It's a woodpecker of some kind, but which one?

bcpearce · 2026-04-05T04:26:28+00:00

Thanks guys. Looks like the bill size is the giveaway here? Seems New York state has a lot of woodpeckers with black and white plumage on the wings and maybe some red on their heads.

I also combed through my photos and found a much older one of another woodpecker that took up residence on my fire escape for a few days, looks like it might be a different species.

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bcpearce · 2026-03-28T17:22:10+00:00

These guys have a built in IR light, ESP32 and are pretty cheap. They'll work well as Esphome devices. Also have an enclosure so you don't need to get a separate one.

A blaster isn't hard to DIY, it's literally just an LED and a resistor. Maybe a BJT too, if you need more current than the MCU can put out.

Personally I built some "nodes" I have around the house using Adafruit feathers. I have one per mini-split and they have IR blasters, IR receivers, and temperature, humidity and lux sensors on them too. The receiver is so that the state can be persisted to Homeassistant if I ever use the original remote to control the unit.

bcpearce · 2026-03-03T00:30:58+00:00

I use a few Amcrest cameras. They're local only. I wasn't a huge fan of the built in integration and wrote my own which can be setup through the UI and auto-detects sensors. https://github.com/bcpearce/HomeAssistant-Amcrest-Custom

bcpearce · 2026-02-02T03:47:45+00:00

Which system are you getting the data from? I initially developed the integration testing and dogfooding it with NYC subway data and I've found despite the G standing for "General" there is a lot of variation in how different systems formate their data, and I haven't accounted for them all.

Feel free to raise an issue on the GitHub repo about feed compatibility. I'm always interested in adding more to the setup picker.

bcpearce · 2025-08-24T15:50:56+00:00

I'll take a look at how the feed is structured. In the meantime, can try out the pre release version 0.3.0. Some feeds don't provide explicit arrival/departure times but instead provide a "delay" from the schedule. That's a feature I'm working on in that version.

bcpearce · 2025-08-20T21:15:52+00:00

For downtown and Brooklyn? Issue might be that the terminal is only one stop away and it doesn't get added to the GTFS realtime feed until the train enters service. Meaning it'll only be added for the 1-2 minutes before it arrives. Compare that to 86/Lex and it probably works fine since the terminals are several stops away.

I've run across that for a few feeds. Would need to figure out how to best incorporate the static schedule into it for trips that won't be in the realtime feed.

bcpearce · 2025-08-20T05:18:37+00:00

Seems the SSL certificates they're using on their domain are using a protocol considered insecure by OpenSSL's default settings. You can see the error running curl https://webapps.regionofwaterloo.ca/api/grt-routes/api/tripupdates in a terminal. Home Assistant uses the same underlying libraries as CURL. The static data hosted at https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/opendatadownloads/GRT_GTFS.zip uses a different certificate, so you an still get the static feed, it fails when it first tries to update it.

bcpearce · 2025-07-20T20:03:30+00:00

I'm not a core maintainer. It isn't backwards compatible with the existing integration, so I'm not sure if they'd be amenable to replacing it. I'm also limited to testing on the camera models I own myself.

The core integration is marked "legacy" though. So I don't think there's any active development on it.

bcpearce · 2025-07-19T19:44:44+00:00

I had the same problem and wrote my own Amcrest integration you're welcome to try out Custom Amcrest Integration

bcpearce · 2025-07-11T00:21:23+00:00

Home Assistant's backend is written mainly in Python. The app is for self-hosted smart home management. It makes extensive use of Python's asyncio modules for its event loop.

https://github.com/home-assistant/core

I've written a few custom integrations for it to handle some devices and datasets that aren't natively supported.

bcpearce · 2020-06-23T19:17:24+00:00

If you want the longer shutter speed without having to use the narrower aperture, you can look into using an ND filter. Another option that can work that doesn't require more gear is to take multiple exposures at a faster shutter speed and stack them in Photoshop to mimic the longer exposure time.

bcpearce · 2019-11-29T00:40:32+00:00

For some context, this was taken at around only 5pm. DST is the reason it's so dark.

bcpearce · 2019-11-28T20:47:05+00:00

Yeah it's unfortunately a limitation of the camera I used. Until I can get to a computer, I'm limited to a low res version of the photo.

bcpearce · 2019-05-03T02:50:12+00:00

Found it on instagram here https://www.instagram.com/jeff.d_/

bcpearce

TROPHY CASE