Dyson V15 now

After year and a half of using the Dyson Detect V15 with Optic/Fluffy head, how has it been?

Generally, I've been quite happy with it. It does require some more consideration and care than the old vacuum cleaners. It's not built like a tank at all, but so far I've not broken anything.

It was quite clear I'd mostly use the ECO mode, as the battery lasts longer and all normal dirt and hair can be removed with it. AUTO can be useful when using the other nozzles for sofas and things like that. BOOST, like I initially observed, depletes the battery in a matter of minutes.

Emptying the dust "bag" should not be left for the last moment. The emptying should be performed with the Dyson mostly inside a trash bag, so the fine grained dirt doesn't float around.

More often than not, it's not enough to kick out the contents, the entire container usually needs to be removed. But I guess more often it's done, the less hassle it is. Laziness prevails and I find myself emptying an overfilled container.

Removing the filter is just a twist away.

There are a couple of warning messages that come up after prolonged use.

The "before" pictures would have been too horrible to bear, so I only added "after" pictures.

Clean filter: Gently screw out the violet back end with hand, knock out visible dirt and particles, wash the cloth part under tap water, let dry for about 24-30 hours.

Weirdly enough, I did not need to do this until after a year of use, but then I had to do it again after a couple of months. Hmm...

Airflow blocked: More mysterious, but can generally mean the dust and hair has built up to the inner intake hole. One symptom is that even if the Dyson seems to take in particles, when I stop pulling the trigger they fall down the tube again. Just clear everything inside.

The roller dirt and hair build-up does not produce an error message, although it's bound to happen. I guess it would have been wise to do once a month or so, but I didn't do it for nearly one and a half years! I think Dyson could have added some kind of hour count and a reset button.

Locations where the hair easily accumulates.

It's far more easy to open than I thought. There's a sort of lever at the side and the part comes off without any use of force. 

The axle outside the roller had collected so much hair it was rather tricky to remove. I used scissors and a sharp paper knife, digging and cutting into the furry torus. I don't have much confidence in the strength of the part, so I tried to be careful.

The furry striped bar can be pulled out. Any visible hair and dirt is removed, then the furry part can be washed under the tap, taking care not to wash the connector part. I used Q-tips to clean that end. Again, wait until next day before re-assembling.

Only after cleaning the roller I saw how slow it had been before, because now it's quite nippy again. Ideally, the yellow-black stripes shouldn't be visible, but lost under a zoetropic blur. 

A vacuum cleaner is perhaps not the most ecological way to kill banana flies. But I was happy to see Dyson with the short nozzle is good for this task. The BOOST mode positively disintegrates them and they end up dead, not sure exactly why. With the less aggressive modes, not all flies end up inside. Those that do mostly remain alive. They won't get out, though. A house fly is not so easily fooled.

Nedis USB-C 3-in-1 Multi-Port Adapter

This caught my eye in Tokmanni, and thought why not try yet another adapter. I already have the USB-C to HDMI adapter for using Samsung Dex with an external display, but I was kind of stuck with wireless mice and keyboard so I largely forgot the whole thing.

Back then I was also worried that a USB hub would be too large, but this is not much bulkier than that video-only adapter.

So, apart from HDMI it has one USB-A style port and a USB-C.

The happy outcome here is that the USB-C to HDMI works with the Samsung Dex phone desktop for displays, and the Samsung S23FE also joyfully accepts USB keyboards, gamepads and mice. This is not something that was explicitly promised on the box, but I think it can be taken granted these days. Or can it?

I have to make the choices carefully as I have to use both port types. So one C-connector mouse and A-connector keyboard, or other way round, but not both of either type.

Does this make Samsung Dex much better? Well, at least the experience improves. Perhaps I'm more intrigued about the possibility of using a keyboard without actually invoking the Samsung Dex desktop.

It's still not a very coherent experience. For example the Slack app doesn't work well with a physical keyboard, after typing one letter it insists on opening the virtual keyboard after all.

I could have connected a keyboard without the adapter, but somehow my Samsung was picky about sticking some USB-C keyboards into it directly. Besides, today cheap small keyboards tend to be either wireless or with a hardwired USB-A cable. Admittedly, a simple USB C/A adapter might do the trick too.

What about games? Asphalt 8 Airborne had worked with the Shrimp USB-C connected keyboard, so I could expect Logitech F350 to work too. And yes it did, but I had to do some other things before I could properly try the game.

Samsung Dex works in two modes, either as a dedicated desktop that uses the external display resolution and sets the touch screen as a trackpad, or as 100% mirrored phone screen, showing exactly what I'd see if I only used the mobile. 

In the Dex desktop mode, if the game is launched and put into full screen, all kinds of weird screen resolution hiccups would appear. I didn't find a solid way to launch the game in the external display resolution, although it's obvious the game can do this. (Because it runs on different resolution Android phones and tabs).

Worse than that, the gamepad direction keys stopped responding until I refreshed the Dex trackpad screen.

Things were better with the full mirrored mode, as the game screen is set up nicely, if not altogether taking advantage of the external display resolution. There were no control anomalies, probably because the Dex trackpad is not invoked in any way.

It's silly to mirror the screen, and it uses battery power too. No doubt the better option would be to have the phone screen shut, but so far I didn't find a suitable configuration. For games it might be wiser to use the phone or tablet screen directly anyway.

If only I just could find an interesting gamepad-controlled mobile game. Don't get me wrong, the actual Asphalt game play was kind of nice but all that wading through menus and opportunities and "coins", in short the full-on mobile game experience, got to my nerves rather soon.

In any case it looks like car and flight games have lenient controls, negating any lag and inaccuracies, but as soon as I try some retro shooters the limits are more obvious.

Apart from that F350 gamepad, the Arduino 8-bit joystick adapter worked too, making this one of my most cross-linked blog posts ever. Not that it works well with any modern games, but I might explore some emulators later. My expectations are not high.

Trangia Triangle

Attached to the "X-Briv" Trangia-compatible burner

The Trangia Triangle is made of four pieces that can be dismantled for maximal flatness. It's not especially heavy either at ~105g, counting the carry bag. Putting the three walls and the circle together doesn't take much effort and it's not slower to set up than the standard Trangia.

Four pieces

Using a Trangia-compatible gas burner, it does give some "spider" vibes, but perhaps with better wind protection. This could be one rationale for the product. Also, it is not fixed to some particular burner, so for example the spirit burner can be used with it too.

Correct way up

Even if not immune to wind, the wind shield works quite well and the food kept bubbling quite evenly. I have a hunch that this combination worked better than the cheap "spider" I've used previously.

The instructions show the three protrusions at the top, but it shouldn't make much difference if the Triangle is upside down? That might even in some situations work better. At least one Fire Maple pot with the heat sink didn't sit that well on the suggested orientation.

The Knorr test

But, practice sometimes proves these ideas wrong. One of the walls ended up slightly bent from heat, possibly because there's a pocket where the flame could be pushed to. Or, somehow the heat is more easily distributed to the wall this way as the pot is in more contact with it.

It's hardly broken, and can be bent to shape again, but it's another small lesson learned.

The not so correct way up

Carrying a pot, the burner and some gas, it's all bound to take up some space anyway, so it might not be that much more space efficient than the Trangia 27. Why does that configuration need to be so darn perfect, leaving no room for invention?