Hydroflush HYF450 Dual Flush Converter By MJSI - update

As predicted in my earlier post the converter did not hold up for long. It did not break but started leaking at the lower seal that seats on the hole originally closed by the flapper. The converter slid up slightly on the overflow tube and seal was broken.

This converter is a bad idea for installation by the third party or in relative's home. You will install it and it will leak causing higher water bill and waste of water. The design should have had a tighter clamp around the tube and not a flimsy tie which is hard to make tight.

Avoid this converter!

How to glue lexan - food processor bowl fix

Small tab from our old food processor lid broke off. The tab is pressing on the button which prevents food processor from running if the lid is not latched. Without this tab the unit would not turn on. We have this unit for many years (more than 10, I think) and definitely got our money worth, but I felt like it was a waste to throw away working unit because of the small plastic tab.
I started looking for suitable way to put this tab back. My first attempt was epoxy glue which turned out does not work on food processor plastic. It does not adhere to the plastic itself and breaks off easy and cleanly.
My research turned to figuring out what type of plastic this was and it appears to be Lexan or polycarbonate plastic.  After researching various glues for plastics I found that PCV pipe glue works by dissolving plastic at the point of contact and making a kind of weld. I did not know if the glue would work on the Lexan plastic but as I got nothing to loose I decided to try it. The glue was readily available to me at home so it was an easy choice. If you do not have it handy it is available at any hardware store in the plumbing section.
To glue it I followed the recommended process - primer goes first then glue and finally parts are connected and held together. The primer makes everything purple so be careful and use small amount with the small brush or Q-tip. To make sure that tab went on correctly I attached food processor lid to the container with the painter's tape and masked off under the tab with the same tape to protect the bowl from the primer and the glue.
To my surprise it worked very well. The glue took a few hours to dry and while drying the whole thing should be left alone. Until the glue is completely dry the tab was flexing but after drying out it appears to be one solid piece. I did not try to break off the tab to test the strength of the bond but it holds well enough for food processor to work as before.
When using the glue do this outside as the primer and the glue stink and most likely vapors are not good for you. When dry it should be harmless as this glue is used to bond PVC pipes with drinking water. In my case the connection point does not come in contact with the food so I am not worried.
If you know what glue will work best on Lexan or you can confirm that the plastic is indeed Lexan please leave a comment. After more searching online I found that some people used PVC cement to bind Lexan parts successfully. I am still interested in the glue that creates the strongest bond.
I also discovered that you can not buy the new bowl 10 years after the food processor manufacturing date. If you like your machine buy the spare parts while it is still in production.

Hydroflush HYF450 Dual Flush Converter By MJSI - waste of time

I got this kit at Costco while it was on sale for $15. I was planning to replace the fill valve anyway and this kit contains a fill valve together with "water saving" dual flush contraption. After installing it and using it for a few days I found that this is a waste of time as this device does not save any water when used with 1.6GPF toilets.

Design problems

This device has multiple design issues that would prevent it from working correctly in 1.6GPF toilet. Some of the issues would cause long term operational problems.

This device sits on top of a drain hole normally closed by the flapper. Due to this it raises the flush hole and minimum water level in the tank about 2 inches. This effectively reduces amount of water that can be used at the highest setting. If you watch animation on the MJSI website here, it shows that during full flush the water level drops to the bottom of the tank. This is wrong. The water level drops to the top of a blue cup covering the flush hole. 

The "liquids" setting is controlled by the blue float. Manual instructs to allow about 2 inches of water above the blue float. This setting is impossible to achieve at least in my tank because the overflow tube top is about 1 inch higher than the lowest position of the blue float. So the low setting is impossible to to get to work in my tank.

The flush mechanism itself has many parts with relatively tight clearance. Although made of plastic, these parts are bound to accumulate the same deposits that are accumulated on a normal flapper and a fill valve. These deposits are likely to prevent this mechanism from operating correctly over a long term due to tight clearances between moving parts.

The flush is triggered by the steel wire moving in the sleeve, mechanism similar to a bicycle break. Although on a bicycle this mechanism is not submerged and has little contact with water, it is still recommended to lubricate it frequently. In the toilet tank this mechanism is unlikely to last any reasonable period of time without rusting and locking up. This in fact confirmed by multiple reviewers on Amazon.com.

Installation

It is stated on the box that no tools are required to install this contraption. If you watch installation videos on the manufacturers website, the first thing they do is list tools which you will need. This is NOT an install without tools.

The installation is pretty simple, although all pieces are large and somewhat of a tight fit in to my tank. After installation you need to adjust the device flow. The procedure to do this is not clearly described and some reviewers on Amazon describe it much better. Over all installation is simple but adjustment is not possible, at least with my tank.

Use

The buttons are rather hard to press so if you have a small child it would be a problem. The "low" button does not release enough water even after setting it to maximum, so it is effectively useless. You can hold the button until you see the complete flush but this defeats the purpose of the device. The "high" button works OK, but the total volume of released water is less than with a regular flapper because of the device design. The 'high" flush is adequate even with reduced amount of water.

Good news

Not all is bad with this converter. Valve appears to be very quiet as the name implies. The flapper replacement does not leak water and closes securely at least while it is new. The "high" button works well as I already mentioned and it may even save you some water.

Conclusion

I think this device is a waste of time and money vs regular flapper when used with 1.6GPF toilet. The device is not likely to hold up as long as the simple flapper would, due to its complexity. The rubber gaskets are not replaceable and the company does not sell replacement parts.  If the device breaks it is simple to replace but pricy comparing with a regular flapper. If this converter is to leak due to mechanical failure it will waste much more water than it will save. If you want to reduce water use it would be more effective to place few plastic bottles filled with water in to your tank to reduce amount of water used. To prevent leaks you can change flapper every few years. It is inexpensive and only takes a few minutes to replace. Valve included with the converter kit works well but similar valves are on the market fore less money.

HuluPlus vs Netflix on Roku

HuluPlus advertizements recently got out of hand completely. When I first subscribed to HuluPlus there was one ad per break and it was 15 to 30 seconds. Now there are two to tree ads 30 seconds each. This is completely unacceptable for the paid service that shows mostly major networks content which is available for free over the air or online.
So I ditched Hulu and went with Netflix. I found Netflix to have better selection of streaming content although a lot of content only available on DVD.

Hulu has custom interface that became horrible after upgrade. It is extremely slow, unintuitive and often causes Roku to reboot. Netflix on the other hand has interface built using Roku widgets and while it looks outdated, it is very functional and fast. For example fast forwarding on Hulu only shows one thumbnail and it is hard to estimate where in the movie you are because the thumbnail does not update adequately. On Neflix several thumbnails are shown and navigating works very well.

Hulu seems to be pedaling some specific content with large banners. I wish they put as much effort in to making interface functional as they put in to preventing users to skip their ads. For the type content that I watch, I found Netflix to have better selection, more modern movies, more BBC shows, more and better kids programming. Netflix has a lot of Disney programming which Hulu lacks. Hulu instead has some Nicolodeon shows which are completely stupid. My kid seems to like Netflix selection much better.

If you put off by ads and do not care for current reality shows, Netflix is the way to go.

Hands on Hisense Sero 7 Pro tablet review

This tablet is available at Wallmart for $150 and it is a very nice tablet. The reviews are starting to hit the web and every review that I have encountered is positive.
The tablet comes in a simple box, with charger, usb cable and a simple manual included. Nothing else is in the box, which is to be expected at this price point. The tablet itself is very well made. I had access to Nexus 7 for a few days and I can tell that the Sero 7 Pro is built just as well. The case has a rubbery feel to it with textured back and it does not feel slippery at all. The case does not have any give or does not creak as some people say. It feels very solid and well made.  The tablet has a 5MP camera with flash on the back and 2MP front facing camera on the front. On the back in the bottom part of the tablet there are 2 speakers. All connectors are concentrated on top and the buttons are on the right side. I personally like connectors being on top since it is more comfortable to read and listen to the music although any tablet can be rotated this way.

The screen quality is excellent. Pictures are vibrant and videos are very nice. The screen is a bit too bright on minimum setting when reading in total darkness even in the night mode. Maybe I should find a reader that can adjust brightness lower than FBReader by putting overlay over the text. Reading experience is very pleasant, similar to my Galaxy Player 4.2 but better because pages do not have to be turned as often. The tablet is not too heavy especially comparing to iPad and it is comfortable to hold over long periods of time. Overall this makes an excellent reading tablet.

Camera quality is reasonable. Better that the one on the Galaxy player. LED flash is OK and the whole setup works in a pinch. I would not use it for anything important since any $100 camera would blow this tablet away. Any dedicated camera would blow away iPad or iPhone as well so this is not surprising. Front camera is good enough as well, for a tablet that is. Camera app has a stock panorama feature which may be useful for a realtor or someone who wants to make a quick panorama in good light.

Battery life is amazing to say the least. I am not sure if this is new Android or processor or anything else. My Galaxy player is loosing about 6% of charge a day even if not used. It can go about week and a half with about 30 minutes of reading every day with the screen at the minimum brightness and all communications off. The Visio 8 inch tablet performed the same way. The Sero tablet only looses about 1% of charge a day when not in use. I have not had long enough usage to estimate how long I can read on a single charge but initial numbers are very good. I will update this post when I get firm numbers. Please note that most of my battery measurement are done with display brightness at the minimum. I read in the low light environment and minimum brightness is all I need.

Internet browsing is very good - pages load fast and render correctly. It is OK to use for browsing but I still prefer my PC. For quick stock check, traffic check or weather forecast it is fine. WiFi signal strength is shown to be less than the Galaxy player in the same location but the network works fine. I have tried few simple games and they work well. Other people report that 3d games run OK. My main interest was in reading books and playing videos for which it works really well.

There are no accessories designed specifically for this tablet but I am sure that this should be forthcoming. Over all I am very pleased with this tablet and would recommend it for any use. I would especially recommend it if you want a good quality tablet on the cheap.

 Battery Life Update

After 5 days of standby with 40 minutes of reading the battery is down to 87%. This is much better than Galaxy Player 4.2. The player shows 77% of battery after 2 hours of reading and 2 days since the last charge. The standby consumption of the Sero 7 appears to be very good.

 Battery Life Update 2

After 19 days of standby battery level is at 43%. The conclusion is that standby time is excellent. I expect it to last a month on standby. My next tests are to use it for reading.

Roku new interface review

I received Roku interface update about a week ago. Before the update I was looking for reviews of the new interface but aside from paid "technology writers" I could not find any unbiased reviews. There are voices of criticism on Roku forums but they are quickly drowned out by the "you have no rights to criticize" crowd.

Here is my review in a few words - the new interface SUCKS! It has a few differences from the old one, mainly that is is now grid of icons versus strip of icons in the old one. The icons are much smaller and the text is smaller and harder to read. The ad on the other hand is much bigger. Ad takes up more than a third of the screen and so annoying that it prompted me to find a blocking solution.

This new interface was designed by a marketing person who has no idea about usability of interfaces on TV. Previous interface was not a usability example but it was tolerable. The font was readable, the icons were large. The new one goes against all good design guidelines, except if your guidelines are to show giant ads and piss off all users of the device.
Navigation to a given icon is now faster since one can navigate in two directions instead of one but the interface startup is slower. It also takes more memory or maybe the new software is slower over all. It affects other apps and they are slower to start and have to fetch images more often. Home button now brings you in to the menu instead of the application icon as it used to do. To navigate back to the app screen you need an extra press.
Roku tried to better integrate the app store but I think they failed. Roku store is still as ugly as ever and loads very slowly. The settings now a menu item on the left instead of an icon and has greater chance to be selected by mistake. Search is also a menu item which is an improvement as it can be reached faster.

The video, when streamed from the local server, starts faster. Positioning within the video is also seems faster. New software fixed crashes when navigating within MKV files. I only tried with one file so this conclusion may be a bit premature. When position is changed within MKV file that is streamed over HTTP, most of the time first few seconds of video is broken but audio is OK. After few seconds video recovers. Previous version locked up the box, which rebooted after watchdog is expired. The new version seems to hold up.

The new Roku interface is definitely worse than the old one. It is slower to start, icons are smaller and ad is much larger and obtrusive. The software over all seems to slow down old apps. On the other hand video navigation is faster and MKV files  play better when streamed. I am disappointed with this update and will try to figure out how to prevent Roku from auto updating in the future.

Blocking ads in Roku launcher

New Roku interface sucks! I will talk about it in my later post in details. The size of ad is increased probably 8x. Before I did not think  it would be worth blocking Roku ad servers because ads were not in your face and not intrusive. Now ad occupies almost half of the screen and is very annoying.

After some research online I found the servers that Roku uses to host its ads. Below is the list of servers that should be blocked to stop Roku from serving ads:

• api.roku.com
• cloudservices.roku.com
• channles.roku.com/images

Most modern routers have some sort of URL filtering abilities. Adding these URLs to the filtering list solves ad problem nicely. So far the only downside that I found is that Hulu Plus starts a bit slower. It maybe trying to hit the server for updates. Another side effect of blocking these links is that the Roku channel store is no longer works. Your loaded channels work OK but you can not get the new channels. This works for me, in fact it is an additional benefit as you child will not be able to browse the channel store and to download any unwanted apps. If you start the app store when these URLs are blocked, upon returning in to the main menu you will not be able to see your apps for a few minutes. This most likely caused by the network timeout and check for application updates.

If you have older Roku software you can block zedo.com domain and that would block all ads in the older Roku software.

I can not take credit for discovering these URLs, I just looked them up on the Internet. I hope this post will save you some time.

Watching America's Test Kitchen on Roku

Recently PBS and PBS KIDS channels were made available on Roku. Unfortunately America's Test Kitchen is not a part of PBS shows offered on Roku and it is one of our favorite shows. I this post I will explain how you can watch this show on Roku.

More than one year of episodes is available to watch in your browser for free on the show website. If you subscribe, you can watch all seasons of the show. The trick is to use Roku to do this. I have to warn you that the process is somewhat time consuming and not everyone would want to do this.

You will need software listed below and you can use google to find it. All software is free.

• rtmpdump - this is the tool used to download the episodes
• RTMPDumpHelper - this tool is used to make downloading process very simple
• ffmpeg - this tool is used to convert downloaded video to the format understood by Roku
• MyMedia - this software is used to play videos on Roku. This can be substituted by any software capable of doing the same thing or by playing videos from the USB media if your Roku is capable of doing so.

First you need to download episodes that you want to watch. Unfortunately downloading must happen in real time  so you have to be patient here. You also can not download multiple shows at the same time. Install rtmpdump and RTMPDumpHelper you your computer. Open RTMPDumpHelper and navigate to America's Test Kitchen website. Select episode that you want to download. You will see that rtmpsuck.exe will save advertisement first and then will start saving the episode. You can ether watch the episode or can go and do something else for 20 odd minutes. After episode is finished playing in your browser you will have a copy on your hard drive. You can repeat this process for any episode that you want.

Next step is to convert the video in to format that Roku will recognize. The original video is encoded correctly but it is multiplexed in to flash video format. All you need to do is re-multiplex this video in to the mp4 container. Use following ffmpeg command line to it:

ffmpeg -i input-file.mp4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy output-directory/output-file.mp4

Replace your input and output file names with correct episode names.This command will very quickly re-multiplex video. It only takes few seconds per episode on any modern computer.

Now you can play your downloaded videos on Roku using MyMedia (my favorite), Plex or any one of many local playback apps. You can also put episodes on USB drive and play them directly on your Roku if your device supports it. As a bonus after you downloaded the show you can store it on DVD and watch it any time you want to in the future. The show is streamed in 640x352 resolution and looks very good on our CRT TV.

Logitech G400s mouse

In my previous post I complimented Logitech customer service and now I wanted to give my opinion on the new mouse they sent me.

My old mouse is G400 as far as I can tell. It is dark grey with black bottom and has a Logitech logo on top. The new mouse is G400s and has a large G in place of Logitech logo. It is also different color - dark blue with the black stripes and silver markings. The buttons are same size and in the same positions. The weight of the new mouse is the same as the old one although I did not measure it precisely.
One thing that did change is the mouse cable. Old mouse had thin and very hard cable. There was no issues with it, it just was different from the older mice that I had. The new mouse has same thin cable but it is not as hard. It is more pliable and softer on touch. They also added grommet on the mouse end of the cable which should help this cable to last longer.

Sensitivity and button presses feel exactly the same. Wheel rotation feels "clicker" on the new mouse. In use this mouse feels identical to my original G400 and performs identically.

I still like G400 a lot and would recommend it for gaming and everyday use. I really like sensitivity adjustment buttons which do not require any special drivers. The mouse performs flawlessly on my cheap mouse pad and does not jerk or skip. No matter how fast I move it, it tracks really well.

Excellent customer service from Logitech

My older Logitech MX300 mouse finally gave up to ghost and after some research I purchased Logitech G400 to replace it. I like G400 a lot. It has a nice weight and comfortable to use. The only downside of this mouse in my case that it is right handed and I prefer ambidextrous mice. This mouse served me for over a year really well but developed very annoying squeak when pressing the wheel down.  Ordinary mouse can be opened and cleaned but G400 is sealed. The screws are located under the gliding pads, which are glued shut to the body. In theory the pads can be pried away to access the screws but I did not want to ruin the mouse.

I contacted Logitech tech support in hopes of getting some tips on cleaning this mouse. Few emails later they send me a brand new G400. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. It is unusual to see a company being so forthcoming in replacing their products. I used Logitech products before as their mice are very good and reliable. Now they got a devoted customer. Knowing that they stand behind their products makes me confident that they are interested in maintaining quality. I can not imaging that their business model would be selling a bad product and then replacing it for free.