WeChat ID
aaronpk_tv
#homeautomation
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Goodbye Philips Hue 👋
I finally finished replacing all my Hue lights with Caseta switches.
While I will miss the color temperature control, I am excited that I can attach a switch anywhere that works and looks just like a normal switch, no wires needed!
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Just installed my first Lutron Caseta switch. Going to slowly convert all these switches over in the next few weeks. I do like how the switch is silent, no sound of a relay snapping.
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Someone broke through the chain link fence last week, in broad daylight, while I was home, and didn't notice at the time.
I started thinking about what I could do about it, and it turns out the EA Unifi cameras have a new webhook feature. So now my cameras send a webhook to Home Assistant when someone crosses a virtual line, and it will trigger the siren. Since this is a line crossing event, not generic person detection, I can leave it armed 24/7, since nobody should be in that area at all. -
ok I think I just got my Home Assistant set up with Matter and Thread using the SkyConnect USB dongle and I have to say this is way more complicated than it should be and those names are terrible. I hope this gets smoothed out in the next couple years!
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was it absolutely necessary to run cables for ceiling mics in 5 rooms? definitely not. but now I am all set up to film a reality show 😂 -
We are just a couple weeks away from closing up the walls on the new house! Are there any last minute requests I should put in for things in the walls? We already have: ethernet everywhere, 2x the required power outlets, water on the patios, intercoms...
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Very glad I took reference photos before I closed up the wall in the electrical closet! I was able to use it to figure out a safe place to punch through a hole for PoE into the studio side!
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Sadly my hopes of getting a mailbox opened notification seem to be a lost cause. The 433mhz sensor doesn't have enough power to reach the 80 feet to the street. The Zigbee one does reach that distance, but not once it's inside the mailbox.
I just found a LoRa line of home automation products, and while I'm not a fan that their Home Assistant integration is all through the cloud API, I might have to give it a shot for this anyway. -
I just got the Aqara C1 cat feeder and within a few minutes had it connected directly to Home Assistant via Zigbee, and all the sensors and buttons showing up and working!
However, I then realized the ZHA method doesn't expose the scheduling interface of the feeder, so I can only drive it entirely via Home Assistant, no local on-device scheduling option.
I really wanted it to be self sufficient, just reporting state and being able to dispense food with HA, but I think I'll stick with this for now anyway. The failure mode is that my HA server goes down for some reason or the Zigbee controller dies, and the food doesn't get automatically dispensed. But even if I'm out of town, I always have someone come by to check on the cat at least once a day anyway, so I guess that will be the manual fallback option.
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Sonos discovery across subnets - Configuration - Home Assistant Community (community.home-assistant.io)
