Is your question rhetorical? I remember reading before that Facebook was creating shadow accounts for people that didn’t have actual accounts. They would build a user based on everything they could track, even attaching presumed names.

I use reolink cameras isolated to their own VLAN and strictly controlled. NVR is an Intel NUC with Coral running Frigate. It was the cheapest/best solution for me. Tough to find things that aren’t insanely expensive.

Nice write-up. I thought I had a large library (24TB) and my off site backup is starting to get full. I backup everything though but I have long debated on if there’s a point of keeping movies and TV since they’ll likely always be available. Anyway, I never thought of generating a list of files and eliminating the stuff that’s not particularly important. Good idea.

How do you find frigate with the NUC? It works pretty well?

The lights we have definitely require the app and an account to get them to do anything other than solid white.

Thanks I will look into those products as well as Home Assistant. I’ve yet to pull the trigger on installing HA, I don’t have a lot of devices that have made me want to use it yet. We only have a couple Google speakers and Chromecasts.

Apparently it’s to detect nearby devices so that you don’t have to pair the traditional way.

The other thing that bothers me about these lights is they have a built in microphone that listens for music playing and can adjust the lights to match the music. I haven’t looked myself but some users on Reddit have posted about the amount of network activity with Govee cloud and Google Analytics being very high.

If I can isolate them from accessing the internet and connect through Home Assistant locally then I may keep them… These are sort of a trial run for future permanent Christmas/Occasion lights on the outside of the house.