HPR4729: Living under a rock

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Living under a rock

Living under a rock and feeling completely out of touch with everyone else.

I rarely buy new items unless I have to due to me being a tight Scotsman however recently I have bought a few new items and their performance surprised me somewhat and made me feel a little like I’ve been living under a rock. I thought this would make a good topic for an HPR show.

SSD 256GB USB stick (Refer to picture 1 and 2)

Wikipedia article about SSD’s
This is my first ever SSD, its made by Netac
It is a double ended USB thumb drive with a USB A one side and USB C the other.
I couldn’t believe how fast it was on my Mac; copying a 700MB file seemed almost instantaneous.
I couldn’t actually believe it had copied the file and thought it had been an error!
I tried it on my old PC running Ubuntu and was getting 40MB/sec write speed!
Even more surprising was copying files between a USB hard drive and the SSD usb stick, with both connected to my Raspberry Pi. This was achieving a sustained write speed of 60MB/Sec.
I’ve never seen anything faster than 40MB/Sec.
I think I’ve been living under a rock for a number of years while the rest of the world moved on!
My only concern with this technology is that I am not totally convinced about the long term reliability of SSDs. The SSD is great for transferring files back and fourth to different devices however for now I’ll stick to spinning hard drives on my PC for long term storage as speed is not so important to me.

Picture above shows my new Netac USB SSD stick

Picture above shows how the USB SSD stick opens

LED Lantern (Refer to pictures 3)

This LED Lantern was recommended by my mother
We purchased it from Tesco’s.
Tescos in the UK is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer
I think it only cost me £8.40. (UK pounds)
It even came with AA batteries !
The LED Lantern is 9 inches x 3.5 inches
The light output is phenomenal. It is diffused and fills a good-sized room with light.
It has a low output mode, which is still very usable and will increase the running time.
It also has a flashing option, which is likely only useful in an emergency.
I think the reason they were selling them so cheap was that the date code of the included AA alkaline batteries was almost out of date.
Alkaline batteries can have a very long shelf life.

Picture above shows the new LED latern that I bought from Tescos Super Store in the UK

Laser printer HP M209dw (Refer to picture 4)

Wikipedia article about laser printers
Wikipedia article about inkjet printers
I needed to replace my old Epson inkjet printer with a new printer as it recently failed after 20 years of use! I covered the failure of my old printer in HPR episode HPR4552
My new printer is an HP M209dw
I'm finding it really nice to have crisp, clear, trouble-free printing again.
It’s also very nice that the printer does double-sided (duplex) printing.
I’ve been putting my new printer to good use printing out various SSH documentation to help me try and solve an SSH problem I’m having.
As of May 2026 i’ve now had the printer about 6 months and according to the printer I’ve used about 50% of the toner cartridge.
I believe it may be necessary at some point to remove the cartridge and gently rock it in order to use up all the remaining toner. I’m slightly nervous of doing this as I'm concerned it could prove messy.
Time will tell how long the cartridge ultimately lasts and how much a new toner cartridge will cost. I also think it unlikely that this printer will last 20 years like my last Epson printer. Come to think of it I might not last that long either. :)

New Raspberry Pi4 server install

Wikipedia article about the raspberry pi 4.
Current stumbling block is SSH .
My new raspberry pi 4 is running an up to date distribution. This distribution has a corresponding up to date version SSH . This newer version of SSH is refusing to connect to another raspberry pi running an old distribution.
I can’t update the distribution on the older raspberry pi because it has a PiFace command and display add-on board which I covered in HPR episodes hpr2933 , hpr2951 , hpr2963 , hpr2976 . The drivers for this board are not available on an up to date raspberry pi Linux distribution.
Getting the driver software installed for the add on PiFace command and display board on and up to date raspberry pi Linux distribution is non trivial.
I also need to be able to make this work in the other direction. ie the old pi needs to be able to SSH into the new pi. This is proving tricky.
I did a search within the SSH release notes and found over 20 references to possible incompatibilities between the latest version of SSH and the old version of SSH running on my PiFace Raspberry pi!

Car tyre problems

Mrs. X’s car had a long-standing tyre problem.
The air pressure in one of her front tyres kept going down.
This caused a warning light on the dashboard to come on.
At first, it was taking a long time for the light to come on after it was pumped up.
Over time the leak got worse and the light came on more quickly after the tyre was inflated.
We eventually took her car to our local garage; they couldn’t find the fault.
The tyre leak continued to get worse.
We eventually took the car to a car tyre specialist called Farmer Autocare near Medowbank in Edinburgh Scotland. They discovered that air was leaking from the tyre valve.
They informed us that they were unable to repair the tyre because it was fitted with a TPMS “Tyre Pressure Monitoring System” .
They said that the tyre valve had a sensor and this couldn’t be separated from the tyre valve and that we would need to go to one of their specialist branches that can replace this. This would require a new sensor which would need to be reprogrammed. They warned us the repair could be expensive.
The following week, we visited the specialist Farmers Autocare in Corstorphine Edinburgh. They took a closer look and found that it was actually leaking around the edge of the valve. They ground down any corrosion around the alloy wheel, refitted the valve and added sealant.
In the end, the repair bill ended up being very reasonable.
We were warned that each of the four valves has a battery installed and that they have a finite lifespan and that due to the age of the car, any one of the four batteries could fail at any time.
Each of the valves would be expensive to replace!
I guess this is the price you pay for the complexity in modern cars.

Kindle pre 2013 No longer supported by Amazon

I have one of the affected devices. It’s a pre 2013 Kindle 4 .
It was the last model before they brought in a touch screen. My wife complains about her newer model with a touch screen. She preferred the earlier model like mine.
In an email Amazon said they were glad we had enjoyed using our kindle for a long time. Going forward we can no longer purchase books from Amazon as they are cutting Kindle Store access.
What surprised me most was that the email stated that a factory reset of the Kindle would make the device unusable for good!
I was under the impression that I can still download books manually from Amazon. However this may not be true as I noted down the following comment from somewhere. Unfortunately I can’t remember where:

The statement 'You can still log into Amazon’s “Manage Your Content and Devices” page on the web, download your owned Kindle books as files, and transfer them manually via USB.' is not really true. There is no longer (in April 2026) any "download" facility on that page, even for titles I "own". That's the whole point.

During the episode I refer to the fictitious TV character Victor Meldrue from the UK TV show “ One Foot In The Grave ” whose catch phrase was “I don’t believe it!”.

Roku streaming stick Feb 2026

Our old Google Chromecast started to become very buggy and slow. This is an old model that you use by casting programs from your phone or tablet device.
My mother has a newer version of the Google Chromecast . When I visited her I also found this a bit slow and buggy.
I previously tried replacing our Google Chromecast with an Apple TV streaming box costing over £100!
I found this frustrating as some of my existing apps would not cast to my Apple TV streaming box.
I promptly returned the Apple TV streaming box to Amazon for a full refund.
Mrs X came up with the idea of buying a Roku streaming stick.
I knew very little about Roku and didn’t expect to be much good due to the low price (£27 UK).
We bought the Roku Streaming stick plus 4K HDR
This is a streaming device similar to a Google Chromecast and Amazon’s Firestick
We have found it extremely good value at only £27 (UK)
The remote control is excellent and also controls all the TV major functions like volume & turning the TV off and on.
The interface seems very responsive and I can cast all my apps from my phone and tablet to it with no problems.
The only negative thing I have found is that it seems to have stopped my TV remote working with Kodi . I have Kodi running on a raspberry pi under my TV. This works by sending the remote control signals received by the TV and passing them to the raspberry pi via the HDMI cable connected to the TV. These control signals are sent using CEC . My hunch is that during the Roku installation it has upgraded or reconfigured the CEC on my TV stopping it from now controlling Kodi . Luckily this is not too much of a problem as I don’t use Kodi very often these days and I can also control Kodi using an old Xbox remote control and Xbox infrared Sensor that I have plugged into my raspberry pi.

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