Traveling with the Amazon FireTV Stick

We headed off in our annual skiing trip over Spring break this year and I thought I would try bringing the Amazon FireTV Stick with me. In previous years I brought along the our Apple TV, but that was difficult to disconnect from the home entertainment system and did not carry the same range of content we were used to at home. Our last attempt with Google's ChromeCast did not go well mostly because of the requirement to talk people through how to use it. 

Both TVs I tried in the house offered easy access to an HDMI port and USB (for power). Setting up wifi was also relatively easy. No training was required for the families who joined us (the concept of a remote is pretty universal) and for those wanting to use their own Netflix or YouTube accounts, they were able to "cast" from their device to the FireTV stick. 

I think in terms of providing the familiarity and convenience of home entertainment while traveling (in the US), this is now a complete and effective solution. 

Rebooting your Tesla

A few days ago I noticed a few anomalies with the music system. At first I thought it was an encode error on some of the TED talks I was listening to, but it started happening on other news and music as well. Then when I put something in the Nav system, it would say "navigation system initializing" but stay on that indefinitely. I had assumed when I turned off at night it would "reboot" when I started the next day - but that is apparently not the case. 

So today I had Will Google how to "reboot" the main screen and the driver screen. Holding the top right and left buttons on the steering wheel reboots the drivers console. Holding the right and left scroll buttons on the steering wheel reboots the main center screen. I of course pulled over to do this but am pretty sure it does not affect the main systems (have seen both reboot on their own while driving before). 

It seems to have solved the problems with the audio system and with the Nav system.  Problem solved!

How low can the Tesla battery go?

While not really on purpose, I had the opportunity tonight to run the Tesla down to 3% tonight (9 miles of range). The alerts in both the Nav system and the energy console were helpful. Was very happy to see the battery drain at the predicted rate in the Nav screen (taking your destination into account along with your average driving and the coming terrain / elevation). I did notice that it was very accurate on the last drive back from Las Vegas - much more so than before the v6.1 update. 

Now if I could just get the battery in my iPhone and Mac to behave the same at single digit percentages of remaining life....