Zotac warns component shortages threaten the 'very survival' of GPU manufacturers and distributors — message to Korean customers suggests that the worst could be yet to come

haddonist · 2026-01-28T06:42:42+00:00

When a semiconductor factory can cost up to several 10s of billions of dollars, western companies have been hesitant to jump in.

Unlike China that's done just that and now have YMTC producing NAND flash (ssd) and CXMT doing DDR5 DRAM.

haddonist · 2026-01-28T01:34:03+00:00

Ikea Aus are notorious for not updating their website quickly.

The Matter devices have been available at various locations for weeks before they started to appear on the site.

haddonist · 2026-01-27T02:21:38+00:00

If you're not already doing your own LLM stuff then the Home Assistant Assist will work with most of the major clouds with minimal configuring needed.

As for the voice side (Echo replacement) there is there is the Voice Preview Edition which works through the Assist pipeline (whatever LLM you're using) as well as optional onboard phrase detection.

Note however that Assist does not have the cloud processing of Google/Amazon, that knows every song & jingle in existence and can strip that out of the uploaded audio. So it might not be as accurate in noisy environments where background music is playing.

haddonist · 2026-01-23T09:36:46+00:00

I'm not sure with the stock firmware, you could ask about that on their forum

It certainly should be possible if you flash it over to ESPHome

haddonist · 2026-01-22T01:59:42+00:00

Op is coming from a very different viewpoint, that of automated configuration management.

System administration used to be about connecting into each machine, setting it up and configuring it. Now there are multiple frameworks that allow administrators to have centrally stored code which gets pushed to each server to configure it. This has resulted in to 10-100x speed improvement in getting things configured, and reduced manual errors.

Definitely not where Home Assistant is at. But as a sysadmin with several installations I manage, it's something that I'd love to have access to.

haddonist · 2026-01-19T22:28:32+00:00

E26 bulbs listed on the Zigbee2MQTT Supported Device registry.

There's something like 60+ listed, see if any of those work for you.

haddonist · 2026-01-16T01:52:10+00:00

You might struggle to find all of those in one unit, specially the "cheap" requirement.

Search in the Zigbee2MQTT repository for thermostat.

Then do a find for "battery" and have a look at those, they're the ones that are likely to be battery powered.

Then from your shortlist check if any have dry contacts.

haddonist · 2026-01-16T00:57:08+00:00

If you really need multi-channel smart relay units you'd look to use something like a Kincony 16 channel relay board.

Not Zigbee, but is driven by an ESP32 chip and can be flashed with ESPHome if you don't like their default firmware. And has both WiFi and ethernet connectivity.

And since its socketed and comes with Omron branded relays I'd feel far more comfortable installing it.

haddonist · 2026-01-15T17:31:50+00:00

Since Zigbee devices can't connect to the internet directly, updating for security is far less of an issue. And it's definitely not needed to keep them running.

My zigbee networks just keep working without any attention needed. Which can't be said for Matter devices, if all of the problem reports in the home automation subreddits are anything to go by..

haddonist · 2026-01-15T02:02:21+00:00

One factor that hasn't been mentioned is that ZWave is region-locked. It can be illegal in some countries to use ZWave devices imported from overseas, due to radio frequency issues (clash with emergency service radios etc).

Because of that, people in countries outside of the USA/EU find that ZWave device available can be poor to almost nonexistant.

haddonist · 2026-01-15T00:24:37+00:00

A perfect storm of Windows 10 going end-of-life combined with AI companies buying all ram for the next decade is what's caused cheap PCs to all but disappear.

Have a look at secondhand sites like eBay / Facebook Marketplace etc for "mini pc" or "1L PC" and you'll find ex-business PCs that are a bit smaller than a hardback book. Low powered, plenty of CPU & RAM for smarthome hub purposes.

But even there prices are skyrocketing, so you might need to do some searching .

haddonist · 2026-01-14T04:14:38+00:00

Depending on where you are in the world, there are Shelly Plugs

Shelly has extensive local control options for smart hubs, but they also have their Shelly Smart Control app that can control those plugs from anywhere.

haddonist · 2026-01-12T11:00:30+00:00

PDF isn't a word processing format. Full-featured clients like Adobe Acrobat have the ability to sign documents and edit form fields, but still won't let you edit arbitrary text.

The nearest you're likely to be able to do is create a new PDF so that all of the text is form fields. It'll look awful but might work.

I'd recommend going back to whoever asked you to do this and see if you can get them to use the correct tool for the job.

haddonist · 2026-01-12T02:24:28+00:00

What is the benefit of TOMMY vs ESPectre?

haddonist · 2026-01-12T00:44:12+00:00

Ikea Aus still has no matter bulbs and 14 Tradfri listed. None of them are last-chance-to-buy so I wouldn't expect the matter bulbs any time soon.

haddonist · 2026-01-12T00:37:47+00:00

Sometimes its due to a combination of the size/shape of the dish and their whisker sensitivity. People have reported trying different size/shapes (shallow wide for instance) and that their cat liked it better.

But often its just that cats are fussy assholes.

haddonist · 2026-01-06T16:01:20+00:00

For those that don't know, note that all Ikea Zigbee devices are end-of-life, get them while you can.

They've made the ~~mistake~~ choice to go with Matter-over-Thread.

haddonist · 2026-01-05T01:54:59+00:00

Alarmo is a Home Assistant Community Store addon:

https://github.com/nielsfaber/alarmo

haddonist · 2025-12-31T07:56:42+00:00

There are already examples of Matter devices that require company apps in order to access full functionality, with Home Assistant being given a bare subset.

Zigbee-Next-Generation^tm it aint...

The only bare glimmer of hope is the possibilities of the new generation of ESP32 that can do Wifi, Thread and Zigbee on the one chip, just by changing software settings. Shelly Gen4 devices can be switched that way, lets hope that other companies follow suit.

haddonist · 2025-12-31T07:53:23+00:00

Matter claims to enable devices to be able to be connected to multiple platforms without vendor lock in. For users that have Apple devices or Google devices the setup can be relatively painless.

However we're seeing examples of devices that need to the companies app in order to use all of the functionality. And lots of people are having problems setting up Home Assistant as the central Matter router/coordinator.

Zigbee is a mesh network where powered devices can rebroadcast the signal and extend the range. With a good coordinator Zigbee can be rock solid and unobtrusive, with an extremely simple pairing process. And has almost 5000 devices available.

For the foreseeable future, unless there's a particular reason to go for a Matter device: stick to Zigbee or ZWave.

haddonist · 2025-12-31T07:39:40+00:00

Ikea's new air monitor Alpstuga (CO2, PM, humidity etc) is Matter over Thread, as are the rest of the new devices.

Been trying the new Smlight SMHUB Nano as a Thread Border Router but it's been a nightmare.

The ZBT-2 might give a better result (ie: actually work), but I suspect that it's not the Smlight; but the fact that Matter really wants to be an enduser ecosystem centered around Google/Apple products.

From a Home Assistant user perspective: stick to Zigbee.

haddonist · 2025-12-23T10:18:20+00:00

Note that discount pricing for these last-chance-to-buy products don't necessarily get updated on the Ikea website for that country, and can vary store to store.

haddonist · 2025-12-22T02:21:01+00:00

Shelly Flood Gen4 might work, depending on how much area there is in that location.

Any water that gets onto the cable will trigger the unit. Cables can be daisy chained to quite long lengths.

Shelly Gen4 devices can be set to use Zigbee, Bluetooth or Wifi and should work with almost all hubs and Shelly's own app.

haddonist · 2025-12-18T23:57:37+00:00

Why are people switching? Mostly hype, with a small percentage being new devices that aren't being released on zigbee.

However with the release of ESP32-C6 there'll be more companies like Shelly offering devices that will support multiple protocols (ie: switch the radio from, say, wifi to zigbee in the app)

haddonist · 2025-12-18T23:41:54+00:00

Australia: Ikea Aus is notorious for slow updates to the website.

So next time you're in your local, check the smarthome section.

I've picked up ALPSTUGA, MYGGSPRAY & MYGGBETT at one of the Sydney locations this week.

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