JSFetzik

You can control pretty much any addressable RGB LED strip easily with any Arduino compatible device. With the right software. For running at 5V just buy 5V strips. It really is that simple. Going 6 meters you will start getting into voltage drop issues and may need to use power injection to keep the colors looking good. Check out the following video for more details about voltage drop and what to do about it. QuinLED: LED strip voltage drop, is it real? How to prevent or combat it! To make it really easy use a NodeMCU and an already built software image of WLED. Check out out the following video for a walk through of how to set things up. He also has some additional videos about how to hook this up to home automation systems as well. WLED - New RBG wifi control software!

I would also go with an ESP variant. Mostly because I have a bunch of them already. Easy to use and there are a lot of examples out there. Check out the following article by someone has already done this. https://blog.zakkemble.net/remote-mail-notifier-and-gps-tracker/

Hoping for a moderate deal on a couple 5700XT's to upgrade my wife's and my machine, from the Radeon 480's.

I have owned a Monoprice Maker Select v2 for a bit more than two years now. This is the ~$260 big brother to the Mini. I have done a number of mods, including setting up Octoprint, so the total cost for me is about $400. I agree somewhat with Pixel5. Working with a $200-$300 3D printer can be a very frustrating process. It can also be a good learning experience. The problem is that the quality control at this price point is all over the place. So for the same model printer, from the same manufacturer, one will work great and the next can be a complete lemon. Considering the above if you are willing to treat it as a learning experience and not counting on an out of the box plug and play experience, then go for it. I would not suggest getting the Monoprice Mini however, not because it is bad, but because of the size of the community out there. I would suggest getting something like an Ender 3/5 or CR-10 that have a huge number of users, and thus a large community out there that can help you out. Also the Mini has a really small print bed, so you are very limited in what you can print.

Try a brim and see if that helps. The extra surface can help keep things stuck to the surface. Also as suggested above give hairspray a try, I found it works better than glue stick for me. I use this Aquanet spray. You could also try a different type of glue stick and see if one is better than another.

I also use it to run Octoprint for my 3D-printer.

My wife and I mainly play MMOs together. Currently Elder Scrolls Online. Previously Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, The Secret World, City of Heroes/Villains. We have also played a little bit of Borderlands co-op. Waiting to see what form of multi-player BL3 will have.

Depends on what you consider a PC. The first computer I owned was an IMSAI 8080 back in the late 1980's. Toggle switches and LED's for the win. Didn't have a monitor or keyboard. My first DOS based PC was an Epson Equity II. Had a NEC V30 CPU which could run in either 8086 or 8080 modes. Also ran at a blazing 10MHz IIRC, faster than any of the Intel 8086 based machines. ?

I have been running 3 machines 24/7 for over a decade. For some components it is better for some a little worse. Power cycling will shorten the life of chips. Constant on will short the life of motors in fans and possibly hard drives. In the end it is a wash that you won't really notice, unless you keep your PC for many years, meaning 5-10 years, before refreshing or completely replacing. In the end the real cost is the extra electricity you use and any additional air conditioning your home may need. That cost varies greatly depending on where you are in the world. Where I am electricity is fairly cheap.

For some extra safety use "waterproof" LED strips. The strip is enclosed in a clear plastic sleeve, so it will help insulate from shorts. You still need to be careful with the terminations. Potential downside is the plastic sleeve does make the strip significantly thicker, so it may not fit.

The 518 has been my only mouse for years and have not found anything else I like. To the point where I have 4 spares in the closet obtained from eBay. ?

Should be pretty easy. Check out the following tutorial on the Teensy site about emulating a USB keyboard. https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_keyboard.html

N9KUB Here. Got my Technician license here in the US back in the early 90's, when it was a brand new thing. Took the test on a dare when visiting a friend on the weekend he happened to be taking one of the higher level exams. My college degree was in electronics so they figured I should be able to pass the first couple tests. I almost passed the one after Tech. Had a Yaesu handie talkie for a couple years, but never got all that involved. Haven't done any HAM stuff since the mid 90's.

Yeah you can do a lot with an Arduino, or one of the many clones. My favorite is the Teensy family. You can emulate a USB keyboard, mouse, joystick, MIDI controller, etc. There are some good examples on the Teensy site and their forums. Encoder example Keyboard example Mouse example MIDI example

1962 Corvette. Undecided on color.

For a small and powerful microcontroller check out the Teensy family. Arduino compatible in a small form factor with a number of versions available. Plus they have a good forum.

At home there are currently a total of 12 PC's. The breakdown is as follows 2 identical main PC's that were built a few months ago. (i7, 16GB, Radeon 470) One for my wife and one for me. 2 previous generation main PC's that were rotated to the gaming/craft room. Mainly used for doing 2-3 camera video conference/streaming during paper and pencil game sessions for the out of town players. Also for occasional tasks related to 3D printing, CAD and electronics tinkering. 2 previous, previous generation main PC's. Now 5+ years old, waiting to go to friends and family that can use them. 1 low power $99 Lenovo used as a linux machine used for miscellaneous stuff when needed. Lately testing and wiping old hard drives. 1 stick PC connected to a TV for Netflix and YouTube streaming. 1 FreeNAS machine in a rack case. 1 7+ year old Sony laptop. Soon to be completely retired 1 6 month old Dell laptop to replace the Sony. 1 original Surface Pro Yeah I am a tech hoarder. ;-) At work I have a more realistic setup of 2 workstations and a laptop. Laptop is used for day to day office type work. One workstation is a bunch of developer and admin tools. The other hosts 3 VM's used for testing, along with video editing software.

I build two identical machines, one for me and one for my wife. My full upgrade cycle is 3-4 years. With a possible GPU upgrade somewhere in the middle if it makes sense. I built new machines about 9 months ago and the previous machines did not get new GPU's, because it wasn't worth it for the budget I had. By the time there were new GPU's that fit my budget and had noticeably better performance it was time for a whole new build. I do my builds based on budget. I set a target cost that I have the money for, then I start looking for good deals and start gathering up parts. Sometimes this can take months to gather all the parts. For the last cycle I got the SSD's in October, CPU's during a Black Friday sale and the rest leading up to Christmas. Then built the machines during the Christmas/New Years holiday's.

Very nicely done.

Make sure the motherboard supports the PCI-E version that the new video card uses. A friend saw something similar and it turned out his motherboard was too old to support the new PCI-E version of the video card.

One of my old PC's with a 5770 from 2009 is still running fine. In my experience unless you do significant overclocking GPU's tend to last pretty long.

My method is to use canned air and a vacuum. Don't use the vacuum directly on your PC. Use the canned air to blow out the dust. Set the vacuum hose near your PC to collect the dust you are blowing out. Move the hose around as needed.

Check out the Voicemeeter virtual mixer. I use this mix multiple audio sources into a "output" for Google Hangouts. I know of others that have used it with OBS as well.

I work in IT at a manufacturing company, in the group that supports our CAD users. We don't use SolidWorks, but have used a number of other CAD applications. With most CAD software the video card only makes a noticeable difference if you are using relatively complex textures. If you are just using colors instead of textures just about any decent GPU will do. CPU cores might make a difference, but it really depends on the specific application. For example we have seen a number of CAD apps that max out at using 2 cores. During our last round of hardware testing before getting new machines we found that the biggest performance difference came from switching to SSD's. We saw a 10%-30% performance improvement. Particularly with large assemblies.

So here is my anecdote about lightning. I few months ago the tree next to our house got hit by lightning. We lost the following items. 1 cable modem 3 cable set top boxes 4 ethernet switches, every one in the house. 1 HP Stream Mini 1 Canon SL1 DSLR camera Everything except the camera was plugged into a good quality surge strip. The tree is only 5-6 feet from both the power line and the cable line to the house. Best I can tell from the pattern of damage the lightning either jumped to or induced a spike in the coax cable which then passed through the cable modem to the ethernet switches. All of the ethernet switches in the house died. Seemingly saving most of PC's. Only loosing the HP Stream Mini. The DSLR camera was running on an AC adapter that was plugged directly into an outlet. So it likely took a direct hit via a jump to or an induced spike on the AC line.