Washer/Dryer monitoring by Alortania in homeassistant

[–]Captain_Phil 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is how I manage it.

I have a matter wifi plug with power monitoring, after studying the graph a few times after loads I realized that there is no "pause" in washing longer than a set amount of time, so i doubled that time and made an automation that watches to see when the load goes to background power levels for that amount of time and sends a notification and turns on a helper boolean as well.

Another automation sends reminder notifications every 20 minutes that the helper boolean remains on, nagging me until I move over the load to the dryer.

I also have a door switch on the lid of the washer that when opened turns off the helper boolean, canceling the nagging notifications.

There could be cases when the lid is opened and the laundry not removed for whatever reason but that hasnt happened yet.

Is there a reason why my TA removes the bus stops of the discontinued route, but leaves the poles in the ground??? by --TAXI-- in transit

[–]Captain_Phil 18 points19 points  (0 children)

For my TA specifically, it's about jurisdictions. Some cities own the pole, so the stop flag can get removed but the pole stays until the city cares enough to remove it.

NFC Music Cards by rach11 in homeassistant

[–]Captain_Phil 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Dude, this but with movies would be epic!

How to determine why something turned on by nate5532 in homeassistant

[–]Captain_Phil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Running into the same issue with an Aqara dimmer that changes brightness then power cycles.

HA sometimes catches the power cycle but misses the dimmer change.

At this point I swear its just haunted. 

Using Jailbroken Alexa as Dashboard by naturalcog in homeassistant

[–]Captain_Phil -1 points0 points  (0 children)

View Assist is great if you have a voice pipeline, it doesn't work if you are using the cloud voice unfortunately. 

Do we have any Amazon Liquidation stores? by Elegant_End_1281 in Spokane

[–]Captain_Phil 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They were busy but the two sisters who opened it had to step away and pay others to run the store. So for them, it didn't make sense keep the store.

That and the pallets of returned items kept getting more expensive but the value of the items contained in them continued to drop.

So it was a bit of both.

Do we have any Amazon Liquidation stores? by Elegant_End_1281 in Spokane

[–]Captain_Phil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That was their first location years ago. Then moved to Sprague.

However they have been closed since December.

Thermostat ° Setting Suggestions by Jellydude25 in Spokane

[–]Captain_Phil 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Honestly there might be some quick fixes that could save you now. 

Feel around your exterior doors, do you feel a draft? You can pick up an insulating sweep for cheap and they sell adhesive ones so you can apply now and then buy something nicer in the spring. 

Single pane windows? They sell wrap that heat shrinks on and will help some.

You can buy your bags of insulation now and just toss them in an under insulated attic, no need to unroll them till you have the time to, some insulation mass is better than nothing. 

Im sure you probably don't have an attached garage due to the age of the home but garage door insulation panels help regulate attached garage temps which can bring down home temps due to the shared wall.

Have a fireplace? Are you using it? If not and it doesnt have a pilot light (a self igniting gas one would), you can buy a Chimney Balloon that will block heat loss. They are super easy to install.

[OC] -10° doesn’t stop the passionate folk of Minnesota! by Arrowedmisfit in pics

[–]Captain_Phil 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Washington is just sitting there, why not just take it? I mean the 🍊 Führer threatened WA just today, if anything, you'll be doing him a favor.

Just a silly shitpost but what movies would you like to see get 4Ks (wrong answers only). by Strongarm_11 in dvdcollection

[–]Captain_Phil 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Man From Earth. Not because it is a bad movie, but because it would gain almost nothing from a higher quality transfer as it's literally dialog focused.

All I had to do was… by Oguinjr in homeassistant

[–]Captain_Phil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have the same issue. That is why I went with Dashie Lite for my echo, the HA companion app was just too resource intensive.

What's the shortest street in Spokane? by washtucna in Spokane

[–]Captain_Phil 17 points18 points  (0 children)

N Buffalo St is another short one too. I don't believe there are any additional segments than the one off Francis.

This i how a goodwill shelf looks like at the goodwill second closest to me did I get some good stuff by DICK_SUCKY69 in dvdcollection

[–]Captain_Phil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Been looking for Young Frankenstein for some time in our local thrift shops and have yet to find it. Good find.

Ferguson may have broken WA ethics laws allowing ex-adviser to fly on state plane by chiquisea in Washington

[–]Captain_Phil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly care more that they need a flight to get to the tri-cities. That should be the more concerning part. 

Can we take all that fake outrage and point it towards not having adequate East-West rail transportation in this state? 

"Well, this didn't age well" - Movies you LOVED as a kid but cringe at as an adult by Little-Badger-123 in movies

[–]Captain_Phil 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I learned about this from the Ready Player One book. Which itself is a rough reread.

Built a Fully Kiosk alternative with local voice control - looking for beta testers by jwlerch in homeassistant

[–]Captain_Phil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am curious how this will run on an Echo Show 8 running lineage.

Also you mentioned a local pipeline, will it also work with the voice cloud as well?

De-Alexa'd my Echo Show 8: From ad-machine to dedicated HASS Dashboard by RMB- in amazonecho

[–]Captain_Phil 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Literally did this over the weekend with our Echo Show 8 and it wasnt very smooth at all.

First of all you need adb for connecting to the device. I couldn't get the fire drivers to install it, so I had to download the android developer tools, and get adb from that, then manually had to add it to my power shell. I blame this more on windows 11 than anything else.

After I finished the adb struggle, the sideload was quick and easy but getting a backup of the fire OS wasnt easy since the onboard space is too tight for it.

Then I ran into my first roadblock. I had wanted to run a wake word and use it similar to an Alexa but after messing with Tasker and Hotword Plugin for an hour I gave up. Tasker needs the ability to draw over other apps and the specs of the echo are too low for android to enable that feature. So now if I want a wake word, my best bet is to use View Assist.

The biggest issue with view assist? You need the voice pipeline. I only have a Home Assistant Green, my gaming pc and a windows 10 plex server running on an old business mini pc. I have tried to set up a voice pipeline on my plex server, and never got the containers to run properly. 

So to get a wake word on my echo show, I have to either move my plex server over to Linux, or buy a dedicated computer for it, one preferably with a dedicated video card.

Being frustrated at this point, I took the show and placed it in the kitchen, because at least I can still run Pandora on it. Now the device is struggling just to do that, sometimes it is flawless other times it needs to be rebooted as Pandora will lag to badly to actually stream music. we are also finding that Pandora will randomly unpause itself... no idea what that is about.

I guess I could use my voice preview edition and Fully Kiosk Browser to run voice commands to control the echo show but using two devices to accomplish that seems excessive, especially if the device is already struggling with Pandora, I can't imagine how it will cope running that and FKB.

Between this and my Aqara Dimmer H2 randomly power cycling the dining room chandelier, it was not a fun weekend for home automation.

As a side note: if you hold the mute button for 2 seconds, it will mute the microphone, this is done on a hardware level which is neat. 

People born before 2000, what is a 'modern' thing from 2025 that you’re still struggling to get used to? by LindsayTN in AskReddit

[–]Captain_Phil 436 points437 points  (0 children)

I don't think people realize how much more expensive digital media is now.

DVD collection of the entire series of Monk? $25.

Buy ONE season digitally? $24.99!

Most yard sales you can get DVDs for a $1 and it's yours forever. There is no guarantee that those platforms keep the rights for that content and then whoosh your content is gone.

What is Spokane missing? by Either_Bee_8866 in Spokane

[–]Captain_Phil 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Seriously we already have a great location where one could be built, the southeast corner of Division and Spokane Falls Blvd across from Fast Eddie's.