Author Archives: John Hagensieker

Sainlogic Weather Station SA6 Plus Review

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Sainlogic Weather Station SA6 Plus Review

Sainlogic Weather Station

I got my hands on yet another Sainlogic Weather Station to review. Enter the Sainlogic SA6 Plus.

I love all of them but this one has one feature that stands out. A visual monitor. With most stations you can set your sensor outside and get real time conditions from your own yard.

Then you can retrieve that data from the Weatherseed application on your smart device. But let’s be honest here. If you pick up your cell phone there is probably a weather widget on the home screen that can give you plenty of weather information for you location. The advantage to using a Sainlogic Weather Station is that you are PART OF SOMETHING if you upload your data to the WeatherUnderground API.

But how much better is it that you don’t have to grab a phone and navigate to an app? All you need to do with the Sainlogic SA6 Plus is to look at the connected display.

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2025 Piece Of Fucking Shit Award

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2025 Piece Of Fucking Shit Award

It’s been a while since I’ve done this. And to make it worse I have tried real hard to behave in a manner in which would make me and others around me proud. But every once in a while you need to call out a POS. So before the year ends I aim to award the coveted John’s Tech Blog Piece Of Fucking Shit Award to the biggest POS out there.

This year it goes to a company called Sidio or SidioCrate. They can’t really make up their mind what they are called.

I’d love to tell you the stackable crate I ordered was a POS however I don’t have it yet despite the fact that I ordered it on Nov 29th. They made a label on the 8th but it didn’t actually show up to a shipping point and actually move for a few days after that.

Allow me to clarify: IT TOOK THEM 10 DAYS JUST TO MAKE A SHIPPING LABEL.

Oh, and I forgot the fact that I paid $7.99 for that shipping.

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Best Gear Of 2025

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Best Gear Of 2025

And yet another trip around the sun is near to completion. What was the Best Gear of 2025? These are a few of my favorites. Let me know in the comments what your selection for the best gear of the passing year is.

Computer Hardware

I should have added this to the bottom as a grand finale, but it also fits nicely at the top. For 2025 the Beelink Me Mini is one of my top picks for Gear Of The Year.

It is a high capacity NAS that is SILENT and uses NVME M.2 SSD drives for data storage. While the Beelink Me Mini is inexpensive, sadly memory prices have exploded. I got mine just in time it seems.

Equipped with 16 GB of built in RAM and four 4TB drives nets you about 12TB of storage in a RAIDZ1 configuration. Even better is that you can install TrueNAS on this device. This is replacing my very noisy QNAP NAS appliance.

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BeVigor CR123A Battery Review

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BeVigor CR123A Battery Review

BeVigor CR123A

The battery manufacturer BeVigor reached out to me recently and asked if I would be interested in reviewing some batteries, and if so, which ones. I opted for the BeVigor CR123A Battery. I’m one of those unusual people that use a LOT of CR123A batteries. Not only are they expensive usually, the ones I have used just don’t last that long.

The Company

I’m told the company name “BeVigor” is a play on words for “be vigorous”!

And sure enough my volt meter does imply strength and energy. I supply the enthusiasm. Allow me to demonstrate my enthusiasm by reading on.

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HiBoost Cell Phone Booster Review

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HiBoost Cell Phone Booster Review

HiBoost Cell Phone Booster

I get some great stuff here at John’s Tech Blog and this certainly tops the list. HiBoost has graciously provided me their HiBoost Cell Phone Booster to review. This is primarily targeted for Overland and Off Road explorers who might find themselves in weak cell phone signal areas.

The version sent to me to review is the Travel 3.0 ExplorerX. The other version is targeted towards Truck Drivers and SUV drivers and is called the Travel 3.0 Truck.

*****NOTE: BIG CHRISTMAS SALE December 24th to December 31st, and the price will be $417.51*****

It should be noted right out of the gate that you can’t boost a signal that doesn’t exist.

In my current location cell reception is pretty poor. Can you hear ME now, Verizon? We live on the edge of the Croatan National Forest and our neighborhood is heavily wooded. At best we get 2 reception bars on a good day.

And I should also note that mobile boosters and in home boosters are two different animals entirely. I promise you though that I’m going to test this at our home regardless.

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Ancel IR101 Thermal Camera Review

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Ancel IR101 Thermal Camera Review

Having a Tech Blog almost certainly involves having some fancy tech tools. One of the coolest (pun intended) tools I’ve stumbled across is the Ancel IR101 Thermal Camera.

Thermal cameras are awesome for identifying heat related issues as well as a whole bunch of other uses.

And for full disclosure, as always, Ancel provided me this IR101 to review. I’m not being paid to post this, and I’m not an affiliate of theirs, and there is no pressure, nor payout for a good review.

The device pictured has an Apple Lightning connector and is for older iPhones and iPad’s with that connector. The Ancel IR101 is also available in a USB-C form factor for newer iPhones or Android phones. And there is a cable which can convert the lightning connector on the camera to a USB-C male connector. And in fact, I bought this cable, with my own money.

There are a lot of choices for smart phone thermal cameras and the strength really lays in the application or software used. So far, I am really loving the app (Ancel IR in the Apple App Store) and working my way through all the of software options. And there are a lot!

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Don’t Use The Shop App

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Don’t Use The Shop App

Shop App

Ever seen this logo before?

This is going to be a super short, and straight to the point blog entry.

If you are doing some online purchasing and you see the seller encourages you to use the Shop App, run do not walk to another web site. Sadly websites such as Leatherman have started using this. And that is only one example.

I’m not saying “Don’t buy a Leatherman”, because they are awesome. I’m saying “Don’t buy one from their online store which uses the Shop app”. Go to the store and buy one.

I recently bought a couple items online and received subsequent emails telling me that in order to track my shipment I needed the Shop app. I receive lots of equipment to review and I buy some gizmos myself quite frequently.

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Vlogging Camera Light Comparison

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Vlogging Camera Light Comparison

Vlogging Camera Light

I’ve been really trying hard to up my photography and video game here on the blog. Lighting of course is one aspect of that journey. I have recently purchased a couple different brands of Vlogging Camera Lights, and I’ll shake them down here.

The fun part about this is that I spent my own money so I can call it like I see it. It’s not that I don’t do that already, but when someone sends me an item to review I try hard to WORK WITH THEM. If I find something wrong I contact them and most places are happy to hear the feedback and WORK WITH ME. But when I spend my own cash there isn’t any pre-established back and forth.

And I review so much gear provided by others I seldom get to write about the things that I spend my own money on.

So, I’ll use these lights and then I’ll tell you what I think about them. Let’s get started.

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Foxwell BT630 600 Amp Shunt Battery Monitor Review

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Foxwell BT630 600 Amp Shunt Battery Monitor Review

Foxwell BT630

Next up on the review list is a Foxwell BT630, 600 Amp Shunt Battery Monitor (selling on Amazon)

This worked out really well because I have two solar setups at my house. I have a fairly large system with 3 – 100 Amp hour (Ah) batteries in parallel that powers my shed.

And I have a much smaller and portable board for a single or maybe two 100 Ah batteries. I had kind of a no name shunt on that board and this Foxwell BT630 was a welcome addition.

Foxwell provided me this Shunt for free but no other payment or requests were made by them prior to publishing. My goal is to shake down the product and maybe help them with the next version with some recommendations if I stumble across any.

Spoiler Alert: There is a recommendation that I’ll be mentioning later.

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OLIGHT IMINI 2 Keychain Flashlight Review

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OLIGHT IMINI 2 Keychain Flashlight Review

Olight Imini 2

I have a whole bunch of OLight flashlights but some years ago some clown on their website made fun of something I said. That’s fine, but what wasn’t okay was that an employee of Olight jumped on me as well. I quit collecting flashlights at that point. Anyway, I guess I have gotten over that with the purchase of the OLIGHT IMINI 2. ($11.99 Black Friday Deal). I got two of them.

What really predicated this purchase was that my wife and I went to a bonfire cookout and it was pretty much in the woods in a dark but wonderful place. Navigating to the fire was a bit scary because of tree roots and slippery wet leaves.

Walking up to the truck to get a proper flashlight I kind of wondered if I could find an Every Day Carry (EDC) keychain flashlight for just such situations. Much as it made me make a cringy face because it was from Olight, it looked very cool.

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