In my last post, I mentioned it was almost time for my final (for now at least) semester of college to start. Now it’s almost over. I graduate in about a week and a half, and hopefully I’ll be moving on to a big-boy job without much delay. Between then and now not much worth sharing has happened, but two events in the last week or so are worthy of a post. The first is related to my parents’ car shopping, and I’ll post about that once a conclusion is reached, but the second is 90% finished and it’s right here in my house.
A week or two ago, my wife decided that we should host new year’s eve at our house. This gathering will include friends and family, a few of which will be staying overnight. We do have a guest room, but up until now it was kind of a catchall junk room with a bed, a dresser and an old TV just sitting in there. Functional I suppose, but not a place you’d want to spend too much time. Last week we rearranged the furniture into a much, much nicer layout. I’ve taken to calling it “the hotel room.”
Previously, the bed was in the far corner and the dresser was against the left wall. The TV was sitting on the floor in front of the dresser and the TV stand was not in the room. The current set up of a rather empty room featuring a bed and a large TV make it feel like a hotel to me. The ladder is for our cat Martha to sit on so she can survey the neighborhood wildlife. It’s so much more functional, and I’ve used the room to relax in the afternoon a few times. All it needs now is a nightstand next to the bed to keep phones and the remotes.
I used a Raspberry Pi 4 with LibreELEC to get Kodi on the TV, so it has access to all the cable TV channels and Jellyfin content that you can get on the other TVs. An older Roku stick is also connected to the TV for the streaming services. Unfortunately there isn’t a smooth solution to get things like Netflix in the Kodi interface, so the Roku will have to do. Which is fine, it just adds a seam to the user experience. I’m waiting on a FLIRC receiver to make one remote work with both the TV and Kodi. The Roku is RF only, so it will have to have a separate remote.
To improve guest hospitality even further, I 3D printed a QR code for my guest wi-fi network. It came out pretty nicely for my first multi-color print I think.
With this, all you need to do to access the guest network is point your phone’s camera at the code and click the button that shows up. No entering passwords or browsing for the right SSID. I added a couple magnets and standoffs to the back so I can stick it on the fridge.
With all this activity I’m really excited to have some overnight guests. It almost feels like a bed and breakfast or something.