reboot it. There is a narrow window for the loader to grab it, so you have to be running the software before you reboot or you’ll miss it.

You can control your thermostat again!

After that, the flash is relatively fast, but the Nest will look dead for a brief time. Then the No Longer Evil logo will show, and you are in business. We wish the hack simply replaced the Google software with a local website, but it doesn’t. It redirects all the network traffic to a custom URL. Then you can control your thermostat from the nolongerevil.com website. So we don’t know what will happen if they decide to stop hosting the remote server that powers this.

Then again, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. If you get another year out of your trusty thermostat, that’s a year you wouldn’t have had otherwise. We do worry a bit about putting an odd device on your network. In theory, the project is open source, but all the important bits are in a binary U-Boot image file, so it would take some work to validate it. To get you started, the command to dump the content is probably: dumpimage -T kernel -p 0 -o kernel uImage. Or, you could watch it with Wireshark for a bit.

We were happy to get some more use out of our Nest.

From Blog – Hackaday via this RSS feed

I want to design one of these once I get some money to spend

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38675965

Got one friend interested in Japanese, and I might learn it one day.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/36273113

As a long time Japanese learner, I always wanted there to be a simple online trainer for learning kana, Kanji and vocabulary - like Anki, but for the web. Originally, I created the website for personal use simply as a better alternative to kana pro and realkana, and as an alternative to Chase Colburn's Kanji Study app, because Kanji Study was pretty complicated for me to use as a beginner and didn't have a simpler way of just grinding Kanji like you can grind the kana on kana pro.

I'm doing this because I grew tired of all the subscriptions and paywalls. I want to make the most user-friendly, customizable, aesthetic and fun platform for learning Japanese currently available. Accessible to all, fully open-source and free forever - and driven not by profit, but made by the community, for the community.

We already have more than 30+ active contributors from all over the world, and we really want to make the first definitive 100% free, open-source platform for learning Japanese - in contrast to most other apps for learning Japanese, which are often paid and monetized aggressively.

If you're interested, you can check it out here: https://kanadojo.com/ ^ ^

GitHub if you're a dev and interested in contributing: https://github.com/lingdojo/kana-dojo

The app is still in its early alpha stages - but with your help, we can make it even better and give the Japanese learning community its first completely free, open-source and community-driven learning platform! どうもありがとうございます!

Lora is a an awesome method of long range communication without the need for cell towers or satellites

cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/1672004

I use linseed oil often for my woodworks, so I'm curious to try this method out.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/18297406

Tuning pegs for musical instruments are commonly made from ebony or boxwood, but in medieval times and renaissance they would also be made from roasted maple. Maple is a relatively soft wood, so the trick is to roast it, which makes it very light and porous, and then let it soak in a mixture of linseed oil and turpentine overnight. It soaks the oil in like a sponge, going from swimming on the surface to sinking to the ground when it's saturated. The oil hardens and reinforces the wood, kind of like epoxy stabilised wood.

I may eventually live with someone that has two cats. I'll definitely want this if that time comes.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33437741

cat tax first

Hey everyone,

It’s me again – the person with the two ridiculously hungry cats, Candy and Poppy.

First off, I just wanted to say a massive thank you. A while back, I shared my little side project, cancateat.food, and I was honestly blown away by how many of you checked it out and gave me such smart feedback. It was genuinely awesome.

I basically treated all your comments as a to-do list, and I've been tinkering away ever since. I’m pretty excited to share what I've been up to, all thanks to you:

So, about plants... A ton of you pointed out, "What about plants?! My cat tries to eat my ferns!" and you were totally right. It was a blind spot. So, I buckled down and managed to add over 1,000 plants to the database, most with pictures. Hopefully this helps when you spot them chewing on something they shouldn’t.

Food Search

Food Detail

"What if it's not on the list?" Another brilliant idea you had. I've now added a "Food Request" button in the corner. If you search for something and I don't have it, just click that, pop it into the sheet, and I'll get it researched and added. It’s our way of building this thing together.

Food Request

And yeah, I fixed the clunky stuff. Remember that annoying extra click you had to do after searching? It’s gone. I smoothed out a bunch of other little things you guys pointed out. Thanks for the honest feedback on that!

I just want to repeat that this is still my little project, born from a moment of panic in my kitchen. It's for us. So, it's still 100% free, with no ads, no sign-ups, and no creepy tracking. Just a tool from one cat person to another.

Anyway, I’d love for you to take another look and tell me what you think. I hope it’s even more useful now.

You can find it here: cancateat.food

A pretty powerful FOSS pixel art editor that I should try some day

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33900671

Saving this for future game ideas

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24242883

Gave my old WMR headset to a friend, so it's nice to know they can still use it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/36956097

The Oasis driver arrives just under one year after Microsoft started rolling out Windows 11 24H2, which completely removed support for Windows MR. This meant Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung PC VR headset owners could no longer use their headset at all, not even on Steam, since Windows MR had its own runtime and only supported SteamVR through a shim.

Matthieu Bucchianeri's Oasis solves this problem, for free. Oasis is a native SteamVR driver for Windows MR headsets, adding direct SteamVR support. No other software is required, except for SteamVR itself.

I've never binded a book before, but I thought this would be good to save if I happen across someone that does.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/40814350

There's a few 3D printable corner cut jigs out there. I designed my own for three main reasons:

1. There's a little ruler on the side to mark the width of the fold-over section of the cloth
2. It's parametric (using OpenSCAD), so you can customize various sizes (spacing from corner, various thicknesses, size of ruler, etc.)
3. I like to model stuff myself because it's fun.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/2000894-corner-cut-jig-with-ruler-for-bookbinding#profileId-2154412