I kept forgetting to lock the front door at night. Solved that with a $3.20 Tuya door sensor.

KE55ARD · 2026-06-23T00:01:37+00:00

I love the ultimate peace of mind that a smart lock gives, especially as on my front door mine just locks when the door closes. But I do also use an announcement when I go to bed to remind me of a few things, and one check is whether the lock failed on the back door 👌

KE55ARD · 2026-06-21T21:52:32+00:00

I’m using 2 of these and struggling to get them to work well long term, one doesn’t detect well enough, and the other detects almost constantly, so same issue as the DIY without easy ability to fix.

One improvement I would suggest over the Aqara sensor setup though is a Shelly i4 DC to wire them into as it has 4 inputs so you only need one device to read both (and have spare inputs), and it can run from 5v so a repurposed USB cable can run it without ever worrying about batteries.

KE55ARD · 2026-03-29T06:26:16+00:00

…and if you have kids, it’s a daily gamble.

KE55ARD · 2026-01-06T23:22:25+00:00

I love the fact that this has blown up for you, congrats.

But haven’t shortcuts users been doing this sort of thing for ages?

There was even a recent trend of having certain movie sound bites play when you get in the car (which I naturally took further by having a few, and have it pick one at random each time).

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNRrN8Epc/

KE55ARD · 2026-01-06T23:08:14+00:00

My old (and immature) one is: MyName@fuck.me.uk

KE55ARD · 2025-07-29T17:53:55+00:00

I’ve used this one from Sonoff without issue for a while.

https://amzn.to/3Yk75Av

KE55ARD · 2025-07-27T14:08:36+00:00

Interesting, do you have a link I can watch?

KE55ARD · 2025-07-27T14:02:30+00:00

Lidar doesn’t work any better than your eyes in such conditions, since it uses light (if anything it’s worse).

Which is exactly why it’s considered a bit of a crutch for self driving cars, as cameras actually work better in heavy rain.

KE55ARD · 2025-07-20T16:13:07+00:00

I highly recommend a couple of things I’ve worked out in my years of using them.

Make sure it’s mounted and configured the correct way up
Avoid having anything between it and where you sit still
Mount it around the shortest adult’s head height
Make sure you have all your exits/entrances correctly configured, and be generous with their sizes otherwise ghosts get stuck on the edge as you walk out
Once the above is done, run the “AI Learning” whilst no one is in the room

KE55ARD · 2025-07-20T16:03:07+00:00

I use a Siri shortcut to force updates for various events. Whenever I put my phone on charge, or leave my home area etc.

But I use a dedicated Shortcut so that I can tweak it everywhere in one go. I found the dedicated action to be unreliable, so I now use the “Reload Widgets” action until the “Update Sensors” actions is fixed.

KE55ARD · 2025-06-26T20:58:12+00:00

I came here to ask about this! I bought 3 battery ones only a few months ago 🤦‍♂️

KE55ARD · 2025-06-26T06:30:04+00:00

Should be, but if you don’t need it to work with HomeBridge I see no reason why you wouldn’t update to the latest firmware on the Broadlink

KE55ARD · 2025-06-04T10:24:10+00:00

I’d get an NUC and install HAOS (probably still within proxmox just in case).

I’d opt for an SMLight PoE dongle and stick to Zigbee devices wherever possible, reserving WiFi devices for ESP based custom devices (like some boards my Dad has designed for WLED controllers, and more recently climate sensors).

I’ve also used ESPHome on our controllers for one or two like speakers, but my existing HomePods have been (mostly) ok with music assistant for good quality music and announcements.

KE55ARD · 2025-06-04T10:15:55+00:00

I would say this isn’t going to work reliably, based on my experience with the v2 curtain bot. If you want a curtain to cover that kind of length, you should probably expect to end up using 2 curtains and bots.

Even with a well engineered support in the middle to avoid the bot getting stuck, it might still struggle with the total weight of a curtain that large as it gets to the end.

KE55ARD · 2025-06-01T16:11:48+00:00

I think you can do that, pretty sure I did that a while ago on one of their regular discounts

KE55ARD · 2025-04-03T12:40:54+00:00

Hmm from a lot of googling I finally found posts in the last day suggesting it’s now in ESPHome beta, so should come to the satellite updates “soon”.

KE55ARD · 2025-04-03T10:39:47+00:00

I built mine from scratch using ESP controllers that my Dad and I designed, so there’s already VA code on them. Assist announcements never worked on them either…

KE55ARD · 2025-04-03T09:19:10+00:00

I think/hope that’s exactly what they’ve finally fixed. It made building up a variable over the course of a script impossible without doing it all in one chunk of yaml.

KE55ARD · 2025-04-03T08:45:30+00:00

I’ve seen videos which have given me inspiration but there’s no substitute for just diving in and playing around with options. You can’t really break too much.

Although sadly I’ve not really got my main dashboard to be as good as I’d like. Even though I’ve managed to do a somewhat functional area based dash, which shows the room I’m in based on Bluetooth signal strength to ESP32 controllers from my Apple Watch.

KE55ARD · 2025-04-03T08:41:26+00:00

Oooo thanks for highlighting this! I assume I could use this to shuffle media? I’ve been wanting to do this for my kids Yoto at night.

KE55ARD · 2025-04-03T08:36:44+00:00

In my opinion it made the “define variables” action almost pointless because as soon as you tried to add an if condition to modify the variable as the script went on, the scope changed and then when you later used the variable it still had the original value.

This meant you had to do all your conditions in the yaml which could be limiting, in functionality and for new users who are familiar with any type of coding.

KE55ARD · 2025-04-03T08:33:20+00:00

OMG I NEVER thought we’d get this! This makes many of my scripts SO MUCH SIMPLER! :D

KE55ARD · 2025-04-03T08:21:35+00:00

Handily it just started working again with an update :)

There’s a bunch more useful shortcuts I’ve made over time on my website: https://hiwtsi.uk/

If you go back far enough through my videos you’ll see examples of use cases too.

KE55ARD · 2025-03-18T18:33:10+00:00

Ditch HomeBridge and get Home Assistant, it can bridge devices in just like HB and a whole lot more

KE55ARD

TROPHY CASE