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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 11th, 2025

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  • I recognize it’s not the answer to your question, but the ZigBee ones I have run on AAA batteries and last about a year on a charge.

    With Eneloops, even after a decade they still keep over half their charge capacity. Could probably go 15-20 years per battery in regular trickled use with at most quarterly swaps - I think that’s kinda ideal operation for these guys.

    One battery every 15 years, and an annual swap when it drops off my HA is a small price to pay for the flexibility of being able to deploy anywhere with zero infrastructure. I have a dozen sensors and would not want to have to wire each one.

    FYI - Stock white charger that came with eneloops did not like how low the voltage gets when they run low in the temperature sensors, so I swapped for the “super pro” charger and it’s significantly better at managing the batteries: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0B2WXJH43


  • Ubuntu (like 100 years ago) > Debian > Mint (for several years) > a bunch of things > Kubuntu > PikaOS (GNOME)

    Cinnamon Mint is almost perfect as a daily driver, but had hangups in gaming (frame stutter, controller disconnects, etc…)

    Tried PopOS! for a hot minute, Cosmic is pretty but very clearly still WIP

    Rode the plasma train for a little while on Kubuntu, but everything felt a little half-baked and games crashed pretty regularly.

    I’ve settled on PikaOS GNOME for now as my daily driver. Things seem generally solid, but I’ve only been using it for a few weeks, TBD on the long-term stability, but I’ll probably hang here at least until whenever Mint reaches stable Wayland support, at which point I’ll give that a go.






  • While you’re searching for batteries (or any other potentially smart appliance), check if they are supported by just searching for “device home assistant”

    Those that have official support will have a page on home-assistant.io and scrolling the description will tell you if it’s controlled locally (preferred) or via cloud polling/API (less preferred)

    Some devices may have custom integrations you can setup from Github via HACS, where the quality and support can vary more significantly than official integrations.





  • IDK about a true voice call but you could definitely set something to play a message through a second satellite. You could even make it recurring until snoozed e.g.:

    Grandma: “Computer, I need help”

    HASS - Trigger automation say (through separate speaker) “Grandma called, she needs help”, delay 30, repeat until button is pressed.

    The tricky part is teaching it enough permutations of “I need help” that Grandma doesn’t have to get the phrasing exactly right in an emergency





  • Hosting for two:

    • Domain - $300/yr (it’s a great domain, don’t judge me.)
    • Proton Duo - $180/yr
    • Kagi Duo - $168/yr
    • Nabu Casa (Home Assistant) - $65/yr
    • Donations to FOSS projects & initiatives - $250/yr
    • Lingering security camera subscription (next to go) - $120/yr
    • ISP Unlimited Data - $600/yr gofuckyourselfISP
    • Typical added network load ~50W - $131/yr
    • ~10yr Hardware Upgrades - $200/yr

    I just upgraded my home storage setup, so offsite backup is now running at my parents house, saving me ~$250/yr (but probably costing them ~$50/yr in added utility costs)


  • I have a little Proxmox installation running a VM on a 256GB NVMe, which as you can imagine is tight

    Not as tight as I was imagining a 256 MB installation to be.

    I know nothing about promox, but because it’s quiet in here, I imagine cloning the original drive for the original system then expanding it to take over the whole drive is the easier thing to do, it’s a fairly standard process and generally nondestructive because you can just put the old drive back in if something breaks.

    So, I would probably go e) unless you really want to set everything up again from scratch (which is sometimes nice to do)