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Newbie’s Roadmap to Streaming Audio and Music

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We’ve been a diehard audiophile beginning with our in-person autograph from Elvis on a Sunday afternoon while he was playing touch football in the vacant lot beside his mother’s home in Memphis. My first serious setup was a law school graduation present that included a McIntosh amp, preamp, and tuner with Bozak Concert Grand speakers in the early 70’s. From there we added Revox, Tandberg, and Nakamichi tape machines. And then along came MP3, Napster and 10¢ music downloads from sites in Russia. That finally persuaded the RIAA to come to the bargaining table over streaming audio compensation, the same issue facing the movie industry today with the Writers Guild of America strike.

Fast forward a few decades and XM Radio introduced streaming audio for your car and later for your home. Sonos saw the writing on the wall and quickly followed with sound systems offering the flexibility to play streaming content from different sources in every room of your home or office. We actually lived in several homes that were pre-wired for speakers in every room and, thanks to Sonos, the days of multi-zone receivers costing thousands of dollars were numbered. And then along came Spotify to make streaming music a household word and music piracy a thing of the past thanks to reasonable pricing and $5 a month streaming subscriptions for college students which live on to this day.

Choosing a Provider for Streaming Audio


That brings us to today with streaming music content from Apple, Amazon Music, and Spotify. With Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited, you can choose CD-quality and high-resolution audio streams at no additional cost. And you can stream the content to wireless speakers with dynamic range comparable to speakers costing thousands of dollars and occupying a fraction of the space required by standalone speaker systems. So we begin with our recommendation for a streaming provider that offers the best feature set for families. With all three providers, the breadth of the music content is virtually identical topping 100 million songs and each of the family plans supports six accounts. With Apple, you’re pretty much locked into the Apple ecosystem. If your family is loaded with iMacs, iPhones, and iPads, then Apple One is worth a careful look which bundles Apple Music, Apple TV+, some iCloud storage, and Apple Arcade for $22.95/month or $16.95 a month for an individual subscription. While there is no Apple One student plan, their Apple Music Student plan is $4.99 a month and includes Apple TV+ but no Apple Arcade or iCloud storage. Spotify’s student plan is priced the same and bundles Hulu but no longer includes Showtime. And, speaking of Spotify, the deal breaker with their $15.99/month, 6-user, family plan is that all members of the family must reside under one roof. Spotify reportedly uses the location of each family member’s phone to verify location.
 
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So we’re left with Amazon Music’s $14.99/month Family Plan which includes six accounts with no restrictions on location of each family member and no requirement that all users own a Mac, or iPhone, or iPad. That works out to $2.50 per person per month. Quite a deal. In addition, you always get HD audio quality which is more than double the quality of standard quality streaming services. For millions of songs, Ultra HD audio quality is offered with up to 10 times the quality of standard quality streaming services. The absence of gotchas made this an easy choice for our family, but your criteria may differ. The one objection we heard from a family member was preservation of their Spotify playlists, but this was easily solved here.

Speaker Recommendations for Streaming Audio


Now that we have music content, we need something on which to play our favorite tunes. With the exception of Apple, both Spotify and Amazon permit streaming to virtually any smartphone, tablet, or desktop PC. But the silver lining is the ability to stream the content to three of today’s best wireless speakers, all of which we have put through their paces. These include the Denon Home 350, the Sonos Five, and Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin. Suffice it to say, all three provide superb audio quality using both Bluetooth and WiFi with AirPlay2.

We’re big fans of most refurbished electronics products but, if you’re new to the game, we would caution you to carefully pick your provider. Make certain that their offerings include a good warranty and free returns with free shipping with problematic devices. These speakers in particular are fairly heavy because they also include sophisticated electronics in the form of amplifiers and network connectivity. That also means they are more subject to problems down the road. There’s a reason there are so many refurbished offerings for these particular speakers. So you may also wish to consider extended warranties if you go the refurb route. If you’re not dissuaded, we cannot recommend a better supplier than Accessories4Less.

Insofar as audio quality is concerned, if you are a fan of booming bass in your speakers, then the Denon Home 350 and Sonos Five are your best picks. The Zeppelin has equally pleasing audio quality, but the bass emphasis is not quite as pronounced. All three provide excellent mid-range and tweeter response, and all three allow adjustment through a smartphone-based app that includes an Equalizer.

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Paired Denon Home 350 Speakers

Setup of the three devices is performed using a smartphone app, and the Denon Home 350 and Zeppelin also provide a button for automatic Bluetooth connectivity. The apps on our Denon Home 350 and Sonos Five worked flawlessly for painless setup. On our refurbished B&W Zeppelin, we never got connectivity using the app despite the fact that the speaker was successfully connected to our phone with Bluetooth. Initial unpacking revealed that the factory-refurbished Zeppelin was dead on arrival. We only managed to restore it to a functional state after hours digging through B&W’s web site to locate this tutorial to restore the firmware on the speaker. Despite a generally favorable impression of Zeppelin and its sound quality (once restored), we never managed to get connectivity to the smartphone app and ended up returning the unit, a real disappointment given its gorgeous design.

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Sonos Five Speaker


In choosing between the Denon Home 350 and the Sonos Five, we would rate this pick as a tossup. We own both units. If you are already heavily invested in the Sonos ecosystem, then the Sonos Five will not disappoint. The Denon Home 350, however, is less dependent upon its smartphone app in terms of usability. On a Mac, for example, navigating to Sound preferences in Setup, lets you instantly switch your Mac sound output to AirPlay after which all apps on your desktop machine play flawless audio through the Home 350. And on either an iPhone or an Android device, Bluetooth connectivity is as simple as pressing the Bluetooth button on the back of the speaker and selecting the Home 350 on your phone or tablet. Similarly, if multi-room and multi-device connectivity are on your radar, both the Sonos unit and the Home 350 speaker through its HEOS app provide this functionality. Finally, both speakers support Amazon Echo devices so Alexa awaits to power on and off your speaker as well as to adjust the volume and skip songs.

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Both the Sonos smartphone app and the Home 350 HEOS app provide the ability to stream content from a number of sources without Bluetooth interaction with your phone. Using the Home 350 HEOS app, you can also drill down into your Amazon Music Playlists to choose individual songs to play. You also can play music from your favorite NAS or USB flash drive.

Once you dive into streaming audio and wireless speakers, post a comment and add your 2¢.

Originally published: Monday, July 31, 2023


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FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

blankBOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

blankThe lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

blankVitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

blankSpecial Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



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Cyber Monday 2020: TV Deals You Can’t & Shouldn’t Refuse

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We try to leave Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals to the big boys but, hey, it’s 2020 and some of these deals may never come along again. Most of these are offerings we’ve tried for ourselves which is different than regurgitating the flyers from Amazon, WalMart, and BestBuy.

Televisions. Who would have ever thought you’d be able to purchase a 75″ 4K Android TV with built-in Chromecast for under $500? TCL has you covered this year at Best Buy.

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If you have a back porch that really could use a cord-cutting TV, here’s our favorite 43″ model which is on sale for $209.99. All you need is WiFi and a little electricity to bring this TV to life.

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And, speaking of cord-cutting, we assume you already have your Netflix subscription in hand. But now’s the time to add Hulu which is available for $1.99 a month if you hurry. Better yet, if you still have a kid in college, sign them up for a Spotify Student account at $5 a month and both a Hulu and ShowTime subscription are thrown in at no extra cost. Don’t worry about stepping on your kid’s use of the services. They sleep at completely different hours than you do. With the new Android TVs, adding these services is as easy as adding an Android app on your smartphone. Add a Sling TV subscription for $30 a month, and you’ll have more stations than you could ever watch.

DVR Delight. One of the complaints we often hear from the cord-cutters is the absence of a decent digital video recorder for these streaming services. And, of course, none of them let you skip the endless ads in 4+ minute clusters sprinkled throughout your shows and movies. Well, now there’s a solution. If you haven’t tried PlayOn Cloud, you’ve missed the greatest advancement since the Betamax. Here’s how it works. You pay PlayOn a fee to make a cloud-based, ad-skipping recording of your movie or TV show using your credentials for as little as 10¢ for a full-length movie or TV show. Then you get a week to download the MP4 recording at no additional cost. Or you also can sign up for a PlayOn cloud-based storage plan, and they keep your recordings in the cloud for as long as you need them and they remain in business. PlayOn recording, playback, and content management software is free.

For Black Friday through Cyber Monday, you can purchase credits to record 1,000 shows in the cloud for just $100. That’s 10¢ per show or movie, regardless of length. The recordings then can be downloaded to a PC, Mac, or Smartphone at no additional cost for one week from the date of the recording. If you purchase long-term cloud storage, it’s $4.99 a month for 100GB of storage with 20 recording credits every month. $19.99 a month gets you a terabyte of cloud storage plus 40 recording credits each month. You can record shows or movies from any of the channels shown below assuming you have the necessary accounts in place. Is it legal? While this isn’t legal advice, we would label this a close case and would be comfortable representing either side. You can read the history of the Betamax case for yourself and decide whether the time-shifting argument trumps the license agreements of all the streaming services. For the time being, you’re probably okay, but nothing lasts forever… except your downloaded MP4’s and a media player or Roku device. 😉

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Originally published: Sunday, November 29, 2020


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Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info Forum.


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

blankBOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

blankThe lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

blankVitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

blankSpecial Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



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2019 Technology RoundUp: What’s Hot and What’s Not

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As 2019 comes to a close, we wanted to pause briefly and share some of our discoveries from this past year on all things tech. More specifically, let’s chat about solar, electric vehicles, cutting the cord from cable TV, streaming services including music and video, and cellphone data plans. We hope some of you will chime in and share your own discoveries from 2019. We’ll also apologize in advance if some of this discussion is U.S.-centric. It just happens to be our home turf.

What Are You Waiting For: GO SOLAR!


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Let me begin by noting that the average electric bill on our 4,000+ square foot home with four heat pumps, two electric water heaters, and three pool pumps typically ran $500 a month prior to 2018. After installation of 50 solar panels on our roof, our average electric bill for the first six months of 2019 was about $10 a month. Installation cost of the system was about $60,000, but there was a 30% tax credit from the feds and a 25% tax credit (spread over six years) from South Carolina which reduced the actual out-of-pocket cost to about $30,000.


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If you’re new to solar, be advised that most states have given utility companies a monopoly on electricity which means your local energy company makes the rules on how many solar panels you can install and remain connected to the grid. In the case of South Carolina, you cannot generate more electricity than you actually use in a year, but, for energy you generate, the South Carolina model is they pay you the same rate they charge for electricity. Given our current annual cost of $1,000 versus $6,000 in the good old days, our best estimate is the break-even date will be about six years from installation date. After that, it’s a $5,000 a year gravy train with solar. Coupling these utility savings with a nearly 70% reduction in our property taxes moving from Atlanta, Georgia to Charleston, we can no longer afford to move despite the fact that a few South Carolina residents still are fighting the Civil War. blank

What Are You Waiting For: GO ELECTRIC!

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Some of you may have followed our love-hate relationship with Tesla during 2017 and 2018. Sorry to say that Elon Musk is his own worst enemy when it comes to promising far more than he can actually deliver. As much as we loved Tesla, we parted ways when a sloppy repair job totally crippled the car in the middle of nowhere leaving us hanging for over a month while Tesla attempted to diagnose the cause. It turned out they had bent a pin in replacing the big screen in the car, and it shorted out almost every function in the vehicle. The lack of a local service center coupled with the obvious shortcomings in diagnosing a system fault in the vehicle caused us to move on. HINT: Don’t fly to Mars with Elon. Tesla never came close on Elon’s full self-driving (FSD), and they still appear to be years away. We’ve joined the lawsuit to recover our FSD purchase. That and $5 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.




 
Despite Tesla’s shortcomings, we didn’t give up on electric vehicles and purchased the First Edition of Jaguar’s I-Pace. What a difference a quality interior makes! The I-Pace is fairly comparable to the Tesla Model S in price, performance, and range. While not as refined as Tesla’s current AutoPilot, Jaguar’s Lane Keeping Assist is extremely reliable in highway driving and more than adequate on well-marked roads in town. Our only real complaint is the lack of a charging network comparable to Tesla’s in the southeastern United States. But Volkswagen’s new Electrify America coupled with ChargePoint looks promising for 2020.

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If you’re not a car nut (like us) and just want reliable transportation at a reasonable cost to get back and forth to work and for around-town driving, an electric vehicle will save you a lot of money. You really can’t beat a Nissan Leaf for about $30,000. For a few cents more, you can extend the range to over 200 miles, and you can add Lane Keeping Assist that is almost as good as a Tesla. Add a 240v NEMA 1450 outlet in your garage for about $500, and you can add about 20 miles of range for every hour of charge at a fraction of the cost of gasoline. You also can get the car serviced at any local Nissan dealership, and most also provide free charging. 50 kWh commercial DC quick chargers can provide an 80% charge in less than an hour.

What Are You Waiting For: CUT THE CORD!

Comcast reportedly lost a quarter million TV subscribers in both Q2 and Q3 of 2019. AT&T has lost five million subscribers to DirecTV and U-Verse since 2016. Price gouging finally has led millions of cable and satellite TV subscribers to cut the cord and say enough is enough. If you haven’t tried the 2019 edition of yesteryear’s TV rabbit ears and you live in an area with local TV stations within a 50-75 mile radius of your home, you’re in for quite a surprise. Over-the-air (OTA) HDTV broadcasts now are actually comparable or better than Comcast and DirecTV.

Did we mention all over-the-air HDTV broadcasts are free?

Choosing an HDTV Antenna. As you might have guessed, antennas come in all shapes and sizes. An outside antenna is light-years better than any indoor model but, if you live in an apartment where an outside antenna isn’t feasible, then visit your local WalMart and purchase three or four inside HDTV antennas of various shapes and sizes including some HDTV rabbit ears. Bring them all home and try the various antennas with a TV to see which provides the best reception and most stations. Take the others back for a refund. In almost all cases, we’ve found the HDTV rabbit ears (under $10) work as well as the more expensive models which can range in price between $8 and $50. Our favorite outdoor antenna is the Clearstream 4 for under $100 from WalMart. Old-timers will be pleased to know that the days of snowy pictures and ghost images are a thing of the past with HDTV.

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Recording Shows. If all you care about is watching local TV stations (commercials and all), then you can stop reading here. But if you like time shifting and skipping commercials, then a TiVo OTA DVR is the best game in town. TiVo is proud of their service and loves to charge a $15 monthly fee for access on top of the $200+ cost of the device. But our favorite is a $350 refurbished TiVo Roamio from Amazon that includes a lifetime subscription at no additional cost. If you’re worried about the reliability of a refurbished product, you can buy the Amazon 3-year protection plan for $33.99. We did. Once you use a TiVo unit with automatic skipping of commercials, you’ll rarely watch live TV broadcasts again. It’s that good.

Streaming TiVo Content to Other Devices. One nifty addition for your TiVO OTA unit is the ability to stream the content to devices other than the TV to which the TiVo unit is connected. The trick is to find a TiVo Stream device (about $150). It requires a wired Internet connection on the same subnet as your wired TiVo Roamio OTA unit. Once you have the unit in hand, contact TiVo with the serial number of your TiVo stream unit, and they will activate it. You then can stream any of your TiVo live or recorded content to up to four iPhones, iPads, and Android devices simultaneously. The streaming works on both your local WiFi network as well as any remote location using either WiFi or cellular service. Very slick!

Alternative Streaming Options. Another streaming alternative worth considering is TabloTV. The units start at $150 and are available at WalMart, Best Buy, and Amazon. You then add your own USB storage device and antenna. Finally, you need a subscription for the TabloTV Guide. The lifetime subscription is $150. The device can stream to computers using a web browser, iOS and Android phones and tablets as well as Roku devices and TVs. Our results with TabloTV have been hit and miss. On the same network as our TiVo machine, the TabloTV WiFi streams regularly experience pauses and drop-outs while the TiVo streams rarely do. Whether you choose a TabloTV or not, be sure to sign up for email delivery of their newsletter. It’s by far the best in the cut-the-cord industry.

Supplementing Local Content. Cut-the-cord commercial streaming services are booming as you might imagine. These services provide streaming content of what was traditional cable TV programming including local and cable news channels, sports channels, and commercial add-ons such as HBO and ShowTime. These streaming services typically support web access via a browser as well as iOS, Android, and Roku devices and smart TVs. Our current favorite is YouTube TV which offers 70+ channels for $50 a month with a free trial. Assuming you have a decent Internet connection, you’ll never return to Comcast or DirecTV after YouTube TV.

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Got a Kid in College? Paying college tuition and expenses is one of the most painful periods for many families, but there’s a silver lining. Your student qualifies for unlimited music streaming plus a Hulu subscription plus a ShowTime subscription, and you get all three for only $5 a month by setting up a student Spotify account. Your first 3 months are free, and it’s renewable for up to 4 years. There’s more good news. Parents can share the credentials in a different location because the hours of your listening and viewing will rarely, if ever, coincide with those of your college son or daughter.

The Granddaddy of Streaming.Services If you only can choose one, the streaming service that most folks probably will not want to live without is Netflix. Your first 30 days are free, and plans start at $8.99 a month. That gets you one simultaneous, non-HD stream to a device of your choice. You can move up to HD streaming for $12.99 for a single stream or $14.99 for simultaneous streams to four devices. Smart TVs, computers, tablets, phones, and Roku devices are all supported. If you happen to have rental property, next to WiFi, Netflix always ranks at the top of the list of most requested amenities.

Our Must-Have Traveling Companion. The Roku Streaming Stick+ may just be the best under $50 purchase you ever make. Whether you travel or just have older not-so-smart televisions at home, so long as you have access to an HDMI port, all of your streaming services are just a click away on any TV. The only setup required when you reach your destination is plugging in your WiFi credentials. Then Netflix, Hulu, ShowTime, Comcast, Spectrum, and TabloTV immediately come to life.

Best Cellphone Plan on the Planet. If T-Mobile is supported in your neck of the woods, you won’t want to miss MintMobile, the best cellphone plan on the planet. You always get unlimited U.S. calling and messaging, and then you can choose the amount of monthly 4G LTE data you need. For the first three months, you get 12GB of monthly 4G LTE data for only $15 a month. After that, you can sign up for an annual plan at their standard 3-month rates: $15 a month for 3GB, $20 a month for 8GB, or $25 a month for 12GB. It’s an unbelievable deal compared to the Bell Sisters. Use our signup link to share the wealth with the Nerd Vittles staff. Merry Christmas to all.

Originally published: Monday, December 23, 2019


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

blankBOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

blankThe lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

blankVitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

blankSpecial Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



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Best of the Internet: American Road Warrior’s Fall Roundup

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The Internet is all about sharing the best finds and once a year we like to take a fresh look at what’s new and exciting whether you travel frequently or not. While the primary focus of Nerd Vittles is VoIP technology, you can’t provide the best VoIP solutions without also exploring network and cellular technology. And, as the old saying goes, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. When we travel for more than a day or two, we like to have a music and video source other than an iPhone. So let’s start there. And there’s plenty to love here even if you never leave the comfort of your living room.

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For movies and TV shows, nothing holds a candle to a $10 subscription to Netflix. You can watch on your phone, or tablet, or PC, and someone else in your family can do the same thing at the same time. For $2 more, you can watch on four devices at a time. If you happen to have a rental unit, your renters will always remember you for the free Netflix subscription. Our second place alternative is primarily for cord cutters. DirecTV Now is just $10/month if you happen to have an AT&T Unlimited Data Plan (regularly $35). That gets you 60+ live channels and 20,000 on demand titles. For an extra $5, you can add HBO. With a two-month prepayment, you can snag a free Roku Premier until September 22, 2017. DirecTV Now also aupports streaming to two simultaneous devices, and a 100-hour DVR is just around the corner.

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For cellular service, we’ve never been big fans of corporate tying. Believe it or not, there was a time when most thought it was illegal. But there’s a loophole. So long as you’re not forced to buy the unrelated product, it’s not technically a tying violation. And that’s where we find ourselves today with American oligopolies. You’d be crazy not to take advantage of the opportunities especially since AT&T bought DirecTV. An AT&T unlimited data plan for your cellular service unlocks all sorts of goodies with DirecTV. We’ve mentioned the $25 monthly credit with DirecTV Now. But it’s also available with standard DirecTV subscriptions. And you get HBO and NFL Sunday Ticket at no charge as well. With four devices including a Wi-Fi HotSpot, our cellular plan with AT&T costs under $50/month per device including taxes and fees. It provides unlimited talk, text, and data in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The 22GB data throttling gotcha doesn’t apply in many locations including our hometown of Charleston, SC. We racked up 90GB of data usage on the hotspot during our last 8-day vacation. Never a hiccup! Whether you’re in a car, a hotel room, or on a cruise ship, the $59 AT&T Velocity 4G LTE HotSpot is a perfect traveling companion supporting 10 device connections for up to 10 hours.

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For international cellular data service, there’s a terrific new option that provides unlimited 4G data service in 100+ countries for $9 per day. This compares favorably with AT&T’s outrageous cruise ship offering of $8.19 per megabyte of data traffic. You can purchase the Skyroam Solis device for $150 on Amazon, or you can rent one in major airports. It supports 5 devices at a time. We can’t give you a first-hand report on the Solis because it was just released this week. But we have ordered one and will provide a Grand Turk update soon. ↙

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For music services, Spotify Premium remains the gold standard. $10 a month buys you unlimited streaming of almost every song ever published. $5 more gets you a family plan to support 5 people. For qualifying college students, Spotify Premium is just $5 a month. You can even download the songs to your smartphone or tablet and play them when you don’t have Internet connectivity. For extended vacations, we discovered a new boom box this summer that is worth a careful look. It combines an Android tablet with some terrific speakers to provide 12 hours of non-stop music from your favorite sources including Spotify. It also can access the best radio stations throughout the United States using the iHeartRadio app. And it even includes 8GB of internal storage as well as microSD and USB flash drive support. The Sonicgrace will set you back $190 on Amazon (MSRP: $299.99).

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For music junkies, it’s worth noting that the only application that routinely crashed Android unfortunately was TuneIn Radio. For neophytes, TuneIn is the must-have app that provides streaming of virtually every commercial radio station in the world. Here’s the quick fix. We suspected that the problem involved the latest release of TuneIn which you would automatically receive using Google’s Play Store as the download source as Sonicgrace does. So the solution would be to install a prior release. Here’s how. On a desktop PC, download an earlier TuneIn APK from here. We chose 13.7 which happened to work. Next, use Gmail to send yourself a message with this 13.7.apk file as an attachment. Then, on the Sonicgrace, first install Gmail from the Play Store tapping My +:App:PlayStore. Open the Gmail app once the install finishes and then open the email message you sent yourself. Tap on the attachment, and TuneIn will automatically be installed.

For VoIP telephony, here’s another nice surprise. Google’s Amazon Echo Killer, aka Google Home, has a new feature. It can make free calls in the United States and Canada to anyone in your Google Contacts as well as any business you can find with a Google Search. Here’s the best deal we could find if you don’t already own Google Home. It’s also available at Target and WalMart for about $25 more plus tax. And here’s how to start making calls.

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Published: Friday, September 1, 2017  


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Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.


 

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FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

blankBOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

blankThe lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

blankVitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

blankSpecial Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

The Autonomous Car: Tesla and the Yellow Brick Road

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Today marks the six month anniversary since we picked up our second generation Tesla Model S. If you’ve followed our adventure, you already know that the road has been a bumpy one even giving Elon Musk credit for the best of intentions. As one new owner remarked, "The difference in a salesman and a marketer is the marketer knows he is lying." We haven’t quite decided which pigeon hole best describes Elon, but there certainly was optimistic puffing of the Tesla feature set to put it charitably. And the time to begin sale of Model 3’s is just around the corner with a half million people already waiting in line.

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Having owned a couple dozen cars, we decided it might be a good opportunity to weigh the pro’s and con’s of buying a Tesla, any Tesla. On the plus side, receiving over-the-air software updates every month is one of the greatest advancements in the history of the automobile industry. A Tesla is essentially a supercomputer on wheels so these updates offer a monthly opportunity for Tesla to radically improve your driving experience… at no cost to you! Compare that to Cadillac which will give you a new GPS map once a year for about $300. Since we accepted delivery of the Tesla, the updates have added a five-range equalizer with Dolby Surround Sound, automatic emergency braking, side collision avoidance, auto-dimming headlights, self-parking, auto-summon for vehicle retrieval, and multiple upgrades to the traffic-aware cruise control and autopilot systems. During a 600-mile road trip to Atlanta, we stopped once in each direction for a 45-minute battery refill using Tesla’s free superchargers. By the way, they won’t be free to new owners unless you take advantage of an existing owner’s coupon to purchase a Model S or X at a $1,000 discount which also includes free lifetime usage of Tesla’s supercharger network. That saves you about ten cents per mile. Here’s our referral link if you need one. As with most referral links, we get something, too: a mini-Tesla for our new grandson. 🙂

And speaking of road trips, let us offer some tips on using Tesla’s Supercharger network. A one-hour charge will typically buy you about 150-200 miles depending upon the current state of your battery. If there are other Teslas at the site, be sure you choose a numbered supercharger that is different from the other vehicles. Otherwise, your charging rate is cut in half. Some locations are better than others, and we’ve pretty much covered the southeastern United States at this juncture. The Augusta, Georgia site is a 5-minute walk from Denny’s which makes it an excellent site around meal time if you’re heading east or west on I-20. For those traveling on I-85 or I-40 through North Carolina, the Burlington Supercharger is a definite must with a rich collection of restaurants as well as a terrific grocery store within one block. Charlotte and Greenville are pretty much in the middle of nowhere so pick up some fast food before you arrive if you plan to stay for an hour. The Atlanta Supercharger in the Level 2 garage of Atlantic Station downtown is a shopper’s paradise with dozens of shops and restaurants to keep you entertained. For those on the east coast heading south, there’s now a supercharger in Myrtle Beach at the Coastal Grand Mall which also provides lots of restaurants and shopping distractions. Another one is located in the Savannah, Georgia airport with two free hours of parking. The wrinkle is that there’s only one restaurant in the airport, and it’s lousy so bring food with you if you are stopping there for an extended charge. From Charleston, we typically do a restroom break there which takes about 20 minutes including the time to get on and off I-95. A 10-minute charge gets you about 55 extra miles. Then you can make it to the Kingsland, Georgia which is right at the Florida border with lots of restaurants within easy walking distance. From there, you can make it to St. Augustine, Florida where you’ll land right in the middle of all the "interstate hotels" with lots of fast food restaurants nearby. Another don’t miss site is Port Orange which has a large mall and lots of restaurants. From there you can easily make it to Orlando or Port St. Lucie. On our recent 1,100 mile trip to Virginia and Atlanta and our 900 mile trip to Florida, we saw a grand total of two other Teslas in all of the supercharger locations we used. That may change once the Model 3’s start rolling off the assembly line. We would estimate that we spent less than an hour at supercharger locations traveling in each direction. We typically try to stay at Hilton Hotels which have free overnight charging at many of their sites. Make a phone call to verify destination charging before booking. EVTripPlanner is also a handy web site when planning your travels. It includes most Superchargers and Destination Chargers and can show you the most convenient stops.

So that’s the good news. The rest of the story is mostly about Tesla’s marketing tactics. For us, they promised considerably more than they delivered when we received the car. That leaves a bad taste in your mouth for a very long time, particularly with vehicles costing $70,000 to $170,000. The disappointing part is that we would have bought the car even if Tesla had honestly described what was available with delivery and what could be expected down the road. Looking back, Tesla’s developments on the autopilot front have been nothing short of miraculous. Tesla has delivered in six months what it took Mobileye almost ten years to develop. That’s not to say it’s not still dangerous. It is. To the guy that chooses to drive with your hands off the wheel, make sure your affairs are in order and your will is up to date. And there are some other rough edges which are reported regularly. An owner last week posted that his headlights abruptly turned off in the middle of the night while he was cruising along at highway speeds. Should this happen to you, remember you can pull the turn signal stalk to instantly turn on your bright lights which will at least let you guide the car to a safe stop. Yet another reason to follow the Tesla Motors Forum should you buy a Tesla.

Will Tesla get there? I think so. But self-driving technology is still evolving, and it probably will be for the next several years. If you’re not in a hurry, you might consider waiting another year or two and compare other options. But, for now, Tesla is the only game in town, and it’s finally usable on most interstates and major thoroughfares. The other downside of a Tesla is service center locations. While we were lucky and received an almost perfect car, others have not been so lucky. If there’s not a service center close to you, that is a real problem. If you have a flat tire, there is no spare and that, too, can be problematic depending upon where you live. The good news is that AAA offers a plan for under $100 that includes free towing up to 200 miles once a year. If you travel a good bit, sign up!

Finally, a word about options. The S75 base model of the Model S is under $70,000 with federal tax credit. The Model X SUV is about $10,000 more. You can future-proof the cars for $8,000 to lock in full self-driving capability for down the road. For short road trips and in-town driving, the 249 mile range of the S75 is more than adequate. In most areas of the U.S., superchargers are located every 150 miles or less. Many of the Tesla showrooms now have new and used vehicles for immediate sale. The advantage is you can see what you’ll be getting before you spend a dime. Because of the pace of technology developments in both electric vehicles and self-driving technology, we would lease the vehicle if we had it to do over again. So what are you waiting for? Come join the party!

Continue reading…

The Autonomous Car: Tesla & The Winding Road (January 9, 2017)

The Autonomous Car: A Hands-Free Drive with Tesla’s HW2 (January 23, 2017)

The Autonomous Car: Navigating Tesla’s Slippery Slope to the Promised Land (3/13/2017)

The Autonomous Car: Move Over Tesla, Here Comes Cadillac (April 17, 2017)

Published: Monday, June 19, 2017


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

blankBOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

blankThe lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

blankVitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

blankSpecial Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

The Autonomous Car: Navigating Tesla’s Slippery Slope to the Promised Land

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We continue our Autonomous Car series today with a report card on our first quarter results with the new Tesla Vision autopilot and a cautionary note to would-be Tesla owners. Since the new Tesla hardware was rolled out to vehicles manufactured in the last couple months of 2016, Tesla has had a bumpy ride and, in no small part, it has been due to self-inflicted wounds. The Tesla executive heading up the autopilot project abruptly quit and allegedly walked out the door with Tesla’s crown jewels. Then it became apparent that Tesla had misled fourth quarter buyers by promising autopilot software that was anything but ready for prime time. In fact, it barely existed. To make matters worse, Elon Musk finally acknowledged a couple weeks ago that their first generation autopilot hardware and software powered by Mobileye was nowhere to be found in the new vehicles. This was a careful way of admitting that Tesla was basically starting over with Tesla Vision. The alarming reports from new Tesla owners (685+ posts) confirmed that fairly quickly. For a glimpse at the complexity of autonomous driving, take a look at this in-depth review.

The Joke’s On You: What You Saw Ain’t What You Get

To make matters worse, Tesla had sold the vehicles by overpromising features which were nowhere near ready. BestRadar, one of the frequent contributors to TMC’s Tesla Motors Forum, recently posted some interesting comparisons of Tesla’s representations to buyers in October, 2016 to demonstrate the morphing which occurred after the first of the year. Using a tool called Copyscape he compared Tesla’s autopilot offering (AP2) from late 2016 to the revised text in early 2017. The actual before and after web pages are available as well. Here’s the Enhanced AutoPilot feature, a pricey $6,000 upgrade, that has caused fourth quarter 2016 buyers the most heartburn:

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Here’s the Standard Safety Features offering also promised for delivery in December 2016:

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Let’s compare features promised to buyers by December 2016 to what has been delivered:

  1. Match Speed to Traffic Conditions (90% TACC; 55MPH on Interstate w/ AP2)
  2. Keep Vehicle Within a Lane (Curve-free with lane markings, minimal car following)
  3. Automatically Change Lanes w/o Driver Input (NO)
  4. Transition from One Freeway to Another (NO)
  5. Exit Freeway When Destination is Near (NO)
  6. Self-Park When Near a Parking Spot (20%)
  7. Summon Vehicle To/From Garage (NO)
  8. Collision Avoidance (NO)
  9. Automatic Emergency Breaking (NO)
  10. Side Collision Alerts (Worthless)
  11. Front Collision Warning (YES)
  12. Auto High Beams (NO)
  13. Auto Windshield Wipers (NO)

    Keep in mind that those who purchased Tesla AP2 vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2016 had never seen an actual AP2 Tesla because they were not yet available. So the entire purchasing decision was based upon Tesla’s and Musk’s representations that the new Teslas were far superior to earlier vehicles both in terms of hardware and software. This was reinforced in the video contemporaneously released by Tesla (below) demonstrating Tesla Vision (AP2) as a fully autonomous driving experience. Only months later when California released its disengagement report for 2016 did we learn that the making of that video apparently resulted in traveling about 500 miles and logging 177 disengagement reports with the state over the 3-day filming period. A "disengagement" is defined as an autonomous driving event that forces a driver to take control of the vehicle. And never mind the video’s opening assertion that the entire trip was hands-free with the driver doing nothing. It further appears that, following production of the Tesla video, further self-driving experimentation with Tesla Vision was completely halted. Details here.

    Beware the Ides of March

    We haven’t mentioned SAFETY yet but you’ll want to read this if you’re considering a new Tesla. If you’ve ever driven a car with a toddler sitting in your lap holding the steering wheel with you, then you’ll appreciate the amount of care and attention you need to focus on a Tesla while AP2 is activated. It’s that dangerous. Forum reports of vehicles veering toward guard rails and ditches are common as are reports of Tesla vehicles swerving out of their lane in search of a lane divider while 18-wheelers are within six feet of your car. As one forum member observed, autopilot in a car differs dramatically from autopilot on a plane where a pilot who is alerted to take control has 5 minutes or more to react before a plane can descend from 30,000 feet. With a car, you’re talking about a fraction of a second when autopilot does something stupid and veers into another lane of traffic. This also isn’t a case of your Tesla relying upon Mobileye with a decade of self-driving experience under its belt. We’re talking about brand new, half-baked software. Labeling it as "beta" suggests you really must be a Tesla shareholder.

    I chose the image at the top of this article because it literally sent shivers down my spine thinking some poor fool might actually try using AP2 on this road. Look at the margin of error available with your $100,000+ autonomous vehicle.



    Dangerous software is only part of the problem. The other half is Tesla’s complete failure to document for its drivers what works and what doesn’t. It’s one thing to do something stupid after you’ve been warned not to do it. It’s quite another to have to discover all of the mines in the minefield for yourself. It’s worth recalling that, in selling the $6,000 Enhanced Autopilot feature, Tesla represented that the software was "expected to complete validation" by the end of December, 2016. In the English language, that certainly suggests that the software is all but ready and just needs a bit more testing to validate that all of the promised features are safe before uploading it to Tesla vehicles. Remember that Tesla was still saying the same thing at the end of December and even into the middle of January. Truth be told, we’re not sure large chunks of the deliverable software have even been written yet. We’re not talking about "puffing." Take a look at the list above and where we stand today. Then compare that to what Tesla was promising in sales contracts and actually showcasing in videos four to five months ago:



    Deep Neural Networks and Machine Learning

    For the technically curious, it’s worth mentioning the complexity of the Tesla autopilot approach and how primitive it remains today. Keep in mind that Tesla’s AP1 vehicles had the luxury of Mobileye technology with 10 years of machine learning to identify dangerous and safe objects using cameras. To fully appreciate the enormity of the AP2 problem, take a look at Tesla’s explanation of its new radar-centric approach. Then enjoy a fascinating introduction to Machine Learning 101. In a nutshell, Tesla has got to create a "map" whitelisting every stationary object in the world and determining with 99.99% accuracy whether it is unlikely to pose a collision risk to a Tesla vehicle. The reason is because radar can have a difficult time distinguishing an overhead sign 25 feet in the air and an overhead sign that has fallen onto the highway. You obviously want the car to slam on the brakes for the latter one but not for every overhead sign you encounter while traveling down an interstate highway. We haven’t yet considered electronic highway signs where the messaging on the sign constantly changes. To your Tesla, every change in the sign message looks like a new sign. Here’s another example at the neighborhood level. We have two 90 degree turns in the street near our home. To date, our Tesla vehicle with AP2 proceeds at full speed into both locations. Without manual intervention, the AP2 result would either land your Tesla in the water or it would plow into a wall. Now let’s multiply those situations by a hundred million, and you’ll appreciate the complexity of the task at hand and better understand how deceptive the Tesla video really was.

    Dear Elon: We Still Love You, Warts and All

    Don’t take our observations the wrong way. We love our Tesla vehicle and appreciate everything Elon Musk is trying to do both in terms of electric vehicles and autonomous driving. But, as we have observed previously, Elon can morph from Steve Jobs visionary into used car salesman with a single tweet. And he often does, particularly when Tesla earnings reports are at stake. We’ve been in the technology business for more than 30 years and we’ve owned 25 different automobiles. When it comes to software development or car purchases, there’s not much we haven’t witnessed first hand. But Tesla’s approach of overselling and underdelivering functionality is novel. And we believe it is precarious if not downright dangerous from both a legal and safety standpoint. That’s unfortunate because a class action lawsuit or serious accident involving a Tesla with AP2 which, unlike the earlier vehicles, has no track record of safety could set back not only Tesla but all autonomous driving projects by years. It also would prompt federal and state regulators to take a very hard look at the types of vehicles which are being unleashed on public highways.


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    Our plea to Elon is please clean up your act before releasing Model 3 vehicles to 400,000 unsuspecting owners. People are accustomed to purchasing vehicles with the expectation that the features they’ve purchased will actually work and will do so in a SAFE manner. They also expect to be able to get their cars repaired. Read this nightmare scenario from a fender bender. Stop overpromising and overhyping what new Tesla vehicles can actually do and level with buyers on the very real limitations of the current vehicles. Drivers need to understand what works and what doesn’t before they set foot in a new Tesla. A simple disclaimer that the software is experimental really doesn’t cut it. As it stands today, autopilot using AP2 is little more than a wish and a prayer much like our license plate. Here’s hoping we all make it through this Magic Carpet Ride alive.

    blank

    Finally, a word about the Tesla Model 3. We’ve commented before that customers will be hard-pressed to purchase a Tesla Model 3 for $35,000. Guess what? Here’s a price list formulated by one industrious user based upon estimates of feature costs derived from current Tesla vehicles. While it is not an official Tesla document, it provides a fairly accurate estimate of the pricing that Tesla Model 3 buyers can expect to see:


Move Over Tesla: Competition Coming on April 1

Tesla will no longer be the only option starting April 1. @Lloyd shared a sneak peek at Google’s surprise. Production looks eerily similar to Tesla’s self-driving video. 😉



Published: Monday, March 13, 2017


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

blankBOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

blankThe lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

blankVitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

blankSpecial Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

The Autonomous Car: A Hands-Free Drive with Tesla’s HW2

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It’s been about a month since we took delivery of a new, second-generation Tesla lovingly referred to as an HW2 vehicle.1 During that time, Tesla has provided an over-the-air map update and four firmware updates. The latest one this past weekend enabled Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) and limited AutoSteer capabilities for the entire fleet of next-generation HW2 Tesla vehicles. This includes all cars manufactured since October 19, 2016 that feature a new state-of-the-art supercomputer (pictured below) capable of 8 trillion deep learning operations per second plus eight cameras, radar, and loads of sonar sensors.


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The latest software update follows last week’s vindication of Tesla in the fatal crash of a Tesla vehicle with an 18-wheeler and a fluff piece published two weeks ago by The Verge extolling the virtues of a yet-to-be-seen Mercedes S-Class. It was hailed as a better self-driving vehicle when compared with Tesla’s 3-year-old first generation model. As one infamous commenter observed:

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The fact is that every car manufacturer is working on autonomous vehicles now. The difference is that nobody except Tesla delivers over-the-air software updates to their vehicles and nobody comes close to Tesla’s billion+ miles of real-world autonomous driving data. So ask yourself this simple question. If your life and that of your family depended upon the reliability of self-driving software, where would you prefer to ride and how would you prefer to see mission-critical vehicle updates distributed? Make no mistake. This isn’t just about self-driving software. It’s also about propping up an automobile dealer network that sees Tesla threatening its entire business model including both sales and service. It’s also about companies like Uber that see Tesla encroaching quickly on its turf and its autonomous vehicle future. But we digress. Here’s what really matters:


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So back to our story. Yesterday at 5 a.m. a message arrived on the Tesla dashboard indicating that the long-awaited self-driving update was ready for installation. By 6 a.m. we were on the road in a torrential thunderstorm (yes, it’s January in Charleston) headed to the closest interstate, I-526, a circumferential freeway that goes about halfway around the Charleston metropolitan area and includes one of only two bridges in and out of Charleston County. Why an Interstate? Because this first release of AutoPilot requires a freeway which, on the east coast of the United States, means an interstate highway.


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The only additional wrinkle with this first software iteration is that self-driving speed is limited to 45 miles per hour, a 10 MPH improvement from the original version released only to California vehicles. Whooda thunk we’d be wishing for rush hour traffic just so we could try out AutoPilot. As it turned out, with the heavy rainstorm, 45 MPH was just about right. And we wanted to test AutoSteer in bad weather and darkness anyway. The good news is we’re still among the living. The great news is the software performed almost flawlessly. The only wrinkle was approaching exits in the right lane. Tesla currently gives precedence to the solid line on the right side of your vehicle rather than the dotted line marker on the left. If you’re driving in the right lane, it means your car tries to take every exit rather than continuing straight. Disabling and reenabling AutoSteer at every exit would become tedious quickly in a busy metropolitan area. This version also requires that you keep your hands on the wheel and too little pressure prompted alarms and flashing lights within 15 seconds alerting the driver to grab the steering wheel immediately or face banishment from AutoPilot until the car is restarted. This is in sharp contrast to the 4+ minute interval shown in the HW1 AutoPilot demo below. We grabbed harder and soon learned the correct pressure that our Tesla overlords expected. Like all terrific first dates, it had us wishing for more, and Elon promises that the speed and freeway limitations will be relaxed gradually. Having had a taste of the Kool-Aid®, we’re believers now and are looking forward to the next release. Stay tuned!



Feb. 24 Update:


To celebrate our maiden voyage, we are pleased to introduce for fellow Tesla owners our first of several new products using the Tesla API. This one offers a command-line interface to the entire Tesla API using PHP on any LAMP (Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP) server. If you don’t have a LAMP server, our previous tutorial will walk you through setting one up in the cloud for a one-time cost of less than $20. Once your LAMP server is in place, log into the server as root and issue the following commands to install the Tesla Management Portal:

cd /root
git clone https://github.com/wardmundy/php-api-tesla.git
chmod 775 /root
cd php-api-tesla
chmod +x *.php
nano -w config.php
# set install directory, Tesla credentials and desired valet and web PINs
# plus the desired temperature settings for your Tesla
# save your changes: Ctrl-X, y, then press ENTER key
./token.php
./vehicle.php

Now you’re ready to explore the Tesla API by running the various scripts for three months. After that, you’ll need to refresh the OAuth tokens by running the token.php and vehicle.php scripts again. Six of the remaining scripts extract all the various settings in your vehicle:

charge_state.php
climate_state.php
drive_state.php
gui_settings.php
vehicle.php
vehicle_state.php

The remaining "set" scripts allow you to make changes to various settings in your Tesla. These include locking and unlocking car doors, setting and controlling the HVAC in your vehicle, setting and configuring valet mode, setting the charge limit for your vehicle, and waking your car from sleep mode.

Coming Soon: The Tesla Management Portal web interface…


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Published: Monday, January 23, 2017


 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

blankBOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

blankThe lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

blankVitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

blankSpecial Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

  1. In Tesla lingo, a P90D Model S signifies a Performance model with a 90kWh battery and all-wheel Drive. According to Wikipedia, the P90D has dual motors with a front axle power of 259 horsepower (193 kW) and rear axle power of 503 horsepower (375 kW) for a total of 762 horsepower (568 kW) and a 0–60 MPH time of 2.8 sec. The acceleration of the P90D can reach 1.1g, described by Tesla as "faster than falling". []

The Autonomous Car: Tesla & The Winding Road


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We kick off 2017 with a new series on autonomous vehicles and, for the short term at least, the focus will be on Tesla simply because they’ve moved the needle the quickest and have a billion+ driver-tested miles under their belt already. I’m reminded of a quip from a pilot friend who said, "Anybody can fly a plane at 30,000 feet with autopilot. What separates the living from the dead is what you do when something goes wrong." A recent example here.

A few of you may be reading about autonomous cars for the first time so let’s start with the basics. We’re talking about vehicles that can drive themselves without user intervention. The latest Tesla vehicles are basically Linux computers on wheels with one or more 500 horsepower electric motors. This Tesla magic is performed using lots of state-of-the-art hardware including a supercomputer capable of 8 trillion deep learning operations per second, 8 cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors plus loads of software. The car must have current maps, must know the rules of the road, must obey speed limits and stop signs, and hopefully won’t run over pedestrians or bicyclists. It also must learn in realtime from driver interactions and make adjustments on the fly. The design must work on sunny days in the Arizona desert and frigid days with two feet of snow in Buffalo and rainy days in Seattle.

The hard part comes when a child runs into the street from behind parked cars and the only two choices are killing the child or swerving into another lane of traffic where an 18-wheeler is barreling towards you at an excessive rate of speed. What would you do? Do you know what your autonomous car would do? Will the manufacturer tell you? With that introduction, let’s begin with this Tesla video and the Elon Musk sales pitch from Twitter:


With the expiration of our lease last month on a surprisingly good Cadillac ELR, we swapped vehicles. So you’ll be following the Tesla adventure in realtime from behind the wheel of a second-generation Tesla Model S P90D. This Tesla has all the latest and greatest autopilot and self-driving hardware that money can buy. What Tesla barely mentioned was that none of it works. It gets worse. The windshield wipers don’t turn on when it rains, and the lights don’t turn on in the dark. In short, as delivered last month and putting aside the electric motors, it had about the same technology advancements as my 1968 Pontiac GTO.


The good news is Tesla pushes updates to the cars regularly using AT&T’s 4G/LTE network or even WiFi if you happen to have it in your garage. That’s the primary reason we bought a Tesla. And, by the way, the Tesla phones home regularly with a detailed report about your whereabouts and your car’s status. Divorce lawyers will have a field day with Tesla data.


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The other thing Tesla didn’t mention was that, with the second generation Tesla’s (also known as AP2 or HW2), Tesla engineers are basically starting over even with the autopilot software. Minutes before the 2017 New Year, Tesla released a firmware update to 1,000 vehicles (all in California) that enabled minimal self-driving functionality between speeds of 17 and 35 miles per hour on highways only. If you were one of the lucky ones and happen to live near a nursing home with nothing but elderly drivers on the freeway, this was great news. For a sobering experience, read the early feedback posted on the Tesla Forum. Scary!

I think it would be fair to say that 2017 is starting off a little bumpy for Tesla. Not only are some owners that shelled out over $100,000 fuming over misrepresentations from Tesla sales staff, but there also are about a half million people that forked over $1,000 deposits on the so-called affordable Tesla, the Model 3. As you can see from the Self-Driving and Autopilot software price tags above, nobody is going to get a Tesla Model 3 for $35,000. If that was your plan, apply for your refund now. We, of course, expected a fun ride as a Tesla pioneer, and Tesla is giving every indication that it will be a very wild and sometimes frustrating adventure. The great news is that a Tesla API already is available and has an enthusiastic group of developers and fellow Tesla owners. The API will tell you almost anything you want to know about your car including its location. You can even control your Tesla using an Amazon Echo. Start reading and stay tuned. 2017 is going to be fun! In our next chapter, we’ll walk you through using the impressive API feature set with PHP. Enjoy!


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Published: Monday, January 9, 2017


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