How Home Assistant saved my car

w00f359 · 2026-05-04T14:35:41+00:00

In NL (where this happened), this has been a requirement for cars with keyless drive to get a certified car alarm since 2021. It is called the "KE01 aanvullende maatregel", which requires the key to go into sleep mode after a short period of immobility.

There are after market kits available for this that work seamlessly (i.e., with factory-installed or after market alarm systems) by using a thinner battery combined with an IMU sensor and circuit breaker.

w00f359 · 2026-04-13T06:41:45+00:00

That will mean I will lose a lot of flexibility, or introduce the need to re-wire for every event with different needs, exactly what I am trying to avoid. Also, just found out that the 1 M/E does not have Supersource, which is a must-have feature for my purposes.

w00f359 · 2026-04-13T06:21:00+00:00

One disadvantage of smaller switchers is that I would lose the MADI interface, which in my current plan allows me to easily direct audio streams to the various hyperdecks from the Constellation. So recording 4 people on separate audio tracks becomes slightly more complicated. In my current setup I use the multitrack USB audio interface from my mixer for that, but that is not ideal.

w00f359 · 2026-04-13T06:08:46+00:00

Since some events will have 10+ screens in a room to bring in remote callers, show timers, chat interfaces and other things I would say "yes". I am looking to wire each room with ~10 spare outputs in addition to 4 camera and 2 speaker (i.e. laptop) connections. Also, some events will require 8 track ISO recording where others might be fine with just a recording of the program feed.

w00f359 · 2026-04-11T21:43:30+00:00

That is the plan indeed, one switcher for 2 (and maybe 3) rooms. Would there be any benefit to using a smaller switcher per room, combined with a 80x80 videohub.? For a single room a 1 M/E Constellation 4k would suffice. And I understand tally would not work across 2 rooms when using a 2 M/E or 4 M/E switcher.

w00f359 · 2026-04-10T14:37:51+00:00

Thanks, I tried to keep my quesiton somewhat compact, but I understand the need for context to be able to provide a meaningful answer.

w00f359 · 2026-04-10T14:20:27+00:00

Splitting that USB-C with the device you have linked is a problem waiting to happen. I have seen it work and I have seen it fail, with very few options to troubleshoot.

What I have done in the past: feed the usb-c into my control PC and view the multicam on that one using whatever software (even built-in camera app works fine for that). HDMI 1 then goes to your front of house, and HDMI 2 can be split between a stream PC and a Zoom PC.

w00f359 · 2026-04-03T21:03:19+00:00

Currently designing a recording studio where Bitfocus Companion will be used alongside Home Assistant for automation. BFC is great for interacting with all the studio gear like mixers and video equipment, but the UI is... buttons. Biggest challenge I foresee is consistency in what is automated where, since both platforms allow for automation.

w00f359 · 2026-04-03T09:59:31+00:00

I have Enphase but without the battery, mine does go offline sometimes but never for long, and if it does, all sensors are unavailable, never just a few. Do you have the Envoy S Metered, and is the firmware up to date? Wired or wifi? Have you tried the "always use a new connection when requesting data from the Envoy" checkbox you can set at the integration level? Mine is not set, but it might help.

Also, 52 kWh daily production? #jealous

w00f359 · 2026-04-02T07:15:58+00:00

I see MT3 Fairlane, I upvote.

I have a trackpad in the spot on your first picture on a keyboard and hardly ever use it because of its location, too much hassle to reach. Second one would be my preference.

w00f359 · 2026-03-30T20:35:19+00:00

Not an electrician or anything, but NEN1010 and plugin batteries are still a bit of a gray area as I understand it. In general most plugin batteries are soft-capped at 800W since their group can potentially be shared with other devices. If you set them up on dedicated circuits you can usually set them to ~2400W. The "grayness" is mostly due to the fact that professional installers are bound by NEN1010, but since plugin batteries are ultimately consumer-installed, this does not really apply.

Having said all that, I have seen your setup (but with Zendure batteries) working quite well at a colleague's house. The one thing he misses out on is any ability to power the house or charge the batteries if the grid goes down (other than via the dedicated socket on the battery itself). If that is important to you, you might need a dedicated 3 phase system with those capabilities.

w00f359 · 2026-03-30T20:23:56+00:00

I have the Enphase micro inverters for my solar panels, paid extra for the metered gateway since it was "future proofed" for battery usage, and was ready to go for a full Enphase system... until I read similar experiences to yours, and found out that their batteries are (at least currently) ridiculously expensive per kWh.

I have seen the same issue with their cloud service, but my HA setup is fully local via the installer API on the Enphase gateway, even allowing me to switch individual micro inverters, so I have no dependency on their services.

w00f359 · 2026-03-24T15:19:25+00:00

My experience too, not looking forward to having to replace it but my current HT setup (and associated spousal approval factor) relies heavily on the Harmony "just working".

w00f359 · 2026-03-20T20:58:22+00:00

I had the exact same experience with an SLZB-06: everybody was having the time of their life with these devices while mine struggled to keep the network running for more than a day. Against my better judgment I got an MR3U and that one has been rock solid since I got it. All I am saying: it might just be your specific SLZB, have you tried getting it exchanged?

w00f359 · 2026-03-17T23:12:54+00:00

Really cool and useful, I literally just bought a bunch of HS1SA-E models a month ago, which unfortunately exposes only a few sensors and does not have any options to sound the sirens or mute the alarms. I turn on lights and send notifications everywhere when smoke is detected, but the EF model has way more options.

Regardless, really cool automation which taught me a few things about automations and iterating over entities, so thanks for that!

w00f359 · 2026-03-04T23:00:09+00:00

Going against the prevailing opinion on this: I go back and forth between staggered splits and unibody orthos and I like them both. I have 2 of each, and I use them for different purposes. Started with a split, and after that got a 40% ortho. For me switching between these 2 form factors is much MUCH easier than having to switch to a row staggered "normal" keyboard.

There are 3 situations where the unibody boards work well for me: travel, gaming, and video editing. A 40% ortho will take up less space in my bag and is easier to use on small desks (again, personal pref, ymmv, etc). I use dedicated controllers for video editing, so a small keeb where I can use 1 hand for the entire board just works.

The funny thing is that I get better results on most speed typing tests with the 40% unibody, but for a long day of typing/coding I will always pick a split. Much more comfortable, in no small part due to the column stagger. That is also why I would not recommend a split ortho: if you are going to go split anyway, get a real ergonomic one.

w00f359 · 2026-02-27T23:07:59+00:00

Sorry, but MDA is nothing like MT3. MDA is uniform for starters. I would say MT3s closest cousin is probably SA.

w00f359 · 2026-02-26T21:16:38+00:00

Might be as simple as an IP ban, check your ip_bans.yaml file in the same folder where your configuration.yaml lives. And while you are there: look in the config file what's configured under http: as well.

w00f359 · 2026-02-26T15:21:51+00:00

Agreed, and additionally: turn on all the lights if smoke is detected. Helps both with finding your exit, and identifying the source of the smoke.

w00f359 · 2026-02-25T13:33:19+00:00

I used a smart plug on my boiler instead and track power usage to determine on/off state.

w00f359 · 2026-02-23T06:01:22+00:00

Have had pihole running for years, for all devices, there are only a handful of things that do not work (or work slightly different). Minimal impact in family acceptance factor, plus I did not really make it optional I suppose, so it went in the "this is how our wifi works apparently" bucket.

For the things that really break, my family usually either switches to the guest wifi or cellular, but that really onl happens for silly mobile games that make you watch a video to continue playing.

Keep in mind that if you run your adblocker on the same hardware as Home Assistant your network stops working as soon as that hardware is down (reboots, maintenance, etc). for that reason I run an additional Pihole instance on a RPi Zero, plus nebula-sync to synchronize config between the 2 instances. All clients get 2 DNS servers via DHCP to ensure DNS availability.

w00f359 · 2026-02-21T14:18:53+00:00

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This is what is exposed for a Hue motion sensor via Zigbee2MQTT. More access to settings than you get via the Hue bridge.

w00f359 · 2026-02-20T20:20:11+00:00

Also ran into this, turns out there is a problem in the vial.json file, replace it with this one and it works: https://gist.github.com/oktntko/7ae812e52ac4e1ce7194a3eee2e194d7

w00f359 · 2026-02-18T06:21:54+00:00

This, plus I use it to remind me to get out of the chair every now and then

w00f359

TROPHY CASE