My experience with a Pi4B has been rock solid and plenty fast for what I’ve tried so far, at low power consumption.

While I had problems in the beginning, it was all from the micro-SD card. People here will recommend staying away but I’ve had no problems since buying an “extreme” card. Well, starting to hit the size limit now - I can no longer kick off multiple concurrent updates because limited free space available on, I think, 16G card. Get bigger

If you’re starting with ha, don’t feel confined to only one.

IMPORTANT: a local area mesh is not just a low powered way of connecting devices but is inherently local-only. Highly recommended

The more common local area meshes include

• Zigbee - open standard, lots of inexpensive sensors
• Z-Wave - devices need to pay for certification but are more standard. I found more smart switches using this in my area
• Thread - the new standard. Same frequency as Zigbee but IPv6 based. Slowly rolling out.

The new Matter/Thread standard has support of the major players (Apple, Google, Amazon) so seems like the way to go for the future, but products are slow to roll out so you can’t count on it yet

Personally I found the strengths of each compelling so quickly added all three of the above to my ha setup. Ha is fine with it so why limit yourself

I follow the principle that devices must work “as expected” for my users, automation adds capabilities but does not replace them. This comes together with a focus on smart switches

• can be used interactively just like any switch
• continue to work as expected even if ha is down
• typically act as routers to strengthen your local area mesh. I have switches acting as routers for Zigbee, zwave, and Thread, so all my local area meshes are solid everywhere
• then I can automate

As someone who used to live in places with very limited places to park, that shouldn’t be a deal breaker. Some do have driveways and there are side streets. It’s not the end of the world to have to park around the corner. (Assuming the side streets are less crowded than downtown Boston)

You don’t have to be religious to support people who are, just like you don’t have to cycle to support people who do. Both are community needs

I was actually going to jump on their side: that area is still very car centric and you need to be able to handle that while taking steps toward safe cycling and walkability. …… then the video was showing a mostly empty street where many of the houses had driveways, so no. They can suck it up and park in their driveway or around the corner like the rest of us

Or heck, that street is really wide. We have narrower streets with both a protected bike lane and parking

The church should have accomodations though, even if it means closing part of the bike lane sundays

Yeah, I stopped buying anything Welch’s for just this reason. Actually I’m not sure I ever started. When I bought juice, I always looked for some that had juice. Now that juice has entered a new phase of enshittication, it’s just not worth it, even for special occasions

Huh, I wish my town would do those corner protectors. There’s one corner especially, a block from my house, and on a major walking route to our neighborhood elementary school. After it snows, I frequently see tire tracks across the sidewalk from people who cut the corner badly. One of these days, they’re going to run over a kid on the sidewalk on their way to school.

Anyone try Rancher? Is that still a thing? When I looked into k8s a few years back, Ranchers was highly recommended to simplify managing k8s if you couldn’t automate. Supposedly friendly and free.

Tesla always had “light show” as a fun gimmick. It’s one of the first things you show friends and family.

There’s a few canned versions but apparently you can create your own on usb stick. Supposedly it was an outgrowth of qa, so it includes things like windows and trunk opening and closing, side mirrors folding and unfolding, all timed to music, etc. Even before the active matrix headlights were approved for regular use, one of the canned light shows used them to spell out “Tesla” on whatever is in front of you.

A recent update mentioned new light shows and a way to synchronize. I can certainly imagine a Tesla club having great fun with this

Step 0. Make sure your networking equipment can do vlans and subnets.

Given how much I paid for a “high end” consumer router, I just assumed ……

I got into each mesh technology for specific devices. Home Assistant supports them all and they seem to coexist just fine in my use case.

I have a small to medium setup with only a few simple automations and a focus on voice control and scheduling

Preference

• Thread - given Apple, Amazon, and Google support and the standardization work, I expect this to be the future. Eventually. But I’m getting impatient. If I’m buying a device, I prefer Thread but usually it’s not yet
• z-Wave - my first, and most devices. Basically this was what was most available at local stores when I started. No complaints
• Zigbee - by far the biggest selection of simple, cheap sensors. I need to more of those
• all too much is WiFi but I try to avoid

But it also helps that my approach is generally switches and outlets. Hard-wired, predictable network, tend to be repeaters. I have comparatively fewer leaf nodes.

This approach also fits in with my biggest challenge. While my house is small, it’s an older one with dense materials that blocks a lot of radio signals. For example I have no cell phone reception inside yet strong signal just out any door. My focus on switches and outlets overcome this with a repeater in every room

So for example a few years back I got a z-wave IR blaster to control a mini-split AC because at the time I mostly used z-wave. I already had a z-wave light switch in the same room, acting as a repeater, so no worries about connectivity. Now I have both z-wave and Zigbee light switches in that room so expect both meshes to be strong for any future devices in that room

I’ll also vote to reconsider WiFi. Home Assistant supports a variety of local mesh networks that by default can’t connect to the cloud and whose devices are cheaper and lower power.

I use all three of zwave, Zigbee, and thread; ha works with whatever you need.

I choose to pay for remote access, but it’s for convenience and to support the developers. You are free to configure it yourself in a couple ways (and there is decent documentation) or do without remote access

I don’t know how you set up remote access for OpenHab, but from a quick glance at the web site it looks similar

Wait, really? You’re telling us there are rural areas with unreliable electricity, yet are piped for gas?

Why not both? Even before I understood the indoor pollution caused by gas stoves, I never understood how it was legal to have a “vent” blowing supposedly filtered air back into the kitchen. cooking causes pollutants and should always require venting to the outside

Another warning label is a step. It will raise awareness and convince some. Most importantly it should ease the process for more significant steps.

Given that induction ranges are so hard to find and so much more expensive, I hope the warning can lead to incentive programs to convert. Maybe having a predictable and growing market will help companies with the decisions to manufacture more choices at more reasonable cost

My reading of this article shows the judge issued a temporary injunction saying the evidence suggested looks like the manufacturers will win. That is something a judge should decide.

It’s the wrong decision but we don’t know what was presented or how.

I believe it hinges on “controversial” but how do you give the controversy any credence when it is only manufacturers with a profit motive to disagree with science?

I’m not entirely sure why all the hate : Jenkins can do the most things the must ways. And yes, it’s so much nicer defining a pipeline with a fully functional language than an assortment of yaml files

Actually that was my response when my company wanted to start using Gitlab ci. It only has one way of doing things so you can probably get a faster start if you had no ci, were a small company, and had simple builds. However we’re over 4,000 builds in many languages from 12 year old monoliths to modern micro services and containers…… and way too much godawful JavaScript. Do you want the quick and simple tool great for a small startup or the all powerful kitchen sink of tools?

I’ve wondered if people’s watch lists are prioritized to be pay videos. The first time I saw this I wondered why my watch list was mostly pay videos: I must have misunderstood something. So I created it again with only free shows. A year later it was mostly pay

In the us, Tesla has a much higher reputation for chargers that actually work when you need them. Usually the credit goes to better sensors and more responsive service, but an underrated factor is larger charging stations with many more chargers. One failing of twelve is less impact than one failing of four, for example.

As yet another anecdote showing how regressive/spiteful US treatment of EVs is …… over the summer I saw an article about a new vendor winning contract for New Jersey rest areas. Part of the contract was to replace 12 charger Tesla supercharger rest areas with “equivalent” four charger that cost 20¢/KwH more