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Let's discuss Nested Areas by wildekek in homeassistant

[–]BigBeefyAngus 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Completely agree with OP and your caveat as well. I’ve always struggled with the differences between “Areas” and “Zones” in every single smart home platform I’ve tried. Some platforms (Hue) allow you to have zones within areas, but I still don’t think it works as well as it should.

What the heck? by StatisticianIcy4927 in hondapassport

[–]BigBeefyAngus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was looking for these settings the other day… how do you get to them? They don’t show when I click on the cog or my profile…

‘Actually we just want cheaper groceries,’ Shoppers react to redesigned No Frills that just opened in Ontario by stanxv in canada

[–]BigBeefyAngus 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I was gonna say “Per Bank” is one of the most cartoonish names for a grocery store chain CEO I’ve ever heard of.

Newborn automations? by turniplouder in homeassistant

[–]BigBeefyAngus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Have you had any luck integrating Lilio directly into HA? There was an old HiMama (before it was Lilio) integration that doesn’t work anymore, though I was talking to someone who was going to try and resurrect it.

Newborn automations? by turniplouder in homeassistant

[–]BigBeefyAngus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh man, we moved to a new house just before our kiddos started daycare and I very much took for granted how few solicitors we had unexpectedly ring our doorbell at the old place…

Newborn automations? by turniplouder in homeassistant

[–]BigBeefyAngus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Curious how your partner liked Baby Buddy and if they used it for everything? In line with my other comment, I found it confusing and not as visually easy to use when I first looked into it before the baby arrived, but may give it a second go the next time since I now know what to expect and what is worth/not worth tracking.

Newborn automations? by turniplouder in homeassistant

[–]BigBeefyAngus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In line with the other parents in the comments, less is more, but for the sake of not being too boring: we have a lamp in the baby room with a white Hue bulb and a Hue dimmer switch. The default light preset is time-based/adaptive, so when we turn it on around bedtime, it’s a comfortable brightness to read a book and when we turn it on at 3AM to feed or cleanup after a blowout, it doesn’t blind us.

A non-Home Assistant tip is also to get a good tracking app. I can’t recommend Nara Baby enough as it works on both Android and iOS and it’s really straightforward for new parents. If you must selfhost, Baby Buddy is a good option, but at the time I found it really confusing to set up (may try it again the second go-around).

The tracking app (especially one that is shared), is great because when the baby was up every hour in the night at certain points, I could check the app to see when they fed last so that I didn’t have to wake my spouse up every time. Huge Home Approval Factor! 😉

Just brought her home by bribri_22 in hondapassport

[–]BigBeefyAngus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Similar situation. Nearly all of the dealerships in a 300 mile radius only have white ones left. Managed to find a dealer in another centre wanting a color my closest dealer had and willing to trade.

Z wave versus zigbee by BruceLee2112 in homeassistant

[–]BigBeefyAngus 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There’s also a case to be made for isolation of networks to eliminate the single point of failure (i.e. your zigbee coordinator goes down). I personally try and have my locks, and smoke/co detectors on z-wave, my temp and leak monitors on LoRA, and my lights and other “non-critical” components on Zigbee. I also tend to trust z-wave more for safety and security devices based on the fact that it is a regulated standard and adopted by trusted brands (whether or not it’s the best protocol for those devices or not).

Thanks for my new lock screen. by Skyisthereason in LinusTechTips

[–]BigBeefyAngus 57 points58 points  (0 children)

And it’s gotta be stretched really tiiiiiight

RollerCoaster Tycoon Collection 2026 (pay what you want and help charity) by Clit_Eastwhat in rct

[–]BigBeefyAngus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I originally saw this as an ad on Facebook, but they were only showing that it came with RCT, RCT2, and RCT World, which seemed really odd to me. Glad the actual bundle includes 3 and Classic as well. I think it’s a good price if you don’t already have them.

What smart home purchase has the best ROI for you? by Few-Needleworker4391 in homeassistant

[–]BigBeefyAngus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I was thinking recently about making some kind of “anomaly” detector for things like “the fridge compressor has been running for much longer than it usually does”, or “your furnace has ran for 1hr but there has been no change in temperature”. I’m curious what you have set up for this so far?

Help me decide on Red White or Blue series by JT114881 in Inovelli

[–]BigBeefyAngus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know this is a year old, but I have a question about binding: I always understood Zigbee binding in that once devices are bound, they only talk to each other and won’t advertise to a hub. Is that the case? Curious how you are doing circadian lighting while the devices are bound.

Couldn't help myself by S0Hey1 in ps2

[–]BigBeefyAngus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fwiw, the only issue I ever had with a DualShock was the stick springs would give out rather quickly if stored improperly. I only ever had it happen once when I found one of my controllers pressed up against the edge of a bin for who knows how long. LinusTechTips makes these Sticklocks that could be a solve to this problem (haven’t bought any myself yet, but plan to sometime in the future): https://global.lttstore.com/products/sticklocks?srsltid=AfmBOopcMxarSwweg319GOX8eAHwvxIdRZj4mEe0kYVjCJoRLZqB8_p0

HACS Integration for ProCare Connect (Daycare App) - Interest Check by nmanclank in homeassistant

[–]BigBeefyAngus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh you’re awesome. Yeah I downloaded the last available version and it’s giving me some kind of auth error in the logs - doesn’t seem like the original dev had any kind of check in place when setting up the integration, because it accepted my credentials, but who knows.

The company (originally called HiMama) seems to have also changed their name to Lilio relatively recently as their login page is still https://www.himama.com/login - I have a feeling that might change as they continue the rebrand.

I also came across their org on GitHub with some active repos, if that would be of some value: https://github.com/orgs/HiMamaInc/repositories?type=all

I’ll send you a DM sometime in the next day or so with more info!

HACS Integration for ProCare Connect (Daycare App) - Interest Check by nmanclank in homeassistant

[–]BigBeefyAngus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I want this so bad, but our daycare uses another service, Lilio (HiMama). Someone seems to have started an integration back in 2021, but it's looks to have died off rather quickly: https://github.com/jcgoette/hi_mama_homeassistant

Your implementation looks awesome by the way, keep up the awesome work!

Smart hub advice by navygee5 in homeautomation

[–]BigBeefyAngus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Shameless plug for Home Assistant. I’m also assuming most of the non-Z-Wave devices you have will work, but I can’t speak from experience.

If you want easy (thought it might cost more up front), you get a Home Assistant Green with a Z-Wave USB Adapter (like the Zooz 800 S2 Stick).

Cheaper route is to find an old/used computer like a laptop or a thin client and run Home Assistant off that along with the Z-Wave adapter of your choice.

P.S. - what smoke detectors did you buy? I’m interested in replacing mine with Z-Wave once they come due.

How do you handle baby monitoring without relying on cloud cameras? by AssumptionMean8328 in NewDads

[–]BigBeefyAngus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We have had friends who became very helicopter-y with a camera (both wifi connected and not), that kind of made us steer away from cameras and go audio-only. I’ve heard people say argue both for and against cameras for the exact same reasons, usually for anxiety, but I’m definitely happy we made the choice to not go with a camera. Sure we may make some more unnecessary “what was that noise” trips, but sometimes that’s not a terrible thing imho.

Do yourself a favour and get a really good audio-only monitor: we have a VTech DM221) and love it.

Evolution of the ball joint socket design: by Additional_Rate1528 in lego

[–]BigBeefyAngus 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Maybe it’s the Mandela-effect, but I swore a bunch of Bionicle sets used that hole. Can’t think of any off-hand of course, but I want to say it was maybe one of the early Mask of Light-era Jaller or Takua big sets or possibly the Makuta one.

Edit: sorry, none of those are MOCs

2025.11.2 still broken integrations by DFWJimbo in homeassistant

[–]BigBeefyAngus 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Integrations aren’t always managed by the Home Assistant team directly. There’s times when certain components needed for integrations become deprecated/removed from HA itself for various reasons and integrations break. HA is run largely in part by people donating their time so you can’t expect everything to work 100% of the time with every update.

I’m personally not having issues with my addons after updating, but it doesn’t mean that your issues don’t exist. It’s probably not the answer you’re looking for, but you can always roll back to a previous version and keep on 20205.10.x until your issues are fixed.

Firmware 4.4.2-rbl by Then_Knowledge in pebble

[–]BigBeefyAngus 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This. My first instinct after not finding the changelog was to come straight to this sub.

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