I used to get in the kind of frustrated situations where, like the author, I spent two days reverse-engineering something I had just bought just to get it to do what I thought it obviously would when I bought it.

IOT things like the thing he bought are (were) typically the worst kind of offenders.

I just don't do that anymore. It used to bring me pleasure cracking the nut, and that's not the case any longer.

These days, if it does not do what I need more or less out of the box, I just return it / send it back and research the follow-up buy better.