I’ve thought more on this yesterday, and I think my issue is-

I don’t want something that ‘just works’, I want to BUILD something that ‘just works’

The distinction is that I don’t want to buy premade solutions. I want to make them. Not because of the customizability, but because the fun is in the building. Think Lego- hundreds of people build the exact same product in the end, but why are they sold in pieces? Just assemble the damn things and sell them complete (with markup). You think more people wanna buy that?? I’d bet against it.

Hard agree. In fact, I think there’s a market for JUST the guides. It’s true that there’s a TON of guides out there already, from old blogs to YouTube, but the issue is: all of them start or end with: “your use case might differ, so perhaps this solution isn’t for you.” Or “make sure this setup is compatible with your specific hardware”

For example: I want to set up some sort of backup/cloud storage type system. Well there’s about 1400 ways to accomplish that. I can easily just grab one and go, but I’ll always wonder- should I have done this a different way? Would my life be easier/more secure if I chose a different set up?

So offering hardware that is compatible with whatever “stack” of services included would be a huge plus. Sorta like getting a raspberry pi and following a specific raspberry pi tutorial- you know the issues you get aren’t gonna be due to incompatibility.

I think it really boils down to the scale of one’s home lab- are you just tinkering to get some skills and make something cool? Or are you hoping to do something much much bigger? Different software solutions fit those extremes differently.

Sorry, got off rambling there. I guess I’ve been down the home lab hardware/software wormhole for too long these last few weeks.

Edit: I remember why - I wanted to use a single button dimming option, and as far as I can tell, there wasn’t that option in Shelly natively. There isn’t really a “native” version of this in Tasmota, but someone had already laid out the method to do such a thing with rules and whatnot within the Tasmota console. But after tinkering with it all this morning, I think I busted it beyond repair, so I might give the native Shelly a try!

Mostly because I’m lazy. This device was set up before Shelly made it so easy to run offline versions of the native firmware. And I’ve got a handful of devices already running Tasmota, so I’m just resistant to change.

Yeah, Tasmota has ‘setoption19’ to enable autodiscovery, and I triggered it, and it finds a whole host of SENSORS - but none of them are the switches. It does add one entity which is a single switch. But it seems this just correlates to switch1. I’m thinking it has something to do with how I originally set up the dimmer… it was years ago, so I guess I need to dig into my notes and see if I can figure out what options I set on it before I moved it to it’s current spot.

for reference, the data spit out by Tasmota: {“Time”:“2024-08-29T15:17:19”,“Switch1”:“OFF”,“Switch2”:“OFF”,“ANALOG”:{“Temperature”:35.1},“ENERGY”:{“TotalStartTime”:“2021-07-13T17:05:01”,“Total”:37178.152,“Yesterday”:0.000,“Today”:0.000,“Period”:0,“Power”:0,“ApparentPower”:0,“ReactivePower”:0,“Factor”:1.00,“Voltage”:117,“Current”:0.000},“TempUnit”:“C”}

Damn. I swear it didn’t say that when I commented!

I wish the wiki post said something about how the tofu was prepared!

I second this. How is the tofu prepped? Pressed? Frozen? I’m always looking for new tofu recipes

Ooooh! Finally. I have needed something like this to control the volume on my media PC.

I used to have an automation that detects when my HVAC turns on, and it bumps the volume of whatever I’m playing up a few clicks. Then turns it back down when the HVAC cycle finishes. Super handy due to the crazy loud HVAC in my house.

The democrats should not have dressed so provocatively!

Agreed. Changes this large for society will always take time. That’s why it’s important to not burn yourself out on one issue, or one fight. You gotta buckle in the for the long run. But keep fighting for change in a way that allows you to keep fighting. I feel guilty sometimes for not getting more involved in issues or causes that I think need support, but I have to remind myself that no one person can fight every battle. Forgive yourself from time to time for “not doing enough”. So long as you keep coming back to the table when your pace allows it.

Nice, I like that Time article better. It reinforces the GINI articles analysis: middle class folks wages didn’t go up with lower class wages. I think that’s sorta a good thing? Ideally the top 10% would not grow, but the bottom 90% would. But help getting to the bottom 50% is definitely not a bad thing.

Also, I never said the income inequality growth is Biden’s fault. But more that it’s the reason all these articles about how good the “economy” is doing might not be seen in the same light by people who are still struggling.

We can do better, and I think closing that gap is everyone’s goal, but the methods to achieve it can vary wildly.

Thank you for the sources. Some comments:

1. I don’t think a narrowing of the income inequality between races is the same as a generalized reduction in income inequality across a whole nation. Yes it probably contributes, but it doesn’t tell the story.
2. your article on GINI tells the exact opposite story that you’re saying here. The headline says it all: pre-tax income inequality has fallen slightly (1.2% or so) but after people pay taxes, the income inequality actually ROSE!! Easily demonstrating the regressive nature of the tax structure. The article mentions some expiring tax breaks for low income households.

Literally until the moment I read your comment, I thought that community was “microbiology memes”

Not on topic, but wow.

I’ll just add that I’m a fan of valetudo, but it can be a bit more involved than your standard firmware swap. I had to build a pin breakout board, and race against time to root my vacuum because there is an auto-reset programmed into some robots that can brick your vacuum if the jailbreak isn’t finished when the reboot is triggered.

Just read the process through all the way before you decide on device.

I was sweating like I was in the hurt locker when I did mine, because my partner would have NEVER let me forget the time I bought a $900 robot vacuum and broke it before it even cleaned the floor once!

Hahah! This answer works for me, because I was unsure what db0 was. Now I hopefully learn two new acronyms

Yeah! Thanks for sticking up for me, stranger.

Ah, that’s what I was looking for. Thank you. I am not sure if an MQTT signal works well for dimming, but I guess I’ll give it a try, because otherwise I end up with two switches controlling the same set of lights in the same location… not idea.

Thanks!

In my experience, aqara motion/lux sensors are pretty binary. I have one in my greenhouse to help with my lighting, but the lux value goes from 0 to max when ANY amount of light hits it.

There is no way I can tell the difference between cloudy and sunny. I can’t tell the difference between 6am (sun just over the horizon, but still behind trees) and 12 noon.

I would love to be able to detect when the sun goes behind a tree and shades my garden, but that’s just not possible with the granularity of the data I’m getting.

Do you have a source for this?

Wow, that looks perfect. I wonder how strong the zigbee signal is in my back yard…

Also, did you try those moisture sensors? That might be the next step for my system.

Yeah, that’s the easy part. But what valve? How to power the valve plus the esp board? Waterproofing? Those are the tricky parts.