The recommended way to flash the Sonoff ZBDongle-E is to use a web-based tool. This tool is not available under FreeBSD—the required WebUSB API is only supported in Chrome or Edge, and the FreeBSD build of Chrome does not include it (Edge is out of the picture for obvious reasons).
It is possible to flash the dongle locally - see the official manual and hints for Linux. The following records FreeBSD-specific hints.
While preparing a scan of ladder manual I ran into a strange issue with a PDF produced by my Xerox® WorkCentre® 3225 MFP. Firefox was rendering the first page of the document normally but contents of the rest of the pages was shrunk in one direction.
Recently I couldn't find manual for a ladder I bought in Lidl. Despite the fact that Lidl has all their non-food products marked with IAN I regularly run into certain numbers not being known to their search on customer-service.lidl.ie.
This time I couldn't find online manual at all. So I got a paper version and scanned it (English part only, sorry I was a bit too lazy to also scan the German part).
Parkside multifunctional ladder IAN 452018_2310 manual
This manual is very similar to that of Parkside multi-purpose ladder IAN 478540_2410:
From time to time, when I upgrade my standalone Unifi controller (running in FreeBSD jail), I run into an issue which requires some manual action to resolve. The issue manifests as MongoDB (bundled with Unifi controller) refusing to start with existing data. Checking logs (/usr/local/share/java/unifi/logs/mongod.log) I can see the following (this log file is in JSON format - not particularly friendly for humans but still readable):
{"t":{"$date":"2025-02-01T21:39:17.097+00:00"},"s":"F", "c":"CONTROL", "id":20573, "ctx":"initandlisten","msg":"Wrong mongod version","attr":{"error":"UPGRADE PROBLEM: Found an invalid featureCompatibilityVersion document (ERROR: Location4926900: Invalid featureCompatibilityVersion document in admin.system.version: { _id: \"featureCompatibilityVersion\", version: \"4.4\" }. See https://docs.mongodb.com/master/release-notes/5.0-compatibility/#feature-compatibility. :: caused by :: Invalid feature compatibility version value, expected '5.0' or '5.3' or '6.0. See https://docs.mongodb.com/master/release-notes/5.0-compatibility/#feature-compatibility.). If the current featureCompatibilityVersion is below 5.0, see the documentation on upgrading at https://docs.mongodb.com/master/release-notes/5.0/#upgrade-procedures."}}
I'm not very experienced with MongoDB and this message looks rather obscure and scary. Fortunately so far it was fairly easy to fix.
Writing this mostly as a reference for myself should I run into this problem in the future.
Pasting into vim running under tmux was producing weird results. For
example pasting wiwiw would actually produce Wiw.
I had a chance to try Zigbee extension lead sold by Lidl under SilverCrest brand.