There is no official Ring API. But there are libraries and tools around that can talk to a Ring ecosystem, mostly written in JavaScript or Python.
Some links I found:
Archive for the ‘*nix’ Category
Some links on non-official Ring API libraries and tools
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/26
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, cURL, Development, Hardware, IoT Internet of Things, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Python, Ring Doorbell/Chime (Amazon), Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Unix/MacOS: “rm: illegal option — b” or how to remove files that have their name starting with a minus sign.
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/11
I had to remove all text files including a -bar.txt from the current directory using bash, so I automatically typed rm *txt resulting in this nice error:
rm: illegal option -- b usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file ... unlink file
When there was just a file named -foo.txt in the directory, the error became more interesting:
rm: illegal option -- o usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file ... unlink file
Then it struck me: rm is one of those old tools where you can smack all options together. Read the rest of this entry »
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Installing Poppler on Windows via Chocolatey, which includes pdfimages for lossless extraction of images from PDF files
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/09
At the time of writing there was an almost 3 year old [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software | Poppler 0.89.0 version so I filed the issue [Wayback/Archive] poppler 23.03 has been out for a few weeks, can you please update the build? · Issue #88 · chtof/chocolatey-packages mentioning [Wayback/Archive] Pull requests · oschwartz10612/poppler-windows
Poppler 23.03.0
Since that did not get really solved, I finally found out that after installing scoop, then scoop install poppler did work and installed version 23.08.0 (which I documented in [Wayback/Archive] Poppler version out of date · Issue #75 · chtof/chocolatey-packages installs from the most recent [Wayback/Archive] Releases · oschwartz10612/poppler-windows).
A very different approach is to install Poppler inside Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) as explained in [Wayback/Archive] Poppler On Windows. Python, PDFs, and Window’s Subsytem for… | by Matthew Earl Miller | Towards Data Science.
I needed Poppler (or actually the Windows equivalent of poppler-utils) of two reasons:
- I wanted to experiment with
pdftotextas it has these very compelling command-line switches. - I needed to export images for which
pdfimagesis the poppler tool to go.
pdftotext
Let’s start with qoutes from [Wayback/Archive] pdftotext: Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter (version 3.03) | poppler-utils Commands | Man Pages | ManKier:
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Posted in Power User, *nix, Windows, PDF, *nix-tools, Chocolatey, man/manual pages, mankier | Tagged: 75, 88 | Leave a Comment »
Odido-router verzamelt analytics van je huishouden en stuurt het door naar AI toko lifemote
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/04
Dit is net zo nalatig als de Odildo hack waar alle klantgegevens mee op straat kwamen te liggen: [Wayback/Archive] Odido-router verzamelt analytics van je huishouden
Bevindingen in het kort
- De Odido-router haalt bij een nieuwe WAN-verbinding een bash-script op over een onversleutelde HTTP-verbinding.
- Je kan dit script manipuleren om een root shell op je router te krijgen.
- Als je TLS-verkeer mitm’t zie je analytics-data over de lijn gaan; de scripters hebben TLS-validatie uitgezet (`curl -k`) dus je kan dit ‘versleutelde’ analytics-verkeer inzien.
- Je router stuurt namen en MAC-adressen van devices in je huis door naar Lifemote. Verder deelt het ding de SSID’s en MAC-adressen van WiFi-netwerken in de buurt. En wat analytics-stats over je dataverbruik. Lifemote adverteert met “AI-Powered Home Wi-Fi Solutions for ISPs”. Het voelt wat vies dat zij AI’s gaan trainen met data uit mijn huishouden. Daar vind ik wat van.
--jeroen
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Development, ISP, Odido (ex Dutch T-Mobile), Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Why octal is important (via @jpluimers on Twitter: “@b0rk @jilles_com Acids vs bases.”)
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/03
A few years back I tweeted [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social on Twitter: “@b0rk @jilles_com Acids vs bases.”
It was a kind of tongue-in-cheek reaction (with a way better picture below) to a very valuable post by b0rk (Julia Evans) on both Twitter and Mastodon [Wayback/Archive] Julia Evans on Twitter: “bases” / [Wayback/Archive] Julia Evans: “bases title: bases # we usually…” – Mastodon for two reasons:
- There are various interpretations of bases
- Octal is very important to educate as errors introduced by its support are hard to spot even if you do know about octal.
Back to Julia’s post:
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, 68k, 8086, Assembly Language, bash, bash, C, C++, Chemistry, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, EPS/PostScript, Event, Haskell, History, Java, Java Platform, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Jon Skeet, LifeHacker, Mathematics, PDP-11, Perl, PHP, Power User, Python, science, Scripting, Software Development, x86 | Leave a Comment »
Generating random strings for passwords and uuids/guids on both Windows and Linux using base64 and hex encoding, plus: “Hive Systems: Are Your Passwords in the Green?”
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/25
Often I need to generate passwords or uuids (on some systems called guids). I usually try to do that in a relatively platform agnostic way as I use MacOS, Windows and Linux in various mixes for many reasons (for instance that I have had developed quite hefty RSI in the early 1990s of the and the best keyboard/pointing-device combination for is the MacBook built in keyboard/touchpad combination so basically MacBooks are my window to all other operating systems).
Generating randomly with a good random number generator them makes sense as for most usage, it is important that both passwords and uuids are hard to guess which means having an entropy that is as high as possible.
A cool thing about OpenSSL is that:
- most of not all systems have it installed (it was no coincidence I published Installing OpenSSL on Windows a few days ago)
- it has a very good pseudo-random number generator and as of [Wayback/Archive] OpenSSL version 1.1.1 first released in 2018 has solved the problem around [Wayback/Archive] Random fork-safety – OpenSSLWiki, see [Wayback/Archive] Our Review of the OpenSSL 1.1.1 Random Number Generation Update – OSTIF.org.
- it supports various useful output formats
hex(hexadecimal) andbase64(next to the default of octet – or by today’s naming convention byte – output)
The easiest to generate are passwords. Yes I know that password managers can do this too, but there are some systems I cannot use them on or sync between them (don’t you love the corporate world) so my aim is to use a random password generator in a platform agnostic way which usage is easy to remember. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, base64, bash, bash, Batch-Files, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Encoding, Event, HEX encoding, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, OpenSSL, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Chocolatey Software | GNU sed
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/24
I needed to document how to install sed on Windows (which I did a long time ago after writing Plastic SCM: show the current changeset abstract (without files) on the commandline) and recently for some more scripting work(which I will blog on that later this week).
At the time of writing it was [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software | GNU sed 4.8, but this Chocolatey command will install or upgrade to the most recent available version:
choco upgrade --yes sed
Of course, like yesterday’s post Installing OpenSSL on Windows, you could use winget or scoop for this as well. Finding out the commands is left as an exercise to the reader (;
Query: [Wayback/Archive] chocolatey sed – Google Search
–jeroen
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Chocolatey, Development, Power User, Scoop, Scripting, sed, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development, winget | Leave a Comment »
Some links on hetrixtools.com Uptime and Blacklist monitoring, and PagerDuty integration.
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/06
Historically I have been using Uptime Robot a lot, but in practice they are only good for HTTP/HTTPS uptime checking and TCP connection checking. SMTP checking requires more than just a valid TCP check which they can’t, so I took a look at hetrixtools.com.
They advertise being forever free when using a limit number of Uptime/Blacklist endpoints as per
[Wayback/Archive] Free Uptime Monitor & Blacklist Monitor- HetrixTools
- 15 Uptime Monitors • 1 Minute Interval
- 32 Blacklist Monitors • Checked Everyday
FREE Forever!
Unlike many other free uptime checking tools, their interval is better.
A thing to consider is that, like many online-first companies, they do not provide company details on either of these pages which you have to agree with when signing on for their service:
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Posted in *nix, hetrixtools, Monitoring, PagerDuty, Power User, Uptimerobot | Leave a Comment »
Naming Files and Directories the Right Way – YouTube
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/01/29
I totally agree with the first comment of [Wayback/Archive] Naming Files and Directories the Right Way – YouTube as it holds not just for file management, but for naming anything including software development:
@yorickwolter
--jeroen
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Posted in *nix, Apple, BSD, Development, Linux, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
vmstan/gravity-sync: 💫 The easy way to synchronize the DNS configuration of two Pi-hole 5.x instances.
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/01/28
Interesting: [Wayback/Archive] vmstan/gravity-sync: 💫 The easy way to synchronize the DNS configuration of two Pi-hole 5.x instances.
Reasoning: [Wayback/Archive] Frequent Questions: Why two Pi-hole? · vmstan/gravity-sync Wiki
Via:
- [Wayback/Archive] Can PiHole work fine for more than 100k clients? : pihole
- [Wayback/Archive] Gravity Sync, an easy way to keep multiple Pi-hole In-sync – General / Customizing Pi-hole – Pi-hole Userspace
What is better than a Pi-hole blocking ads via DNS on your network? That’s right, Two Pi-hole! But if you have more than one Pi-hole (PH) in your network you’ll want a simple way to keep the list configurations identical between the two. I’ve recently been toiling away at a script to do exactly this, and what started as a few lines lines of bash was shared with some friends, and has grown into what I now call Gravity Sync — which I’d now like to share with you all for your feedback.
–jeroen
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Development, DNS, Hardware Development, Internet, Power User, Raspberry Pi, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 