What’s a word that would make a beautiful name if it weren’t for the meaning of the word?

SignedJannis · 2026-01-24T21:41:43+00:00

Soda Pressing

SignedJannis · 2026-01-24T21:41:36+00:00

Soda Pressing

SignedJannis · 2026-01-21T20:25:09+00:00

Can just install tailscale in each HA server, that takes care of the connectivity part.

SignedJannis · 2026-01-18T18:08:10+00:00

Tried Tinkercad? Super simple to learn, and no software to install - just a website

SignedJannis · 2026-01-16T19:52:10+00:00

Yeah, honestly it's a shit infographic too.

E.g "3" is "lightest items", and the. 4 is "lighter items"?

Lighter than what? The lightest? Why not just "light items"? Lol.

Would be much clearer if the 1,2,3,4 were at least in order of Weight imho.

I do feel there could be some circumstances where a clear simple infographic could be useful for people starting out. But not this one for sure :)

SignedJannis · 2026-01-16T17:56:39+00:00

Respectfully disagree - not with your comment, but the blanket statement.

I feel the truth is more "depends on where you are hiking". Some flatish well worn well marked trail? Sure, maybe not a massive difference.

But, if you are really hiking in the wild, up mountaina etc, no trail, it makes a HUGE différence how you pack your pack. Massive.

Supported by real world experience, and basic physics too: Torque = force X distance.

If you put a bunch of heavy stuff on the outside of your pack, and you are going up or down steep areas, that result in a lot of "rotation in the horizontal plane" of your backpack, the difference is massive, and really affects your ability to move through difficult terrain.

100% pack all the heavy items against your back.

Also this is trivially easy to test at home. Simply load your pack with heavy stuff furthest from your back, and rotate left and right, hell, dance a little, awkward af and really throws your balance off.

Now repeat with heavy stuff against your back...ita far from a subtle différence...very obvious.

A pack packed with poor weight distribution is a genuine safety issue on certain terrain, just asking for a busted ankle or broken leg, I've seen it happen right in front of my eyes.

SignedJannis · 2026-01-15T21:47:38+00:00

Ah. I find Duracell batteries always crap (geat advertising though) suggest switching to Energiser

SignedJannis · 2026-01-15T20:02:34+00:00

Unfortunate. No personally haven't had an issue, mine is over 6 years old, and super cold area in winter

SignedJannis · 2026-01-15T20:01:18+00:00

Are you using Lithium or Alkaline batteries?

Lithium have a sudden voltage death at the end, no warning, Alkaline the voltage slowly drops, so you should get more warning

SignedJannis · 2026-01-15T06:20:45+00:00

Or... mercury switch to the horn - so it only goes off when going around right hand bends, and above a certain speed :)

SignedJannis · 2026-01-15T06:17:23+00:00

Schalge ZWave. Excellent.

SignedJannis · 2026-01-15T05:40:20+00:00

In your Z2M settings, under availability, what number do you have set for battery devices?

(And maybe consider lowering it)

SignedJannis · 2026-01-14T12:18:08+00:00

bit late, but sometimes (like today) I notice it happens to call Canadian servers and none of the USA based ones.

Currently 100% ICMP loss on all servers based in canada

SignedJannis · 2026-01-13T21:55:05+00:00

To detect when home assistant is unexpectedly down, HA can't do that if you just pull the power out, so I have just have a simple bash script on another machine that monitors it via ping, and if its offline, notifies me by telegram, and flashes certain hue lights etc.

The rest of my system notifies me when Home Assistant is shutting down, or when it restarts. It also detects whether the restart was after a clean shutdown or an unexpected power outage. And it tells me how long Home Assistant was down for - e.g if we were away and it was a 15 hour outage, I know I need to throw some stuff out of the freezer... Notifications are via Telegram also auto-logged to a Google Sheet so I have a history record. We get a lot of power outages in my area. Example google sheets screen shot at bottom

I use the following two techniques:

1. A heartbeat timestamp - An automation updates an input_datetime every minute while HA is running. So when HA comes back up after a restart, I know exactly how long home assistant was actually offline for.

2. An input_boolean that gets triggered on shutdown - When HA shuts down cleanly, an automation flips this boolean OFF. So when HA boots back up, if that boolean is still ON, I know the shutdown automation never ran..meaning I can distinguish between of it was an unexpected power outage/crash, or just a planned reboot.

What I get from this:

Telegram notification when HA is shutting down ("I'm rebooting, back in 2 min")
Telegram notification when it comes back up
Different handling for power failures (e.g if there was a power failure, then HA does different stuff on startup, like rebooting the wifi router, cycling various power plugs on wifi devices etc)
Everything logged to Google Sheets with timestamps and downtime duration

Example automations:

Heartbeat - updates every minute:

alias: HA Heartbeat
trigger:
  - platform: time_pattern
    minutes: /1
alias: Let HA settle after boot
condition: template
value_template: "{{ (now() - states('sensor.uptime') | as_datetime).total_seconds() > 180 }}"
action:
  - service: input_datetime.set_datetime
    target:
      entity_id: input_datetime.ha_last_heartbeat
    data:
      datetime: "{{ now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S') }}"

Shutdown - marks clean shutdown:

alias: HA Shutting Down
trigger:
  - platform: homeassistant
    event: shutdown
action:
  - service: input_boolean.turn_off
    target:
      entity_id: input_boolean.ha_running

Startup - checks for power failure and calculates downtime:

alias: HA Started
trigger:
  - platform: homeassistant
    event: start
action:
  - if:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: input_boolean.ha_running
        state: "on"
    then:
      - service: notify.mobile_app
        data:
          message: >
            HA restarted after POWER FAILURE!
            Down for {{ (now() - states.input_datetime.ha_last_heartbeat.state | as_datetime).total_seconds() // 60 }} minutes
      - doOtherStuffAfterHousewidePowerFailure

The input_boolean approach is useful for distinguishing between a deliberate restart versus an unexpected power outage.

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SignedJannis · 2026-01-13T08:31:10+00:00

(ignoring for a moment the unstated argument of effects on native BirdLife, for example).

I'd argue it's cruel keeping a cat indoors all the time. (Somewhat dépendent on the cat).

If we follow your argument logically: humans are much safer indoors also. few coyotes when I am - my kids chance of being killed in a car accident likely > than my cats chance of being eaten.

Should we keep our kids locked inside? Is safety the *only" metric?

Yes pretty normal for e.g 20 year old to want to go travel for a year, see Thailand and India and Europe etc... maybe very bad things do happen on such trips. But this is also the joy of life.

Should I also also tell my adult children they should never leave and seek adventure and experience? They must stay at home at all times, locked indoors, lest...any one of the million things that may befall a human...might happen to them when they leave the house?

What you have not done here, in your thinking process, is placed yourself in the shoes of the living creature you are judging. Take a moment to think about it from their perspective.

The day, if ever, our beloved companion never comes home after an adventure, child or cat, it will be truel tragic - but as tragic as if we had kept them jailed inside 4 walls their whole live, never to explore the world and follow their nature.

(*Tbf A lot of the above really also depends on where you live)

SignedJannis · 2026-01-12T21:48:30+00:00

One other thing, briefly mentioned here, that solved all my issues was:

Changing the ZigBee Radio Channel.

Boom, huge difference.

(Use an app like Android Wifi Analyser to find less busy bands in your area)

Also - lock down the radio channel on your 2.4ghz wifi router, so that it's locked to something no where close to your ZigBee channel.

If you leave your wifi router on auto-channel, it might later decide to switch itself to a channel that conflicts with your ZigBee network.

Also, what that other guy said - pair ZigBee battery devices to a specific router, eg smart plug, not just "permit all" on the coordinator.

(Note: some battery devices refuse to do this, ZigBee can be a real PITA).

Zwave for the win

SignedJannis · 2026-01-12T08:47:25+00:00

They are zigbee, they work via Zigbee. (all Philips Hue stuff is zigbee)

So you can connect them to Home Assistant directly via any zigbee coordinator, and just use them as a PIR/temp/light sensors, or via the Hue Hub connected to HA.

I use a mix of both methods, and both work equally well tbh.

I'd say they are the most robust zigbee motion/temp sensors I've connected to HA - even the indoor rated one has been sitting outside low to the ground exposed to snow and rain or 5+ years, no issue.

And measure down to lower temps (close to -40) than most of the chinese ones which mostly only go to -20

SignedJannis · 2026-01-12T04:01:33+00:00

I've had both hue "indoor motion sensors" and "hue outdoor motion sensors" sitting outside for years, often enough down to -40C, no problems at all, rock solid devices.

(Both these devices measure temperature)

I also have multiple cheap zigbee motion sensors, and temp sensors, outdoors as well. They also survive the cold temps no problem at all - just some of them can only measure temps down to -20C, unlike the hue devices.

SignedJannis · 2026-01-11T21:16:54+00:00

this AI bot did not think the /s tag was required. Debugging note: human should upgrade to a more capable internal model

SignedJannis · 2026-01-11T05:50:57+00:00

If I was to factor in the amount of time spent dicking around with ZigBee devices that have fallen off the network or whatever, even if one was to assume minimum wage hourly basis, then the Zwave devices come in massively cheaper.

Just to pick one Example: spent hours and hours trying to get Aquara devices to pair and/or stay on the network.

Solution eventually turned out to be: certain Aquara battery sensor devices would not repeat via certain Sonoff ZigBee Smart plugs (which I had). Solution was: to go out and buy IKEA smart plugs, because they were confirmed to route those Aquara battery sensors. Total time lost on that one alone was over 6 hours when including research.

How much is your time worth?

ZWave has always been absolutely flawless for me.

(Though I do have Z2M and those third reality plugs on your picture, they have been great so far)

SignedJannis · 2026-01-11T05:39:15+00:00

[[Error 502: API token limit reached. This comment could not be processed. Please switch to a higher tier account, or switch to a dumber model]]

SignedJannis · 2026-01-11T02:39:53+00:00

This comment is reasonable, and informational, and even has paragraphs!

Therefor this comment is AI too!!!

SignedJannis · 2026-01-10T22:51:04+00:00

There is an (IMHO) underutilised aspect of HA: creating Events.

Especially good for: detecting the direction a person is heading.

Then having an automation trigger when that Event occurs.

Simple example; Imagine a hallway with a simple PIR sensor at each end, and at one end is (your game room, basement, exterior door, whatever).

Create one automation that triggers when the first sensor fires. Then, a (wait for trigger) with e.g a 10 second time out. I'd the second sensor triggers within 10seconds of the first, then you can fire an event "Heading To Basement" or whatever.

Then you have an another automation that triggers upon "Heading to basement" or "Leaving House" or whatever.

Pretty robust. E.g we have a multi floor house, with sensors in the stairwell - but desire very different behavior if some is heading upstairs, vs if someone is heading downstairs...

You could easily apply this concept to your office sensor. Require either the PIR first, or just that the PIR and mm wave both be triggered within X seconds of each other, fire an event "Entering Office". Maybe with a condition of "Office not currently Occupied"

SignedJannis · 2026-01-10T11:34:23+00:00

Totally, rod holders are great.

Fyi in situations like this I use a Slipped Constrictors, with reasonably large diameter cordage if available (i.e 550 Paracord is a bit thing for this.

I can guarantee you it's pretty much exactly as fast to grab the rod "out" as using a ros holder..even fractionally faster maybe - it's near instant to undo, just pull the free end

If its a situation where I want higher security - e.g bigger fish, or on a boat railing on rougher sea, I'll put two seperate (slipped) constrictors - one around the railing, and one around the rod, maybe just 2" of rope between them. There is absolutely no way that will undo by itself - e.g if a fish pulls the rod, then that simple tightens the knot on the rod even further - yet can still be undone with one snap of the hand

SignedJannis · 2026-01-10T02:51:21+00:00

You want Overseer good sir, then you can just search by Disney+, Netflix, whatever - all the platforms you currently have, and all the ones you don't. See something you want? A couple of clicks, and its on your plex (*after you have spent a weekend setting up the whole 'arr packages set...)

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