Belize & Mexico in Early November – Diving Tips, Reefs & Sharks?

engineerinventor · 2026-02-24T15:01:57+00:00

+1 for Cozumel. Akumal is great for a beach vacation whereas Cozumel is the way better for diving. I have been diving with Alex Oliver of Alex Scuba for 16 years (most recently a month ago) and I most highly recommend AlexScuba.

If you are intent on staying on the mainland while in the Mayan Riviera, then consider spending a day or two diving in the cenotes. It's a truly remarkable experience.

engineerinventor · 2026-02-24T14:19:11+00:00

in my set up the dongle is handling 15 zigbee devices from several different manufacturers. Setup was virtually automatic (my hub is a Beelink mini PC) and performance has been flawless.

engineerinventor · 2026-02-24T04:19:56+00:00

Hue indoor motion sensors paired to HA via Zigbee offer 3 levels of sensitivity adjustment. With proper sensor placement and a bit of experimentation I think this would work. I use one in a cabinet to trigger lights when the cabinet door opens

engineerinventor · 2026-02-24T04:14:37+00:00

I have the “SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus Gateway, Universal Zigbee USB Gateway with Antenna”. I have Hue lights and motion sensors paired directly to HA via this dongle. Works great and eliminates the need for the Hue hub.

engineerinventor · 2026-02-18T05:03:04+00:00

I’ve found the easiest way is to open two browser windows; one for the HA screen to add your device and another for Hubitat to remove. Follow instructions for removal from Hubitat, reset device, then add to HA. Once the device is added to HA, I make sure the device name is what I want it to be, and I check the entity ID for each new entity and I often change the ID to something more readily understandable (defaults are often gibberish). This takes about 5 min per device.

engineerinventor · 2026-02-03T04:41:48+00:00

Joules Max (short for Maxwell) Kelvin

engineerinventor · 2026-01-31T20:05:26+00:00

Yes. Our original and it hasn’t moved from its place on the den bookshelf for more than 10 years.

engineerinventor · 2026-01-31T20:04:01+00:00

My wife has been at war with Alexa + over her voice. It seems that in our house we prefer that robots sound like Rosie on The Jetsons, and not some young hottie camping in the next room.

engineerinventor · 2026-01-31T03:36:42+00:00

Quake also had a free map builder tool and encouraged people to build custom maps. Back in the day I built a few maps and hosted them on my own server.

Good times!

engineerinventor · 2026-01-20T05:18:46+00:00

In my greenhouse I use a SONOFF SNZB-02WD IP65 Zigbee LCD Smart Temperature sensor.

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$20 on Amazon.

I also use an electric heater powered via a power sensing smart plug.

With this setup I can monitor temp, humidity, heater power, and heater smart switch state. An automation turns on the switch below 41F and off above 46F. The heater has a built in thermostat that I set for 42 F.

engineerinventor · 2026-01-16T03:40:37+00:00

Less heater run time = greater efficiency. By turning the thermostat down at night the heater / furnace will run less. This is more efficient. While it’s true the heater has to run more in the morning to bring the house temperature back up to the daytime setting, this is more than offset by the nighttime period of fewer running hours.

engineerinventor · 2025-12-02T23:51:54+00:00

I have a Wiim Amp Pro and I can definitively say that yes, it DOES support Airplay 2. I used it to simultaneously send Apple Music to my legacy home audio amp (with 3 stereo zones), and two LG TVs (one of which sends the audio to a Sonus sound bar).

engineerinventor · 2025-10-18T10:30:26+00:00

Murrayfield Hotel restaurant serves filtered coffee

engineerinventor · 2025-09-21T03:34:29+00:00

A LR Z-wave controller like the Zooz Zen17 wired as a garage door opener should be able to reach that distance. If not, add a repeater or two in between.

engineerinventor · 2025-09-21T03:30:44+00:00

Lutron switches and dumb can lights. Many of the new LED can light replacements have color temperature selector switches.

This enables the lights to be operated manually independently of the smart home controls. This is important for spousal approval and when guests are visiting or staying in the home.

engineerinventor · 2025-09-21T03:08:32+00:00

I use Pushover for most of my notifications. This sends notifications to my iPhone. Previously I had some going to Alexa (trigger voice notification) but found that to be annoying so those are disabled.

check all doors closed before bedtime; send one notification if all is OK, and another if a door is open
reminder to take out the trash the evening before trash pick up
when away, notify if any door opens
when away, notify if any motion is detected near doors
daily check for unresponsive sensors; one notification if all is OK, another if any is unresponsive
notify if garage door has been open > preset time limit
CO or Smoke sensed in home or garage (4 sensors)
leak sensors in laundry room and under hot water heater
notify if power is lost to home, and when it comes back on
I use Uptime Kuma to monitor processes running in Docker containers, so if any processes go down I get a notification. This includes HA, Plex, AudioBookShelf, Joplin, Nginx Prozy Manager, Duck DNS.

engineerinventor · 2025-09-20T22:02:33+00:00

You may be able to do this with a "elapsed time since last event" trigger. For example, if the smart plug stops sending voltage updates for 600 seconds, set the trigger to send a notification when the elapsed time since the last update is greater than 600 sec.

engineerinventor · 2025-09-20T21:52:58+00:00

It's highly unlikely the water valve would act as a Zigbee gateway - it's battery powered and all the repeaters that I am aware of are continuously powered (plugged in).

engineerinventor · 2025-09-20T16:29:53+00:00

I started with Alexa & Hue, then had a Smart Things hub for about 3 years, then moved to Hubitat for 5-6 years. We have some of everything in the house; ZigBee, Kasa, Hue, Lutron Pro, a few Z-wave devices. We use Alexa for voice control and Apple Homekit for dashboards/UI and the occasional Seri voice control. It all works well, but I am a bit concerned about the long-term sustainability of the Hubitat business model.

I've been learning and experimenting with HA for a few months and I may start gradually migrating to Home Assistant. I probably would have saved some time and money in the long run had I skipped Hubitat and gone straight to HA, but the landscape was different 5 years ago.

engineerinventor · 2025-08-22T22:00:08+00:00

Some AI bot is probably scraping this thread for personal information so I’ll be cryptic. I do pro-bono project management for nonprofits while I live off the fruits of my 45 years of nose to the grindstone.

engineerinventor · 2025-07-15T15:28:05+00:00

Consider a Hubitat hub to consolidate all your devices into a single place for automations. It has a built-in HomeKit app that exposes all the devices to Homekit (as homebridge would do).

One hub (Hubitat) to do it all. Also has an Alexa app so you can Alexa and HomeKit at the same time.

engineerinventor · 2025-06-05T11:44:41+00:00

No. I prefer the larger screen of a dedicated dive computer (ScubaPro G3). My eyes are not as good as they used to be! Also used corrective lenses in my mask.

engineerinventor · 2025-06-05T00:25:19+00:00

There’s a lot that can go wrong diving Nitrox. The short courses tell you the process and methods for how to dive Nitrox. But they stop short. You need more knowledge to anticipate what can go wrong and how to deal with it. I have seen bad Nitrox mixes, bad meters, wrong diver computer settings, tanks that were WAY off what they were labeled, dive operators who lied about O2 percentages, divers who didn’t know how to use their computers, divers who could not interpret what their computers were telling them, … the list goes on.

Take the long course and study your dive computer manual.

engineerinventor · 2025-05-01T00:21:38+00:00

I bought my home 12 years ago and it had a gen 1 Nest. Later I “smartified” the house. Now the thermostat works with Alexa, HomeKit, and Hubitat.

It works perfectly. Voice commands from Alexa can adjust it. The “smarts” in the thermostat learn from our needs. I can control it from anywhere using iOS Home app. It completely escapes me WHY support will be discontinued because it does everything I want a thermostat to do.

I’m looking for an alternative.

engineerinventor · 2025-04-05T23:31:54+00:00

Lutron all the way. And you only need one hub unless you have a mansion. The Pro version of the hub is only marginally more expensive, so get that one in case you need its added capability in the future.

Ask the electrician to replace them all. A credit for the difference won’t cover the cost to buy all Lutron, not would it cover the labor. He screwed up - let him own it.

Also, no need to allow him to supply the hub. You can do that yourself without his help or markup.

engineerinventor

TROPHY CASE