Wcetesting Co / How-to
I get this question a lot: can you reach your Home Assistant instance from outside your home network without handing your keys to a cloud vendor or paying for a managed VPN? Short answer: yes. There...
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I wanted a private, low-cost way to store footage from my smart home cameras without paying for cloud subscriptions or trusting a third-party service. What I ended up building is a simple local...
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I’m going to show you how I get Pixel 8a–level night and astrophotography results from a budget Android phone by shooting RAW and manually stacking frames. I do this on phones that don’t have...
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I’ve moved Sonos setups between accounts more times than I care to admit while testing multi-room audio workflows — and every time the same questions come up: how do I keep my playlists, my...
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I run my home automation from a Raspberry Pi that acts as my smart home hub (Home Assistant). One of the most annoying problems I’ve solved by now is keeping that hub and my Wi‑Fi router running...
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If you want a smart home camera setup that reliably records clear faces at night — without paying for a cloud subscription or hauling a bulky NVR into your living room — I’ve built and tested...
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I’ve been experimenting with Chromebooks as lightweight, secure editing stations for a while, and I want to share a workflow that lets you build a secure, offline media workstation capable of...
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I recently spent an afternoon putting a refurbished Samsung Galaxy S24 through a full hardware checklist before deciding whether to buy it. If you’re considering a refurbished flagship—especially...
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I spend a lot of time testing GPS performance on running devices because distance and pace are only useful if the location data behind them is reliable. Recently I ran a series of real-world checks...
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I’m going to walk you through how I built a fully local smart home voice assistant that controls Zigbee lights while keeping cameras and other sensitive devices offline. This isn’t about a...
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