How to correct sensors information with Home Assistant

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Some of the smart power plugs I’m using to monitor power usage appear to report incorrect information when viewed in Home Assistant through the Tuya bridge. The information is fine directly in the Tuya app, so the app is probably doing some data processing behind the hood.
Unfortunately, there’s no way of correcting this directly in the entities as managed by Home Assistant. To display (and use) the right sensors values in HA we need to (manually) create some aliases and mathematically correct the values.

How to update BIOS on AMD Ryzen motherboard – the hard(ware) way

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As we know AMD motherboards need BIOS updates to support new generations of Ryzen CPUs. This can normally be done using a recognized older gen CPU to power on the board and access the built-in BIOS updater function.

When there’s no older gen CPU around to use or you’re simply in the mood for some hardware tinkering, you can get your elbows dirty (figuratively, since the board is brand new and not dusty yet) using an EEPROM programmer.

How to adjust TLER value on hard disk (for data recovery)

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In case the hard disk itself is taking too long to respond, some operations will fail and can cause the controller (software or hardware) to drop the disk out of the RAID.
Even when no RAID is used, the hard disk itself can still spend too much time retrying a (failing) read, causing unwanted delays and possible further damage.

To alleviate this, you can try to use a feature called TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) or CCTL (Command Completion Time Limit).

How to install OPNSense on PCEngines’ APU2

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I have been looking for a good alternative which could handle my gigabit internet connection and I believe I made a good choice going with PCEngine’s APU2 embedded system.

I tried following various tutorials dedicated for installing both pfSense and OPNsense on this device, however they didn’t quite work on the APU (or in my case), so I tried a personal method which proved successful.

Recovering ASUS Fonepad 7 (K012 / FE170CG) from boot loop error

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There comes a time in a tablet’s life when firmware crashes and needs recovery (due to events beyond the user’s control, of course, such as OTA updating a rooted firmware).

In such times the unwritten details (like procedures and filenames) are what separate a brick from a successful recovery.

DVB-C TV on Raspberry PI with LibreELEC/Kodi

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There are plenty of TVs to chose from and nowadays they all know DVB-C so why go through all the trouble of building a TV player with a Raspberry PI?

Well… because it’s fun and because of the freedom of being able to watch your favourite TV channel on any of your devices – even when away.

Switching Huawei E3131 Hilink to modem mode

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Latest Huawei 3G/4G modems come with firmware that implements a feature Huawei calls “HiLink“, transforming the classical PPP dial-up connection to an always-on wireless broadband. This feature is highly useful on Windows operating systems, but will add an extra level of complexity to using the modem on Linux or in …

Samsung Galaxy S III I9300 digitizer/screen replacement

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Did you drop your Samsung Galaxy S3 i9300 and crack, smash or shatter your front glass, touch screen and/or LCD? No worries. With the proper tools, the spare parts and a bucket load of patience you will have your phone looking “like new” in no time.

Obtaining administrator access on Huawei HG8247H

Hardware / Technology   / / / / 22 Comments

My ISP upgraded my connection from VDSL to fiber and gave me new hardware to go with it – the Huawei HG8247H GPON. However, as I am already using a fully configured DDWRT-ed router for all my networking tasks, I needed to turn the Huawei into a media converter and pass the static IP to my second router – not the easiest task as it appears.

The Huawei my ISP uses comes with manufacturer firmware and blank configuration so the default logins of still work, but as soon as its WAN gets connected it grabs the configuration from the ISP and the administrator login changes.