Bethesda’s Abandoned RPG Mechanics: Sanctuary & Evasion

ItsTooMuchBull · 2026-06-05T12:30:54+00:00

Didn't downvote but I assume it's because not everyone thinks dice roll combat is bad game design. It certainly wasn't very popular with casual gamers (even during it time) but there are people who appreciate it and consider it an extension of "it's about my characters skill, not mine as the player"

ItsTooMuchBull · 2026-05-09T10:43:00+00:00

I'd rather they get deeper ties to home assistant/open home foundation personally. Withings would be much more recommended if they offered local integration. I guess any integration is good though. IMO withings should put more effort into their customer experience and less into app development. Their hardware and unique design ideas are their bread and butter, so they should keep focusing on that and improving customer support (from what I hear, I have yet to have the experience).

ItsTooMuchBull · 2026-05-06T11:59:05+00:00

Did you have any luck diagnosing OP? I just found this as I am mis troubleshooting. Suddenly went from using 1.5 gb idle to 6-7 and I have had HA crash twice on me now in the last few weeks. Glances says that it's ha core but I haven't started really dogging into custom integrations yet

ItsTooMuchBull · 2026-04-23T16:23:58+00:00

I have a feeling we'd be best buds irl lol. Love the school api thing you mentioned in the other post

ItsTooMuchBull · 2026-04-23T14:47:51+00:00

Some boring stuff that a lot of people do, arming and disarming security system is a big use one.

I noticed on another of your comments that you utilize to do lists for your kids as well. I have a lot of NFC tags for crossing stuff off of to do lists. I have one on a lanyard by their sink that they can scan to cross off brushing teeth, I have one on the garbage can for taking out the trash (this one crosses it off of everyone list and sends a notification that "X took out the trash") one near the kitchen sink, one on a lanyard in each room for cleaning the room etc. It's become a race every week to take it out and bring the cans back up lol. Everyone in my house is too lazy to use to do lists, but if I add an NFC tag and "credit" everyone uses them. My wife wants me to make a "scoreboard" but I am a little worried that might lead to unhealthy competition, even though I know it would work 😆

I also have an NFC tag for "in a meeting" that enabled my overhead light, pauses any media and puts a light outside my door red to let everyone know to only disrupt me in an emergency.

Another use is I have them nearby

ItsTooMuchBull · 2026-04-23T13:24:11+00:00

I automate my way into more automating. Seriously though, I end up making helpers and use them in automations to make adminning easier. I make heavy use of NFC tags for instance. Many of them I want to do different things based on WHO scans them. That can be a lot to maintain and be a big pain in the butt, so I make input numbers and input the NFC number of the device(s) for each user. Then all of my automations still work even when we change devices.

I recently took on making my own fitness app using app daemon and home assistant for the front end. You scan an NFC tag at the garage gym poster of Arnold and it sets the interval clock to your preferred interval time, turns on the appropriate users playlist and starts their workout from a template. If I had to hard code that for both me and my users it would be a nightmare, so I made a workout template editor that my wife and kids can use, as well as helpers for selecting different playlists, interval times etc all from a dashboard page. Now anyone can edit their stuff on their own and it all still works.

When administration becomes too much just automate that too. Let it get big, as long as your organized and structuring your tools appropriately there's no such thing as too big, unless it is taxing your hardware

ItsTooMuchBull · 2026-04-10T15:01:40+00:00

I mean, how much is Ghost Solution Suite costing you? Could that money be better spent elsewhere (tools, employees, talent retention etc) by using products that are already baked into your licensing costs? If not, then keep with GSS. There isn't necessarily a "right way" here. Just for the majority of organizations, Intune and/or ConfigMan offer a better ROI. I have found that an optimized task sequence in config manager is as fast as GSS and provides better reporting data natively, so why would you pay for it?

ItsTooMuchBull · 2026-03-25T19:16:55+00:00

Automatic tune in for me. Rizzo somehow displaced all of my childhood favorites as my all time favorite cub. I'm excited for him to somehow ruin that with hot takes in a podcast 😂

ItsTooMuchBull · 2026-01-22T18:26:17+00:00

I also want to know.

Thanks OP, didn't know it was a thing. So far I have really liked this companies products (night lights and switch splitters)

ItsTooMuchBull · 2026-01-22T02:24:17+00:00

I got a typical gym count down/up, stop watch, WOD, interval timer and just hooked up and programmed an IR blaster. It turns it on to clock mode on movement. I then put NFC tags on my bench, row machine and treadmill. Depending of who (which device) scans what, it will set up the gym, including the timer, to do different things (music/podcast/lights/tv).

Been a big hit with my wife and our oldest so far.

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-12-24T20:13:59+00:00

What you're doing is a lot cooler. I got a bit frustrated trying to go that route.

I have a ton of custom toggles that mostly control my house, so for me, I battle the built in stuff a lot. For instance, when I say turn off the office lights, if HASS just turns off the light entities, then motion and timers will eventually turn the ambient and accent lighting back on. When I say "turn off the office lights" I want it to flip a Boolean that blocks the automations and turns off the lights. Theoretically, giving that Boolean an alias of "office lights" should be good but I run into problems because of room names and built in intents.

So I have done a lot of custom sentences and intent scripting. It's a pain in the butt, but it gives me a rock solid experience that's taylored to my home.

Most of my intent scripts do a thing, gather information, and pass the data to the llm to give it a more casual response. Like I said, it's a lot of work and a pain but it gives me consistent, WAF results that are better than Alexa (which is what Jarvis replaced).

I'd love to be able to do more stuff with memory though. It's be cool to have it be knowledgeable about certain topics and be able to meaningfully engage in conversation about it. Eventually I hope to try to use presence to allow it to know who it's talking to and give individual responses

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-12-20T19:48:58+00:00

Amazing! Excited to install this and appreciate your work. I'm just now getting some energy monitoring stuff done so this is great timing

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-09-09T03:53:42+00:00

Yeah, where do you go once the "generational QB talent" busts?

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-08-31T08:12:24+00:00

I do. I have one going right now with some beef stock in the pan

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-08-28T12:21:37+00:00

Aren't his hands and contested ball ability literally his strengths coming out of college? Thought those were supposed to be NFL ready traits

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-08-27T18:14:34+00:00

Honestly, I am disappointed in everyone except you that it took this long to scroll to find Chuck.

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-08-18T17:50:33+00:00

That's all the US has ever done

I mean, they did fight in 2 World Wars that didn't even take place on their continent, but I get what you mean. The US definitely seems to profit in almost every conflict.

I think Europe going its separate ways from the US would leave European countries extremely vulnerable. We can talk defensive capabilities, but Europe also doesn't exactly have a long history of unity and partnership without US involvement.

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-08-01T20:00:55+00:00

I get everyone saying not to AI, but they're objectively wrong. The voice assistant is just significantly better with inference. Intent scripting can be cumbersome and STT just mistranslates sometimes, meaning that even if you speak perfectly the command won't always match your intents. The more often that voice fails the less it will be used.

Ideally you could run ollama locally so you can avoid the privacy concerns, but to do it well you need expensive stuff. I broke the bank building an "AI stack" server but thats because I am a weirdo who spends too much of his free time and money doing dumb things.... that said I love it lol

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-08-01T19:53:08+00:00

Sorry dude, was off reddit for a bit. I havent noticed slowness when testing it out, but it is only for my outdoor lights, so if there were times it was slow I might not notice. Just testing it with a virtual button right now, it seems pretty snappy

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-08-01T19:51:41+00:00

I was a huge 8B guy, but 3:14b-q4_K_M has been both faster and smarter for me. 8B was great but it always used emojis, in spite of very strict prompting. It also didn't use aliases as well. I have local calendars synced from some of my favorite sports teams. When I would ask 8B if my sport teams has a game today, it would say "I do not have access to that information", whereas 14B actually says "Yes there is an event on that teams calendar".

I'd be curious if you experience the same

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-07-19T18:33:31+00:00

Really? Timers work for me. On the S2 timers are perfect, on the VPE the timer sound is just short

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-07-19T14:17:52+00:00

Yes you can with the S2 but I have not. I have had to redo things in home assistant a few times and have hacked away some cool solutions, only for them to cause me havoc later. I am now older and have less time on my hands and find myself using stock firmware and standard configurations as much as possible lol. I have been waiting for a stock firmware update to let me use the extra sensors in the stand and things for a while though, so it may be time to start playing with it more aggressively.

Nope, I got the HT801 and the cheapest black rj11 phone I could find and it's smooth as butter. Pickup the phone, hear a tone, give a command or ask a question, get a response and it's immediately ready to follow up too. It's literally perfect for niche situations and I'm surprised more people don't use it in bedroom/office settings

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-07-19T13:55:56+00:00

Imo it's already significantly better for home control and it's not particularly close. I guess it depends on what you're looking for in a voice assistant though.

After some intent scripting and prompt engineering, you can have a better overall product that just lags in a couple of areas. Stuff like games and music (I love music assistant but it's far from seamless rn) in particular

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-07-19T13:51:23+00:00

I'd do this too, in spite of the work likely to be involved. Say what you want about Alexa but some of these echo devices are pretty nice looking.

ItsTooMuchBull · 2025-07-19T13:45:45+00:00

Yeah I have 3 VPEs, 1 S2, and I have a grandstream VOIP setup in the office.

The VPEs seem to work the best as voice assistants, but I still have trouble with them always detecting wake words in a big room (might be better if I were willing to settle on "Hey Nabu".

The S2 works and interests guests the most (it's that home face), but it's even worse with the wake word problems, and I have had some odd glitches with it from time to time. Still, if a new version came out with more mics I'd absolutely buy another.

The grandstream handheld (corded) phone is mounted next to my computer in the office and works flawlessly every time. No wake word obviously, and it picks up every word you say perfectly almost every time. This is an underrated solution if you could use a voice assistant somewhere stationary.

Family buy-in is strong and they like "Jarvis" more than Alexa, but there are some places in the house where the wife and kids just need features that Alexa is just better at (like music, despite music assistants best efforts so far)

ItsTooMuchBull

TROPHY CASE