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Pushover app on Huawei Android phones

Posted by Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum on

While diving deeper into my openHAB installation, the need for notifications on mobile phones came up. After some research, I settled with Pushover, which provides Android and iOS apps, as well as Desktop notifications. openHAB Rules have support for Pushover, and everything works well together.

 

Except when Android decides to kill apps, because they sit idle and do nothing. It so happens on my Huawei phone that notifications are delivered to the device, but no popup shows up. Only when I open the up, suddenly all the messages are there. The Pushover FAQ has an entry for this, even for Huawei phones, but it is outdated.

 

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How to prioritize WiFi connections on Android

Posted by Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum on

At home I have two different WiFi networks, both known to all my mobile devices. One is our internal network, password protected. The other one is an open Freifunk network. It's nice to walk around in the village and automatically connect to other Freifunk WiFi routers, instead of using expensive mobile data.

But when at home I really want my devices connected to our internal network. Makes it easy to copy files between devices, or access services only available in our internal network. Plus the native WiFi connection is much faster than the Freifunk connection, which is limited by the speed of the VPN.

However Android connects to the last used WiFi network, and when the last one was another Freifunk router, it will connect to this network at home as well. By default, Android does not allow to prioritize networks. That's where "WiFi Prioritizer" comes to the rescue!

 

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How to clear the cached data in Android - without any App

Posted by Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum on

Up until recently I was using an App to clean the the Android cache once in a while. If you don't, the device over time get's sluggish, because too many apps store too much data in the cache. Over time this cache can grow to GBs in size.

On the other hand, every single "clean cache App", over time, started showing more and more aggresive advertising. I get that the developer wants to make some money, that's fine. But maybe the money is not enough, so more advertising it is.

Turns out, there is a built-in way in Android to clean the cache. No need for an extra App.

 

 

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How I improve OpenStreetMap

Posted by Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum on

OpenStreetMap is an awesome project. Contributors constantly improve a online map and add new data, fix items in the map which did change in the real world, or improve the data for a number of projects (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, List) building on top of the map. Being outside a lot, I figured that I can contribute as well. It's just a question of how to transport the data from "out there" back to the laptop in my office. After probing around and trying a few tools, I came up with 3 different ways, depending on the situation and amount of changes.

 

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