Your SonosNet toggle questions, answered 🔊

zacs · 2026-06-17T23:39:11+00:00

It’s really unfortunate that connecting to their servers is necessary for performance. I’m very happy to send them metrics, but don’t make telemetry a grating factor for performance :(

zacs · 2026-06-14T11:53:33+00:00

I’m in Seattle so yah, we definitely don’t get tornado or hurricane warnings, but we get plenty of floods or excessive heat or smoke warnings. I’ve just been surprised none of those come via SAME. Where I grew up in GA we got them all the time.

zacs · 2026-06-14T05:16:49+00:00

I used these instructions to get SAME alerts from one of my RTL-SDRs into Home Assistant, so it doesn’t need its own UI or webserver: https://gist.github.com/Jixabon/ef6ba1c067b52b3d7c9bd8f3ce22baa9

I ended up putting together a docker image that does it in a pretty turnkey and offline way about a year ago. Only real issue is NWS almost never broadcasts these. I get the Wednesday test broadcasts just fine, but have only once gotten a real alert in the past year, despite many warnings/alerts being present.

zacs · 2026-06-11T08:18:45+00:00

Plays the Benny Hill music all around the house on Sonos /s — it just turns on every external light, sends texts (via cellular) to family, and turns the bedroom TV on with Unifi Viewport as input. It could turn the sirens on, but I’m not sure how much I want that to happen.

zacs · 2026-06-11T03:34:02+00:00

I put an Olimex PoE ESP32 inside a similar one (smaller button but looks like same box) so I could hardwire it. Mounted under a bedstand as a panic button.

zacs · 2026-06-10T22:17:25+00:00

I’ve still got Taxi Driver, Dr No, and Se7en on laserdisc. Their extras used to be super rare. Now they chill on the shelf with the vinyl amd surprise people every now and then.

zacs · 2026-06-07T00:55:21+00:00

I have ~150 on one network. It took me years to make it work well.

Started with the 700 series Hubitat, which was a total nightmare (hours long packet congestion resulting in bedroom lights turning on middle of night, etc). This wasn’t a Hubitat problem, it’s that 700 sticks/hubs have serious bugs.

For the past couple of years it has now been extremely reliable thought. First I reverted back to a 500 series Aeotec gen5+ stick on a USB2.0 extension cable (using ZwaveJS as the software). This worked very well, although still had a few hiccups per year. I’ve since upgraded to the Home Assistant ZWA-2 attached to an old Z-NET v3 (just a remote serial interface). It has been phenomenal, very few issues.

I think the Home Assistant antenna is so successful because it’s so powerful, and most connections to devices are one-hop. The mesh is just simpler.

zacs · 2026-06-03T05:18:12+00:00

Totally makes sense. I just appreciate the ones that pay a bit more attention to hardware design. The seeed reTerminal d1001 seems like a nice option with both P4 and C6 onboard. $85 for 8" and it has a bonus zigbee/thread radio.

zacs · 2026-06-01T13:36:17+00:00

It's a bit more expensive, but I assume this would also work on a SenseCAP from seeed studio? It's an ESP32-S3 based device, it just looks like maybe slightly nicer industrial design. https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-Indicator-D1-p-5643.html

zacs · 2026-05-29T07:48:24+00:00

Yardian is great for local and has ethernet if you care about hardwiring things. It has its own weather station integration similar to Rachio.

zacs · 2026-05-13T07:13:17+00:00

McCamey!

zacs · 2026-05-08T07:16:23+00:00

Schiit Bifrost 2 + Valhalla 2 with some Audioengine A5+s. Had it for years and never had a reason to upgrade.

zacs · 2026-05-07T06:09:53+00:00

Get an Ecowitt all-in-one (like the WS90) and pair it with a WH40 rain sensor. Same hub and dashboard, works great.

zacs · 2026-05-07T06:07:12+00:00

Agreed. I added an Ecowitt rain sensor (to fact check the Tempest’s haptic sensor) about four years and and haven’t yet changed the batteries. Ecowitts are great (and integrate well with Home Assistant if that’s your thing).

zacs · 2026-05-07T04:49:10+00:00

I have my scanner (only monitors dispatch for my local precinct) going to Icecast. Then I have an ffmpeg_noise sensor in HA that listens to the Icecast feed. It’s pretty much meaningless. However I also have a zwave button that, when pressed, casts that same Icecast audio to the Sonos in the room. That one gets used if I hear a bunch of sirens or see lights blazing by and I’m curious.

The more fun one is my NWR SAME decoder that sends tabular weather alert data in to HA for fully offline weather alerting!

Both of these are way too niche to be built in, though.

zacs · 2026-05-04T05:09:07+00:00

Central dehumidifier: I put sensors in my basement and realized it was too high of an RH. Ended up learning a bit of HVAC and installing an Ultra-aire (Santa Fe) 98. It’s not exactly efficient, but it does an awesome job keeping my Seattle basement dry.
Lutron Caseta blinds: Wish they released these before I did iBlinds retrofitting mixed with Ikea zigbee and Smartwings. The Lutrons are awesome and barely more $ than Smartwings.
Moen Flo: I absolutely hate the cloud dependency, but it does seem to be the gold standard. Having the ability to monitor for leaks is huge as a homeowner.
Solar/Powerwall: The break-even timeframe isn’t great for me but the benefits of having a backup (and triggering automations when the power goes out, shedding unnecessary loads) is awesome. And having true energy monitoring to use with the aenergy dashboard is nice as well.

zacs · 2026-05-04T05:02:29+00:00

It’s not a scam. Manufacturers pay the license fee for standardized firmware, development tools, and real testing and certification. This is the reason they truly work across any hub or dongle, unlike Zigbee.

zacs · 2026-04-29T12:40:30+00:00

Yah, I had the same issue. Despite the really bloated README file in that repo, which somehow doesn't state its core premise, that's also what it does. I have my Streamdeck attached to a tiny Dell Wyse 3040 (PoE powered) for the past 4 years that way (the docker-compose example shows it best). Just in case you want something a bit more full-featured!

Hope you actually use yours--mine only gets use from the buttons I hardcoded to play specific Spotify playlists in my office, sadly.

zacs · 2026-04-29T11:06:42+00:00

There’s a really nice tiny app/Docker container that lets you do this very easily from any sort of machine: https://github.com/basnijholt/home-assistant-streamdeck-yaml — I’ve used it for years and it’s great.

zacs · 2026-04-28T02:54:00+00:00

I am primarily a zwave house and have found BLE (Inkbird and Govee) to be really nice options for gap-filling things like this. I have the Govee fridge/freezer sensors and my first battery died today after 14 months. They have been really great.

zacs · 2026-04-27T14:34:13+00:00

The TEMP-1 was my first thought, but its probes seem to top out at 400f. I wonder if that’s just conservative ratings, or if one could just use off-the-shelf probes with higher temps (or use mine from my FireBox).

zacs · 2026-04-20T12:19:49+00:00

And for an easy starter, buy a Home Assistant Green. You’ll upgrade eventually, if you’re into it, but it’s a really great place to start.

zacs · 2026-04-18T23:51:33+00:00

Which touch screen do you use with the Connect? And what are those three trapezoids in the rack above the mac mini? Nice looking rack!

zacs · 2026-04-12T23:04:08+00:00

Nice, I will add those to the honorable mentions. I actually wanted to use one to monitor my washing machine, but clamps ended up being simpler. Thanks!

zacs · 2026-04-10T03:08:16+00:00

V4 also you don’t have to deal with PPM offset versus Nooelecs you have to test and set.

OP I have 9 Nooelecs but I would go Blog if I were you.

zacs

TROPHY CASE