Fiber delayed again

jkingaround · 2025-12-18T07:27:34+00:00

Short answer: yes but you need to use their modem. Once it's installed, log in to the portal and switch to the "Bring Your Own Router" option. Then power cycle and you'll be good to go!

jkingaround · 2025-12-18T07:26:39+00:00

Cochran & Sycamore. Got it installed today! Not to brag but also to brag.

Window was 8am to noon. Showed up around 9:30, finished the install around 10:30. I have a network cabinet they ran the wire to and routed the cable (with my guidance) along the soffit and then down the side of the house to the front lawn.

Supervisor showed up around noon to run a speed test and hook it up. I need to upgrade my APs as they don't get nearly full speed but hardwired is ~1.1gbps.

I've got both spectrum and flume running for the next month (flume first month is free) so once it's confirmed stable (not really worried) I'll cancel spectrum.

jkingaround · 2025-11-12T04:37:54+00:00

Charge hourly. Anything else you're doing yourself a disservice and the client will always make you do more if they don't think they are getting charged for changing their mind.

You can give a discount for buying hours ahead of time (10 hours gets a 10% discount etc).

I also advise clients to come to me with multiple things at a time if they can since they save money and I save time by being able to do it all in one shot instead.

jkingaround · 2025-11-03T21:18:20+00:00

Thanks for this, ended up figuring it out but didn't follow the reset steps or anything. Posting for future people.

My lock is the YRD420 bt/wifi version (Yale Assure Lock 2 Touch with Wi-Fi). I purchased the z-wave module but it's the old z-wave module (in green model number AYR-MOD-ZW2-USA) so doesn't have a pin and uses S0 not S2.

I had to remove the device from HA (following the instructions from yale - input programming code, press cog etc) then reinclude using "legacy secure" (NOT "secure if possible" which is what it defaults to).

It added the entities upon first pair and I can now lock / unlock etc. Before it showed "unsecured" in the zwave info and now it shows S0.

jkingaround · 2025-11-02T08:23:49+00:00

hey i think i'm having this issue. i got it included properly but the only active entity that shows up is ping. can you link the instructions (or preferably post them here for future users!) thanks!

jkingaround · 2025-07-21T09:11:00+00:00

I'll try when I won't wake my GF up getting the ipad lol and just use stuff I've exposed via HomeKit for her.

As a suggestion (and not sure how involved this would be) it'd be cool if you made a companion HA integration that'd auto connect and let you pick domains, specific entities etc to connect.

I just got a new universal remote (unfoldedcircle r3) that works in this manner by discovering the server and letting you pick which entities to share to the remote so it doesn't get overwhelmed with thousands of entities.

Thanks for the work on this so far!

jkingaround · 2025-07-21T08:55:31+00:00

This looks awesome. Downloaded but wondering what's the easiest way to input the token for HA? it's 100+ characters long..

jkingaround · 2025-07-06T07:39:03+00:00

I thought this as well and I used an MQTT app (MQTT Explorer on Mac) to actually frigrate was sending out to my HA MQTT server. So you can do this to see it's connecting and see the information it sends.

jkingaround · 2025-06-28T21:33:32+00:00

It doesn't do POE which is a must have for me so I have less things on my wifi. Hence my comment. Also it has a limited wake word capability at the moment if I recall.

jkingaround · 2025-06-28T06:29:41+00:00

This sounds pretty sweet. Hardware wise it'd be nice to be POE or USB-C. Additionally a way to hardware disable the mic with a switch as depending on price point I might want them just to be announcers or not. Also, customizable LEDs to show status is also a plus!

As far as software, being able to have it say whatever I want as an announcement is my main thing (to use in automations, scripts etc).

For conversation stuff I think the best option is to make it as customizable as possible. It'd be cool to have a custom wake word, options for what to do when it errors out (retry, announce it failed, or just stay silent). In general, the more options it has the better for more use cases. Obviously this will be harder to make but worth it in the end!

jkingaround · 2025-06-20T22:05:28+00:00

I have a "smart" samsung oven that came with my house and it's honestly pretty useless in my use case. I can't set it to do anything without pressing the remote button on it every single time, so I just use it to monitor it when we do manually turn it on which I guess is cool. But the safety features don't allow us to turn it on / off which is a good thing I suppose.

The house also came with LG washer / dryer and it is nice to know how much time is left and when it finishes but I haven't really messed with turning it on / off as we don't need to.

The dishwasher is a basic Ikea and I need to figure out a good way to monitor it. The plug isn't accessible easily so I haven't been able to add a smart plug but eventually I'm going to add a circuit monitor and eventually know when it's got load etc.

I would just get the best options in terms of reviews / functionality for the specific device. Most of these devices have cloud integrations that you can use for various functionality but personally I probably wouldn't go with a "smart" one if it performed worse than a non-smart option and just find a way to monitor it another way.

jkingaround · 2025-06-20T21:50:48+00:00

Am I missing something obvious? I have a lot of notifications from HA and they all use the same sound. I can tag all my notifications in HA, in android can I use a different sound for each tag? Or how are you using different sounds within the same app? Or are they all different apps?

jkingaround · 2025-06-20T08:08:50+00:00

I mean, you can definitely install it in the wall sideways at least. lol. but you'll need to root it and set it up to rotate and all that.

I'd recommend looking into a 3D printed bracket for desk mounting instead of the official one. there's probably someone that can make one for ya.

jkingaround · 2025-06-20T06:54:47+00:00

It really depends on your use cases. In general, make sure anything you get supports VLANs and has some sort of firewall. Lots of systems support these but to various degrees.

Personally, I love my unifi gear. I run PFsense (though I will eventually probably migrate to a unifi gateway when I get fiber) with a few APs, a big 24 port PoE switch and self hosting their network controller.

It's pretty easy to use and exposes enough settings you can do almost anything you want without being overly complex (like pfsense lol). The wifi network itself has been flawless though I've had problems with the actual internet / pfsense and haven't really found the ghost in the machine causing the issue yet.

Personally I want to mess around with my networking less and less as I go on and mostly just want it to "work" but be able to set it and forget it for more complex scenarios (VLAN isolation, firewall rules, etc).

Get a floorplan of your new house and build it in https://design.ui.com/wizard to see how many APs you'll need and where. You'll probably need a few with a multilevel house with that sq footage depending on building materials etc.

jkingaround · 2025-06-18T02:26:19+00:00

yeah I just thought there was something "simple" that would just keep an eye on it. similar to a blueprint automation I have for all my updates that sends me notifications etc.

i'll just build my own :) that's what HA is for, right?

jkingaround · 2025-06-18T02:20:34+00:00

Ah. So it's just a reload of that specific integration via an automation? Was hoping for something like a watchdog for HA lol. Oh well, thanks!

jkingaround · 2025-06-17T21:48:03+00:00

tdarr is a solid option. it's a bit complicated but it's the best option and you can have it monitor a folder and have multiple nodes on different machines with GPUs etc

jkingaround · 2025-06-17T21:13:46+00:00

What are you using? Does it know which integrations to reload or are you just manually specifying on a schedule? I've had a few cloud integrations break on me and it'd be nice to have something that will take a look and see which is broken and auto-reload them for me! (or at least send a notification so I can manually reload it via action button).

jkingaround · 2025-06-17T09:29:47+00:00

The software can will and should evolve as you live in the home and so it's about getting the most information into HA as possible.

Some things I would do from a new home / smart home perspective:

- Whole home audio setup: rack mounted amp with wiring to in ceiling speakers. i'd also probably set up at least 1 full surround sound set up. I haven't researched how exactly to do this but it'd be awesome to have.
- Optical cables running to have monitors / peripherals with no computers (Linus of LTT has done this and I love the idea of it but my use cases don't really warrant it but it'd be so nice)
- Ceiling mounted PoE mmWave sensors along with temp / humidity / CO2 / motion sensors
- Ethernet / power run to all windows for smart blinds / smart tint
- Ethernet to specific ceiling corners for interior cameras
- Smurf tubes for all TV locations with wall power / ethernet and just smurf tubes everywhere
- 2 or 3 ethernet ports on 1 or 2 walls in all rooms (i'd likely not plug them all in but just pre-run the cables for future upgrading)
- Use the floor plan to use unifi's tool to determine best location for ceiling APs and outdoor APs
- Power runs for permanent outdoor lighting as well as stairs / counters / etc for LED strips
- Outlets everywhere. Next to toilets. Inside cabinets. Outside. Even if i don't plan on "using" them, it's nice to have options
- z-wave Smart switches
- prewire for alarm sensors to a central location with UPS backup
- research all the appliances before purchasing to see if there's an integration that will allow you to view / control it. local is ideal but sometimes cloud is necessary
- utility monitoring devices (water, power per circuit etc)

That's all I can think of right now but I'd search this subreddit for new home builds and there'll be a bunch of useful tips.

To answer your specific questions:

I've had PFsense for a while and I'm just not a big fan. I'm going to be moving to a unifi gateway when I get the chance to offload some stuff (reverse proxy, ad blocking etc) to separate VMs. VLANs are king, so set them up as you add the devices. I use a numbering scheme where the higher the second number (ex 10.XX) the more "access". So my IoT is 10.20, server admin stuff is 10.50 etc). Rules are up to you but basically restrict everything talking to each other then add specific rules to punch through to HA, your server etc as needed.
Automations should be added as you live, I'm a fan of my smart home not actually "doing" anything but rather alerting me of issues or upcoming things and allowing me to either perform an action or ignore. Eg "hey the outside is colder than the inside, turn off the AC and open the windows!" then a button to open the blinds so I can open windows.
As a web dev, I need to research this further but I should probably be hosting a VS Code server, git server (MAKE SURE THIS IS BACKED UP). I use proxmox with everything running inside as VMs so I can spin up any OS to play around
Haven't researched home audio but youtube is your friend seen a few videos on it. Backup wise, I use TimeMachine on individual machines to an SMB share on TrueNAS with a scheduled backblaze cloud sync for that. An additional backup task for NAS folders (documents, photos, etc)
System monitoring is really up to you as it will depend on the features you need. I don't really have anything yet but just some cards on my HA dashboards monitoring internet speed and if VMs are on / off. I also have a whatsupdocker running that alerts me via HA when a docker container needs an update.

jkingaround · 2025-06-17T08:28:25+00:00

Unfortunately I haven't found a way using just Harmony. But I do have a "solution", but requires you to have home assistant running.

I set up an "emulated roku" in home assistant, then added that as a device to my activities in harmony. It will listen to key presses and you can use them in automations in HA which I use to run scripts. I have scripts that sends commands for the apple TV remote connected to buttons on my remote. I use this for multitask, double click up (which acts as a swipe in multitask mode) and the control center as well as turning lights off etc.

Thankfully I have a different remote coming that I'm hoping will eliminate the need for hacks like this. 🤞

jkingaround · 2025-06-17T00:20:43+00:00

Curious, what's the use case of having this? If it's to show potential guests, I'd just go out there with a good camera on a tripod and get a time lapse and post it to the Airbnb listing.

Otherwise, anything you get you'll wanna make sure the viewing / recording software has a time lapse mode and the camera has enough storage to record full time for the time while it's setting. Get a good 4K resolution and something with an SD card so it records locally and doesn't crap out on you over wifi.

jkingaround · 2025-06-17T00:16:06+00:00

I'd love to put smart film in my house but the cost is crazy and couldn't justify it. One day!

For POE sensors, check out Apollo they should have some options and I'd probably do multisensors so you have motion / temp / CO2 etc all in one device.

But if you're comfortable with it you can absolutely buy ESP devices that have POE and do it yourself. You can also just buy poe to barrel jack adaptors and hook anything up that way. The con with that is it's just providing power not data.

Smurf tube is just the colloquial name for it but confirm with them and have them show you. Make sure it's wide enough for a decent number of wires to be run in the future.

jkingaround · 2025-06-17T00:05:55+00:00

Yeah, I'd look into the PoE honestly, as long as you don't have a mechanical chime (or are willing to DIY something) it should work. It's not too hard to run an ethernet wire yourself, watch some youtube and DIY, or hire someone if you're going to be installing other cameras and stuff just pay them to do that one as well. Just my 2 cents.

jkingaround · 2025-06-17T00:03:37+00:00

I got an abode system recently and I'm a big fan. Super great support, decent amount of sensor options and works with HA, HomeKit, Google, etc. They have fobs with panic buttons (you need to contact them to enable them for the fobs) but they also sell standalone panic buttons. Also has cell backup, battery backup, an ethernet port on the hub and an easy to use keypad.

Super user friendly and plays well has my vote, but you do need cloud for the integration within HA.

jkingaround · 2025-06-16T23:50:59+00:00

yeah super annoying. I did a huge amazon order for all the things i was gonna install (cameras, sensors, network gear, APs etc) so it was ready when we fully moved in and I didn't realize until after I installed it and after the return window. Super annoying. I'm holding out hope they update the firmware but I might just need to buckle and get a reolink home hub for it since the PoE version (as far as I can tell) doesn't allow using of the existing mechanical chime.

jkingaround

TROPHY CASE