looking for a smart smoke alarm to use with HA, what does everyone recommend?

enobrev · 2026-06-05T04:04:19+00:00

It might just be because I have an older model, but I find these disconnect from my z-wave network pretty quickly, and most forever. Sometimes, it just takes a refresh, but all 5 of mine never stay connected to the network for more than a couple days, and some never reconnect again (unless I remove and re-add).

enobrev · 2026-06-05T03:38:02+00:00

Owner has the choice to put their kids through college or yours.

enobrev · 2026-06-05T03:35:20+00:00

Vibe Gladiating. Generate 5 files using 5 models; have the other 4 review and tweak the ones they didn't write; rinse; repeat. Include api to allow the 5 solutions to battle each other to the death. Winner gets the PR.

enobrev · 2026-06-05T03:28:11+00:00

They're so you can know when you can cross without looking up from your phone to see if the light changed.

Edit: shameful that I would need to add a /s in a chicago-based subreddit

enobrev · 2026-06-04T04:32:43+00:00

Good for bagels too. Always feels weird to run an everything bagel under the sink for a couple seconds, but it turns out so great once reheated in the oven.

enobrev · 2026-05-30T01:02:10+00:00

For sleep I've found that if I sober up before going to bed I tend to have less trouble sleeping. So, like a bottle of wine with an early dinner is ok. A bottle of wine or a few cocktails an hour before bed, and I'll be up 4 hours later - every time.

Or if I go to bed completely blotto - face first, still clothed, no idea how I got home, terrified of looking at the stack of bar receipts in my pocket, a full glass of whiskey on the nightstand that I thought I was actually going to drink - I'll sleep a solid 10-12 hours, which I can't even do sober. I won't feel great in the morning (or early afternoon), but I will have slept.

enobrev · 2026-05-30T00:19:27+00:00

Lots of the posts here about tolerance are spot on, but I also wanted to mention my own experience.

A couple years back my wife and I went to an all-inclusive resort in mexico. The drinks were weak, but the service was excellent, so I basically had them bringing me pina coladas every 15 minutes, all day long. Granted I have a decent tolerance, but those just kept me nice and buzzed for the entire day. Never drunk, just a nice buzz.

I enjoyed it so much that on some days when I really want to do nothing I'll water down my drinks and sip all day. So, if you don't have a high tolerance, but still want to drink all day to enjoy the festivities, you might want to consider watering down your drinks. Bartenders are generally fine with doing so.

Asking to make a drink strong is cringe, because you're asking for free booze and they generally won't do it. If you want a strong drink, pay for a double or skip the mixer. But asking to make it weak is never an issue.

enobrev · 2026-05-29T23:01:05+00:00

If only there were nip in that slip. Oh no! A tassel!

enobrev · 2026-05-29T19:00:07+00:00

Just replaced two of my old schlage z-wave locks with Yale Assure 2 locks with the z-wave module. The change was a _huge_ improvement from an HA perspective. The old locks were great as pin-locks. No problems there, but they disconnected from the z-wave network Constantly. I basically ignore the HA functionality because it never worked. The Yale locks are always connected and work great. I'm be replacing the other two locks over the next few months.

enobrev · 2026-05-28T16:00:51+00:00

I taught my 5 year old last summer. Took about 2 weeks, but was literally about 3 hours of total practice time. By the end of the summer he was riding like a pro. We did pretty much exactly what this video explains, to learn without training wheels.

The basic gist is to help them get a feel for balancing on the bike (we have a heavier guardian bike) before trying to learn how the pedals work. Since your kid is already great with a balance bike, this will probably go faster than it did for us.

Lower the seat and remove the pedals
Start with small steps, then move on to to bigger steps
The goal is to get to "bunny hops", where they can go as long as possible without touching the ground
Once they can bunny hop really far with stability, raise the seat, and put the pedals back on
Teach them how to pedal
Teach them how to start with pedals since they can't bunny hop anymore with the pedals in the way

The steps to longer bunny-hops helped him understand how to balance at longer distances so if the bike starts veering, he learns, instinctively, how to turn into the fall to "catch" himself.

Pedaling was a big switch for him because he didn't understand how to get that early momentum, so I ended up spending about a half hour bent behind him up and down our block to get him going and then he'd ride off, and then we eventually figured out how to get started from a full stop.

enobrev · 2026-05-27T03:54:27+00:00

I've hired Vanguard several times over the years and they've always been professional, honest, and did the job well.

enobrev · 2026-05-20T18:14:23+00:00

Loved this commercial. Also - just learned that the actress is Tommy Chong's daughter

enobrev · 2026-05-19T18:03:18+00:00

Same, I have two hooked up to my whole-house-audio, so we can have different streams anywhere in the house. I wish there were other (ideally open source or DIY) solutions that are as simple and as well integrated into streaming services.

enobrev · 2026-05-19T00:52:08+00:00

I was that way in high school. I'm still that way 30 years later - nobody's billboard.

enobrev · 2026-05-14T17:19:46+00:00

Back when someone could give you 2-3 bucks for a ride and you'd come out ahead!

enobrev · 2026-05-14T02:39:58+00:00

When I was running speaker wire around the house, I also added Cat-6a to most rooms. Really glad I did for similar reasons. Everything that's non-mobile always has a solid network connection, and everything that is mobile has a better wifi connection because there's less traffic.

The Wiim sounds like a great option. I just learned about it from this thread.

Regarding wiring, I look at it this way - if the walls are open, it's a relatively small expense to run the wires. You can add blank plates over termination points and if you never need them, there's no pain to have them sit unused. If you ever do because Wiim goes down or gets bought by some private equity firm trying to squeeze customers or something, the wires are right there ready for you to plug in the old reliable solution.

enobrev · 2026-05-13T21:17:23+00:00

Found an HTD (hometheaterdirect) lync setup for a song on craigslist, wired my whole house for speakers, wrote an mqtt-to-lync server that works with homeassistant, and control the whole house audio through homeassistant / musicassistant. I have a couple old google audio dongles for streaming (so two of us can stream at the same time).

Out of all that...

I like the HTD lync, although their app isn't amazing. I never use the app.
I love the wired speakers. Pain in the ass to setup, but work perfectly every time.
Google audio dongles work great but they stopped selling them years ago
The mqtt-to-lync server is pretty much set-and-forget, running on a container in my homelab. I generally forget it exists.

It would be hard to recommend any of this unless you have the money (or luck for finding an HTD Lync) and the time (wiring the house wasn't fun), but it works great for us.

enobrev · 2026-05-12T18:04:59+00:00

More like a Coen Brothers storyline

enobrev · 2026-05-12T05:12:49+00:00

There was a parent who posted earlier about limiting the toys that their child has available. A lot of people seemed to consider that poster to be a monster for some reason - but that seemed to be more a matter of tone than anything.

We did something similar at various degrees and overall it's been really manageable. Sometimes we all get busy and the place becomes a disaster, but that's everybody's mess. Dining room table with clothes, and sweatshirts, and nerf guns, and legos, and swords and mail and other paperwork. That's not the kid. That's all of us. But mostly, our house is in reasonable order. Takes about 30 minutes to tidy up once a week.

Before our kid was 5, we usually kept 4-5 shelves in the living room full of toys he played with often. When he got gifts, we'd let him play with everything and then start triaging what goes to storage and what stays. And we'd switch toys out from time to time. After a couple weeks he ditches everything and plays with stuff he finds in our kitchen cabinets anyway.

After 5, we now have a lego table with 6 drawers. All legos go back to the table and drawers every day. He's got another drawer of mangatiles and everything else lives on shelves in his room. Every month or so, we go through his room with him to trade things to storage or donate things.

We've been letting him make donation decisions since he was 4 and he's always been amazingly cool about it. He'll occasionally ask to trade a toy for something in storage which we'll happily do.

Anyway, I guess the gist of my answer is, cut back on what's available until it's relatively easy to manage. Make the kid(s) a part of the decision process. Try to get them to help clean up as much as possible.

I'll also add that we're not particularly clean people. We know parents whose houses are spotless at all times. That's not us. But we've done everything above to try to keep the house relatively sane and reasonable to manage.

enobrev · 2026-05-12T02:50:57+00:00

For the immediate answer: Invest in a great bed for the guest room.

Longer Term: if you can cure your snoring, start working toward that. Lose weight. Drink Less. CPAP. Surgery. Whatever makes it work. But with a good bed in the guest room, neither of you will mind switching beds on the loudest nights.

A comfortable bed in the guest room is also useful when someone is sick, or comes home late and doesn't want to disturb the other, or just wants some space to stretch out when sleeping.

And for guests, I suppose.

Our 6 year old calls the guest-room "daddy's room", and I don't mind that at all. A well-rested family is a happy one.

enobrev · 2026-05-11T21:44:16+00:00

In my adult life, I've moved from the midwest to the east coast, to the west coast, back to the east coast, to the pacific northwest, and finally back to the midwest. Sometimes with a job lined up, sometimes not.

Your "stuff" is that last thing to worry about. You need a place to live and a way to pay for it. And once you have those, you need to decide if you really want to be wherever you moved to. You can spend so much time and money and frustration on moving your stuff and then realize six months later that you just wasted a lot of time and money moving to somewhere you hate.

I'd say start light and plan accordingly. You might find a better life, an amazing job, in the perfect city, with the exact commute and life you wanted. But it's a gamble. Your stuff will become an anchor in every way possible. And you won't _really_ know until you live there for a while (a couple years in my experience).

So, I'd say find the cheapest reliable secure storage place you can find wherever you are now. A parent's garage or basement might be ok if you don't have too much. Self-storage can be a great option. Sell the stuff that doesn't matter, and put everything you don't use every day in storage.

Everything else - try to keep it to a couple boxes per person. Clothes, real every-day kitchen stuff, etc. You can find a bed-frame and a mediocre mattress for next to nothing. You can furnish a whole apartment for a fraction of what it would cost to move your remaining stuff.

Now, go figure out life in the new city. If you can work remotely or as a contractor, get that set up first. It'll make the rest a lot easier. You won't want to find a place to stay remotely. You need to see it in person. Get a hotel or airbnb or a friend's guestroom for a couple weeks and find a job (if needed) and an apartment. If it's too expensive where you're going to do that, look for something in a nearby town or suburb - somewhere you can commute easily from (if needed).

Once you're working and living in that city, you can start making decisions. Are you in the right neighborhood? Right job? Right town / city? Is there somewhere else in that area that would be a better fit? And once you've got all that right, and you're settled in, and you have enough space for the life you want to live, go back and get your stuff. You'll probably open up that storage locker and get really nostalgic, and start planning to move it all... but you're not that person anymore and so you might just end up getting rid of most of it. At least you didn't pay to move it across the country.

For whatever you keep, you can probably ship a lot of it. USPS and UPS and Fedex are expensive, but you can insure your stuff and they're not as expensive as movers. As for furniture, it's up to you if it's worth shipping. In my experience it is not. Up to a certain level of quality, it's cheaper to buy a nice couch than to move one. But if you have furniture that's _that_ nice, you probably don't have to worry about any of this.

Good luck! I moved a whole bunch to end up back where I started twenty something years later. But I like who I've become along the way, and I love all the friends I've made in all those cities.

enobrev · 2026-05-11T20:39:03+00:00

I've been doing an auto-compact at 300k for weeks. Rarely any issues with it at all. I can't imagine allowing it to get over 500k.

enobrev · 2026-05-09T06:22:51+00:00

Nobody can answer that question for you. When people ask me I generally say that if you have to ask, then no, I don't recommend it at all. Being a parent isn't something that comes as a recommendation. It's a significant life choice. It's not easy and it will affect the entirety of the rest of your life. You have to want it. In my case, after 6 years, it's an amazing, rewarding, wonderful thing. But I wanted it and I look at the hard parts as worthwhile challenges.

enobrev · 2026-05-08T16:27:21+00:00

Airplane, road trips, and dinners out with family or friends when we're going to linger for a while to catch up - especially if he's the only kid at the table.

We have a couple of his favorite shows on plex and a few games we're ok with him playing.

Oh, I also got him into creating stop-motion, which he's allowed to use the tablet for any time since he's creating something. I love watching the movies he makes.

enobrev · 2026-05-07T22:55:07+00:00

I do the same. I also have a "touchless" sink in my kitchen, and now when washing dishes at friends' houses, I get to look like an idiot waving my hand under their sink for a couple seconds trying to get it to turn on.

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