A user reports their workstation keeps going to sleep “on its own.” Or someone claims they never left their desk, yet the session clearly disconnected. Answering these questions means digging through the Windows event log and correlating events across Security and System logs into one timeline. This script pulls seven distinct event IDs from two […]
Tracking User Lock, Unlock, and Sleep Events with PowerShell Read More »
Command & Conquer: Red Alert was one of the earliest computer games I ever played. That alone probably tells you a lot about how I feel going into this review. The remastered version* gave me a chance to go back and experience it again (not through fuzzy childhood memories, but as it actually exists today).
Command and Conquer Red Alert Remastered Review – A Nostalgic Return Done Right Read More »
I’ve been using the Google Pixel Buds Pro 2* for a little while now after spending a long time with both the original Pixel Buds and the first Pixel Buds Pro series. Since I already reviewed the original Pro series, I wanted to specifically talk about what has improved with the second generation and whether
Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 Review – A Worthy Upgrade Read More »
Windows Update breaks. Everyone knows this. Stuck update loops, error codes that don’t make sense, a client machine that hasn’t successfully installed patches in months. Microsoft’s official KB article for fixing Windows Update is a wall of 30+ manual steps. You have to stop services, rename folders, reset security descriptors, register DLLs, and restart everything
The Nuclear Option: A PowerShell Script to Reset Windows Update Completely Read More »
If you’re looking to ditch gas without sacrificing performance, the EGO LM2156SP self-propelled electric lawn mower* is one of the most compelling options on the market today. With impressive torque, long battery life, and user-friendly features, it’s built for homeowners who want a premium mowing experience (without the fumes, maintenance, or noise of traditional gas
EGO Power+ LM2156SP Review: A Powerful, Quiet (Mostly) Electric Mower Read More »
If you manage older UniFi environments, you’ve probably run into a frustrating issue: legacy Cloud Key Gen1 devices that are too outdated to connect to the UniFi Portal. This can leave you completely blind when trying to manage a client’s network. After working with many of these devices in production environments, here’s a practical, step-by-step
How to Reset and Update a UniFi Cloud Key Gen1 (Complete Guide) Read More »
I’ve been wanting to use AI to analyze my website, https://pibenchmarks.com, and uncover potential improvements (especially security issues) but without spending money on APIs or exposing my code to third-party services. This post walks through how I set up a fully local workflow using Ollama + Claude Code, running on my RTX 3090, to scan
Using Ollama + Claude Code for Local Security Audits (No API Costs) Read More »
External sharing is a compliance nightmare. Your 365 tenant has dozens of SharePoint sites, each with document libraries, and files are shared via links or direct invitations. The SharePoint admin center shows you a high-level sharing policy per site, but it won’t tell you which specific files are shared externally or with whom. I wrote
Auditing External File Sharing in Microsoft 365 with PowerShell Read More »
Despite the massive hype around AI I have always had a lot of trouble getting the AI to generate usable code. Even when I reply back and try to help the AI understand what it’s missing it often tends to actually get *worse* after my suggestions. Even for this simple project ChatGPT and Gemini failed
Making a Core Keeper Fishing Bot Using AI (Grok 3) Read More »
Pi Benchmarks has officially passed over 100,000 tests submitted! The site’s earliest tests started in early 2019 giving us over 5 years worth of real world testing by the single board computer (SBC) community across different boards.
Today we are going to cover the fastest combinations of hardware on the Raspberry Pi 5 to achieve the absolute highest storage scores and performance possible (and the top result *will* surprise you).
Let’s get started!
2024’s Fastest Raspberry Pi 5 Storage Benchmark Results Read More »
I recently went through the trouble of figuring out how to install Steam on the Orange Pi 5 and it worked really well. Now that I’ve already gone through the pain of figuring out how to do this I figured I might as well write one of these guides for the Radxa Rock 5B as well.
The new RK3588/RK3588S boards have much more power than we’ve typically had available to us in the past on ARM boards. With a whopping 8 CPU cores and a Mali 610 GPU the Orange Pi 5 is capable of running Steam using Box64/Box86. It’s even able to play basic games pretty well (with some tinkering usually).
In this guide I’ll show you how to set up Steam on the Radxa Rock 5B and run Stardew Valley on it. You should keep your expectations in line though because there is no native ARM client for Steam. We are using emulation and instruction translation. You will also likely be missing libraries for most games you try which will require some fiddling.
This guide is only for Armbian running the Ubuntu Jammy variant with the Gnome desktop installed (rolling support status). The official Radxa distributions will not have 3D support and I don’t care about whatever other flavor of Linux you are running either. I’m not going to install your preferred flavor of Linux and try to figure out how to do this on there nor am I interested in troubleshooting it. Please don’t ask.
With all of that being said let’s get started!
Radxa Rock 5B Steam Installation Guide for Armbian Read More »
The new RK3588/RK3588S boards have much more power than we’ve typically had available to us in the past on ARM boards. With a whopping 8 CPU cores and a Mali 610 GPU the Orange Pi 5 is capable of running Steam using Box64/Box86. It’s even able to play basic games pretty well (with some tinkering usually).
In this guide I’ll show you how to set up Steam on the Orange Pi 5 and run Stardew Valley on it. You should keep your expectations in line though because there is no native ARM client for Steam. We are using emulation and instruction translation. You will also likely be missing libraries for most games you try which will require some fiddling.
This guide is only for Armbian running the Ubuntu Jammy variant with the Gnome desktop installed only (platinum support status). The Orange Pi official distributions will not have 3D support and I don’t care about whatever other flavor of Linux you are running either. I’m not going to install your preferred flavor of Linux and try to figure out how to do this on there nor am I interested in troubleshooting it. Please don’t ask.
With all of that being said let’s get started!
Installing Steam on the Orange Pi 5 with Armbian Read More »
It had been a while since I had given using a wearable device a try. I had not used one since the original Apple Watch all the way back in 2015. I had switched away from Apple many years ago though to Android phones. Since then I had not seen any reason to try a wearable again although I heard the Samsung Android ones had been improving.
I’d been using a Google Pixel phone for the past several generations as I really like the Google out-of-box experience of having all of the native apps be proper Google apps. It was a clean experience that felt a lot more like Apple. Other Android phones I’d used such as Samsung pushed their own suite of apps which usually were not as good as the native Google apps.
As a fan of the clean first-party OS/application experience I was pretty excited to give the Google Pixel Watch a try. I’ve now had it for 3 months so this will be a 3 month usage review. In this review I’ll cover the good, the bad and the ugly about the Google Pixel Watch.
Let’s begin!
Google Pixel Watch (the original) Review Read More »
I’ve been exploring using Adafruit Stemma QT to create really cool DIY prototypes without any soldering here on the site. It allows you to very quickly throw together prototypes and do testing for various ideas.
I recently ordered a bunch of new Stemma QT devices including the Adafruit ESP32-S3 Reverse TFT Feather and a MLX90640 IR camera module that I wanted to turn into a DIY thermal camera. I wanted it to be small and battery powered.
In this guide I’ll show you the parts I used to build it as well as the code. Let’s get started!
DIY Open Source Handheld Battery Powered Thermal Camera Read More »
I recently covered the extremely cheap and popular ESP32-CAM here on the site. That is still a good choice but I wanted to evaluate some of the other camera options out there.
One of the camera modules I chose to try was the ESP-EYE. This is actually an official product by Espressif (the company who make the ESP modules). It comes as one solid piece unlike the ESP32-CAM. It also has beefier on-board specs than the ESP32-CAM.
In this guide I’ll show you how to set up a completely open-source Home Assistant camera view with the ESP-EYE using ESPHome. Let’s get started!
ESP-EYE Cheap Home Assistant ESPHome Camera Guide Read More »
