I'm looking to replace a few in-wall light switches for lights that are not easily replaced with smart bulbs. I currently use Home Assistant with z2m for all my smart lights and switches, so zigbee switches would be preferred. Does anyone have recommendations for smart in-wall switches?
I've been happy with the GE Enbrighten series, though they do require a neutral wire. I use the Z-Wave models, but I can't imagine the ZigBee models would work any differently.
Neat feature of the Enbrighten line is they recognize several gestures including short tap, long press, double tap, and I think even triple tap. I configured mine so that short taps on/off toggle the lights between off and 100% on, long press on/off brightens/dims, and double tap on activates the preferred evening lighting scene.
I think Minoston are also a GE product line? Again, Z-Wave, but rated for higher wattage in my case. They also require a neutral wire.
I had a pair of no-neutral ZigBee switches sold as 'Martin Jerry' brand, but they were super dodgy. Terrible feel to them, and they made a sort of electrical whine when the fixture was on. I pulled them right out and sent them back.
Hey guys. Im running Home Assistant in docker container for few years and I'm super happy with it. The only way I access my server when not home is wireguard VPN. I noticed that I'm still receiving notifications even when not connected to VPN. I wonder how is that possible?...
I don't know this for sure, but if you installed the mobile companion app thru the Store for your platform, then the integration is probably using its push API to reach your device remotely.
I'm >90% sure notification workflows find me even when I am remote and untethered from home when I notify the app on my mobile devices.
You could source a pair of gigabit media converters and a length of fiber on Amazon for about $100. Just use the media converters to extend the Ethernet port from where the Internet hands off in your house over to your office. You can affix the fiber along baseboards and up over door frames with adhesive cleats and zip ties, or those nylon staples on a nail they use to tack down coax cable.
If you're willing to spend a little more on the fiber for a custom color, you can probably even order the fiber in a more neutral color than SMF yellow to blend into the trim better.
I missed it in the release notes, but there's a breaking change in the ota component in ESPHome 2024.6.0. I figured I'd save folks some time and share the fix here....
I'm thinking the animals would easily defeat us, since trying to get all 8 billion+ humans to agree on a plan of attack would be a near-impossible task. By the time we'd be done trying to coordinate a plan, I figure the lions and cheetahs would have already devoured us, not to mention the larger animals like the elephants....
I have. It usually stays off until they rig the cabin for final approach. Comes back on for landing but hey, whatever?
I'm getting beaten up for my stance here, but seriously: if all it takes to put you over is some midflight ads the do the rest of us a favor and don't fly. Take a train or whatever.
Y'all are acting like they're gonna strap us down and tape our eyes open like that Alex Whasisname kid in A Clockwork Orange. I assure you that doesn't happen for another 22 years in this timeline (give or take).
If you just want each physical interface on your server to participate in a single VLAN, set the corresponding switch port as an access port in the desired VLAN, and then configure each
server interface as a normal untagged interface.
You would only do tagged frames (802.1q trunking) if you wanted to support several VLANs on the switch port.
Egyptian intelligence quietly changed the terms of a ceasefire proposal that Israel had already signed off on earlier this month, ultimately scuttling a deal that could have released Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and set a pathway to temporarily end the fighting in Gaza, according to three people familiar with the...
The three sources familiar with the matter told CNN that a senior Egyptian intelligence official named Ahmed Abdel Khalek was responsible for making the changes. Abdel Khalek is a senior deputy to the Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, who has been Burns’ counterpart in leading Egypt’s mediation in the ceasefire talks.
One source familiar with the negotiations said Abdel Khalek told the Israelis one thing and Hamas another. More of Hamas’ demands were inserted into the original framework that Israel had tacitly agreed to in order to secure Hamas’ approval, the source said. But the other mediators were not informed; nor, critically, were the Israelis.
Russian forces have started military drills near Ukraine simulating the use of tactical nuclear weapons in response to what Moscow deems threats from western officials about increased involvement in the conflict....
Its not exactly lightweight, but the Netdata integration will get you all of that.
Securing Netdata itself can be a bit of a chore, and then the integration requires creating sensors of interest in your configuration.yaml file. Have a look, it might be an interesting project if you're up for a challenge.
Next school year, my son will be left home after school for a few hours while my wife and I are at work. I'm looking for a way to detect when he's home and have the front door unlock (among other automation scripts that are in place)....
Either an ESP32 BLE proxy via MQTT with a Tile-like beacon in the backpack, or a cipher lock with a Kid Code are probably the most straightforward solutions.
If you have Frigate NVR set up, there's a project called Double Take that does facial recognition. Looks like a bit of work and needs training, but it could be a fun project.
Definitely check in with the utility before mucking with the meter. You can find your way into a lot of trouble tampering with active meters. Chances are there's new meter tech out your utility would install, and of which you could take advantage.
Check this thread. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/smart-water-meter/451935 . You'd install it down flow of your utility meter, and would need ESP32 to read the meter. It's a bit of work, but if you're already running ESPHome, it looks pretty straightforward.
On a long shot, you might consider looking into an inexpensively RTL-SDR software radio dongle, and use rtl_433 to scan a few common frequencies the utilities use to scan their meters from the street. I happened to find my neighbor's electrical meter on a common wireless weather station frequency, and if In were so inclined, could publish it to MQTT for HA to pick up.
I've been in the HA world since the time the government placed the world under house arrest. Since then I've seen all sorts of amazing things people can do with an esp32 device....
I have two Digi WLED controllers a handful of project kits, myself.
The WLED boards drive some addressable LED strings in my living room and on my patio. They hardly count as "project" kits, but learning about interfacing TTL logic with the LED driver boards was a helpful experience. I learned a lot about the different GPIO uses and modes.
For the project kits I've built, I've been focused around presence and environment sensors. Using esphome I've successfully built PIR (AM312) + mmWave radar module (R60A) presence sensors, natural gas detectors for kitchen and basement utility areas, and a water leak sensor for the laundry area. I had goals of building a 5-in-1 presence sensor, but you can buy products for those now; its a solved problem.
I've been considering a design for a sump pit depth gauge because that sounds like useless information that I'd like to have for some reason.
I'll probably get interested in energy management soon, and will look into current clamps and tracking usage at smart receptacles.
Sure. Think of it like Lego bricks or one of those 1000-in-1 electronics kits. These kits don't do anything specific, they're building blocks you use to address a need you have in your home automation vision.
The ESP32 kits are just an ESP32 development board (mine are WROOM boards from Freenove) which has the microprocessor, headers breaking out the IO pins, and a "loader" module that facilities uploading code and is used to power the device with a USB cable. The boards also have onboard WiFi and Bluetooth radios. The -CAM variety has a low profile header to seat a small camera module (included). Look for "Freenove ESP32 WROOM" on your preferred online marketplace.
There are several ways to interact with (program) your ESP32 boards. The easiest and most straightforward is to use the ESPHome add-on in HA from the HACS store, along with the companion integration. The ESPHome add-on provides a software ecosystem of drivers and functions for a laundry list of hardware devices you can use in your project-- sensors, switches, lights, speakers, etc. The ESPHome wiki is sort of a catalog of supported peripherals you can easily use in your build projects. Many times, you can substitute components or extend an existing component driver. Mostly you assemble your components and the controller, and then write some YAML do tell ESPHome what devices are plugged into what pins. ESPHome more or less handles the rest.
The ESP32 integration creates HA devices and entities of the devices and sensors in the ESPHome add-on for use as triggers, conditions or actions in automation.
As for my specific doodads:
PIR is a Passive Infrared Receiver. It monitors its field of view for a change in infrared light (heat) which indicates a "hot.blob" has entered or left its field of view. The model I use, AM312, is designed to signal a change in IR light by raising a signal pin to +3 volts, which has applications in presence detection. It is fast, but not accurate. It also tends to "go blind" when the hot blob stops moving, and can be subject to false positives when the HVAC kicks on or by dappled sunlight
The mmWave radar is a Seeed R60A 60Ghz radar module. This particular module is optimized for human presence detection and fall detection. It uses millimeter wave radar to acquire and track humans in its field of view. 60GHz gives enough resolution to detect heartbeat, respiration and micromkvements like fidgeting. It talks to the ESP32 over the I2C bus (a digital IO bus similar to USB). It has advantages over the PIR sensor because it actively tracks its targets and can even tell if there are multiple people. Its less prone to false positives from environmental changes and smaller animals. Unfortunately, it can take several seconds to acquire a target and begin tracking it. In a presence application, a human could walk across several steps into the field of view within that time, giving the impression of a slow response.
Using both sensors in a presence application is a sort of belt-and-suspenders approach. You can compare the state of both sensors in your automations to determine presence with greater accuracy.
As for learning HA itself: we all started in a similar place not even knowing what we didn't know yet. You sort of poke and play and build some bad automations. Then you start to research new projects and start to learn what you don't know yet. That's OK: its a roadmap to future knowledge.
In my rig, I use HA to solve problems or address nuisance situations around the house. Wife and kids are forever leaving doors open with the HVAC on. I programmed HA to watch the HVAC (ecobee thermostat) and the states of the windows doors. If a door gets left open for more than 10 minutes, HA starts flashing lights as an indicator for someone to check notifications. After 20 minutes of the door/window being open, it turns off the HVAC and sends a push notification to my phone that someone is being a dumbass.
Another one is to shut off the basement lights at 10pm because the kids never remember to after they're done gaming down there.
Eventually you want to do.more sophisticated things, and that when the rabbit hole gets real deep.
My sump pit is pretty shallow, and is dry about half of the time. My challenge is that the sump is on a float switch which doesn't activate until the water level is just about an inch (15mm) below the bottom of my slab. It doesn't take much of a delay for it to overflow.
There are three sensor types I'm aware of: a resistive "dipstick," ultrasonic distance gauge, and a bathymetric depth gauge.
The resistive dipsticks are only about 6in (15cm) in length, and would be good to determine if the water is within that distance of a target water line. I would position it on the side of the pit with the effective upper end set some buffer below the top surface of the slab floor, and possible gram the logic to alert when the water lever rises above the bottom of the slab. I would otherwise be blind to the water level if it is below Tue bottom of to sensor.
The ultrasonic sensor looked interesting, but I have pets and I try to avoid ultrasonics in the environment when I can. It also strikes me as perhaps the least reliable (or most crosstalk-prone) of the sensors because it has a larger field of view, and might be fooled by the equipment in the pit.
That leaves the bathy sensor. Its basically a diaphragm and a pressure sensor you screw to a waterproof housing, and submerge. Placed near the bottom of the pit, it would read the depth of the water by the pressure of the column above it. Most accurate, but also the most expensive. Last I checked, the sensor itself was US$60 on the usual online markets.
Ultimately I'll probably do a length of copper pipe with a 90 elbow and a cap. I'll drill and tap a port through the cap and thread and seal the bathy sensor into it, and feed the wire back up the pipe to the controller. I'm not sure if there a driver for it in ESPHome, but if nothing else I expect I can probably just read the analog voltage and alert on a set point.
I haven't really fleshed it out as a design yet, but that's what I'm most likely to do.
I'm in IT in a healthcare-adjacent sector. Never underestimate the motivation or tenacity of foreign state actors, organized crime and chaotic neutral hacking collectives. You have limited time and budget, and both financial and risk based approval processes to deal with. They have time, ideology¹, and financial incentives.
You can't win in the face of that.
¹ sometimes it's hacking for hackings sake, but more typically it's to disrupt critical services and extort modest capital to go away. Rinse, repeat, make that bank on volume.
Yeah, if you're going as far as rooting and Magisk, go the extra half step and install App Manager (io.github.muntashirakon.AppManager). With profiles and 1-Click ops, you can disable trackers, freeze apps, revoke permissions. It's like a 1000 pound scalpel.
Between 11pm and 7am, and if not connected to a list of BT headsets or speakers: lower the main media volume to 0.
If one of a list of apps is on the main screen: activate screen auto-rotate, then disable it as an exit task.
If the phone is less than 30m from the lat/lon of the center of my house: set a variable NEAR_HOME=1, and set NEAR_HOME=0 as an exit task
If my phone is not connected to my home SSID and NEAR_HOME isn't set: activate the Wireguard profile to connect to my home router, and deactivate it as an exit task
At 9am every day, issue a notification showing the number of days remaining to a significant date occurring later this year.
I used to have several more to correct certain idiosyncrasies my phone would have on boot, low battery and a few other repeatable conditions, but those things got fixed with system updates, or ceased to be relevant.
I do this, but I also work in tech and have a pretty solid grasp of routing and how that all works. I agree it may seem overkill for many installs, but makes sense for certain use cases. I'll try to explain without writing a book. I'll be glossing over a LOT of texture in the following...
In networking, a router is considered to be a node in a graph with multiple host IP addresses, one for each edge. It has an interface-- sometimes physical but more often viirtual-- on each edge (network segment, VLAN) that connects to it, and which usually serves as the gateway IP for that edge. In larger networks where there is more than a single router, the routers must all tell each other which router has which destination network segment, so they all speak a routing protocol like RIP, OSPF or IS-IS. Each of the speakers must be able to identify itself uniquely among the others so the others know which node is making what advertisements. To do this, they each are assigned a unique router ID, which is normally a 32 bit integer value represented as a dotted quad. Customarily this is an IP address, and the protocols further this idea by adopting the highest numbered IP address on the device or the addrss of its loopback interface, if defined.
The point of a routing protocol is for the participating nodes to advertise IP ranges associated with their connected edges. They assert advertisements for each edge when it is active.(I.e., the interface is UP) and withdraw or expire them when the edge is unavailable (I.e., the interface is in any state other than UP). Every time an edge changes state-- goes from UP to not-UP, or not-UP to UP-- that advertisement must propagate across the whole system, and every node must stop forwarding traffic to recalculate its own best path to the remaining available edges. This is called reconvergence, and network engineers try to do things to minimize the number and frequency of these events.
Practically, one of the things network engineers do to try to avoid instability is not having the ID of a speaker change dynamically. Going back to how the device selects its router ID, it considers the loopback IP first, or else the highest numbered IP active on the device at the time of evaluation. Edge interfaces can go UP or not-UP for any number of reasons at any time, thus they are less than ideal to use for the router ID. The loopback interface by contrast is always up. This interface is typically assigned the IP the routing protocol will use for its router ID.
In practice, the loopback is the only interface on a router than can be said to belong to the router itself¹, and not to an edge connected to the router². There are other practical reasons in routing to do this, but they all come back to the fact that the loopback is always up, and therefore it's always apt to be advertised as an available edge.
So what does any of this have to do with servers, applications and self hosting?
Applications that provide services over the network, DNS servers for example, need to bind to at least one IP address and protocol port. On servers with multiple interfaces, these applications normally bind to all available interface addresses, using the address 0.0.0.0. In some situations this might be undesirable. Maybe you don't want your pihole serving your internal DNS to your ISP, or maybe you have several VLANs at your house and want to use a single IP address for DNS across all of your VLANs, or you don't trust the VLAN interface IPs to always be the same.
Adding an IP to the lo interface ensures that IP is always available and reachable. It provides a single place for all hosts in the system to go that isn't pinned to any one of the possible VLAN interface IPs.
In my own home setup, I define several IPs on the loopback for different containers that all want to use port 8443/tcp for their public port. This gives me the flexibility of being able to assign different services their own IP (which I can then reference by name in DNS) on their native port vis-à-vis the documentation. So my Pihole container has its address and my Unifi controller container has its own as well.
Anyway, this is very much a Done Thing in the industry. Not everyone needs it, but its a useful technique in the right circumstances.
Considered from to perspective of graph theory, network nodes and the edges they connect are distinct things. A router participates in a LAN, but the LAN is its own thing, and not formally part of the router.
In large IP networks, there are frequently tra sport topologies like VLANs or other shared.media that connect two or more routers, and are used exclusively to distribute traffic among themselves. Which of the participating routers is said to "own" that advertisement?
A painful lesson to be sure, but also perhaps an opportunity to spruce up or rethink some of those original automations and integrations. I've been messing with my own rig since the lockdowns and while it's not exactly a mess, per se, I certainly know more now than I did then. Refactoring your code is rarely a spontaneous activity.
Also, I'm checking now and oops, syncing backups off-box broke thanks for prompting me to check!
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In-wall light switch recommendations
I'm looking to replace a few in-wall light switches for lights that are not easily replaced with smart bulbs. I currently use Home Assistant with z2m for all my smart lights and switches, so zigbee switches would be preferred. Does anyone have recommendations for smart in-wall switches?
How do I get phone notifications from my server while I'm not connected to my home network?
Hey guys. Im running Home Assistant in docker container for few years and I'm super happy with it. The only way I access my server when not home is wireguard VPN. I noticed that I'm still receiving notifications even when not connected to VPN. I wonder how is that possible?...
Networking Dilemma
Hi there good folk,...
Google to show your movie/TV reviews and Search notes in a public 'profile' next week ( 9to5google.com )
Starting on June 24, Google will start showing your movie and TV reviews, as well as Search notes, in a public profile.
Breaking change in ESPHome 2024.6.0 ota component
I missed it in the release notes, but there's a breaking change in the ota component in ESPHome 2024.6.0. I figured I'd save folks some time and share the fix here....
Why doesn’t Miss Piggy call herself Mademoiselle Cochon?
Everything I know about being in my 40s is what I learned from Al Bundy
Who would win: every human in the world vs. every animal in the world?
I'm thinking the animals would easily defeat us, since trying to get all 8 billion+ humans to agree on a plan of attack would be a near-impossible task. By the time we'd be done trying to coordinate a plan, I figure the lions and cheetahs would have already devoured us, not to mention the larger animals like the elephants....
United Airlines passengers to see targeted ads on seat-back screens ( www.cbsnews.com )
VLAN question
I've finally been connected to a fiber connection 2,5/1Gbps! 🥳...
How do you date/marry a zombie?
Knesset to vote on declaring UNRWA a terrorist organization - The Jerusalem Post ( m.jpost.com )
Egypt changed terms of Gaza ceasefire deal presented to Hamas, surprising negotiators, sources say ( www.cnn.com )
Egyptian intelligence quietly changed the terms of a ceasefire proposal that Israel had already signed off on earlier this month, ultimately scuttling a deal that could have released Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and set a pathway to temporarily end the fighting in Gaza, according to three people familiar with the...
‘Deadpool’ Co-Creator Just Had Hilarious Beef With ‘Ancient Aliens’ Guy ( www.huffpost.com )
Russia begins tactical nuclear weapon drills near Ukraine border ( www.theguardian.com )
Russian forces have started military drills near Ukraine simulating the use of tactical nuclear weapons in response to what Moscow deems threats from western officials about increased involvement in the conflict....
Sperm count fall could be due to microplastics, new study finds ( www.euronews.com )
The tiny plastic particles were found in all 23 human testes in a new study, and all 47 testes from pet dogs....
Light system monitor service with Home Assistant integration
Hello....
Presence Detection for a Child with no Phone.
Next school year, my son will be left home after school for a few hours while my wife and I are at work. I'm looking for a way to detect when he's home and have the front door unlock (among other automation scripts that are in place)....
Local Only Water Meter?
I tried my hand at rigging a proximity sensor to the water meter in my house. Sadly it doesn’t have the spinning magnet for the sensor to pick up....
With the recent Open Home Foundation announcement I decided to finally buy some ESP32 chips. They're arriving today, what can I do with them?
I've been in the HA world since the time the government placed the world under house arrest. Since then I've seen all sorts of amazing things people can do with an esp32 device....
The only Monarch I support ( lemmy.ca )
Cyberattack forces major US health care network to divert ambulances from hospitals ( www.cnn.com )
Gross. Android defaults are a privacy nightmare.
Option 1: leave everything enabled, & everything works with full spyware enablement too...
what lemmy app do you recommend and why?
May the 4th berule you ( gifer.com )
Any sufficiently advanced rule is indistinguishable from magic. ( pawb.social )
Share your Tasker Automations
I am fairly new to Tasker and I would like to hear about your clever automations. My automations are mostly location, WiFi and time based ones....
Routeable Loopback Addresses ( etherarp.net )
Old article I found in my bookmarks. Although I didn't have the use for it, I thought it was interesting.
Always have a backup ready, go check now
I thought I had a backup. I use the Gdrive add-on and it should have had a backup....