EV Club of CT Webinar co-presented with PACE on Tue May 19 2026 7 pm-8 pm Eastern
This Innovative Energy Solutions (IES) funded pilot is happening right here in Connecticut, and was approved by PURA (Public Utilities Regulatory Authority). They will provide 100 Stepwise Tap load management devices - hardware and installation included - at no cost to qualifying homeowners in Eversource and United Illuminating territory who want to upgrade from Level 1 to Level 2 EV charging. There are no income requirements. Quick Take Webinar Details Bios of Stepwise Presenters Backstory…
When rates doubled, I switched providers in one of 30 states where you can choose your rate
Feel free to share this article TinkerTry.com/lowerbill with your friends and family. Disclosure: In about a dozen years of content creation here a TinkerTry, I've never written any one article or produced one video that saved my readers and viewers so much money with just about 5 minutes of their time. This is thanks to our ability to choose our energy supplier. In this video, I give you step-by-step instructions. If you prefer words over visuals, written directions appear below. While the…
Technical discussion featuring installation considerations and owner's experience
Disclosure: Here's the Google Doc version of the presentation, complete with animations. Enjoy! Here's the PDF of the presentation, enjoy! My wife and I recently moved into a 33-year-old house, and our two EVs moved with us. We decided to remove the 33-year-old natural gas furnace, choosing to go all in on heat pumps for cooling, heating, and hot water. Between the EVs and the heat pumps, we needed a lot more room for circuit breakers, with hopes to eventually add solar and battery…
Tech tour featured on Undecided with Matt Ferrell!
Thirty-three-year-career Architect and Developer Bruce Becker was the President of the EV Club of Connecticut for many years, and we are both part of the small leadership team that met up at his just-barely-opened technological marvel called the Hotel Marcel back in June of 2022. Bruce graciously gave us the full facility tour, and I think it's safe to say we were all amazed. I've featured Bruce in other articles, and I quite enjoy diving into the nerdier details of how he adopts newer…
Featured on Undecided with Matt Ferrell
Here's Matt's popular new video with over half a million views in its first week alone. It features a wonderful set of animations that really drive his points home in a powerful way, in a small amount of your valuable time. Feel free to leave your comments below this article or his video. Enjoy! When figuring out where the most cost savings are in running your home, it can be difficult to know where to start, especially if the focus is also on moving away from fossil fuels. For my wife and I,…
On April 14 2022, Insteon ceased all sales and service operations and shut off their cloud, as was first covered by Stacey on IoT here. Contrary to some very dire looking headlines, this cloud service suspension didn't actually brick all existing devices, and many simple devices like light switches continuing to work just fine. My own home's sunset/midnight/sunrise programs are all still running fine for now, at least until the next Daylight Saving Time change on November 6 2022 here in the US.…
It's already been 5 years since my article about the first generation Ring Video Doorbell Pro: My Ring Video Doorbell story starts a new chapter with Ring Video Doorbell Pro Apr 29 2016 and it's been in daily use on my home ever since. After moving from a 16V to 24V transformer when first getting started, it's been largely a decent experience, and it's most definitely improved my peace of mind when receiving packages. What's changed that caught enough of my attention to pre-order the 2nd…
If you'd like to run a speed test on your client devices (phones, computers, laptops, etc.) to test your network speeds, there are many available resources, including www.speedtest.net. We typically check more than one speed test service, if possible, to ensure that your results are accurate. Please keep this in mind as you read the article below. In follow-on realworld testing in my home, the actual speeds measured from the speedtest.net app on my iPhone 12 Pro Max are roughly 350 Mbps down…
Unfortunately, the mFi line got to the end of the road back in 2017, see is MFI dead?. That doesn't mean it doesn't mean it stopped working, but support sure is gone. This is unfortunate, and the Ubiquiti name is still generally beloved, it's just that this particular product line has run out of support. I quite liked the ethernet connection and built-in simple web UI, no need for complexity when I brought this on the road with me a few dozen times at user groups, starting in 2016 and 2017.…
Its quiet heat pump also dehumidifies and cools my basement, plus WiFi built in
December 2022 Update - What to do if you get a noisy Rheem/Ruud heat pump water heater May 22 2022 by Sherry Listgarten at Palo Alto Online May 16 2022 Update - Article as it originally appeared below I've written many articles about various ways I've been trying to reduce my family's electric bills and carbon footprint. For many households in the US, water heaters are one of the top 3 energy consumers in their home, right behind heat and air conditioning for monthly utility costs. It…
If you find value in the article and/or video below, please consider using one of these links when buying your own Ring Stick Up Cam, available in black or white with wired, solar, and battery-powered versions at Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from (non-affiliate-link) ring.com. This is not a sponsored post, and I bought the product to use in my home, recording 4K video unboxing and initial configuration, and blogging about using the product, much as I've done for several informal Ring reviews…
If you find value in the article and/or video below, please consider using one of these links when buying your own Ring Alarm Home Security System, available now on Amazon, Best Buy, and directly from (non-affiliate-link) ring.com. My first Ring products were the Ring Video Doorbell and the Ring Pro Video Doorbell back in the summer of 2016, which had some issues initially, but worked out quite well in the end. I even bought a Ring Spotlight Cam last year, so my family was already accustomed to…
Shop This Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite (aka, UBNT ERLite-3) is available at Amazon, B&H, Newegg, and Wiredzone. These are affiliate links, full disclosure below. Product Page Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite EdgeOS User Guide ubnt.com/downloads/guides/edgemax/EdgeOS_UG.pdf EdgeRouter Datasheet ubnt.com/downloads/datasheets/edgemax/EdgeRouter_DS.pdf Firmware Download EdgeRouter ERLite-3/ERPoe-5 Firmware v1.9.1.1 Status Update The ERLite-3 has been around since 2013, still pictured in it's…
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite Available at Amazon, B&H, and Newegg for under $90 USD. Which EdgeRouters? There are other members of the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter family that use this same v1.9.1 firmware, so this article likely applies to those folks as well, including: ERLite-3 and ERPoe-5 ER-8, ERPro-8, and EP-R8 ER-X, ER-X-SFP, and EP-R6 Backstory Within about 30 seconds of getting all my Windows and Linux PCs and VMs talking to each other on a firstname (short name) basis last summer, I fell…
Most of the on-sale items featured in this article are about products I've blogged about extensively. None are perfect, but they are quite good. If you read the articles, at least you will be a well-informed shopper. A few of links in this article are affiliate links that help keep the lights on and reviews going at TinkerTry, at zero cost to you. Full disclosure appears below every article. US dollar prices, not sure which of these offers is available outside of the US. READ THE REVIEWS First,…
In case you hadn't spotted this yet, Ring made an announcement on their blog: #AlwaysHome, Even from Your Desktops May 02 2016 by Yul at Ring featuring a nice functionality overview of the free apps, and download links for the Windows and Mac App stores. I've been using the Windows version on Windows 10 Anniversary edition for about a month now, without incident. It just works. When somebody is at my door, it's faster when the app pops up, versus taking my phone out of my pocket to unlock it.…
The eero 3 Pack is available at Amazon, Best Buy, or eero for ~$500 USD. The Luma 3 pack is available at Amazon, Best Buy, or Luma for ~$400 USD. Backstory It's been 3 years since my family moved up to 802.11ac with the careful decision to go with the Linksys EA6900 AC1900 Dual-Band Wi-Fi router. Routine admin tasks like port forwarding changes didn't cause it to reboot, keeping the household's family internet going, uninterrupted. Netgear and Asus competitors would require nearly a minute of…
Ever wonder if there's an affordable power strip that you could add to your home network that would give you insight into the power usage of up to 8 devices, and allow remote power on/off operations? If you're willing to tolerate a bit of initial setup pain that requires a back-level Java and a firmware upgrade, you'll be rewarded with a solid built-in web server that will do nicely for basic watt use and power toggling, as seen pictured at top-right in the screenshot below. This will likely…
There's a lot of great content coming up soon. To keep up to date, subscribe to the TinkerTry Weekly digest. After Nest, what came next? The ecobee3 thermostat, with remote room motion and temperature sensors. Here's my latest updates on my 1 year of ownership, featuring a new video where I demonstrate the simple process of ecobee3 and iOS 10 Homekit pairing, along with a successful Siri integration test. My ecobee3 HomeKit WiFi thermostat with remote motion/temperature sensors makes…
It's been a bit of a rough week for IoT. On a recent Home Gadget Geeks podcast, I was lamenting the fact that home WiFi routers don't yet have a way to isolate all your cloud connected IoT gear off onto their own subnet, since such consumer tech tends to eventually succumb to various firmware vulnerabilities that don't get patched. Instead of fixing what they got, companies tend to instead encourage owners to simply upgrade to the latest and greatest and patched products. Let's hope Ring…
Amazon - Ring Video Doorbell Pro Best Buy - Ring - Video Doorbell Pro Home Depot - Ring Video Doorbell Pro ring.com/pro. I like the idea of the Ring Video Doorbell, having read many articles, and pored over dozens of the thousands of Amazon reviews. I also had heard months of podcast mentions, and the excellent recent interview of founder/inventor Jamie Siminoff by Jim Collison @jimcollison of the Home Gadget Geeks podcast. I knew full well that I might run into some early adopter…
. Order The ecobee3 with homekit is available at Apple Store, Amazon, Best Buy, ecobee shop, Home Depot, and Lowe's. Review If you have multiple members of your household that are home at various times of the day, then you likely have some familiarity with inevitable temperature preference skirmishes. If you have multiple rooms in your home, then you likely also experience conflicts, especially if you have a bunch of computer gear in your home office, for example. Would a Nest Learning…
Ok, now this looks more interesting than the little Hub II ever did. Apple Homekit-enabled. Easier to set schedules. Extended RF range, using a mere 2 watts of power. Sounds like a significant step up from the existing Insteon Hub that's been running my home automation faithfully since Dec 2012. If I'm going to rip and replace my controller, but leave all my modules in place, this sounds much more worth my while. See also the many reasons I'm happy with my Insteon investment in the TinkerTry e…
June 2013: I had the opportunity to talk about my home automation tinkering with my CES 2012 friend Mike Faucher, over on his podcast, BYOB Episode 125 “Home Automation”. Another guest on that very same episode was Richard Gunther, from The Digital Media Zone. Very grateful for that opportunity. We all had good fun reminiscing about X10, then the joy of being free of X10, and finally, the potential future of Insteon, in each of our homes. August 2013: My next brush with the DMZ crew was with C…
TinkerTry - PCs, EVs, home tech, efficiency and more, including virtualization. My opinions here. Full-time IT Professional, occasional consultant.
Paul Braren, MCSE in 1998, VCP #2681 in 2005, vExpert 2014 to 2025, Veeam Vanguard Emeritus, 2015 to 2019.
Project Manager of my All-Electric Home Retrofit
Easily update VMware ESXi at TinkerTry.com/easy-update-to-latest-esxi
Source - Below paragraphs generated by this comprehensive Perplexity Deep Research report that includes information from 43 sources including Wikipedia - Enshittification:
Why This Exemplifies Enshittification
- Initial Value: VMware initially built goodwill by offering reliable, feature-rich virtualization products and VMUG Advantage, which provided significant value to users.
- Business User Phase: Broadcom prioritized enterprise/hyperscaler customers, extracting more revenue from them while degrading the experience for smaller users (perpetual license elimination, steep subscription costs, discontinued free products).
- Shareholder Phase: The rapid transition to subscriptions and price increases align with maximizing short-term shareholder value, potentially at the long-term expense of the platform's broader ecosystem.
...
The VMware situation perfectly illustrates what one industry observer described as "the classic case of enshittification—where a platform degrades in value to the user to extract maximum value for the shareholder". Even if Broadcom were to reverse course, "the trust is gone" and "the threat of future audits and contract changes remains".
Mar 01, 2026 at 1:23 AM UTC
"Sorry this comment slipped by me as I was in the midst of implementing a way to post comments even for users that say no to cookies. I'm using Supermicro's built-in iKVM feature: https://t..."
Feb 02, 2026 at 6:44 PM UTC
"Thank you for the backup process. I followed the video and everything worked as expected. I was wondering if you could share some information on the tool you use to have a VNC-like connection to you..."
Jan 04, 2026 at 3:12 AM UTC
TinkerTry's 2025 Home Tech Refresh
"This is a simple test of TinkerTry.com new improved handling of Disqus, and it uses the new API and lazy and deferred loading wherever possible. Disqus comments have returned to the sidebar area of al..."
Nov 18, 2025 at 4:29 AM UTC
How to easily update your VMware ESXi Hypervisor to the latest version with one ESXCLI command
"so on an existing installation is not possible to update it? i couldnt even figure out how to create the tokens lol i dont have that option i think on the dashboard..."
Nov 18, 2025 at 4:24 AM UTC
Download all the VMware vSphere 5.5 pieces to get your home lab started
"I cannot do that. I run a legit site, and I have no special access to the code anyway since I don’t work for Broadcom."
Nov 18, 2025 at 4:23 AM UTC
How to easily update your VMware ESXi Hypervisor to the latest version with one ESXCLI command
"It is quite frustrating. While I managed to get the free ESXi 8U3e hypervisor installed (new install only) with a license that doesn’t expire, you still need a token to even patch it the easy way: h..."
Nov 16, 2025 at 8:44 PM UTC
How to easily update your VMware ESXi Hypervisor to the latest version with one ESXCLI command
"i m trying to find the way to generate the tokens etc but i m confused with broadcom....i think its about the time to start migrating to different platform...."
Jul 29, 2025 at 6:08 PM UTC
Download all the VMware vSphere 5.5 pieces to get your home lab started
"Hello, I need help with the vCenter installer. Could you make it available in some drive so I can download it? I have the license and need to activate it to work in an old environment."
Jul 29, 2025 at 6:07 PM UTC
Download all the VMware vSphere 5.5 pieces to get your home lab started
"Olá preciso de ajuda com o instalador do vCenter, poderiam me disponibiliar em algum drive para que eu possa fazer o download? Eu possuo a licença e preciso ativar para trabalhar em um antigo ambien..."
Jul 20, 2025 at 4:22 PM UTC
How to resolve “This virtual machine appears to be in use” error in VMware Workstation
"Still works, using VMware 17.6.3"
Jun 11, 2025 at 7:51 PM UTC
How to easily update your VMware ESXi Hypervisor to the latest version with one ESXCLI command
"I sourced the update zip from a third-party website and ran the following commands. The update seem to have gone fine. I suggest verifying the checksum of the file if you go down that route, as an ext..."
Jun 05, 2025 at 4:57 PM UTC
TinkerTry Supermicro SuperServer Bundles - powerful and efficient virtualization home labs
"I have not, as I moved homes and got rid of everything old, and I tend to avoid eBay stuff partly for support and energy use reasons. It’s amazing that I’m still running both of my SuperServers t..."
Jun 05, 2025 at 8:19 AM UTC
How to easily update your VMware ESXi Hypervisor to the latest version with one ESXCLI command
"Yes. It can be downloaded from the Broadcom site. It is under Free Downloads and comes with a Free license integrated in the ISO. https://support.broadcom.com/group/ecx/free-downloads"
Jun 05, 2025 at 2:56 AM UTC
How to easily update your VMware ESXi Hypervisor to the latest version with one ESXCLI command
"I admit I haven't looked into that, but I appreciate you dropping that idea my way here on TinkerTry! I'm doing much of the same soul searching and tech solution searching that many others are likely ..."
Jun 04, 2025 at 8:41 PM UTC
How to easily update your VMware ESXi Hypervisor to the latest version with one ESXCLI command
"Is there a way to upgrade with the full ISO without overwriting the currently installed license? It wouldn't be a total loss if we could somehow mount the ISO and use a command like below to upg..."
May 28, 2025 at 11:33 AM UTC
TinkerTry Supermicro SuperServer Bundles - powerful and efficient virtualization home labs
"This was such an insightful look back at the impressive legacy of these Supermicro Xeon D bundles! It's remarkable how these compact yet powerful systems served the homelab community so well for ..."
Allan Tygert
Mar 01, 2026 at 3:58 PM UTC
USB Image Tool for Windows easily backs up and restores your complete VMware ESXi hypervisor on USB or SD drives, a simp
"Thank you."