Zsoldier's Tech Blog

Summary: This happens to my Fire TV remotes randomly, and I'm unclear as to a specific cause.  Pressing the "Home" button no longer takes me to the home screen.  It's effectively dead, but a long press works fine.  Why?  Unsure, seems to be a bug that hasn't been flushed out by Amazon, but thankfully a post in Amazon forums by Tolga presents a possible workaround using adb. See this post on how to use/get adb and setup your fire stick to work w/ adb.   Then come back here for steps specific to this problem: Workaround: Connect to your fire stick using adb adb connect <IPAddressofYourFireStick> For example: adb connect 192.168.20.35 If successful, you should see a return of something like this: connected to <IPAddressofYourFireStick>:5555 adb shell settings --user 0 put secure user_setup_complete 1

Summary: Long story short, Fire TV Stick (2nd Generation) doesn't allow you to calibrate the screen, software wise, forcing you to use your TV settings (if available) to fit the screens content within it's borders.  Super annoying for some apps, but you can fix this dumb issue as I was able to. If your TV allows you to adjust its settings, then you'd be fine as well, but the Vizio I have, has no such setting. Solution: Get the Amazon Fire TV instead.  It's only slightly more expensive, but doesn't suffer the problems the Fire Stick does. Workaround: First you have to enable ADB debugging ( step 1 here ) on your fire stick. Next you'll need the ADB provided w/ Android Studio , or you can install w/ brew on the Mac . I prefer brew cause it's easier, keep following steps described by Amazon page if you are using Windows. Open Terminal brew cask install android-platform-tools Next find the IP address of your Firestick Settings --...

If there is an easier or non-root required method to what I’ve outlined here, please I’m ALL EARS. Summary: I pretty much hate Samsung or Android, not sure where to direct my h8, but whatever.  I wasn’t going to let it beat me.  Essentially I needed to connect to an AP that uses 802.1x WEP, PEAP, and MSCHAPv2 radius authentication to get access.  Not that difficult on my iPhone w/ the use of profiles, but Android/Samsung wasn’t as easy.  Here it is in a nutshell: Root your Vibrant (SDK method preferred) Use the SDK to pull your current wireless config Modify the wireless config entry you have for the AP that you are trying to connect to. VOILA! successful connection. Nitty Gritty: Follow the instructions on how to root your Vibrant. Once your vibrant has been rooted, you need to download and install the SDK . Turn off your phone’s Wifi, and turn USB debugging on (Settings –> Applications –> Development). This is where it gets interesting (Windows ...