GreatAlbatross

joined 2 years ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 12 points 4 days ago

This is one of the saddest signs of climate change. And it's visible to anyone willing to look.
You see them bud and bloom in november/december, then get knocked back when it finally gets properly cold.
Knowing full well they've used up part of the energy store they needed for actually blooming in the spring.

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 14 points 6 days ago

That's crazy. I wonder what needed so much spending.
I know that when the host costs for feddit.uk were looked into, standard cloud hosting was going to be significantly more expensive than a cheapie hetzner box.

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I reckon culture-grown meat will be the big one that shifts people away from slaughter meat.

Sure, growing it from a culture will still have people refusing on ethics grounds, but it's damned sight less suffering.

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 4 points 1 week ago

That was the conclusion I reached a little while ago. So I've just stopped eating shellfish as a result.

I'm now trying to reduce the amount of cow I eat.

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

What type of radio is the weather station using? Are you pulling the data using RTL_433?

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Boilers are kinda on/off, from a control perspective.
The boiler heats water to the set flow temperature, pumps it around the loop, and repeats until it's switched off.
The amount of gas used is modulated by the boiler to make the water come out at the right flow temperature.
Unless all the rooms in your house are perfectly insulated, or so badly insulated that they lose heat instantly, ad-hoq temperature changes in individual rooms is tricky to do well.

I did have smart TRVs for a while, but actually ended up binning them.
So my current solution is:
HomeAssistant controlled call-for-heat. This is a relay that when connected, turns the boiler on.
Temperature sensors in each room. This allowed me to balance the radiators so they all warmed up evenly, and also feed into the HA thermostat to decide when the heat needs to come on.
Manual TRVs in each room set to slightly above the normal target temperature. So they're normally open, but will close if something crazy happens, like someone turning on a fan heater.
Timed target temperatures in HA. So the target temperature drops at bedtime, and rises just before I get up.

I also lowered the flow temperature of the boiler, which improves efficiency.
I'm not 100% sure what you're trying to achieve in your setup.
But adding TRVs to each room (and having one always-open, like the bathroom) would be a good step forward.

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 1 points 1 month ago

It was such a breath of fresh air when I finally put HA onto proxmox.
"Oh, I actually have resource now? Sweet!"

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 42 points 2 months ago

I don't get why they are all cosplaying a seedy man from the 70s.

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

A little late to the party, but yes, I can confirm that Hue bulbs can be controlled directly over zigbee. You will need a zigbee radio if you haven't already bought one (£20-ish).
They literally just appear like a zigbee device inside that integration.

You may need to reset them before they will pair.
I forget the pattern, but iirc it's on 2s, off 8s, repeated until you see an acknowledgement flash.
Sometimes, you'll get one that takes forever, then the next bunch will just hop right on.
I have several Hue hubs I still need to offload, as I sometimes buy the combo packs that include another hub.

I also found that the response time was a lot quicker over direct zigbee than farting around with Signiant/Philips' API.

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 11 points 2 months ago

The trick is to buy reasonably open devices, then provide the smarts yourself.
If it can talk to / be configured by HomeAssistant, and doesn't require internet to work, it'll probably be fine.

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 2 points 3 months ago

That's indeed useful information!
My boiler control for the central heating has the very useful function of a 30 minute button.
Which means even if I torpedoed HA in the middle of winter, I could still get the house warm.

 

Just wondered if anyone on here is using a HA compatible one.
Zigbee or Z-Wave would be fine.
Unfortunately, the controllers I got with the main control unit are Heatmiser.
They use Zigbee, but the manufacturer's own implementation which requires buying and running a proprietary hub (and sod that!)
Rather annoyingly, the controllers are pretty functional!
The manifold wiring centre itself (UH4) just works by connecting 240v lines, so shouldn't be too hard to have HA connecting the right loops at the right time.

I've considered just doing this with shelly relays and setting up a thermostat in HA, so if anyone has homebrewed an interesting solution, I'd also be interested to hear!

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 1 points 3 months ago

Similar with snails: Never pull them off something to avoid hurting them as the sucker detaches.

 

I thought I'd pop this up here, as I've now had mine almost a year.

I've had sonoff zigbee sensors for a while, and wanted to try this slightly updated one with a display.
To cut a long story short:

  • It works
  • It communicates and pairs with HA ZHA integration out of the box.
  • I've not had any issues at all since I bought it.
  • The display is clear
  • The bracket sticks to the wall, then the sensor magnets into the bracket. The sensor also has a fold-out stand for placing on a surface.
  • After almost 1 year on the included battery, it's showing 60%
  • I paid about £12, they're now around £14

Battery use should obviously be taken with a pinch of salt, but I would not be surprised if it's still trucking after 2 years.

Accuracy is fine for consumer level gear

I also discovered (after updating to HA latest) that temperature and humidity thresholds can be set on the device.
And that it will show symbols on the display when these limits are breached. By default, it shows a snowflake when it's under 19'C.

So, yeah. For areas where people are likely to want to check the temperature quickly, they're neat little dooberies.

 

Is your grandma a force of nature?
Does your best friend cause an impact wherever they go?
Now you can give them the recognition they deserve, by naming a storm after them.

 

I would like to start using floorplans/maps with various device actions on them. This means I need locally stored images, that can be seen over the network.
I managed to upload images to HA, but as they need to be accessed with a token, I either need to refresh the token every day (no), or have an image with a long-lived token (also not a good idea).

How have other people done things?
Is it worth spinning up an http image host?
Or maybe throwing files into an nginx folder inside HA?

Thoughts on a postcard :)

 

Oh my Jesus, can we just renationalise them already?

'We can only squeeze money out of this debt strangled utility if you exempt us from liability, particularly the executives in charge'

What a load of horseshit.

 

As I'm currently doing a re-wire, it's a great opportunity for me to put some metering in the house.
I'm single-phase, but I plan to monitor multiple sections of the house, which are each wired for 100A independently.

I'm currently eyeing up either the Shelly Pro 3EM – 120A or the 50A.
As it will fit nicely in the consumer unit, and supports Ethernet.

I previously looked at the Aeotec clamp devices, but they seem to be difficult to find with multiple 100A connectors.

Emporia Vue was also a consideration, but I'm always a little hesitant to buy products that require custom firmware to even work properly, when others are available. And I'd also like to avoid using 2.4Ghz wifi for connectivity.

I'd love to hear any experiences people have had with similar devices, good or bad. And how the integration with HA went.

 

I guess they kinda have to do this, or you'd have to keep the same person on breakfast until they retired.

I always found it a little bit comfy that BBC pipelined a lot of the flagship presenters.
Steve Wright going from Radio 1, to Radio 2 as the listeners aged, for example.

 

This was very much a me mistake, so apologies from me.

The long story short, is that we were migrating the domain between accounts.

As the previous DNS records would be wiped during transfer, we made backups, and started the process.
This morning, the "approve transfer" button was lit.
A sensible person would have gone "perfect, lets get this scheduled".
Instead, I just pressed the button.

Unfortunately, when you transfer, and are keeping continuity, you should always make sure the receiving account is ready to re-apply the settings.
I didn't, and the receiving account owner was happily asleep. 100% my bad!

All sorted now (hopefully).
There might be some weirdness while DNS updates propagate through the various caches.

I think the lessons learned are pretty obvious:

  • Consider how noticeable downtime will be, and schedule with this in mind.
  • Check that your counterpart is online when transferring a domain.
  • Always schedule a maintenance window, even if you get excited when the button activates.
 

Apology from me. We're moving some things around on the back end, and my non-thinking brain didn't think to check another admin was online before handing over control of a system to them.

Hopefully, feddit.uk will be back up before the end of the day, assuming nothing horrid happens.

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