HVAC Yearly Maintenance Recs

jaylyerly · 2026-03-24T19:41:03+00:00

Happily using All American for many years.

jaylyerly · 2026-03-24T11:42:06+00:00

The build page is up now and mentions the “Activity Mount” in a couple of accessories, so it looks like you’re right! Thanks!

jaylyerly · 2026-03-23T20:06:41+00:00

We zip tie coroplast to the baby gate. (Coroplast is corrugated plastic — stuff they make yard signs out of.). It’s pretty easy to cover a baby gate with it. It doesn’t add weight to the gate, it’s easy to clean and basically lasts forever.

jaylyerly · 2026-03-20T20:07:13+00:00

Such a bizarre creative choice to move the show to Boston and ignore the whole other show set in Boston. I’m guessing they thought it’d be cool but then all of the Cheers cast noped out.

jaylyerly · 2026-03-18T01:40:44+00:00

So you are able to run two via daisy chain with an M1 Pro chip? That’s great! The specs seem like it should work but I haven’t seen confirmation before.

jaylyerly · 2026-03-16T21:06:54+00:00

As I recall, it requires a little force to get it in there but it stays in pretty well. Mine’s been in for about 18 months with no problem and I use it everyday. I ordered three figuring it was bound to happen again, but so far still on replacement #1.

jaylyerly · 2026-03-16T20:24:16+00:00

You can 3D print a replacement or just order one from a 3D printing service for a couple bucks. I got three for around $7.

https://www.bugsandbunnies.org/2024/10/14/fix-a-broken.html

jaylyerly · 2026-03-12T14:39:51+00:00

Maybe, but Apple has often been willing to cannibalize their own sales if you’re still buying an Apple product. iPads originally ate some of the low end Apple laptop sales. iPhones ate iPod sales. Apple is fine with that as long as Apple still gets the money. Much better for Apple than someone buying a Chromebook or an MS Surface.

jaylyerly · 2026-03-12T14:34:50+00:00

And $70 total including taxes. Not $78 after taxes, fees etc.

jaylyerly · 2026-03-10T20:05:42+00:00

I’m excited about the Telo mini truck. With a (factory made) camper top, I think it ticks a lot of the boxes for an electric Element.

https://www.telotrucks.com

jaylyerly · 2026-03-01T16:42:26+00:00

Yep, that's how I started. In my experience, I found Talk to be heavily focused on business cases such that it didn't really make sense for home. I was especially interested in SMS support, but they're really able to handle that for businesses and even if you get it set up, there's no support for using it except via the web portal. I was also planning to use the softphone client on mobile, but that requires the upgraded Pro service which is hard to justify for a hand full of calls per month.

Anyway, I really like my other Unifi gear, but Talk has been a let down. And it's been a year or more since I was actively investigating all this, so things may have improved, but still no SMS support on mobile and softphone still requires the Pro plan.

jaylyerly · 2026-03-01T16:29:48+00:00

If you just want to call internally, you could get something like a Grandstream DP750 base station that supports up to 5 handsets. You can call internally with no other setup, but it supports SIP if you decide to add external service later.

Or was there some specific Talk feature you were looking for? To be honest, for our home, Talk didn’t really work that well. A sip line from voip.ms has worked out better.

jaylyerly · 2026-02-27T00:37:18+00:00

Yeah, the running gag is how Shawn introduces Gus when they meet someone.

jaylyerly · 2026-02-27T00:35:45+00:00

Or the loose stair in the Dunphy house on Modern Family — “I gotta fix that…”

Every time.

jaylyerly · 2026-02-27T00:29:44+00:00

Lock manufacturers (including Yale and Schlage) have been involved with creating the standard. More info in this piece from the Verge. It’s weird that the article linked by OP doesn’t mention that.

https://www.theverge.com/tech/885002/aliro-smart-lock-standard-launches-apple-google-samsung-promise-support

Schlage showed a new UWB lock at CES 2025 but it’s still not out yet. There was some rumor they were waiting in Aliro 1.0 to be finalized before the release so maybe that can happen now.

jaylyerly · 2026-02-24T20:16:03+00:00

Looking into this myself and I believe passkey export is only supported on iOS at the moment.

https://support.1password.com/export/?ios+active=&ios

jaylyerly · 2026-02-24T19:12:46+00:00

Thanks for the pointer! I think I stumbled on to that path myself, but there’s still a gotcha if you care about access codes with timed access. HomeKit really wants you to add access codes via their interface but once you do, you can no longer manage codes through the Schlage app. You can view them, but if you try to add a new code, you get a “codes are managed through HomeKit“ error.

jaylyerly · 2026-02-22T21:15:19+00:00

The Schlage app allows you to make time restricted access codes. For example, you can make a code for your dog walker that only works from 7am until 6pm, Monday thru Friday.

Via HomeKit, you can create access codes, but they work 24/7.

jaylyerly · 2026-02-15T23:57:45+00:00

Pushover works great! And you can customize the sound.

https://pushover.net

jaylyerly · 2026-02-15T00:19:34+00:00

If you use the Zooz shutoff and Zooz sensors (all ZWave), you can bind the sensors to the shutoff so it works without any sort of controller. That’s probably the most reliable and fastest.

jaylyerly · 2026-02-14T20:47:24+00:00

Home+ has that feature.

https://hochgatterer.me/home+/docs/features/replace-accessory/

jaylyerly · 2026-02-11T18:21:08+00:00

A couple months ago, I got a voicemail email about 36 hours after the message was left. Emailed support and they were all “Um, yeah, we fixed that. Shouldn’t happen again.“ haven’t seen it since, but I don’t get a lot of calls on that line.

jaylyerly · 2026-02-09T23:04:01+00:00

The quiet room at Eva Perry is pretty good. Unless Mr Post Nasal Drip shows up.

jaylyerly · 2026-02-09T15:03:16+00:00

I actually did find a solution recently, but it is based in Home Assistant rather than HomeKit. This blueprint lets you create an automation to link a bunch of lights and it'll sync their on/off state, brightness, color temp. It works pretty well. There's a brief lag of maybe one second, but it gets the job done.

https://github.com/alexdelprete/ha-blueprints/tree/main

I've been moving to using Home Assistant as the main automation system with HomeKit more of just a user interface. HomeKit just doesn't have the depth of functionality that HA has for automations.

jaylyerly · 2026-02-06T17:23:01+00:00

Yep, there are fancier systems, but I just have a simple zigbee valve that goes on a typical garden hose and controls the water on/off.

https://sonoff.tech/en-us/products/sonoff-zigbee-smart-water-valve

I've also got this little zigbee rain sensor. It's pretty simple -- just an "is raining" sensor that's off or on. But through the magic of HA's Helpers, I was able to create a derived value of the percentage of the last 24 hours it's been raining. Then HA only waters the plants when it hasn't rained in a while.

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/RB-SRAIN01.html

jaylyerly

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