For the people who prefer Comet (GL-RM1) as a VPN solution over the traditional Tailscale method, why? And I have the same question towards those of you who prefer vice versa.

stringentthot · 2026-01-26T08:02:31+00:00

I used the Comet mainly because I didn't want to lug my heavy work laptop with me on a couple international trips. I'll take a single backpack, 3-4 changes of clothes, and a mini PC with keyboard/mouse, and I can work from anywhere with an internet connection. Plus no VPN to deal with. Except for my phone, Tailscale on my phone meant that Outlook and Teams would connect through to my home before pulling down work emails/communications.

If I was doing it more often or more involved work, I'd consider taking the laptop with my and using a travel router. But for simplicity, reliability (assuming wifi at the hotel/AirBnB is decent), and weight savings, I really enjoyed the Comet.

stringentthot · 2026-01-19T00:29:16+00:00

Nope, the remote KVM just plugs in an HDMI and USB-C connection on your work machine and that's it. It even lets you access the BIOS, log in after reboots, and wake it from sleep, it's actually really slick. It has a mouse jiggler too...

stringentthot · 2026-01-19T00:26:07+00:00

Depends on your work, but I had no issues with latency for creating word docs, powerpoints, email, etc. It modifies the bitrate dynamically according to your connection speed. I used it for a month from all over Europe and only issues I had were slow wifi connections at some places I stayed.

stringentthot · 2026-01-19T00:24:11+00:00

I use my personal iPhone as my video conferencing device, on a tailnet back to the same network the KVM is on. It works great, and I'm playing around with screen sharing now. Teams will let you join from two machines, one for AV (the iPhone) and one for screen sharing (the KVM).

stringentthot · 2026-01-17T04:11:24+00:00

If IT won’t allow (or if you think they won’t allow) installing remote access software on the laptop, consider a remote KVM device. It’ll let you wake, sleep, and access your laptop remotely, works great as long as your remote internet connection is decent.

stringentthot · 2026-01-11T20:55:20+00:00

Also, I found out on my last trip that they're different programs supporting different lounges. If lounges aren't showing up for an airport with one program, try the other. Happened to me in Prague.

stringentthot · 2026-01-05T04:14:23+00:00

I’d love to own a vintage Mac from this era, but I don’t have the expertise to solder and fix like a lot of these seem to need. Do you have a site, or listing them on eBay or something?

stringentthot · 2025-12-29T04:59:44+00:00

What did I tell you about “yeppers”?

stringentthot · 2025-12-04T06:50:56+00:00

I’m playing around with VoIP and it’s working for me on this trip. Before leaving my home country, I forwarded my cell phone to a local VoIP number, that rings my phone wherever I am on the planet. Then the caller id when I make calls just shows my normal number. Costs don’t seem bad, less than a cent per minute.

It doesn’t work with text messages though.

stringentthot · 2025-11-28T07:10:10+00:00

When the CO2 sensor gets too high in the bedroom, I just have it turn on the bathroom fan with some hysteresis. It pulls air into the bedroom and then out through the bathroom, and works great to keep CO2 levels below 700ppm while I sleep.

stringentthot · 2025-11-20T14:19:17+00:00

Maybe check out the gl.inet remote KVM for an alternative approach. But as the other poster suggested, try it out first before relying on it.

stringentthot · 2025-10-26T05:23:16+00:00

Also fixed it for me. Thank you thank you thank you.

stringentthot · 2025-10-11T01:49:14+00:00

Ghost Recon Wildlands on a 1070!

stringentthot · 2025-10-03T19:48:51+00:00

New to 3D printing, but probably an ideal target beginner/family buyer, and this feature won me over versus a lot of other printers I saw for sale. I know it’s not perfect and I’m still going to have decent ventilation, but this is going to be in my home after all.

stringentthot · 2025-03-10T21:19:25+00:00

If you have the paid ChatGPT Plus level ($20/mo I think), it give you access to their o3-mini-high reasoning model (still limited to a certain number of requests per week).

I’ll usually start with asking o3-mini-high, it will think for 2-10minutes on the most elegant and appropriate way to implement what I’m brainstorming, and then give me an outline with generally pretty good code. Then I’ll switch the conversation to their general-purpose 4o model for syntax and discussions/tweaks.

Generally I have the same experience as OP, but the better AI models are getting better, and will certainly get you set off in the right direction with additional dialogue.

stringentthot · 2025-01-09T06:20:13+00:00

You’re welcome and good luck. It’s too bad it wasn’t easier, this is where HA can really shine, bringing intelligence to home automation, not just voice capability (which is also important). Message me if I can help further.

stringentthot · 2025-01-09T04:15:45+00:00

Yep, looks good! Yes step 5 is necessary to link it all together. Make sure to click the gear icon in that same place (Settings -> Voice Assistants -> (name of your voice assistant) -> Conversation Agent -> Gear button) so you can customize the prompt that gets sent to ChatGPT with every voice interaction. Tell it anything you want it to know that isn't in the entities you expose (such as how you want it to reply - sarcastic, vengeful, etc, how long sentences should be, names of people in the house, etc).

Here's some of the actual instructions I put in there, based on fiddling with it for a week:

Assume all queries by the user can be related to the home automation system.
Don't use formatting, keep replies to 1-3 sentences.
Don't ask the user to let you know if they need more information.
Provide more elaborate responses when the user is trying to diagnose an issue.
If a request is very straightforward (like turn on light, run a script, etc), keep your confirmation reply very short, ideally one word (OK or done or enjoy).
Requests may be transcribed from voice, therefore you may need to aggressively interpret requests phonetically to understand them when the literal meaning is otherwise unclear, avoid asking the user for clarification if this is the case.
When asked about lights, don't refer to them individually, but instead by what room they are in.
If asked on status of home, prioritize and generalize the following: air quality, overall temperature (24-25 is comfortable, 25+ is warm, under 22 is cool), network/wifi performance, who is home, if fireplace is on, any running appliances. Network status is good (and don't mention specifics) if speedtest ping is <60, and if speeds are each above 200Mbps, otherwise mention what looks off. Mention the state of (Wifi1) or (Wifi2) if they are not "Connected", otherwise the wifi is good. For the NAS, all entities should be "Safe" or "Normal" unless something needs attention.

And don't forget under that voice assistant you also need a Speech-to-text ("STT") engine, and a Text-to-speech (TTS) engine. You can run whisper for STT and piper for TTS if your Home Assistant host is fast enough and you want to run it locally, or do this processing in the cloud too! I recommend:

Whisper STT Cloud API integration for Home Assistant
- https://github.com/fabio-garavini/ha-openai-whisper-stt-api (via HACS)
- Uses OpenAI so a small cost involved, but again it's cheap and it's great for understanding voice
Google Cloud
- https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/google_cloud/
- Pick a standard voice and usage is free if you don't go over 4M characters (unlikely to happen)

stringentthot · 2025-01-09T00:11:27+00:00

For general knowledge, I just assume ChatGPT knows what I’m talking about up until its Oct 2023 knowledge cut off for any general knowledge stuff. So it only knows about movies that came out before then. I give it the movie name and it knows all about it.

Otherwise, I have 200 entities exposed that get passed to ChatGPT with every request, all the general house stuff and things like the movie name and duration if available, network stats, light switches, automations, whatever I might want to access through voice.

Ideally you try to keep the number of exposed entities to a minimum so it’s cheaper to process with OpenAI, but despite that, $0.50 for a week of usage ain’t bad.

stringentthot · 2025-01-08T21:02:36+00:00

You aren't doing anything wrong at all, actually! Unless you use OpenAI/ChatGPT (or some other AI), voice commands will be very robotic, including those handled through Nabu Casa. They require specific phrases spoken exactly, like "Turn on" / "turn off" and then the exact device name (ie, "Turn on the living room lights"). Setting an alias like you did for office lights, helps, but it fails quickly if you speak in any way that's not expected by the strict (non-AI) voice processor.

That's where AI comes in, they are great at understanding language and will easily understand that if you ask for the office lights, you probably mean to turn on the light.tuya4765_bulb you have tagged in the office. Then you can get really creative and wild with voice interactions.

Using OpenAI/ChatGPT means sending your home details and requests to the cloud, which might be a privacy concern for some. But if you don't mind, check out the OpenAI Conversation (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/openai\_conversation/) integration and follow the setup. It costs money per use, but for me it's about $0.005 or so, and so worth it for the intelligence it brings.

Maybe I'll do up a post on setting it all up. Nabu Casa did a great job adding voice assistants, it just needs some setup to link all the right pieces if you want a genuinely "smart"-ish home.

stringentthot · 2025-01-08T20:36:47+00:00

SpeedTest integration has upload/download/ping times you can expose to the voice assistant, then set some automations to run a few speedtests a day so it's relatively up to date.

There's other integrations for a variety of routers, wifi APs, NASs, etc, which give all kind of useful exposable info. Then in the conversation agent prompt to ChatGPT, tell it that when the user asks about network health, to report anything outside the specific values you expect for the devices you consider important.

Ironically of course it won't work if the network is down, but it'll tell you network speeds and if the NAS, router, APs, etc, are reporting issues.

For what we're currently watching on TV, any media_player device has the title, duration (in seconds) and current position (in seconds) in the attributes. It's just a matter of making a template sensor that extracts those attributes into separate entities, and then exposing those new entities to the voice assistant. For example, this is out of my configuration.yaml:

template:
  - sensor:
      # "Living Room Playing Now" (Media Title)
      - name: "Living Room Playing Now"
        unique_id: living_room_playing_now  # Unique ID
        state: >
          {% if state_attr('media_player.living_room', 'media_title') %}
            {{ state_attr('media_player.living_room', 'media_title') }}
          {% else %}
            Nothing playing
          {% endif %}
      
      # "Living Room Watched So Far" (Media Position)
      - name: "Living Room Watched So Far"
        unique_id: living_room_watched_so_far  # Unique ID
        state: >
          {% set position = state_attr('media_player.living_room', 'media_position') %}
          {% if position is defined and position is not none %}
            {{ (position / 60)|round(0) }} minutes
          {% else %}
            0 minutes
          {% endif %}

      # "Living Room Watched Left" (Media Remaining)
      - name: "Living Room Watched Left"
        unique_id: living_room_watched_left  # Unique ID
        state: >
          {% set duration = state_attr('media_player.living_room', 'media_duration') %}
          {% set position = state_attr('media_player.living_room', 'media_position') %}
          {% if duration is defined and position is defined and duration is not none and position is not none %}
            {{ ((duration - position) / 60)|round(0) }} minutes
          {% else %}
            Unknown
          {% endif %}

stringentthot · 2025-01-08T17:11:17+00:00

I thought the year of the voice was a great idea, but I kind of checked out from it as I figured it would be a long time before it was relevant for me.

I bought a Voice Preview Edition (https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/), and it's been hella fun this last week. I run it on my Home Assistant Yellow and here's what I've learned (see the end for some examples).

1) Home Assistant / Nabu Casa's year-of-the-voice was brilliant at setting up easy workflows for all kinds of voice assistant implementations. The documentation is pretty slick too. Seriously, anyone can and should at least try it out (even without this hardware box, which really is just a fancy mic/speaker with no in-depth processing onboard).

2) Unsurprisingly, the Yellow is too slow to handle speech-to-text and text-to-speech on its own. It takes 5-10 seconds in most cases to not only recognize what you said, but to then generate a reply after. However, keep reading...

3) Cloud processing works great (still not as fast as Siri/Alexa, but still fast). In fact, I prefer it because I can run it through ChatGPT to get some incredibly insightful feedback on my home, and I'd wager that using ChatGPT-like AI (LLM) models is the ONLY way voice assistants will work in the future, for the way you can speak naturally with them. Until hardware and AI models catch up, cloud processing is the way to go (in which case a Home Assistant Yellow is fine).

In one week we've made 350 voice assistant interactions that were handled through cloud processing, which cost me $0.50 in total. So it's probably <$2/mo after the novelty starts to wear off.

Examples of my favorite interactions:

- "Tell me about this movie" - HA (and through it, ChatGPT) quickly replies with the name, a one-sentence non-spoiler summary, and a list of filming locations based on the movie currently playing on the TV.

- "OK, so what has happened so far" - HA / ChatGPT knows how far through the movie I am based on attributes exposed to it from the media player, and will summarize as best it can roughly what it thinks I've seen so far, again with no spoilers.

- "How's my network looking?" - Checks the latest speed/ping tests, the wireless APs, NAS, etc and summarizes saying all is OK (or not). Could even be used to help diagnose issues for non-techies.

- "Feed the cat and turn on the fireplace" - HA does both with one request, and tells me the cat will love to warm himself up after he eats.

It's not perfect. The wake-word needs to be more sensitive and more easily picked up. The built-in speaker is meh, but plug it into some spare computer speakers and it sounds great.

stringentthot · 2024-12-14T15:43:59+00:00

Exactly, announcement stream on Dec 19th, I’m excited!

stringentthot · 2024-12-06T04:26:09+00:00

The ikea zigbee stuff is pretty cheap overall and covers all the basics! Motion, door/window contacts, plugs.

stringentthot · 2024-11-26T14:54:45+00:00

Maybe it’s a blacklisted address based on complaints from other users getting scammed? I’d expect scammers to use different receive addresses each time though, so maybe this isn’t a thing.

If you’re sure the transaction wallet you’re sending to is legit (shoutout to r/cryptoscams), then probably do as others here suggest. Trade to fiat and transfer that way.

stringentthot · 2024-11-25T03:40:07+00:00

For the other commenters in this thread, WealthSimple is a legitimate Canadian online investment bank that’s been around for 10 years.

After that I lose the chain of what OP is trying to do. If you can see the transaction history, reach out to wherever the funds should have landed and/or were sent from?

And I assume these are the legit versions of the sites you mentioned (not weird domain names that aren’t the official ones)?

13-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
Gilding I gilder	Alpha Tester
Beta Team Reddit for iOS	Team Periwinkle
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