Legendary Technology Blog
365Explorer is now available as a PowerShell module designed to make Microsoft 365 security investigations faster, simpler, and far less painful than the usual Entra admin workflow. It runs a local web server and gives you a browser-based interface that feels closer to a security console than a traditional PowerShell script. At its core, 365Explorer is built around application-based authentication…
I’m extremely excited to finally share what I’ve been up to with hydroponics. I wanted to wait until I actually had real growth and harvests before writing anything because there’s no shortage of “day 1” hydroponics videos and reviews online. So I decided to do something simple. I bought the absolute cheapest hydroponics kit I could find on Amazon and tried to grow real food in my basement. The…
If you’ve ever tried shopping for a single board computer (SBC) on Amazon, you already know the problem: the search is powerful, but it’s not built for this niche. You type in what you want, apply a few filters, and still end up scrolling through pages of accessories, unrelated electronics, duplicate listings, and overpriced bundles. Finding the actual cheapest SBCs quickly? Surprisingly…
One of the things I’ve been trying to optimize lately is running larger local models with higher context windows without spilling over into system RAM. I’ve been running Ollama with Qwen3.6-27B on my NVIDIA 3090, which has 24GB of VRAM. It works great, but once I started pushing the context window above 32K, I started getting a pretty nasty split between CPU and GPU memory. It worked, but it was…
SharePoint storage is one of the most underestimated cost drivers in a Microsoft 365 environment. Microsoft gives every tenant 1TB of base storage plus 1GB per licensed user, but once you start hitting those limits, adding more storage costs money. And the storage you're paying for is often largely wasted. Duplicate files get copied across sites instead of linked. Version history grows unbounded —…
This morning I woke up to a noticeably slow blog. Pages that normally loaded instantly were dragging, and something clearly wasn’t right. What I discovered was a high-volume POST request flood that nearly brought my AWS Lightsail server to its knees. I was able to stop this attack with a simple Apache rule and I wanted to share how in this article! Source
It had been quite a while since I first reviewed the original Google Pixel Watch and I ended up using that watch daily for much longer than I expected. It was one of those devices that once you got used to having it, it became hard to go without it. Since then Google has had a couple more generations to refine the experience and I recently upgraded to the Google Pixel Watch 3. I've now been using…
When you're investigating a potentially compromised Windows endpoint, the last thing you need is another tool that dumps endless raw output into a console window and calls it “forensics.” You need the suspicious service that shouldn’t be there. The scheduled task that doesn’t belong. The odd TCP listener waiting for connections. The registry persistence key that explains why malware keeps coming…
SYSVOL replication failures are one of the domain controller problems that keep IT teams up at night. When SYSVOL stops replicating correctly, Group Policy Objects (GPOs) stop updating, logon scripts fall out of sync, and domain controllers begin serving inconsistent policy data. It’s important to separate this from Active Directory replication issues: AD replication (NTDS) handles users, groups,…
One day I was wrestling with my old trimmer having to manually wind the spool. Most of the time I would end up winding it backwards somehow even though every time I tried to reverse it (from what I thought it should be) so it wouldn't be backwards and it would anyway every single time. That's when I decided to try something different. If you’ve ever wrestled with tangled trimmer line or struggled…
A user reports their workstation keeps going to sleep "on its own." Or someone claims they never left their desk, yet the session clearly disconnected. Answering these questions means digging through the Windows event log and correlating events across Security and System logs into one timeline. This script pulls seven distinct event IDs from two different logs, merges them chronologically, and…
Command Conquer: Red Alert was one of the earliest computer games I ever played. That alone probably tells you a lot about how I feel going into this review. The remastered version gave me a chance to go back and experience it again (not through fuzzy childhood memories, but as it actually exists today). The surprising part is just how much of it still holds up… and how much of it absolutely…
I’ve been using the Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 for a little while now after spending a long time with both the original Pixel Buds and the first Pixel Buds Pro series. Since I already reviewed the original Pro series, I wanted to specifically talk about what has improved with the second generation and whether it feels like a meaningful upgrade. The short version is yes. It absolutely does. Google…
Windows Update breaks. Everyone knows this. Stuck update loops, error codes that don't make sense, a client machine that hasn't successfully installed patches in months. Microsoft's official KB article for fixing Windows Update is a wall of 30+ manual steps. You have to stop services, rename folders, reset security descriptors, register DLLs, and restart everything in the correct order. I wrote a…
If you’re looking to ditch gas without sacrificing performance, the EGO LM2156SP self-propelled electric lawn mower is one of the most compelling options on the market today. With impressive torque, long battery life, and user-friendly features, it’s built for homeowners who want a premium mowing experience (without the fumes, maintenance, or noise of traditional gas mowers). That said, no mower…
If you manage older UniFi environments, you’ve probably run into a frustrating issue: legacy Cloud Key Gen1 devices that are too outdated to connect to the UniFi Portal. This can leave you completely blind when trying to manage a client’s network. After working with many of these devices in production environments, here’s a practical, step-by-step guide to resetting and updating a UniFi Cloud Key…
I’ve been wanting to use AI to analyze my website, https://pibenchmarks.com, and uncover potential improvements (especially security issues) but without spending money on APIs or exposing my code to third-party services. This post walks through how I set up a fully local workflow using Ollama + Claude Code, running on my RTX 3090, to scan an entire repository efficiently. Source
External sharing is a compliance nightmare. Your 365 tenant has dozens of SharePoint sites, each with document libraries, and files are shared via links or direct invitations. The SharePoint admin center shows you a high-level sharing policy per site, but it won't tell you which specific files are shared externally or with whom. I wrote a script that walks every site, every drive, and every file…
Despite the massive hype around AI I have always had a lot of trouble getting the AI to generate usable code. Even when I reply back and try to help the AI understand what it's missing it often tends to actually get *worse* after my suggestions. Even for this simple project ChatGPT and Gemini failed miserably to write a very simple fishing bot. They both hallucinated and tried using PowerShell…
Pi Benchmarks has officially passed over 100,000 tests submitted! The site's earliest tests started in early 2019 giving us over 5 years worth of real world testing by the single board computer (SBC) community across different boards. Today we are going to cover the fastest combinations of hardware on the Raspberry Pi 5 to achieve the absolute highest storage scores and performance possible (and…
I recently went through the trouble of figuring out how to install Steam on the Orange Pi 5 and it worked really well. Now that I've already gone through the pain of figuring out how to do this I figured I might as well write one of these guides for the Radxa Rock 5B as well. The new RK3588/RK3588S boards have much more power than we've typically had available to us in the past on ARM boards. With…
The new RK3588/RK3588S boards have much more power than we've typically had available to us in the past on ARM boards. With a whopping 8 CPU cores and a Mali 610 GPU the Orange Pi 5 is capable of running Steam using Box64/Box86. It's even able to play basic games pretty well (with some tinkering usually). In this guide I'll show you how to set up Steam on the Orange Pi 5 and run Stardew Valley on…
It had been a while since I had given using a wearable device a try. I had not used one since the original Apple Watch all the way back in 2015. I had switched away from Apple many years ago though to Android phones. Since then I had not seen any reason to try a wearable again although I heard the Samsung Android ones had been improving. I'd been using a Google Pixel phone for the past several…
I've been exploring using Adafruit Stemma QT to create really cool DIY prototypes without any soldering here on the site. It allows you to very quickly throw together prototypes and do testing for various ideas. I recently ordered a bunch of new Stemma QT devices including the Adafruit ESP32-S3 Reverse TFT Feather and a MLX90640 IR camera module that I wanted to turn into a DIY thermal camera. I…
I recently covered the extremely cheap and popular ESP32-CAM here on the site. That is still a good choice but I wanted to evaluate some of the other camera options out there. One of the camera modules I chose to try was the ESP-EYE. This is actually an official product by Espressif (the company who make the ESP modules). It comes as one solid piece unlike the ESP32-CAM. It also has beefier…
I've reviewed the Pine64 SOQuartz compute module alternative in the past. While it works great Pine64 is working toward mainline support and doesn't have very many choices available for a well-supported image as mainline kernel support for that board is not quite complete yet. The Radxa Rock 3 Compute Module (CM3) is Radxa's current production alternative to a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. They…
I've been integrating my entire home into Home Assistant using as much open-source software and hardware as possible. Recently I've wanted to add some additional cameras to my home such as a camera to monitor my HVAC / water heater. Although I already have 6 Unifi cameras integrated into the home those are extremely expensive (and frankly availability is poor on them as well). I don't need a…
I've been running my Home Assistant instance on a very old Tinker Board S with a 16GB eMMC. This has been working fine for a month or two but I recently started getting notifications that my Home Assistant instance was out of drive space. Sure enough, even after removing all of my backups there is almost no space left. I've already received reports from my readers about how much better of an…
I've covered making a wireless Adafruit IoT button that can run any action within Home Assistant when you press the button using automations. These are great because they also have a RGB LED built in that you can use to show the status of something being controlled by the button. For example if you used it to control your garage door you could make the button red when your garage door is open and…
I've previously covered creating a Home Assistant air quality monitor system using a XAIO ESP32-C3 module and ESPHome / Home Assistant to create a 7-in-1 air quality monitor sensor. My previous article though did require a little bit of soldering to get it going. Today I'm going to show you my latest sensor build which has completely eliminated the soldering. It's plug and play using ESPHome and…
I've been covering integrating my entire home into Home Assistant here on the site. I want to have the capability to monitor everything going on in my home and control it with an open-source system such as Home Assistant. Although I have a strong WiFi network in my home there are some areas where using a wireless technology that is more energy efficient (such as Z-wave and Zigbee) makes a lot more…
I've been upgrading all of the devices in my home to work with Home Assistant and eliminate subscriptions to proprietary services. One of the last remaining subscription services I have in my home is the Ring door and window sensors. The Ring ones have honestly been fine but the subscription is not free. Since I know these sensors will be installed in my home for 10+ years it will save me money to…
I've been investigating ways to make my garage doors on my home "smart". My overall goal is to implement them into Home Assistant. I've been investigating various options to do this including do-it-yourself with ESP modules (which I've used for a lot of other parts of my home automation). My home is only about 3 years old and came preinstalled with a "dumb" Genie garage door system that does not…
I've been doing a lot of coverage of ESP32-related chips lately on the site. One thing that is a bit painful with them though is that they usually require a lot of soldering. That's why I find the Adafruit QT Py series of ESP32 chips so exciting. They eliminate the soldering! Unfortunately once I got all of my parts and tried to get started I ran into several issues that are not covered at all (or…
The Raspberry Pi continues to suffer from supply chain issues. They have promised there are a lot of their very old models that should be coming up for purchase within the next 6 months. I've been hearing that for years though to be honest with you. Fortunately you don't need to wait. There are more and better alternatives to the Raspberry Pi in 2023 than there have ever been before. In this…
The Radxa Zero can definitely be set up to boot from USB storage / using a SSD. You can do this trick using both the eMMC and an SD card. Given that the board also has a quad-core processor you can actually make a tiny and pretty powerful server setup with something like this achieving pretty impressive I/O speeds for such a small package. In this guide I'll show you how to set up SSD booting on…
I've been documenting my journey building out my smart home powered by Home Assistant here on the site. Home Assistant is an open-source system designed to let you easily manage and automate everything in your home. That's when I saw that Adafruit's QT Py series of boards had a tiny IoT button available for it I immediately thought of Home Assistant. The button could be used to automate anything…
I've been building out various sensor arrays for use with Home Assistant in my home using ESP32 modules and ESPHome and it has been working really well. One challenge though is that you have a limited number of connections (even when using expansion boards). This can be dealt with a few different ways but buying a whole bunch of individual sensor boards one at a time and connecting them can get…
I'm certainly not the first to review the Orange Pi 800 computer kit. It has been available for a while now. That's exactly why I wanted to take a look at the Orange Pi 800 as a more mature product today. In this review we'll take a look at the packaging, build quality, specifications and test the performance of the Orange Pi 800 and see how well it has matured since it's initial release. Let's…
I have been ordering a lot of gear from Adafruit lately to help build my Home Assistant sensor array for my home (as well as other projects I have going here on the site). I was very confused today when something showed up I didn't recognize (and wasn't even aware really existed). It turns out to be a cable that you plug into a USB-C power adapter that supports PD (power delivery) and output a…
The Radxa Zero has been extremely popular since release and is still pretty hard to find on many major retailers. After trying to get it from a couple of different places I finally received mine this week! In this review we'll dive into using the Radxa Zero including the available images, hardware capabilities and what kind of performance to expect. Will the Radxa Zero live up to how popular the…
I recently ordered many of the official Orange Pi accessories for review with my Orange Pi 800 order (also coming up for review). The first of these accessories to come was the Orange Pi 14" 1080P portable monitor. This monitor is meant to be extremely portable and have a low footprint. Today in this review we'll take a close look at Orange Pi's monitor offering and test it with several devices.…
I've previously reviewed the Pine64 SOQuartz here on the site and found that if you used Armbian it was a feasible alternative to the CM4. The compatibility with other IO boards varies wildly though. We've definitely seen mixed experiences using the CM4 Blade when using the SOQuartz for example. I was curious if I got a hold of one of the official Pine64 SOQuartz Blade boards if the experience…
I've been integrating all of my smart home devices into Home Assistant to have everything managed by an open source system. I have a handful of Philips Hue lights but I had not upgraded the entire house to smart lighting yet. After some research I was delighted to find a set of smart bulbs that are able to be managed by ESPHome (the system that is controlling my smart sensors I'm placing around…
Recently on the site I've been covering my journey exploring the world of microcontrollers. This has been a fun journey but it has required me to work with technology a lot smaller than what I'm used to working with. The boards I'm routinely working with now are so small I can barely see them and read the features on them. This has exposed some gaps in my tool set such as my former very poor…
I recently covered using the XAIO-ESP32-C3 with the Grove Expansion shield to create a sensor panel to be used within Home Assistant via ESPHome. That shield is only around $7 and doesn't have very many bells and whistles on it. That is a really fantastic and inexpensive solution to expand your available Grove ports and add more sensors or other Grove accessories to your build. Today I want to…
The Pine64 Pinecil is described as a "smart mini portable soldering iron". It's very popular and has incredible Amazon ratings among a crowd that largely is probably unfamiliar with Pine64 as a company that makes single board computers. I was in dire need of a soldering iron upgrade and Razor Burn mentioned to me in one of the comments on the site that he had the Pinecil and loved it. I've…
I've been working with the Grove series of sensors lately as I previously covered in my K1100 Grove Sensor prototyping kit article. The next step after getting my prototyping kit set up was to try some of the expansion shields for the Seeed Studios XAIO modules such as the ESP32-C3. This will allow me to connect a whole bunch of sensors to a single board. We used LoRa in the last article to upload…
People have been asking me for years how they can convert a Minecraft Bedrock world to Java edition (or vice versa). The answer in the past was that you needed to use one of the tools that could read both formats and convert between them such as Amulet. It wasn't a very fun process though and not many had succeeded over the years. Recently I was asked this question again though and when I went to…
With the Raspberry Pi 5 delayed until 2024 and older models unable to be kept in stock the single board computer market is wide open for competitors to really shine this generation. I've reviewed dozens of board and spent literally thousands of dollars trying to find boards worthy of your money and that are good enough to step into a lot of the roles people were using Raspberry Pis for. Today I'm…