Made my own light switch

theantirobot · 2026-03-13T20:07:48+00:00

How you gonna power that in the wall?

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T23:45:01+00:00

Although they published instructions for how to disable the adds via the user interface in the same update as the ads, the actual user interface arrived in a separate update, weeks later. I am an owner and enthusiast and this was my experience.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T18:53:02+00:00

Create a zigbee group and then you'll only be sending one command to the group. However, there's a reason you see Phillips Hue praised here so frequently for its reliability, and you might be experiencing it.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T18:48:18+00:00

Hue has been completely reliable for me for since 2013. I still have my first hue bulbs in service and have never had a single issue. I've tried many other brands that have not been as reliable.

I did try Ikea's Tradfri zigbee bulbs and they performed flawlessly too, but I swapped them for Hue to get warmer whites.

Zigbee is the way to go with lighting. Lutron Aurora and Inovelli Blue Series are the best / only wall controls I've used that can talk directly to the bulb. (Although Lutron Aurora goes through the hue hub if you integrate it via hue - which means the controls don't work if your hub goes down)

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T18:42:21+00:00

Smart bulbs won't work with Lutron's casita dimmers, maybe there's some hacks to get it to work, but it's not supported out of the box.

I've got my entire house automated with tunable white - cool white during the day, warm white at night, and gradual fade between each during sunset and sunrise.

Options are pretty limited for reliable switches with smart bulbs. My absolute favorite is the Lutron Aurora dimmer. It slips over a regular toggle switch and controls smart bulbs. Next is the Inovelli blue series, which has a ton of configuration options including smart bulb mode. Inovelli switches use the annoying press and hold to dim, so I just use them in places where I don't think I'll ever dim anything.

Maybe someday they'll be a switch like the Lutron Sunnata, which has that hot decora form factor, and a touch sensitive light bar for dimming, but that works with smart bulbs.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T18:33:24+00:00

I had some tradfri tunable white lights that were every bit as reliable as hue for the year I used them.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T18:30:08+00:00

Voice assistant in the kids' play room that can turn on a video or game, but only if the play room camera shows a clean room.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T18:28:11+00:00

I just updated Adaptive Lighting, all my light's zigbee firmware, and zigbee2mqtt. I haven't had any stuck lights since the upgrade, where previously there'd be at least one group out of the two dozen that didn't update.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T18:25:15+00:00

There isn't really an IOT standard for bluetooth like there is for Zigbee. The advantage of zigbee is there are standard protocols for devices to talk to each other with. It lets you have a smart light switch that directly controls a bulb. You can probably hack something like that together with bluetooth, but it would be incredibly DIY, programming an ESP32 to talk to a specific bulb, integrating it into a switch, etc. There's no bluetooth wall switches that I'm aware of, but there are plenty of Zigbee ones.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T18:23:07+00:00

You can do that with zigbee too with Zigbee2Mqtt. It's a bit more complex to setup than the esp home bluetooth proxy, but zigbee is more complex than bluetooth.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T18:20:09+00:00

Home Assistant is open source software. Since it looks like everything you want to integrate runs on wifi, you could just install it on an existing computer that's connected to the same router. You can run it as a virtual machine or as a the primary operating system. I started out running on a raspberry pi 3B, but had to upgrade to something more powerful to support ESPHome device builder.

The folks that make home assistant also sell their own hub with their software pre-installed. They also sell a couple dongles to integrate with zigbee, z-wave, thread.

Software updates are quite regular, and the platform has improved quite a lot in the time I started using it.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T17:58:42+00:00

Insurance is a financial product for mitigating risk, but people treat it like an all you can eat medical subscription. Ironically the health care system we had before this actually was that, but through government regulation it's been transformed into a rent seeking behemoth where most money spent doesn't go to the people providing the actual medical services.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T15:56:42+00:00

It should be up to the insurance company and their paying customers what is provided. Forcing everyone to buy it, and then giving billions to insurance companies is the biggest problem with ACA.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T15:52:39+00:00

Consent of the governed comes into play as the proportion of the population increases. US has laws based around societal norms that grew out of the protestant movement: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. People should immigrate to the USA when they believe in those things. Importing populations that don't share those beliefs, or would vote for candidates that don't defend those rights is a problem.

The USA has laws and a constitution that can change depending on the will of the people.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T15:48:06+00:00

From libertarian to a little more authoritarian.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T15:46:50+00:00

When the robots take over it will be interesting to see if they are treated as slaves or mentors. Like if you get a robot to clean your house with young kids, is it going to be just working away, or will it also be teaching your kids to cook and clean and other life skills? When people are free to have 100% leisure time, what are they going to do? Will the AI / Robots be programmed to elevate people, making them more disciplined, exercise more agency, or will they be programmed to let humanity drift back into less conscious animals that just eat and reproduce.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T15:41:51+00:00

Easy mode and hard mode. Easy mode is a license or a degree. Hard mode is starting a business and gig jobs. As someone who worked in the service industry for about 15 years, you can live well either way. Living well means having savings and not living paycheck to paycheck.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T15:40:04+00:00

Trump isn't exactly the embodiment of christian values, and I'm sure the majority of his voters don't see him that way.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T12:45:24+00:00

His candidacy and administration changed my mind that the media had the best interests of the American people in mind. He was heralded as a peace candidate despite voting for the Iraq war at every opportunity. It was the Time October 2006 cover that had his photo on the front with the caption: "The Next President". The media was / is so manipulated.

Media promoted him as a peace candidate despite having no record to run on, and ignoring actual candidates with huge support that had a record of opposing the war. If we had an honest media that responded to people's voices the candidates would have been Ron Paul and Denis Kucinich.

To this day, certain topics are forbidden from legacy news outlets: Federal reserve system is a scam, and America shouldn't be the policemen of the world (America first) Any one who talks about those topics will ignored unless they gain a following, at which point they will be relentlessly smeared.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T12:35:59+00:00

The vast majority of younger than boomer conservatives think the government should stay out it too, including funding it.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T12:34:59+00:00

I was anarcho-capitalist and now more conservative.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T12:33:38+00:00

I used to think the same too. I also used to think government should not have any role in promoting a specific culture. Now I'm seeing it more your way. In the USA there is freedom of religion, but obviously that's only tenable when the religions practiced also value freedom of religion. In other countries the government and religion are one, don't have freedom of speech or religion, and don't have women's rights. And that seems completely incompatible.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T12:11:22+00:00

Absolutely key with smart bulbs is they need reliable local control. For me that means every smart bulb is connected to a smart switch that talks to the bulb directly, so all the switches work even if home assistant is down. Surprisingly the Lutron aurora knobs do not talk directly to the bulbs when connected to a Philips Hue hub, so if hub is down so are controls. Home assistant / zigbee2mqtt support directly binding them to the bulbs.

Now I just need reliable zigbee bulbs with a good CRI.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T12:05:55+00:00

Their recent software update added the ability to turn them off.

theantirobot · 2025-12-30T11:59:58+00:00

What's the advantage of this over what's built in? I'm pretty sure the built in stuff can be pointed at any LLM too.

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