Review: LED Headlamp

I've written in the past about having a variety of flashlights and when I came across this headlamp, I had to give it a try. I actually stumbled upon it from a spammy ad for a similar product; given that there were a number of products that looked identical, I decided to purchase the cheapest with the idea that they all came from the same factory and I was probably correct.

Lately I've been walking the dog when it is dark (I've run out of time during the day and the dog needs a walk), so I was interested in what would make it easier to see at night. I found that other headlamps were uncomfortable and were very directional with a very narrow beam. While some people swear by headlamps for camping and other activities, I've avoided them as much as possible as I found a flashlight to be easier to light my way.

This headlamp differs from other headlamps in that the main light is a strip of LEDs across the front and weighs significantly less than other lights. I've used it on a few walks and was amazed at how bright it was and how much it lit the path. There is a gimmicky feature on it that lets you wave your hand on the side of the light to turn it on and off (kind of like wax on/wax off). Turns out it is actually useful! My walk isn't in the complete dark, so I was easily able to turn the light off when not needed. However, the sensor is quite sensitive so if you're using it in an enclosed space, it will likely turn on and off as you move.

I haven't had a chance to see how long it lasts, so I can't confirm the runtime. It does charge pretty quickly over USB-C. Well, sort of. I was intrigued about USB-C charging so I connected a USB-C to USB-C cable to 2 different chargers and it didn't charge. The headlamp uses a USB-C connector, but doesn't actually use USB-C (it comes with a USB-A to USB-C cable for charging). That's a bit disappointing as I have to bring a different cable if I go camping.

Pros

• Light weight
• Wide beam

Cons

• Doesn't use real USB-C charging
• Hand waving sensor is gimmicky

Summary

This inexpensive headlamp is well worth the $10 I paid for it. While I hope that it lasts, I have no idea the longevity of it. I'm excited to take it on my next camping trip. While I would have designed it differently by removing the side sensor, putting the battery in the back and getting rid of the light on the side, it is good enough for my needs.

Relying on the cloud for home automation and monitoring

When I started getting into home automation 9 years ago, I decided to go with Z-Wave devices as it had the largest range of devices I could integrate into a system. Z-Wave communicates locally with a hub for automation and doesn't rely on the cloud to work. At the time I made this choice, there weren't many options let alone ones that relied on the cloud or apps to work. Fast forward a few years and there are a number of proprietary systems and apps that won't work without a connection to the cloud. This, of course, causes problems when the Internet is down, the provider is down, or the provider has gone out of business. Luckily my setups have never relied on the cloud (they have had some integrations for notifications and such, but the basic automations have been local).

Part of my home automation is monitoring power usage as well as solar production. When I had my SunPower system installed two years ago, I had researched how to monitor the system locally. I've written about my system and how I monitor it. While SunPower has their own app, I've never relied on it because it isn't integrated into the rest of my home automation setup. I was told by the installer that if there was ever a problem, they would be notified and would give me a call to come out and take a look. That shouldn't great, but I never really trusted that would happen as one of the panels wasn't activated when the system was turned on and because of my own monitoring, I alerted them to come out. I have no idea if they would have called me to fix the problem or I would have been out 1 panel of production.

If you follow the discussion of my article, you'll see that people have been reporting that the SunPower app isn't showing any data. I hadn't noticed, but checked and saw that the app hasn't recorded data for the last 1.5 months! Ouch. I don't know how SunPower or the installer monitors the system when it hasn't reported in, but I would have expected a call to fix the system. Luckily I don't rely on the app to see production. My nice dashboard in Home Assistant tells me production and usage without talking to the cloud. If my system had failed 1.5 months ago, it would cost me a significant amount of money and I would have been quite annoyed that SunPower didn't alert me.

I just used the app to change the device to connect via WiFi (it is still connected via wired Ethernet) and now the device says it is online. Will it work tomorrow when the sun is up? I don't know. Do I care? Not really as long as my non-cloud based system keeps working.

Side note

This year we may have turned a corner with relying on the cloud for various home automations. The Matter standard aims to join various systems and have local control over devices. Will this work out? I can only hope.

Eating my own words (again)

I've spent a little less than half my career self employed and the other half working for companies, so I'd like to think I know something about the pros and cons of both types of work. In the last two companies I worked, I said at the end of my tenure that I'd never work for anyone again and would always be self employed. That didn't work out for a number of reasons causing me to eat my words.

Being self employed sounds great as I didn't have a boss, no reviews, I could work my own schedule, and no one was looking over my shoulder. That was only partly true; as a contractor I always had to work on someone else's schedule and meet deadlines. In addition, I was sometimes the only person doing my type of work meaning I had to handle all the support, deal with all the issues, and sort of be on call all the time. Also any time I took off, I didn't get paid for meaning that it could be very costly (depending on the contract I could get paid for some vacation, but I always felt guilty about taking time off). Being self employed also means sending out invoices, hoping you get paid on time, stressing over raising rates, and crossing your fingers that your contract isn't terminated without notice.

One of the things that I missed when I was self employed last was working with other developers doing the same type of work, i.e. iOS or Mac development. This made it hard to learn new things as there was no one around to push me or show me better ways. No one was looking over my code and since I'm not perfect, I likely kept making the same mistakes over and over again.

This past April I started a new job and now work on a team with another 14 iOS developers. I pretty much learn something new everyday and know that I'm not alone when it comes to figuring out problems or tackling the work. Of course, I do my best at work, but it is much easier to leave work at the end of the day.

As much as being self employed sounded great, this change has been good to me and has lowered my stress. It has also given me opportunities to learn new skills and hone my existing ones.

Those words about never working for someone else sure tasted good!

Fixing Battery Drain in Kwikset Locks

Almost 10 years ago I installed Kwikset Z-Wave locks on our doors. They had been working well for years, but I noticed that the batteries drained faster than I had expected. I attributed this to buying refurbished or b stock locks and just tried to get batteries that lasted longer. Last December I decided to replace the locks with new ones that hopefully drained the batteries slower.

The locks appeared to drain slower initially, but I wasn't get the year out of a set of batteries that I had read others could get; I could get a few months. After one of the updates to Home Assistant, I noticed in the Logbook that it recorded Z-Wave commands. In the list of commands were a bunch of "lock" commands sent to one of the locks; about once every 30 seconds at night.

Ah ha! It finally dawned on me. In my Node-RED automations, I had it setup to lock the garage door lock at night if the door was closed. This was repeated every 30 seconds. I had thought that if the lock was locked, nothing would happen. That was not the case as Home Assistant happily sent the command causing the lock to wake up every 30 seconds. The fix was quite simple: before sending the lock command check the state of the lock as Home Assistant stored this without having to poll the lock. With this simple change I stopped seeing the Z-Wave lock command and knock on wood, the batteries are lasting longer!