Photos Latest Purchases Thread: v2.0

Reading the last few posts makes me happy for two reasons. Firstly that I don't have or want any Apple or Amazon devices and secondly, that I don't care about TV and films.

 

I've still got one, although it lives in the drawer of old phones and rarely comes out to play

 

Like a massive sadact, mine is still on my desk. The charger is still plugged into the wall.

 

That makes me sad

 

Nice - Still got my classic PSP on my desk too! Although my V3's black.

 

I have a Nokia E71 and a HTC Magic kicking about... wishing I had kept hold of my Nokia phones from before those though... 8850, 8890, 8800, 8910i, 9210i... so many memberberries

Topical to video and "just working", hoping this latest purchase does...





Unifi 2TB NVR and a pair of cameras to directly replace my Hikvision cameras and share on the server.
The cost of the NVR has caused much deliberation, but decided in the end it's worth it for having an entirely separate appliance. At least it had better be.

 

Return train ticket to the airport, because cheaper than airport parking.

 

Good Choice. I am a fan of their kit, I am hoping to grab a couple of cameras next year and i will probably just make a vm for the video software instead of the NVr but thats just me

 

IME the Unifi camera/NVR stuff does tend to 'just work'. We've sold a couple and they've seemed fairly straight forward.

 

This is the main thing that made me take pause about the NVR. On balance though, I think rolling my own is the root of my problems at the moment. I've had the occasional hiccup with my current setup and it seems to come down to sharing hardware. E.g. just last weekend a neighbour mentioned picking up some shady characters skulking about on their CCTV. I go to check mine and no recordings. For weeks. I rejigged some storage a bit ago and moved where those particular shares lived, and apparently in doing so the cameras got their knickers in a twist and were no longer recording. It was a simple fix, just a reboot of the cameras, but that can't fix any missing footage. Having a physically separate device also means I can hide it away somewhere, which makes me warmer and fuzzier.

In the same way, I always used a VM for the Unifi controller, until one day I ran into catch 22, needing to log into the controller to configure a switch, but needing to configure the switch before I could access the controller VM. Queue much faffing about, and a Prime'd Cloud Key.

I think the Hikvision cameras themselves are excellent, it's just my particular implementation that's not terribly reliable. A colleague has 7 of them recording to a Synology with surveillance station and he says it's been bulletproof. I've had a few occasions since having the Hikvisions where simply pointing them at a CIFS share has resulted in missed recordings. Granted it's only been twice in two years, but by nature it's something you only check if you need the footage, which isn't really a good time to find out it went wrong.

This is good - my reckoning was that a great deal of Unifi kit gets thrown into small businesses that have zero technical know-how, by installers whose margin quickly disappears if they have to fix things. The video might not be as high quality as the Hikvisions, but I'd rather have footage of something in 1080p, than no footage at all... even if it's just the neighbour's cat.

 

Show me an Android phone manufacturer - besides Google - which still supports their devices with timely patches and OS updates for as long as Apple does and I'll happily reconsider. In my experience with Android, even with major manufacturers, support is dropped like a sack of crap after 2-3 years at most (if not sooner). After that it's on me to install custom firmware - assuming my device is supported and all the drivers work - and pray that whichever firmware project I choose is actually going to be around for more than a few months. The iPhone 5S however will be supported by iOS 12, a full five years after its release; assuming that support is dropped in iOS 13 (which is likely) then by the time that rolls around next year the iPhone 5S will have been officially supported for six years.

Plus, no one else makes smaller phones any more. I don't want a whopping great 5", 6", 7", etc, slab of glass in my pocket, no matter how small the bezels are. The iPhone SE is still on sale and it is IMO the perfect size for a phone.

 

They definitely seem to have, for now at least, got the mindset of designing the UI so it's not a complete trainwreck and it doesn't take hours to pick up and learn.

And Byron, yeah. Phones are too big. Even with my ham-sized hands I think the Oneplus 3tx..z..q4? I have is over size. As for iPhones.. Show me one that has consistently worked as a phone - The primary motivation for a phone - and I'll reconsider my opinion of them as trash. My bosses have had iPhones going back to the 3gs, and not one of them has made a successful call from their car in.. Ever. They've all, at random points, decided not to ring at all only to bleep a few minutes later because someone's left a voice mail. I had a 3G and a 4, and both were trash-level in the one function I wanted from my phone - Phone.

That's not to say Android or anything else is strictly better, and you're right, the support is garbage, but at least I'm not expected to dance to Apple's hymn sheet with regards to tweaking the trash.

Bring back the V3, the 3310, and maybe the 3330.

 

Edit:wtf happened there... bear with me...

 

I've never had a problem with calls, but it's the one thing I use my "phone" for the least!

I am honestly considering going to a feature phone and getting a tablet with a data plan for my next "mobile data" device.

 

Sadly, 'phone' is the only function I really want from a mobile device these days - And it's by far the most neglected function. It still makes me laugh that way back when Apple told the users they were using the phone wrong when they made a phone call and had to hold it a specific way. I mean really, come on now. You sell a mobile phone and it barely works as a phone? At what point is it just a mobile internet portal, not a communication device?

Bleh. I'm old (Not really, but) and bitter about having a slab of expensive metal and glass as a required item for being alive in this day and age.

 

A 200lb gripper to go with my older 100lb.

Spoiler

RRRR...can't close!

 

I really CBA dealing with eBay muppetery.