Computer Shopper - UK (2020-10)

HELPFILE&BUSINESSHELP

ISSUE392|COMPUTER SHOPPER|OCTOBER 2020 111

Iread Clive Webster’s excellent feature on the VLC media player

(AdvancedProjects,Shopper390), and followed his instructions

on how to download videos from YouTube.Icopied and pasted

the URL from YouTube intoVLC and pressed play, but nothing

happened. Could it be that the Windows 10 firewall is stopping

the video from loading

or streaming?

John Harrison

It’s hard to be sure what’s

happening, but when this

particular feature doesn’t

work the issue is often that

VLChas amissing or out of

dateyoutube.luafile.You

can download the latest

version of the file from

tinyurl.com/392helpfile.

Youwant youtube.lua, but

you’ll find updated .lua files

forother services here,too.

Once you’ve downloaded

the latest .lua file,movethe

file to the lua\playlist folder

of your VLC installation.

The path will usually be

C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\

VLC\lua\playlist.

On the other hand, this issue mayalready have been solved

with the recent updatetoVLC, as the files are updated regularly.

Tryopening VLC and agreeing to the update, then retrying. We

had to allow an unknown connection for24hours in order to

download the upgrade file.

NowYouTube VLCme

Afew months ago (seeHelpfile,

Shopper384 and 385), you

helped me link our Kasa smart

lights to our Tado smart

thermostats, so that the lights

turn off and on when we leave

and return. Last night, the

lights started turning on and

off by themselves! First

everything went out, then

the hall lights kept cycling on

and off.Iwondered if we’d

been hacked, so Ichanged my

Kasa password and it stopped.

Iwenttobed thinking I’d

probably best change all my

passwords in the morning.

This morning, Iwoke up to

two emails from IFTTT telling

me that two of the three

applets involved had been

disabled. Lookingatthe activity,

Ican see that the applet that

makes aweb request when Tado

switches to home mode had

fired literally every minute

until 01:12, then stopped.

I’m not sure what’s going on. The smart

lights are working fine,and Tado seems to

be working fine,but now Tado isn’t

triggering the lights to go on and off.Did

somebody hack my Kasa or Tado accounts?

Whoturned on thelights?

I’m using two-factor authentication on

IFTTT,soIassumethat’smuchless likely.

Nick Barnes

The issue seems to be that Tado was cycling

repeatedly between home and awaymode,

⬆ThisGitHubfolder holds all the latest VLC .lua files, some of which are updated regularly

initiallycausingallyourKasadevices

toswitchoff,thenthehalllightsto

togglecontinuously.Kasawasn’tthe

sourceoftheproblem,but

changing your Kasa password broke

the link between IFTTT and the Kasa

service,preventing the actions

being triggered. Eventually IFTTT

detected this, disabled the applets

and sent you the notifications.

Youcan re-enable the applets by

logging intoIFTTT,editing the

settings forthe Kasa service,then

reconnecting each applet.

It’s less clear what caused the

problem, but it seems it mayhave

been down to an issue with the

Tado service on IFTTT.Ifso, it’s

likely that it’s been resolved already.

However,ifthe cycling behaviour

restarts when you reconnect the

applets, disconnect both again and

investigateTado.From the settings

page in the phone app,check the Home Area

under the Geofencing settings; this should be

at least a200m radius. Check you’re using the

recommended phone settings on all devices

with geofencing set up,and ensure that Home

Wi-Fi detection is configured correctly.

⬅The root of the problem mayhavelain

between Tado and IFTTT