the-workshop

[trail fractal]

Does your NAS go down often? Or is there another reason to put HA on dedicated but lower power hardware

[vagrant sparrow]

my reason for running haos on a pi is robustness. i run mine directly attached to my router by ethernet cable. my coordinator is a nabu casa usb stick in the pi. the only device in my automations that isn't zigbee is my front door camera. it has stayed up 24/7 except power outages since the pi 4 came out, and ran on a pi 3+ before that. no matter how i screw up my servers and network when playing around it doesn't affect my ha server.

[sudden plinth]

one reason to go with a VM is if you use ESPHome as giving it a better CPU will see it compile faster.

[mild grove]

Replace PI with mini PC but yes. HA is mission critical so i don't want it anywhere where it might get rebooted for other testing or hardware changes

[ionic hinge]

just wondering whats the best gauge card

[heady nexus]

wtf happened to this thing 🤣 https://www.ebay.com/itm/136251821361

[boreal onyx]

I was assuming maybe it had a kensington lock installed and someone just brutally ripped that off, but was wrong about the location of the lock slot

End of the back panel there is just a cutout for optional features

[heady nexus]

that was my first thought too

[silent shore]

Holy cow, this thing looks like it cartwheeled down a flight or three of stairs. Like the aftermath of some rage room session.

[crystal pond]

hey guys i have a weird one - I have a helper I made in the UI but I can't delete it or modify it?

[crystal pond]

new phone who dis

[olive owl]

#1284966582375813201

[trail fractal]

Jesus someone tried to murder it

[heady nexus]

For real though

This is the best part of the listing 🤣

[vagrant sparrow]

dumpster salvage?

[crystal pond]

browser cache issue

thanks though very helpful

[meager quail]

<@&330946878646517761>

[mint wasp]

Is there an easy way to power multiple Dell Optiplex Micro PCs?

[thorn ore]

Not sure why you would want to. Multiple power supplies reduce the single point of failure risk.

[mint wasp]

I’m trying to justify either multiple small pc’s vs one normal size pc with VM’s.

Either way it’s a single point of failure.

[sweet trellis]

On a power strip?

[mint wasp]

The problem is the external power supply. I already have two micro's. HA and a Minecraft server. It's just messy have two external power supplies.

If I do a mini rack with them then that would take up a lot of space.

[neon mica]

In case you've ever wondered: This is the Gosund (aka OHMAX) Smart Wifi Outlet that I apparently fried by plugging in a vacuum cleaner. Thought I'd check whether it was just a fuse I could replace, but I don't think they intended anything here to be user-replaceable. My PCB experience is limited to arcade games from the 1970s/80s so it's a long shot that I'd be able to do anything with this.

[teal pasture]

i've never done PCB designing but i want to get into it.. whats the most common software used for it?

[teal heath]

kicad is pretty popular I think and you can probably find a bunch of guides using it to help you get starteed

[teal pasture]

okay, thanks

idk shit about electronics tho, wish me luck

[olive owl]

Just get yourself a smoke generator

[teal heath]

anything is a smoke generator if you apply enough power

[vagrant sparrow]

kicad - as the name suggests - is like a cad program for pcb design. it is open source and it seems to be very good.

but wait - there is more!

it also contains emulation of circuits based on the ngspice project. so you can first design a circuit, simulate it, and then get help converting the design to a pcb layout

[keen bone]

most relays are not meant to handle vacuum-cleaner-level-loads.

At least not at 120v.

[vagrant sparrow]

you have to check if it can handle inductive loads if you want to run electric motors. like a vacuum cleaner. note that those that do support inductive loads generally list a significantly lower amperage for such loads

[heady nexus]

Okay the Ikea PARASOLL contact sensor might be the first Zigbee contact sensor I've found that can actually bind to lights for control

pretty sure I tried binding my linkind contact sensors and a few other brands to lights to no avail, but I could be remembering wrong

okay yeah, linkind, TP-Link, and Aqara contact sensors don't expose the on/off cluster for binding

interestingly, one rebranded Tuya contact sensor I have exposes that cluster, but not any of the other rebranded Tuya ones I have

[mild grove]

A power strip?

[keen bone]

I mean; its one of those "if you have to ask" things 😄

if you have to ask, probably just don't try and screw with that.. 😄

[heady nexus]

Dell machines are also picky about PSUs and will throttle the CPU to the lowest clock speed if it can't detect the max output power of the PSU

ask me how I know...

[keen bone]

ah yes, wonderful three-wire bullshit.. 😛

[heady nexus]

took me a few months to notice every core on my server was running at 800 MHz 🤣

[keen bone]

what is the only way intel does power efficiency? /s

[mint wasp]

The problem is the power supply. If you have multiple of them, you gonna have a mess. Was hoping that someone might know if there a big power supply with multiple plugs on it.

[keen bone]

I mean.. the "cleaner" way would be to cut down and hardwire the AC side things.. to me at least since I'm comfortable doing that.. but aside from that.. 3d printing shroud stuff to hide cable excess.. etc

or you could buy shorter plugs that comke off it to remove that big bundle at least.. 🤷‍♂️ i'm sure they exist..

[mellow falcon]

Can anyone spot a mistake i made? As soon as I give it 5v my relays start flickering.

[mild grove]

Mine have wall warts, also there are poe powered ones.

If you're gonna cluster or have a bunch seems like we're was a different choice

[teal heath]

i mean i guess you you could use a big DC supply. quick google tells me that the adapter for those systems are 19.5v 3.3A 65 watt
so you could multiply up and get a power supply capable of running multiple and then wire the right connectors on it...

[boreal onyx]

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/MEAN-WELL/HEP-600-20?qs=QoFhu5%2BruIoCtaLawLvLmw%3D%3D
$243, 20V 28A. So that'd be good for eight

The other option is you can get some pretty massive USB PD chargers these days, and cheap USB-C to dell barrel jack cables
https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Charging-Converter-Latitude-Inspiron/dp/B0989P9XM5
https://www.androidauthority.com/ugreen-six-port-desktop-charger-3512782/
One charger for five PCs, and zero wiring required

Expensive, certainly, but not going to shock you so badly if it goes wrong

[teal heath]

at a guess, possibly something to do with the 5v and 3.3v disagreeing somewhere causing strange triggers

[teal heath]

this is a pretty good approach actually

[boreal onyx]

Depending on how much you trust the power supply component to be a no-name cheapo, here's one that claims 2x140W, 2x100W and 4x65W for only $120 😄
https://www.amazon.com/Charger-Charging-Station-Multiple-Compatible/dp/B0F66TWX8S?th=1

[thorn ore]

Check the ripple voltage on the output of your HV to 5V supply. Probably needs some smoothing capacitors.

Also check that the power supply can supply sufficient current and that you have defined your outputs correctly in ESPHome.

[teal pasture]

is it possible to make PoE for ESP8266? I don't mean just for power, but proper ethernet
I got no clue how these things work

[thorn ore]

Yes and no. Yes it is easy to power it with something like this: https://www.jaycar.com.au/5v-micro-usb-poe-splitter/p/YN8416 No network however. For that there are plenty of ESP32 PoE dev boards. I've used the Olimex ones.

[teal pasture]

yeah I checked them out, except they are outside my budget (i'll need like 30 of those microcontrollers compatible with HA and PoE)

[mild grove]

WTF you doing with 30 of them?

[teal pasture]

ordered this one for now

[teal pasture]

a lil personal project. I'm about to build a home for fam and plan to make those hubs which are compatible with regular switches and bulbs and fans etc

[boreal onyx]

Looks like this one is about the same price https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/ESP32/ESP32-POE/open-source-hardware

1900 INR ~= 18.78 EUR

If that's what that currency symbol is

[teal pasture]

yeah thats what it is, except that website doesn't charge me extra for shipping. olimex will cost me almost triple and still deliver the thing months late

https://thinkrobotics.com/products/esp32-s3-eth?variant=49730253750589
it doesn't have olimex one sadly

[boreal onyx]

https://www.mouser.in/ProductDetail/Olimex-Ltd/ESP32-POE-ISO?qs=unwgFEO1A6vVfCRbLeeCIw%3D%3D
Up to R2475 though, and sadly no price break for quantity

[teal pasture]

i hope this one is equally as good

https://www.printables.com/model/1327570-waveshare-esp32-s3-eth-poe-case/files
found its case 3d files too

[heady nexus]

Okay I just found out about this, and it's awesome because it completely replaced the Google Assistant integration for me

[keen bone]

Hm, neat

[heady nexus]

in other news, I can bind a Hue remote to a Zigbee group with ThirdReality lights, but I can't bind a Hue remote to a Zigbee group with Hue lights

[keen bone]

recently switched from hue bulbs to some matter govee ones.. and still need to setup my new shelly 4 button thing to replace the hue remote..

[heady nexus]

I still have a couple of hue lights in use because they support insanely long transitions (like 120+ seconds)

[boreal onyx]

I use 20 minute transitions for some of my LIFX ones. So long you can't use the UI because the slider only goes to 5 minutes

[sweet trellis]

So your pet sloth can turn off the lights and leave the room before it gets dark?

[boreal onyx]

Sunrise simulator for waking up. Starts 30 minutes before my phone's configured alarm time and fades up from 1% 1500K to 100% 3000K over 20 minutes.

[sweet trellis]

I have that in the form of children

[olive owl]

And there's the literal sunrise, too

[boreal onyx]

At some times of the year, sure

[keen bone]

I mean theres a blueprint for that already..

[sweet trellis]

Sunrise Simulator sounds like the sort of game with waaay too many downloads on Steam

[heady nexus]

MFW live view of a HEVC stream in Frigate works in Chrome, but viewing recordings doesn't

and yet, viewing the HEVC files directly in Chrome works

[teal anchor]

Well, just look at the Frigate support channel, Discord, Community, whatever... Oh ya, there isn't one...

[olive owl]

Frigate support is in their GitHub discussion section

Or #1284966353798697001 -> Cameras

The latest 0.16 RC works around sone issue in Chrome, BTW

[heady nexus]

lmao I almost finished drafting an issue on Github complete with a HILARIOUS inclusion of deeznuts as one of my sanitized passwords, and right before I submit it I check again without changing anything, and it's suddenly working now 🤣

[heady nexus]

noice, good to know. I almost always avoid anything other than stable releases, but I might check it out

[mild grove]

Thanks for letting me know your passwords

[raven sage]

huh, esphome over thread on the esp32-h2 works surprisingly well. i might actually make some progress on my project ideas for these things now that i don't have to code them from scratch.

ota updates over thread take a while tho :)

[keen bone]

... well.. yeah?

low power.. low bandwidth.. etc

[heady nexus]

So work sent me a new webcam and when I plugged it in nothing happened. Tried another machine, nothing. Naturally I opened it up which was super easy and the first thing I noticed was this metal strand (from what I assume is ground but haven't checked) that was touching the capacitor right next to it. "That doesn't seem right" I thought, so I moved it away as shown in the photo and it works now lol

[mild grove]

You turn your camera on for meetings?

[heady nexus]

Heh

For zoom, yeah. Slack huddles, nah

[mild grove]

I only ever had mine on for my interview for this company and never again. I did steal two from my last job though. C920s. They were handing them out like candy and didn't want them back

[vagrant sparrow]

i never really had any issues having my cam on during meetings until managers started pressuring those who didn't have their cam on.

from then on my cam is off in solidarity.

[olive owl]

for me, "cam off" usually means I haven't taken a shower

[silent shore]

Depends on who's in the call for me. Up at 8am with colleagues for standup? Hell no. With directors or above who automatically turn theirs on when they join? I'll do it.

[vagrant sparrow]

they know who i am. 😄 they don't have to see me. those faces from up the misty mountain? nice for me to see them once in a while but i bet they don't care about seeing every one of us.

[teal anchor]

Privacy Feature.

[heady nexus]

pain to turn it on and off though

[teal anchor]

My wife was complaining in a couple of meetings that her image is just red so her camera was busted....
-# yes the camera privacy door was closed...

[mild grove]

Nah, they don't need to see me either. Also wek have 2k+ people on those calls

[keen bone]

only the most quality stuff sent from work! /s

[plush gull]

Oh you're one of those

[olive owl]

[mild grove]

Why would I ever turn it on?

[plush gull]

So you have an extra dimension of conversation with colleagues

[mild grove]

They would also have to turn their cameras on and they aren't doing that

[olive owl]

Be the change..

[mild grove]

Hell no. I ain't turning my camera on

[heady nexus]

Alright I'm officially using HEVC with all of my security cameras that support it, and it was only a moderate PITA to get working

[keen bone]

I mean sure.. 😛

its mostly just about having either cameras that support it.. or proper hardware transcoding to convert to it?

[heady nexus]

to clarify, it was a pain to figure out why I couldn't play it back in Chrome on my Ubuntu laptop with an 8th gen Intel chipset

[keen bone]

yeah there is that..

setting up a new frigate/hass install in office (moving from an old server that it ran on; to a modern ryzen 9 chipset..) so I may look at that too

[heady nexus]

a combination of Chrome flags and switching from i965 to the iHD graphics driver on my laptop was the fix

[keen bone]

since the cameras also support H265...

[heady nexus]

although I switched to h265 solely to squeeze out higher quality at the current bitrate I was using as opposed to using a lower bitrate for bandwidth/storage concerns

[keen bone]

hmm.

[heady nexus]

Wat

[keen bone]

considering switching the things at the office to h265.

they support both, but 265 does have better storage efficiency

and that ryzen 9 is probably new enough to transcode either without caring.

[heady nexus]

i assume you mean decode

[keen bone]

yeah, whatever 😛

theyre comically cheap chinese cameras (like 15$/ea prior to tariffs) but they do.. actually work well enough

[heady nexus]

not sure about ryzen, but Intel CPUs have had hardware acceleration for decoding HEVC since the 6th gen

[keen bone]

eh frigate lists VAAPI transcoding support on ryzen igpus so I assume it can too

[heady nexus]

yeah, the difference would be whether it actually needs to decode in software or hardware

hardware decoding would mean way less CPU usage

[keen bone]

I think it does support it.

[heady nexus]

should be easy enough to look up

[keen bone]

just gets touchy with.. ROCM support for cpu/gpu model stuff.. so i had to order an m2 adapter for the dual edge TPU..

🤷‍♂️

minipc from.. minisforum or something instead of a full sized server so cant use the pcie riser for it.

[heady nexus]

|| riser i hardly know 'er ||

[keen bone]

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-patrick-boo-gif-1281926785517906930

[heady nexus]

in other news, I have a bunch of these night light plugs flashed with Tasmota which are awesome... except that they all have huge signal issues, I suspect because of how the wi-fi module is mounted... so I bought a few of these which are pin compatible with ESP-12F, and I plan to flash them with Zigbee firmware and swap the module

so wish me luck lol

[keen bone]

depends on how the antenna is I suppose inside of those.

[heady nexus]

It's an SMD antenna (the one on the ESP-12 itself), and if I remember correctly, it's flat on the main board with no opening behind it

[keen bone]

the flat on the board part is probably what is most likely the problem tbh.

[heady nexus]

Yeah

[keen bone]

especially if they put ground planes or something under it.

that'd just be a big thing going

[heady nexus]

Which is how it's meant to be mounted though, but usually the antenna is exposed

[keen bone]

https://tenor.com/view/cookies-gif-11341368259252365706

to the signal.

[keen bone]

photos of inside of it? 🤔

you may also be able to (if you have the skills) just solder on some external antennas

[heady nexus]

Yeah I suppose I could expose part of the antenna, but I'd rather swap in a module with Zigbee fw

[boreal onyx]

Looks like you win the prize for "big-ass ground plane"

[keen bone]

... yep

[boreal onyx]

TBH the power rail for those LEDs being directly underneath won't be helping either

[keen bone]

no cutout for the antenna.. smh

either/or still not ideal.

[heady nexus]

I'm actually curious how Zigbee will perform... I also plan to make it an end device only

[keen bone]

why; it has mains power..?

[heady nexus]

shitty signal

well potentially at least

dunno, maybe i will enable router functionality

this all assumes I'm able to figure out Espressif's SDK for this 🤣

[keen bone]

I mean.. if you've fixed the antenna issue which..

I dont think you're gonna fix with just another board antenna like that tbh

[heady nexus]

yeah I don't plan to fix that lol. really just want to swap on a zigbee module for fun

[keen bone]

🤣

[heady nexus]

[brisk goblet]

you need a module with an external antenna lol

inovelli puts the antenna directly behind the plastic paddle

[heady nexus]

Yeah I couldn't find one unfortunately

[keen bone]

I mean.. if you can cut a trace and solder.. you can add one.. 🤷‍♂️

[heady nexus]

Yeah, I wonder if it would cast a shadow though

We'll see how my zigbee swap nonsense goes

[heady nexus]

@keen bone for context, this is a smart switch (in a metal electrical box) and the night light plug that's right next to it lol

[olive owl]

Excellent, now I can turn on your fan in the middle of the night

[heady nexus]

NBD, only 2^5 x worse signal (I think)

[heady nexus]

Don't steal my bits

[mild grove]

But I need to drill some holes

[mild grove]

Did you know turning random mac off on a galaxy smart watch is a pain in the ass

[keen bone]

what do you mean you don't appreciate samsung's proprietary bullshit!?

how dare you!

[tall axle]

most modern devices do mac randomization.

[mild grove]

I don't have an issue with it in practice and fuck companies that were tracking is with it but I want to track myself

[tall axle]

Yea, that does add some complications.

need a HA client for the watch, then it wouldn't matter. 🤣

[mild grove]

I have HA installed on it. The watch just rotates the mac still unless you turn it off while connecting to wifi. Make that make sense when we are dealing with ble

[keen bone]

unless you're on a home network or such.. then it should be easy

[tall axle]

https://tenor.com/view/jennifer-lawrence-air-quotes-quote-unquote-quotation-marks-better-gif-25501408

with various amounts of easy..

[keen bone]

would take me like.. 10-15 seconds on my phone

I presume samsung requires a separate fucking app?

[tall axle]

no, we're talking the watch. You have to manually add the wifi, then there's a switch. If it pulls the wifi info over from your phone, which is the default way to do it, then there's not a switch.

[mild grove]

Nah, its just buried on the watch where it is only available when you are connecting to wifi

[thorn ore]

Can you connect your watch to your PC by Bluetooth? If so then you can get the resolving key to track it, see: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/private_ble_device/

[mild grove]

I don't think so. It's fine for now I think. I just factory reset the watch and broke it. We will see if it lasts

[teal anchor]

I have trouble finding the bedside at all so radioactive glows would not help me either.

[heady nexus]

No clue how this happened, but one of my zigbee lights started to think it was part of another group, so an unrelated remote bound to that group was controlling it too lol

Tried a few things to fix it, but I ultimately ended up unpairing it and re-pairing it which fixed it

[teal anchor]

I thought you didn't have any Tuya? Maybe something identifying as Tuya doing a little cross-pairing on the side?

[boreal onyx]

They can have a little cross-pairing, as a treat

[heady nexus]

not a tuya device. No clue what the issue was, but it's fixed now

z2m has given me a little grief with groups lately

[olive owl]

It's an area that often has issues. Once I get everything set up, I leave it alone and try not to breathe near the group tab

I wonder if the new UI will help with that

[heady nexus]

i tried the new UI and couldn't really get used to it

[olive owl]

I think it's really the UI and not Z2M

[heady nexus]

I'll probably stick with the legacy UI for now unless there's a compelling reason to move

hmm, I suppose I could try the new UI again for that reason

[olive owl]

Same, and then I had to manually change it back in configuration.yaml

Groups in the UI have had issues for the last 6 months or a year

[heady nexus]

Good to know... surprisingly I haven't used them much until about a year ago lol

I'm also still afraid to upgrade z2m after the issue years ago where pairing devices on the network was only possible near the coordinator

[olive owl]

I use them everywhere, so it's a big problem when they don't work properly

[heady nexus]

oof

[meager quail]

The new group ui or am I missing something?

[olive owl]

The new Z2M UI. Windfront

[heady nexus]

@keen bone this was successful btw

[heady nexus]

Was easier than I thought since it turns out someone created an external Zigbee component for ESPHome

[keen bone]

with esp c6's?

or c3? I forget right now..

[heady nexus]

c6

[raven sage]

c6 and h2 are the ones with 802.15.4 radios right now. the c5 will as well.

[heady nexus]

Alright I identified the pins for the relay, switch input, button, and LED on the Shelly 1 Gen4 and flashed a working config with ESPHome + Zigbee, so I just need to install it now as a garage door controller

Since Shelly hasn't posted this and I haven't found it anywhere, here are the components:

IO4: Button
IO5: Relay
IO15: LED (inverted)
IO10: Switch input (no pull-up)

I also completely forgot to dump the stock firmware before flashing, so I guess I'm stuck with ESPHome 🤣

Also there's no way to flash from MgOS to anything else OTA for ESP32-C6 (from what I've read), so it did require serial flashing. I really didn't want to solder, so I stripped wire wrapping wire to create a wire thin enough to fit in the debug header

Still haven't decided if that was actually easier or not

[jagged harness]

Is this some artifact of how a temp sensor may work? Or of how home assistant polls the device?
This sensor fluctuates by exactly 0.7F in a 20 minute cycle very consistently

If that was my A/C cycle, it should show up on all temp entities I have, but it doesn't

[raven sage]

your other temperature sensors (zigbee?) look like they significantly throttle temperature reporting updates to preserve battery life.

it's also possible that if this temperature sensor is in a multifunction device, there's some other sensor running in it (e.g. particulate measurement) which causes self-heating in the device on cycles like that.

anyways, i expect that the temperature fluctuations are real, your other sensors are unable to show fluctuations that small on that cycle length, which leaves the cause of the fluctuations somewhat indeterminate.

I also threw an esphome based sensor (yellow line) into a room with a couple of zigbee sensors, and you don't see the same sort of thing with cycles, but you can see how battery powered zigbee sensors simply aren't tracking very fast. I'm using an inverter drive portable AC unit, so it doesn't "cycle" unless the cooling required drops below its minimum output, which happened a few times on this graph.

[heady nexus]

more information on this here for anyone that happens to come across this and is interested

[boreal onyx]

@jagged harness As well as what's already been suggested there of self-heating of the sensor device, it'd be worth checking the datasheet for the specific sensor in use.

Unless you're dropping truly egregious amounts of money on the hardware, you're realistically fishing in a pool where the devices have best-case accuracy of about ±0.3°C / 0.5°F. The fact that the reporting precision of yours seems to be around 0.05°F means you're quite likely to also just be getting a bunch of the ADC's noise, and other non-data in your measurement.

Everyone's favourite DS18B20 for instance says this in its datasheet:

±0.5°C Accuracy from -10°C to +85°C
while simultaneously allowing precision of what it calls "9 to 12" bits, of which 8 are the integer °C, and the rest the decimal; allowing increments of 0.5°C (1), 0.25°C (2), 0.125°C (3) or 0.0625°C (4 bits).

I also find - and this is purely personal preference - that there is definitely such a thing as updating the sensor too often. My LoRa sensors default for the sake of battery life to 10 minutes, and honestly the temperature just doesn't move that quickly in my house (even here, where the outside temperature got to around freezing and the heat pump was running defrost cycles).

But my worst case "noise" seems to be only around 0.1°C, noting that this is a somewhat expensive unit with stated accuracy of ±0.2°C (from 0-60°C).

[keen bone]

... bruh 🤣

[keen bone]

you can get the files if you put in effort.

And I bet they'd provide a restore file if you asked. 🤷‍♂️

[heady nexus]

Fite me irl

But really, my post on the forum explains why

[jagged harness]

Oh, that's a good point. Those other sensors are zigbee ones powered by a button cell battery.
The first one is plugged into the wall. And it's an AirGradient One, which has a lot of other sensors on it too

[keen bone]

forum? what is this 2003?

[hallow lance]

https://tenor.com/view/fax-machine-feed-me-recht-kommt-grundgesetz-gesetz-gif-11852174

[heady nexus]

tl;dr: even my smallest breadboard jumpers were too thick for the debug header

[keen bone]

thats because you need special 1.27mm ones. 😉

[heady nexus]

Hence, I stripped wire wrapping wire to make thin enough jumpers

[jagged harness]

It'd be nice if everything was on forums again. Forum posts show up in web searches but not discord conversations

But also, I want answers the moment I have a question and Discord gives that instant satisfaction

[keen bone]

limits how much the slop bots can get

I'm okay with that.

😉

[jagged harness]

But it also limits how much info we can get, making the internet even less usable for real people

[keen bone]

skill issue; learn to use discord search? 😛

[jagged harness]

And what if I'm not in the discord for whatever topic I have a question about?

[keen bone]

suffer.

[jagged harness]

And maybe there are multiple discords for whatever the topic is. So now I have to find all of them and search through each one.

[olive owl]

no, you dont

[keen bone]

actually I've noticed for some reason you can't global-search on the desktop discord app?

just the mobile?

[olive owl]

From the id:guide :

[jagged harness]

Even with those downsides, I have had way better experiences in Discord and Telegram though.
If you ask in a forum, it seems like there's a 50/50 chance of just being insulted for not already being an expert at that thing.
But none of the chat groups I'm in are like that

I still don't get why people make Stack Overflow accounts when they are offended by the concept of people not knowing things

[heady nexus]

Well, I didn't have any and I wanted to get the job done lol

It was only for flashing it anyway

[keen bone]

skill issue.... 😛

[keen bone]

are you sure? plug it in while its mains powred fun stuff will happen. /s

🙃

[weary spoke]

"Any machine is a smoke machine if you use it badly enough" - borrowed from meme channel

[keen bone]

https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/115152538274090027

Graham Sutherland / Polynomial (@[e-mail])

yesterday's weird discovery is that every regular sized carrot I have tested is almost exactly 100kΩ end to end with sharp probes stuck in it. a couple of them come out at 100.0k on the dot.

inb4 NIST carrot-based electrical resistance metrology reference

Favorites

121

chaos.social · Sep 5, 2025, 4:04 PM

hilarious random thread of bored people measuring carrots.

[heady nexus]

The only difference between science and goofing around is documenting the results

[olive owl]

The US has now adopted the carrot in its electrical code

Along with the new unit, of course

[keen bone]

wouldn't be surprised.

america will do anything but use sane things in electricity..

[lost otter]

General question : Are there any advantages to using a ESP32 with a touchscreen for control panels vs tablets? ( cost, DIY factor, etc ) ?

[keen bone]

I mean.. its cheaper? ish. you can get some stuff used pretty cheap for tablets or etc.. but like.. downside is that you either have to have a project that already designed the UI for you.. or do it yourself since you can't just embed an entire browser on it.

[boreal onyx]

As a third option, there are things like Shelly's wall displays, which run Android and support the Home Assistant app. Zero-effort plug-and-play solution:
https://www.shelly.com/products/shelly-wall-display-xl-gray
(in 4" square, or 7" or 10" 16:9 display, and has a switched relay so you don't have to lose the light switch you're replacing with it)

[lost otter]

yeah Im using a Samsung 7 tablet right now, and its working will with kiosk and an LCARS interface

previously I was usin grasp pi / touchscreens

but I dont need to buy 1001 pi's 🙂

[boreal onyx]

End of the day, one way you're spending money, other way you're spending time. Individual circumstances dictate which one of those is more valuable to you 🤷‍♂️

[lost otter]

Well understood

So tablet = more $, less time , esp32 = less $, more time

I can live with that

[boreal onyx]

Pretty much

[lost otter]

Thanks

currently my time is in a knife fight to get streamdeck working with HA

I have a custom 'environmental audio' system in my place, it plays bg sounds on a separate stereo system from my primary one

eg : Thunderstorm, engineering deck sfx from Enterprise D , ocean , etc...

works fine with HA, and on my controls, but streamdeck plugin does not play nice with command line calls

have to build a script, and call that script from the streamdeck

I did it sneaky-like. One of my pi command stations doubles as a VLC player to play the audio for the environment

[tidal drift]

modified an aqara door sensor with an external magnet sensor so i could detect when my mailbox is open and not have the antenna trapped in a faraday cage. I also plugged a zigbee repeater into the outdoor socket at the front door and the connection has been pretty solid!

[granite vault]

Nice work!

[tidal drift]

[trail fractal]

Please tell me it announces the mail using the old AOL "you have mail" sound bite

[teal anchor]

Mine does. It's you got mail...
https://youtu.be/fzRC37grckk?si=V-X_Ox2BO5pHdiLn

[trail fractal]

I've always heard it as "you've got mail" and I'll die on that hill

Lol

Though dangit I see his message isn't quite that now 🤦‍♂️

[teal anchor]

I hear it several times a day, so...

Open the box to put the mail in (1), close the box(2), get the mail(3). usually quicker so we only get one then.

[paper moat]

You've got mail is the 1998 romcom with Tom Hanks.

[lilac pulsar]

does anyone know what this is?

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/323272/Speco-Rqs-10b.html
ManualsLib
SPECO RQS-10B SPECIFICATIONS Pdf Download
View and Download Speco RQS-10B specifications online. B/W Quad Splitter. RQS-10B media converter pdf manual download.
Image
and how do I actually get a signal from this thing?

trying to figure out how to use this thing

[solid holly]

It's an old school coax CCTV combiner.

It takes 4 coax video inputs and outputs them onto one screen, and to a VCR for recording.

[olive owl]

Sounds like something you'd see at a jail

[solid holly]

Hence why I know what it is. 🤣

[olive owl]

Or the local quickie mart

[solid holly]

We have 4 of them at the county courthouse lockup. They haven't completely swapped to IPTV over there yet.

Or, rather, IP cameras.

All the public cameras are Bosch IP cameras, but the ones in the holding cells haven't been upgraded since the "new" courthouse building was built in the 90s.

[lilac pulsar]

ok so now i just gotta figure out where this is supposed to be outputting to

ive checked all the tvs in the house that are plugged into the coax cable and none of them output any channels at least that are auto detected.

[solid holly]

That's not how it works. It won't put channels out. It's for black and white security cameras.

You need coaxial CCTV cameras and monitors. Not TVs.

It takes 4 inputs, and puts them onto one screen.

It's not for TV or cable or satellite. It's for security cameras.

Your TV's do NOT use BNC style coax inputs, and that's what the device you have is using.

You MIGHT be able to convert the BNC into an RCA jack and get display that way. But, again, it's only got 1 or 2 outputs for that, the rest are inputs, and it's expecting a video source on them. Then it formats them into 2x2 picture in picture and outputs it.

[vast leaf]

Hi there, is there a laundrywasher/dryer combo with Ethernet? the reason I ask here is that there might be a workaround to make a wireless laundry washer combo wired?

[keen bone]

.... anything like that would probably be more along the lines of an industrial appliance

[lilac pulsar]

I see. Well it must have had something attached to it to convert the signal or pass it off some where then. It is inside a little network cabinet in a very small closet.

[vast leaf]

I've looked it up myself and asked ChatGPT. Seems like the only ethernet laundry washer is a domestic one. Prosumer washers only have Wifi. That's why I wondered if ChatGPT may have overlooked something. Is there for example a lower end domestic washer that can also be used at home? Or is there a workaround?

[keen bone]

why would a low end washer have fucking ethernet? 🤔

also aamount of people who.. actually would have ethernet there is pretty low.. more likely to find a wifi model.. if you can find one that isn't some app-tied garbage that you can actually connect to that is.

[tulip steeple]

if you want basic notification if your washing machine is done you can use a power measuring plug

[left heath]

Hello, I wanted to make small boxes with an 18650 battery + charging module + ESP01. My problem is that the battery only lasts about ~30 min, I tested several batteries and the problem is the same, the autonomy is small Can you help me?

Thank you!

[hidden goblet]

Are you able to hook them up to a bench top power supply and measure the energy usage? Could help to get a baseline of where the issue lies.

[left heath]

I don’t have this kind of food unfortunately.

I understood that the esp01 didn’t consume much

[hidden goblet]

You can test the amp draw with a multimeter if you have one!
Esp01 draw is generally pretty low but unless they're in sleep mode they can probably use 100-200ma on top of losses from the charger regulating the 5v.
What's the other device you're connecting the esp to? That might be part of the issue.

[left heath]

I will try with a multimeter. The esp is connected to a DHT11 sensor (https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005008504242390.html)

Indeed it does not go to sleep I do not know how to put it to sleep in the code. It runs continuously and connects to wifi continuously too

[open thicket]

Thoughts on putting something like this in the ceiling? Though is to have a microphone like the Satellite1 and a mmWave sensor, maybe a PIR. I don't have a smart home right now, just renovating the bathroom so trying to make it ready

[teal heath]

depending on local regulations stuff inserted into the ceiling needs to have a fire rating. even if you don't "require" it then its probably still a good idea. you can look at something like THIS though, which is designed for normal speakers but it would give protection to something like the above too.
some possible inspiration for this kind of thing HERE which is something similar for an everything presence one sensor.

i imagine that due to humidity in a bathroom you are not necessarily going to get a huge lifespan out of it so having it designed in such a way that you can replace components would, probably be a good idea.

[open thicket]

I'm using some heat inserts in the top, for various mounting options. I'll probably print it in a UL94 V0 filament, also it won't have above 24v. It's also going in a concrete ceiling with drywall. The reason for the shape is so i can attach drywall pieces all around it.

I'm hoping i could fit mics, various sensors like humidity, and a mmwave sensor, maybe PIR

[teal heath]

yeah fire proofing is probably less of an issue but you should still check local regs/home insurance requirements to be sure.

[tiny trench]

My Aqara zigbee motion sensor won't turn on my lutron lights but works with casa lights

[olive owl]

ok

#1284980040940912641 , probably

[heady nexus]

Another Zigbee device conversion complete 🎉 this time it was a Treatlife dimmer plug. It uses a TuyaMCU which means all components are controlled by the separate MCU, and the ESP is basically just a network interface. I wanted to be able to use the button on the plug for my own purposes, so I wired it to the ESP and cut the trace to the MCU

@dire pecan the obsession continues lol

[dire pecan]

I hate how this hobby makes me want to learn electrical engineering.

[keen bone]

make your own pcbs.

Put not-tuya's on them! 😛

[heady nexus]

I've been wanting to do that, but I'd need to learn waaaaaay more about EE

[dire pecan]

Let's see if I break my VPE when I change its case before I start trying this.

[keen bone]

it is.. not that hard really

first board of any real complexity i've designed.. works fine so far.. 😛 (well the v1 did before I fixed the power stage to not be molten lava..)

unless you involve RF I guess

because RF is legitimate witchcraft

[boreal onyx]

The great news - as you have yourself done there - you can just outsource the RF component and only have to handle the "other"

No signal integrity issues, no compliance issues, no nothing

[keen bone]

yep.

I wanted fucking nothing to do with RF stuff myself.

also the seeed xiao modules are just comically cheap

Is a simple wifi antenna hard? probably not no.. I imagine there are probably kicad footprints to premake them.. but.. meh

[heady nexus]

yeah if I designed my own PCB I would absolutely just have pads for an ESP module of some sort

as you did

[heady nexus]

alright now I know there's something wrong with me

[heady nexus]

not satisfied with breaking out the button, I wanted to also break out the red and white LEDs, so I just did that 🤣

traced the LEDs to the respective pins on the secondary MCU, removed said pins, and soldered leads between the LEDs and two GPIOs on the ESP

[keen bone]

goddamn man get some thinner wire... 😛

[heady nexus]

@brisk goblet hey, at least I know it's dumb lol. still fun though

[brisk goblet]

😂 was to the part of having to do more than just the button. Not the craftsmanship.

[heady nexus]

oh yeah I figured. sometimes I can't help myself lol

[thorny flower]

Hi, I am sketching a seat occupancy sensor for my office chair. I want to trigger a "stand up!" alert if I sat down for too long and lower my standing desk if I sit down after it had been raised.

Is my understanding correct that an ESP32 cannot listen for both falling and raising edge interrupts while in deep sleep?

Ah, nevermind. I should be able to toggle the interrupt condition based on whether I just sat down or stood up in software.

[wide obsidian]

Hmm... I have a device that supports modbus. Never messed with that before. Seems like there's a HA integration for modbus, but I don't think controlling this one via HA makes sense (it's an industrial PID oven controller at work, not a home device). Any suggestions? RPi maybe? I see there are RPi RS485 hats, so that seems convenient.

Currently looking at https://www.waveshare.com/2-ch-rs485-hat.htm

For context, this is the device (The SL9696)
https://cdn.automationdirect.com/static/manuals/solocontrolm/solocontrolm.pdf

[sweet trellis]

I know an esphome component exists

[wide obsidian]

Found a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W compatible hat, think I may go that route. I'll look into ESPhome though.

Hrm... found this on the hat info, not sure what it means:

Question:I am looking for some documentation of the register for ModBus Communications (Address)?
Answer:

The RS485 CAN HAT is an adapter only.
For Modbus transmit, you can only transmit modbus command directly.

[broken cave]

I dont know why Im so stoked about this build, but I am lol. Ignore the cables I ran a outlet inside the cabinet.
Stepper motor and esp32.

[olive owl]

Take out the trash 🙂

[boreal onyx]

Needs to be about 14 times faster

Here's some inspiration: https://youtube.com/shorts/d4HCfkiRhfw

[broken cave]

https://tenor.com/view/fantana-approve-yes-ok-i-see-tetarahublot-gif-20384601

lol.. but yeah after I got the cables and everything in their place, the final tweaks got it almost silent and about 25% faster than the video. At first the stepper motor sounded like an airplane flying through the kitchen.

My 3d printer stopped working for some reason tho. idk

[heady nexus]

Never fails to make me laugh

[tribal sail]

https://github.com/geo-tp/ESP32-Bus-Pirate thought this might be of interest to folks

[tribal sail]

Can confirm. Work in high frequency RF land. It is sorcery, witchcraft, blasphemy and demonic resurrection depending on the time of day

[thorny flower]

Hi, can anyone point me in the right direction for an ESP32-C6 board to start dabbling in some DIY sensoring? I am struggling in finding the proper board. There are so many different variants and the nomenclature differs from vendor to vendor. I know that I'd like a C6, but yeah...

[heady nexus]

I have some of these and some of these

[keen bone]

I mean.. you get any c6 you wanat.. and a breadboard/solder stuff and use pins..e tc

[agile cave]

anyone been able to flash the TYWE1S with tuya convert

[heady nexus]

tuya-convert hasn't been a reliable option for flashing alternative firmware for years

the exploit was patched a while ago

[agile cave]

so other than manually soldering up to the chip and connecting to serial there is no other "easy" way?

[bitter panther]

I have an external NAS connected with an esata cable. I can't seem to get it recognized by the home assistant.

[thorn ore]

#1284966540617449515

[keen bone]

...e-sata

[teal anchor]

You spelled that wrong. I think it's spelled eww.

[tacit roost]

anyone know how to configure the network interface in hacli?
or even better get an actual shell

for some reason my nic is showing as disabled and I'm not finding the cli very intuitive

[olive owl]

https://www.home-assistant.io/common-tasks/os/#home-assistant-via-the-command-line

login to get to the OS shell. Please move to #1284966540617449515 for more questions

[tacit roost]

the command isn't documented

[olive owl]

#1284966540617449515

[broken cave]

Actually reminds me of a problem I've been trying to ignore. The tuya developer account hack to get the LocalTuya integration working makes me feel like I need a shower. How are folks getting tuya working locally (other than not buying them 🤣 )?

[teal anchor]

not buying them )

or just use the stupid cloud so they work.

[heady nexus]

flashing alternative firmware via serial

[jagged harness]

I have a deep fryer that doesn't display the current temperature, just if it's reached the target or not.
Is there a type of thermometer I could use to make a sensor for this? (Or a pre-existing module)
It reaches 375F/190C. That means a 3D printer thermosistor would be able to handle the heat. But I imagine that's not food safe

It takes so long to heat up that I sometimes forget I turned it on and leave it running for hours. So that's why I'd want a smart sensor for it

[teal anchor]

Thermocouple

There are pre-made bbq thermometers that bluetooth that would work.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=best+bbq+thermometer+wireless

[jagged harness]

Thanks, that's a good idea!

[teal anchor]

Personally an esp with a thermocouple is where I would oprobably go though. I use that in my pellet stove and oil furnace up to 1200F.

[boreal onyx]

Just check the temperature ratings on the battery powered ones

A lot of them the food sensor end is only rated up to 100C or so, because it's basically being kept cool by the food it's poked into, and they take advantage of that to keep the battery "cool" by having it in the food end

If it's the kind with a cabled sensor you'll be fine, but the all in one wireless ones are really only made for oven/bbq cooking where only one end gets really hot

[lost horizon]

Greetings!

I am just beginning to get into Home Assistant waters for a remote installation (camper). I recently heard about HA and have started studying options. This workshop appears to be the best spot to present my thoughts and hopefully receive feedback.

The installation location only has power, 120VAC with some battery backup capacity. There is no means of communication (Wi-Fi / cell). The plan is to periodically transmit the data over an RF link.

The SBC will be a Raspberry Pi 4. HA will be installed in a Docker container. Data does not need to be persistent: saving to RAM would be ideal. For starters, I wish to monitor Mopeka level sensors and battery gauges. Eventually, I will likely add additional sensors (E.g., indoor/outdoor temperature sensor).

Everything needs to survive a complete power cycle.

Thank you for reading and thank you for your comments!

Best regards,
Fred

[cerulean aspen]

birthday is coming around and sadly lots of smart tech is expensive. suggestions for DIY stuff?

[trail fractal]

Wled stuff is always fun, and there's always an esp deck you can build

[thorn ore]

Browse the esphome components for something interesting. Most of them are a couple of bucks on Aliexpress.

[cerulean aspen]

voice assistant may be fun

this is epic inspiration, thanks!

i honestly just don't know how hard it would be to somehow like.. add a voltage power reader to the entire house

[thorn ore]

That depends what a "voltage power reader" is.

[teal anchor]

Voltage is easy if it don't kill you. Power is harder. Voltage Power, hmm, have to think about that one...

[trail fractal]

Maybe they mean volt-amp? Like the UPS ratings that are more common now.

Amps is the hard one, CT clamps are about the only reasonable way for house wiring

[thorn ore]

Then for ESPHome they should look up the PZEM components.

[thorny flower]

What are good options of battery powering this type of ESP32?
https://www.waveshare.com/w/upload/2/2e/ESP32-C6-Zero_Pin.png

[thorn ore]

A buck boost 3.3V DC-DC converter, a battery under-volt protection module, and a battery with sufficient capacity to power your circuit based on the load current, your required run time and sleep/wake duty cycle.

[keen bone]

the better option is to... get an esp that already supports it. 🙃

(Seed xiao ESPc3/c6 has battery support)

[cerulean aspen]

for those in US: typically can you just buy things direct from micro center or generally will it have to be aliexpress or Amazon or whatever

[teal anchor]

Microcenter has a brick & mortar & mail order. Perhaps this applies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

[cerulean aspen]

yeah that applies. I don’t have anything specific to buy yet but I’m thinking of projects, and it’s my birthday soon so I need to figure out what to tell people to get without breaking bank

[teal anchor]

Well if you tell them Ali, you will get Tuya, so avoid that.
I suggest create an Amazon list and share it.

[ivory trellis]

little weekend challenge was to design this esp32-c3fh4 board which is the same size as the ld2450 that is inisde of this little box, final dimensions are 5x2x2 cm pertty neat, can't wait to send those to prod.

[indigo pine]

What are alternatives for ESP to produce Smart Home devices? (manufacture, not home DIY for fun)

[trail fractal]

Apollo automation manufactures Smart home devices using esps

Hell that's all tuya is too is esps with crap tier firmware

[boreal onyx]

Basically everything Shelly makes is an ESP (Espressif make them custom versions of the chips these days)

I mean heck, have a look at https://devices.esphome.io/type/misc to see how many random-ass devices have an ESP inside

[keen bone]

stm32 maybe?

But like.. there's a good reason basically everyone uses ESP.. its dirt cheap and has wifi/bt/etc onboard.

[ivory trellis]

I meannnn you don’t use stm32 for IOT devices imo I’m sure they have a lineup for it but it’s not really their strong suit

The best contender would be maybe Nordic Semiconductors ?

The reason so many pepps use ESPs is because they are highly integrated, you don’t need a lot of components you already have the RF figured out, it’s really fast to design a product no big headache

[keen bone]

yep... don't reinvent the wheel.

Unless you're tuya and want to be a rat bastard on puprose.

[raven sage]

Silicon Labs is also an alternative (they have quite a variety of chips that do zigbee/thread, but not as many which do wifi)

[brisk goblet]

Nordic too

[ivory trellis]

To be noted Nordic are generally more rigged towards low power systems ESPs are also more powerful

[keen bone]

comically low power even.

Like.. harvest-power-from-rf-low-power.

[ivory trellis]

https://tenor.com/view/captain-america-i-understand-reference-i-get-it-gif-18109305

[cerulean aspen]

just so im understanding everything properly: the idea is with esphome, we have an esp32 run esphome which can be integrated with HA and then its just an esp32 we can use for whatever?

[olive owl]

ESPHome is a framework that can build images for ESPs and some other parts along with some external peripherals and also has the ability to talk natively to HA if you want

This page has improved since the last time I saw it: https://esphome.io/

[sonic pond]

Hi all
I'm trying to figure out how to get my boiler some smarts
I have a modern boiler, it supports OpenTherm but is not wired for it.
I have 2 heating zones with esrtp4+ thermostats connected (wired)

I've figured out a few options

1. wire in a Shelly relay behind both thermostats
   This seems safest to me, I don't have to open my boiler up and I keep a simple 'UI' for my family.
   A. How do I power the relays? The thermostats are battery powered

2. Open up my boiler and wire in a DIYLESS thermostat to the openTherm connection.
   This seems straightforward but I have more questions
   A. What happens to my existing thermostats?
   B. What about the 2 zones?
   C. How to power it?
   D. Do I invalidate any safety 'things' by doing this myself?

[worn surge]

I'm looking for a smart speaker or diy smart speaker solution for home assistant that actually has good speaker audio. I have yet to encounter a design that has reasonable speaker and amplification. from the reviews i've seen even the "premium" home assistant voice preview edition has a lackluster onboard speaker. I'm not looking for magic, just something that's similar to an amazon or google smart speaker without paying a ton of money... or heck, I guess even an esphome solution with a good amp and speaker would work (idk why everyone i've seen so far has used really poor ones)... anyone have any ideas?

[teal heath]

the 3.5mm jack on the VPE gives some options. I have this setup for example

ReSpeaker have some stuff that gives you basically the same functionality of a VPE but allows you to wire your own speaker into it.

[worn surge]

thanks but I was looking for an integrated solution, like an echo

I'm not looking for concert audio here... just something like an echo dot... idk why so many of these projects have garbage speaker/amps in them

I suppose I could try to find an old echo dot, just keep it's mic muted (or snip the mic module) and use it as a media player

then I could set up an esp32 with a mic module, and use ha to redirect the output

[teal heath]

a lot of it is probably to do with production costs. increasing the cost of the device to include some better components will be expansive. these kind of things are not hitting the economies of scale that amazon are when they make millions of devices and also they can afford to sell them at almost a loss because they bring in other business.

[worn surge]

yeah, that's true... i'm sure echos are subsodized by amazon due to directing people to make purchases with them and data collection

[teal heath]

you could just add a i2s amp at that point and connect to the speaker

[worn surge]

I could, but i'm not sure what i2s amps and speakers don't suck...

[teal heath]

you could have a seperate amp inbetween a basic i2s output and a speaker too

there's been plenty of custom mods like THIS for example

In the long term there will likely be better devices. but its a bit baby steps at the moment.

[worn surge]

I guess instead of an amplifier board, it wouldn't be that hard to find an i2s headphone dac/amp, get a set of cheap amplified computer speakers, and 3d print myself an enclosure...

[teal heath]

yeah, at some point when i get around to getting a 3d printer ill probably make an enclosure of the previously linked setup with VPE and anker speaker.

THIS is another example of customised stuff

[worn surge]

3d printing is a whole profession in and of itself if you let it 😄 - I just ordered all of the components to turn my voron v2.4 into a stupid fast and accurate 6-tool multimaterial tool changer 😄

[teal heath]

I do kinda want one but honestly i don't really want to get sucked into being a 3d printing person. but instead just use it as a tool for other stuff.

[worn surge]

imo it's great for both. I've got a bambu p1s+ams as a workhorse, a creality k1 max for slightly larger stuff, a self-built voron v0 for small part, high iteration fast rapid prototyping, and a self-built voron v2 for big plates of parts or larger parts, that will soon do multimaterial/multicolor as well. https://i.imgur.com/ICYXcLw https://i.imgur.com/11aU52z.jpg - I rather enjoy building them and extending their functionality.

[meager quail]

this is where I'm at

[teal heath]

CAT!

[worn surge]

yes, Star kitteh likes to hang out on the tops of machines when they aren't doing stuff 😄

and here she is on the top of the k1 max.

but her fav spot is on her very special $10k just-for-her custom cat warmer (or at least I think that's her perspective)

[teal heath]

🙂

[indigo pine]

Is it for all kind of Smart Home system all mainly for HA?

[wintry plaza]

90 feet of cabling, 4 HX711, 1 ESP32 and 16 load cells later:

[wraith cedar]

I want this to know my wife's lover weight

[wintry plaza]

I could just ask her to weight her lovers if I really needed that lol

[thorn ore]

16 load cells? Why?

And how are you going to deal with the eventual drift?

[trail fractal]

Gotta have a tar button nearby

To reset the zero point

[thorn ore]

tare or tar and feather pillows?

[wintry plaza]

To get 4 zones

[wintry plaza]

Imma use the radarr occupancy and the weight.

If under 40 lb and no occupancy

tare

[wintry plaza]

ill burn that bridge when i get there 😛

[trail fractal]

<@&330946878646517761>s

[hallow lance]

Thx. And gone.

[lilac pulsar]

is it a good idea to get converters for my existing coaxial security cameras to Ethernet so i can just easily connect them to the network? They are already all connected and I have the coaxial running to a networking box with my Ethernet already so I can just convert it at the end and connect it to a switch or something pretty easily. Any recommendations for this situation?

most the options I see they have 2 converters on each end which requires you to buy new cameras.

[teal anchor]

By the time you buy converters for old low-res coax analog cameras, you can probably just buy new lower end Ethernet or WIFI cameras that will give you a better picture less cost.

[lilac pulsar]

buying the ethernet cameras will require converters because the wiring is coaxial

[teal anchor]

Wire?

[lilac pulsar]

was looking at these https://amzn.to/48U4CSf

not sure if these just convert it to a signal that is easily captured via the network or you need both at each end.

basically if the camera is already a coaxial camera and the wire is coaxial, I want to just convert that signal to something that can be used on the network.

[teal anchor]

https://www.amazon.com/REOLINK-Argus-PT-Solar-Panel/dp/B07W6PXRR8/ same cost

[lilac pulsar]

but i already have wires and power to each camera

wifi is nice, but its nice to not have to use it as well

[teal anchor]

Then you can get cheaper without the solar and the batteries. It doesn't matter in the end, you do what you have decided on doing already.

[uneven mural]

For ethernet over coax, you should look up MoCA adapters. I've seen these in pairs for less than $20

[teal anchor]

Especially if you have power out there already, don't need POE.

[lilac pulsar]

ok looks like the best option.

[uneven mural]

E.g. https://www.amazon.com//dp/B0CCSSHR8K

Hmm, reviews say "not a moca adapter". So check reviews first 😵‍💫

[lilac pulsar]

Are there IP cameras that are better than others in terms of accessing the video and audio feed directly and not using their software?

or are they all like that

[meager quail]

Reolink and Unifi have good HA integrations from what I understand

[uneven mural]

I've used both reolink and unifi. They both play nice with HA. But you need their app to do initial configuration and firmware updates. No cloud accounts required

[meager quail]

I think that's pretty typical (setup and updates)

[uneven mural]

I prefer unifi since my network is unifi and they integrate well

[meager quail]

I think there are a couple very minor differences between how you trigger off the cameras in automations but it basically comes down to brand preference.

[tropic cypress]

Hi all, is there a way to use sentence trigger to activate a single led on an addressable led-strip? What led hardware would be needed to control a single led? I want to use sentence trigger to say e.g. "Pink Floyd - Pulse" and want the led-strip to indicate the location of that album in my vinyl cabinet with one led above the corresponding album. Thanks in advance for your input!

[teal heath]

that's a cool idea, using esphome you could assign a light entity to each led of a strip which you could then control separately although i believe this will use up more memory in overheads which is something to keep an eye on. ESPHome Documentation on the partition component - https://esphome.io/components/light/partition/

[tropic cypress]

Just looking at that, keep you posted , thanks

forseeing issues with 2000+ albums and led strip has 144leds p/mtr i guess 🙂 maybe reducing to a roughly indication per album. The right controller choice is the QuinLED-Dig-Uno i suppose?

[teal heath]

I am not sure on hardware for this (maybe someone else thats messed with led strips can jump in though) i imagine the leds/m depends on how accurate you want it to be.
how are you planning to house the data?
I imagine you have a database somewhere with albums and led reference and the sentence trigger performs a lookup on the variable then sets the desired led.
I am curious what the plan is for this process? (assuming you have gotten that far) and also consideration of updating it (assuming you intend for your collection will grow)

[tropic cypress]

Actually, many years ago i build my own pinball machine using 4k 32"monitor, background and dmd monitor, force feedback etc. Also setup arddressable strips (that's why i still have some of those strips) but... years ago... Have to start new with this project so i am not this far at this point. Hoping anyone has fiddled with this 🙂

And with the pinball software the leds where already programmed inside the pinball table files

[tropic cypress]

before adding addressable leds around display.

[sudden plinth]

@tropic cypress this might help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C4i-2IqSS4

[tropic cypress]

will take a look at it, Thanks SJ

[teal anchor]

I don't think WLED can put like 100 segments in a session, but the pixelheads would have lots of ideas for you in another server... https://discord.gg/HeMW9wXXDc and ask in https://discord.com/channels/469330414121517056/511947803115913217

[meager quail]

<@&330946878646517761>

[grim igloo]

Once is generally enough. But thanks.

[olive owl]

You must become the spam you wish to vanquish...

[meager quail]

https://tenor.com/view/i-cannot-accept-selina-dalton-mr-malcolms-list-i-will-not-accept-i-cant-accept-gif-25984855

[tropic cypress]

Thanks, gonna take a look right now. Thanks for your input 😉

[indigo pine]

Is https://esphome.io/ ok (vs own code) for some serious controlling? I mean no bulb, but something really important which can't fail. Something what has to work without HA connection and with. Something to manufacture, not DIY?

[keen bone]

I mean.. sometimes?

You have to change some defaults so it doesn't reboot loop when it can't connect or etc.. I think?

[keen bone]

but also something actually critical.. probably time to write shit yourself? 🤷‍♂️

[indigo pine]

yeah this is what I read in the internet. Although I didn't find answer why exactly. Is it not stable enough or something? Too slow?

[teal anchor]

I mean, it's written so idiots (like me) can script in YAML to have the compiler do stuff.
If you want more, just do stuff yourself in the compiler.
However bdraco is all over esphome now, and you know that things are getting refined pretty tightly. My suggestion is just go with it and use it.
It's only considered unstable by some because they have no idea what they are doing in the yaml and tell the thing to compile garbage.

[indigo pine]

Is a way to turn off users to overwrite ESP? Setting prepared values by me is ok, but keeping it available for everyone to change firmware is not.

[teal heath]

I am not sure you will find much support here for locking people out of a device... however I think that esp32's have an internal fuse that you can blow which prevents the firmware from being overwritten. that's how some manufactures lock them down although I dont really know the specifics of it tbh. people could still fully replace the esp32 chip but that is a much bigger job...

[keen bone]

hint: write your own code thats not what esphome is for.

and also.

your code.

is not that important. 😉

and then y'know.

read the espressif documentation don't dig here.

.... then again judging by previous quesitons I have a feeling that you're probably vibing this... so.. oof. 🙃

[indigo pine]

I am starting my adventure with ESP. I have over 20 years of experience in IT. But not exp in hardware yet. So yes I can have mix of newbie questions with questions which make sense 😉

[keen bone]

20 years IT could be 20 years of IT helpdesk.

🙃 my statement remains on your code is not actually that important enough to blow the e-fuse.. if you're asking these questions the very last thing you want to do is blow the e-fuse consider it'd be locking things rather permanently..

[indigo pine]

heh not in helpdesk 😉

I am trying to figure out if on the beginning I can use esphome to make something like shelly or other brand doest. Updates / firmware changes are good, but I would like to control them (not random user or scriptkid hacker).

BTW Do you recommend more ESP focused discord? "Espressif MCUs" seems to be dead.

[keen bone]

I think shelly is built off..

https://mongoose-os.com/

but regardless.

Even shelly doesn't give a fuck.

🙃 if you're doing somethign actually mission critical.. probably better to use somehting tried and true like.. a PLC

[indigo pine]

thank you. I really know nothing about hardware 🙂

[teal anchor]

Explitives deleted...

[thorn ore]

Are you off your meds and in pain or something? That was uncalled for.

[teal anchor]

yes

[indigo pine]

short and simple way to give people context instead of making them read to 300 words describing my experience, skills etc. to make them understand what I can need and what I can handle.

giving context for the question help with communication

[lofty stream]

Hey, I was directed here with a question about a potentially complex task to encode time lapse videos recorded from synology surveillance station. I made a post in automations, but since it isn't strictly a HA thing maybe this is a better place to discuss it? I think this link will take you to my post: https://discord.com/channels/330944238910963714/1427676300306288691

[thorn ore]

#rules Rule 7

[marble bobcat]

this is quite off topic, but I am at a stage with this project where I am trying to share it with people and open it to the public. It's a roomba with a raspberry pi and a camera, and you can drive it around my basement.

https://rover.otter.land/

[thorn ore]

#1284960456880029707

[teal heath]

damit, wanting to hack a device, battle my way into the case and its fucking potted 🙁

[boreal onyx]

Controller for outdoor lights?

[teal heath]

yup, was hoping it was an esp that i could hack. but looks like i will have to use a different controller. the strip looks like generic connections so shouldn't be much of an issue really

ordered one of the athom esphome controllers. although the really annoying thing is that i had order stuff for another project from there 3 hours earlier. so double shipping sadness

[heady nexus]

You could give cloudcutter a try

[teal heath]

its not got wifi enabled. takes ble commands (or IR)

[heady nexus]

Ah gotcha

[teal heath]

i wouldnt really have minded using the IR with an esp+blaster but the BLE cant be switched off and there is no auth. so its open season on anyone that wants to mess with it

[hallow lance]

Don't look at me! I'm too far away. It was my neighbor's Switchbot Bot without password attached to his coffee machine.

[teal heath]

yeah... the fact i have messed with other peoples stuff before is how i know how easy it is...

i probably wont be installing them for a few weeks anyway. gotta wait until i have at least a day alone and to myself so i am not interupted whilst installing them

[thorn ore]

Soak that thing in dichloromethane. It will dissolve most potting compounds. Don't leave it in too long though. It will dissolve most component encapsulation too.

Also don't breathe it.

[old pike]

wear gloves, operate in a well-ventilated area, demolish the building and silence any witnesses.

[hallow lance]

You need other chemical components to dissolve the witnesses though.

[teal heath]

maybe ill have a play with that at some point but seems easier to just get another controller and make the strip work with that instead.

[thorn ore]

It was mostly a joke. It's fine for industrial espionage but you are very likely to damage the item when depotting that way.

[teal heath]

now you are just making it seem like a challenge...

[thorn ore]

If you are buying an alternative controller you have nothing to lose.

[hallow lance]

https://tenor.com/view/breaking-bad-walter-white-jesse-pinkman-heisenberg-vince-gilligan-gif-17016123874427286459

[keen bone]

you mean "bribe the underpaid person"? 😛

😛 why depot when you can just bribe someone underpaid for something duh! /s

tho does remind me I need to make a better.. system to put an esp in the ground-ish for some outdoor lighting control.. thought my conformal coating was enough (it wasn't apparently)

... so I could do a full potting.. or maybe I do a grease-nipple and inject grease to pressurize the print enough to keep water out..

[teal anchor]

We don't want to know what you are doing with your grease-nipples.

What about get it working in an enclosure, make sure you are happy with it, then fill the container with epoxy. It's a <$10 thing, throw it out if it fails.
Don't tell me you are going to remove the grease to fix it if it breaks a wire...

[keen bone]

I mean its better to be able to service/fix if something goes wrong.

thus why I waas hoping simply using conformal coating would be sufficient

[tulip steeple]

I'm trying to give an android TV access to a tailscale network. Do I understand correctly I need to setup subnet access for that?

stupid TV won't let me install tailscale on the unit itself

[crimson fern]

Yeah, you'll need a subnet router if you can't add the TV to the tailnet directly. Docs here: https://tailscale.com/kb/1019/subnets

I decided to experiment with a corsi-rosenthal box as an air cleaner in my shop before dropping real money on a commercial air cleaner. The goal is to reduce the fine sawdust that dust collection doesn't catch. Wound up adding a dry contact relay I had laying around to it so it's controllable via Home Assistant. Next up is a PM2.5 sensor to automate it turning on/off. https://imgur.com/a/s22NOCp

[tulip steeple]

I think I set this up correctly. I'm using the home assistant tailscale addon. However I can't access the nas from the tv, just says unable to connect.

[compact fog]

Hello everyone, I had an idea. I want to create a timer in my HA dashboard, so that when I click the timer icon I can set a duration, and when the time is up, my lights turn on or something else happens. Does anyone know how I can do this? ChatGPT hasn’t been very helpful so far. :/

[trail fractal]

#find-support #find-a-channel that sounds like something for the automations or configuration channels

This tends to be for folks 3d printing, building pcbs, etc

[obsidian skiff]

The wife says that my desk is an eye sore and I wanted to raise my monitors when I get to my desk, but I was wondering if you guys had any insight on any silent linear actuators that would raise 26 inch monitors

[teal heath]

reminded me of THIS

[tropic cypress]

me too, but could't find it lol

[meager quail]

Yeah, same. I think you're just looking for a TV lift.

https://www.tvlift.com/tv-lifts/pop-up-tv-lifts/

(no idea about the brand)

[olive owl]

Not sure if that will make the desk any less of an eyesore, though 🙂

[obsidian skiff]

Gee thanks

[trail fractal]

Lol how many keyboards do you need at a single desk

I'm counting 2 on and one on the side

[sweet trellis]

Yeah us normal people put our third keyboard away in a cabinet

[olive owl]

that makes it harder to use with your third hand

[sweet trellis]

Pro tip: open all your firewall ports so the script kiddies can help you type faster

[heady nexus]

i swear that scene was added solely to annoy anyone who knows anything about technology lol

[teal heath]

so yeah... obviously I couldn't get lucky enough for the connectors to be compatible...

plan is to chop the cable of the original driver and make it into an adaptor. got a couple of bits coming tomorrow then ill attack it with a soldering iron and hope i dont let the magic smoke out of anything.

[trail fractal]

I love this scene because of how absurd it is

[olive owl]

The zoom in makes me think that the actors didn't want to participate and they used standins 🙂

[keen bone]

you're likely just gonna need to desk-mount them and use a standing-desk type thing instead tbh.

[teal heath]

slightly dodgy but hopefully will work... now we see if it works (or at least keeps the magic smoke in)

so... it does work. but apparently red and green are swapped somewhere. probably wired differently on the cheap random connector the thing uses. however i can fix that in ESPHome. will call this a win.

[teal heath]

and we indeed have a winner 🙂

[heady nexus]

I love that binding a Philips Hue Zigbee remote to a Zigbee group works with ThirdReality lights, but not a Zigbee group with Philips Hue lights 🤣 make it make sense

The binding aspect works, but it doesn't control the Hue lights at all lol

[sweet trellis]

I had a Lutron Aurora controlling hue can lights through the hub, but decided to merge them into my Zigbee network to improve coverage. Apparently the Aurora can’t bind to a group and otherwise has a max 5 bound devices. I have 8 lights… make it make sense

I did get an inovelli switch to bind to a Zigbee group of those Hue lights

[keen bone]

https://tenor.com/view/the-power-of-christ-compels-gif-13129137

[tropic cypress]

yeah not all rgb strips are rgb wired 😉

[teal heath]

yeah, i was going by the colours of the cores used. I did check the positive line was right to be sure to keep the magic smoke in but apparently the signal lines were not quite right. but meh.

[heady nexus]

I just remembered that I set a relay as a PWM channel in Tasmota on a smart plug years ago for shits and giggles and this was the result 🤣

I think the sweet spot which is in the video was 700 Hz

[teal heath]

lol, that relay was probably very upset...

[heady nexus]

Most likely lol

[normal idol]

Hey everyone, I'm thinking of building a small AI desktop robot that can integrate with Home Assistant. Has anyone done something similar? 🤓

[teal heath]

can you explain a bit more about what you mean by "AI desktop robot"?

[keen bone]

the habit of anything these days.

Gotta stick the "AI" into fucking everything! 😄

[normal idol]

Do you know Emo Petbot? Like that one, but that one really isn't smart.

[normal idol]

I added some AI to the robot because I think it makes it smarter. For example, when we're chatting, it can sense my frustration from the context and turn on a fan or something.

Of course, I don't know if this will work either. Have you guys done anything similar : )

[keen bone]

slop isn't "smart"

it infers from chat queues.

[sweet trellis]

Track down my usb to serial adapter, get it rewired to flash the emporia vue utility connect again with esphome, futz around getting esphome working with windows again, manage to reflash without letting the magic smoke out...

It was the OEM USB power supply the whole time

[normal idol]

I think he used a lot of slot responses to make the bot seem lively. But these pre-programmed responses are always limited. To spark more conversation, each round of dialogue requires integration with a large language model. That’s why I want to add some AI. Perhaps it could be more lifelike?

[keen bone]

or.

or you could.. do something that serves a purpose.. rather than just "OOH I NEED TO SHOVE SLOP ON THIS!"

[keen bone]

we aren't a VC you're pitching to.. most people here probably like..

... build things that serve a purpose.. 🤷‍♂️

[cerulean aspen]

https://www.microcenter.com/product/691617/adafruit-industries-infrared-ir-remote-transceiver-stemma-jst-ph-2mm-940nm-emitter-38khz-receiver

I'm going to guess I'll have to solder this to my esp32?

eh not entirely sure where but i'll have to figure it out

[flint prawn]

I looked for a esp bot that can be controled from home assistant but they dont exists

[main vine]

I looking into mmWave low power sensors and so far I found the Rd-03L and LD2410S but their I can't find any review or info not coming from the manufacturer, did anyone try it?

[mild grove]

better than the tv being on the mantel!

[keen bone]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-GzUTyIH9c

is not a bad video.

[golden garnet]

I know this isn’t the truenas discord, but have a feeling a lot of you also use truenas. I’m finally looking to expand my nas and I’m looking for an affordable disk shelf, does anyone have any recommendations?

[flint cliff]

Hello I would like to ask for help
I tried to flash a xiaomi thermometer and since then it doesn't show anything on the display
https://github.com/atc1441/ATC_MiThermometer

[fast seal]

Esphome seems like firmware and modules for standard stuff..

I wanna do a thermostat, saw there was already a thing fot that, I just don't know how combinable things are, eg. I have a bunch of air quality sensors I'd like to use, don't know how possible that combination would be (using one esp22)

I'm down to write firmware too if I must but I can't be the first to want to do something like this

gotta do more reading about eaphome but any tips/answers appreciated

[keen bone]

I mean esphome supports 'climate' objects on the devices.. but I'd probably say more complete to use https://github.com/jmcollin78/versatile_thermostat on the HA side and delegate end control to an esp probably? 🤷‍♂️

[ivory trellis]

Made my own little version of all those esp boards for presence sensors

Bh1750 on-board

For some reason the BH will refuse to compile, maybe an oddity of the esp32-c3 idk

[fast seal]

I'll check that project out thanks

[fast seal]

So instead of like, running the esphome thermostat module (or whatever they call their firmware things), I'd just run a generic esphome to expose the relay and sensors to ha and let versitle actually do the thermostatting, if I'm understanding correctly?

And if so, I think the one down side is it wouldn't work if HA is down, while the esp could be standalone if I added some buttons or something. Though I probably won't, haha

To be clear on what I want to do, I have an esp32 and want to use it to replace a dumb thermostat. Just needs to switch a relay on/off (valve for radiative cooling)
might add a oled temperature display.

[fast seal]

Or wait, re-reading your statement, I think you meant on the HA side as far as the integration for controlling it goes. I'm down to use whatever there, I was more curious about the actual firmware for the esp32 tself

[keen bone]

that depends what yoou're using to control your climate stuff..

[keen bone]

reminds me I need to.. finish my pcbs

literally maade for this topic.... 🤣

[summer pumice]

That's a really nice looking board. I haven't been following the conversation. Mind filling me in on what it's for?

[ivory trellis]

fixed, what a nice unit, next step esp32-c6 zigbee here we go

[summer pumice]

Someone asked to see the carpets I use the tufting gun for. These are the only two that didn't sell at the last craft show.

My wife also makes crochet dolls and I've dabbled in making embroidery on a machine.

[wraith cedar]

Hi guys, bought a cheap LIDL/Silvercrest 4435 Label Printer (https://www.lidl.de/p/silvercrest-thermo-label-printer-inkl-etikettenrolle/p100384543), and to my disappointment it only works from some smartphone app. I want to use it with a real keyboard and mouse, so I'd like to hack it to use it from a PC. I din't find anything after a web, and an AI search. Any pointers?

[teal heath]

from PCI? ... maybe a missed something? do you actually mean a pci slot? if so then... no...
its bluetooth so you might be able to rig something up. although tbh if your just wanting to use it from 1 place and just want a keybaord then plugging a keyboard into your phone might be easier...

[keen bone]

sounds like you get to..

... reverse engineer its bluetooth protocols. 😄

... or just buy a better printer that has an app that isn't absolute trash

[wraith cedar]

omg so many typos in my post, sorry. It was "from a PC".
connecting a BT keyboard could be an idea, but the tiny screen and the app maye for touchscreen would still be here.

[wraith cedar]

yeah my question here was a last resort... 😁
I'm cheap, and I don't need to do THAT many labels, so I think I'll live with that cheap-ass printer

[keen bone]

https://www.amazon.com/Brother-PTP300BT-Smartphone-Technology-Compatible/dp/B071RSC7ZH

I meant look for like this one.. used on ebay or something

[teal heath]

was gunna say, how much use are you planning on getting out of a €25 lidl printer? 😛 if your using it enough that you need a proper pc setup for your tasks then its the wrong tool for the job 😛

[keen bone]

the BT app isn't bad.. etc.. 🤷‍♂️

and that one can also do shrink wrap cable ones too if you modify their cartridges soemtimes.. 😛

[teal heath]

brady are pretty good too apprantly but they are not cheap. but depends on how much you need to use it i guess. they are more designed as industrial tools.

[wraith cedar]

You underestimate my hate for touchscreen keyboards... 😉 I can also borrow a Dymo, but there are such a chore to use, too (in spite of a physical... "keyboard")

[wraith cedar]

But this one seems to be only for "a mobile device or tablet".

[teal heath]

just physically plug a regular keyboard into the phone. it will probably work fine with the app

i have a usb-c - usb-a adaptor and have plugged random stuff into my phone with it. android is pretty good

[wraith cedar]

[searches for a female USB-A <-> mal USB-C adapter]

[teal heath]

the one I have is from "Lindy"

I have had ethernet adaptors plugged into it and all sorts

[wraith cedar]

Actually, I have one of these laying around. I'll try that

[keen bone]

pay more money if you want desktop usage too. 😉

https://www.amazon.com/Brother-Business-Professional-Connected-Bluetooth®/dp/B0B1KZJXPG

I paid like 50$ on ebay for a used one of these.. keyboard on it.. but also a full mobile app.. and full desktop app too

[wraith cedar]

For $50 I might have fallen for this. Now let me concentrate on not mistyping my labels. 😉

[keen bone]

🙃 check ebay

[amber narwhal]

Seconded for Lindy, if you can’t find a Ugreen, that and Vention are good alternatives

[keen bone]

ah

closer to shelly pin pitch then

(the shelly debug pin pitch; I mean)

orr uhh

its a..

[fast seal]

iuno its tiny haha

[keen bone]

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2743

reminds me of that

[fast seal]

annoyingly so hopefully it did come with a cable that I'll find or at least that riser that was pictured but even that doesn't look like it changes pitch

yeah looks close

wonder if I have a cable like that actually

is what they show goes with it but the socket was also wider

similar pitch tho

doesn't help all my prototyping stuff is all over but yeah it should've been in the ziplock I put it in but the damn thing had a hole lol

omg

from amazon review

[keen bone]

... oof

clearly someone who doesn't know how flux works

[fast seal]

does look like he's using the plug though so I shuold have one

might make it a little easier but yeah

haha

this is one I'd be using the microscope on for sure

I suppose I could just order a new one (that comes with a cable) off amazon and return it without the cable lol

[keen bone]

I mean its not.. like its that small

[fast seal]

but that also feels like a dick move

[fast seal]

twss

[keen bone]

🤷‍♂️ I've also done some limited tiny soldering I suppose so I am skewed

[fast seal]

so I rip an old ssd out of a laptop
cuz the only sata adapter I have that ermotely fits this thing is 5v only and usually ssds are okay with that
tried drives before they didn't liek it
newp
solders new cable
starts booting into previous windows installation from old laptop well I guess that worked :/

oh no
i think the touchscreen is fucked haha

windows detected it I guess... showing touches all across the screen on one line dang

[amber narwhal]

I’ve found this HLK board + card kit on a local store, is it enough for basic presence stuff? If so, what additional stuff do I need to make it communicate via Zigbee?

[cyan musk]

Is there some device / software I can get that would let me connect to an AVR which does not itself have any sort of networked functionality and use something like, but not necessarily limited to, HDMI CEC to power on, and/or swap from whatever the active input is to my device before playing some bit of media?

Basically I'm hoping I can hang a raspberry pi off the back of my receiver and configure HA to take it over as part of different automations, but I'm open to spending some money if it's less than a new receiver with more 'native' functionality.

I tried poking at it with PiCorePlayer but I'm honestly kinda lost on what I'm even looking for, I don't really know what components I need to get to this goal or if it's even possible.

Might be iceskating uphill again, so I'll also accept recommendations for a reasonably priced AVR. Bonus points for 8k support - don't need it yet, but might someday!

[fast seal]

omg I found the header hahaha

[fast seal]

I have a very similar one same brand works great

[keen bone]

https://tenor.com/view/shut-up-stfu-shut-your-mouth-slap-slapping-gif-8050553153066707611

crimp or ferrule your wires sir.

[fast seal]

lol
I will
that's just trying to layout shit on the perf board
nothing is soldered
the wire stuck on that terminal is just jammed in the side I didn't even loosen the screw
just trying to see if everything was even gonna fit on the perfboard I had

[fast seal]

I ran a 12volt company for 5+ years, official compustar dealer and shit
tbh the industry basically solders everything
if we do crimp though we use stuff that will make a cold weld usually
but that shits expensive
I do definitely need a ferrule crimper and ferrules though, most of the wiring I've done uses different types of terminals, plugs or solder

but also we're never like, putting shit on screw terminals
and the odd time we do, ofc we crimp a terminal on

spade blades more often than horseshoescrews

my ENS160+AHT21 Carbon Dioxide CO2 eCO2 TVOC Air Quality and Temperature and Humidity Sensor Replace CCS811 for Arduino arrived today
now just trying to put stuff together
I figured I'd need more analog pins
so I grabbed some analog switching multiplexers out my box
then I checked the esp32 pinout (while I've used some esp32-based stuff before, I've never used it as a core micro in one of my projects, usually use teensy) and tons of analog pins 😮
was also thinking of driving some 7segs but might just do OLED
I only have some decade counters that aren't ideal for 7segs, could work with some trannies but screw that
might do an LED ring around the chassis
though I'd have to hope I have a 5v strip or figure out 12v, I don't have any boost or buckboost, just buck, I do have some nice looking rectifiers, maybe use that with a buck

[keen bone]

soldering is stupid if there's any chance of connecting/disconnecting.

[fast seal]

oh I agree

on motorsport stuff, we don't solder anything

[keen bone]

and properly done crimps are basically bulletproof

[fast seal]

on consumer vehicles for like a remote start, we always try to use a t-harness, if one isn't available though, the industry standard is soldering

yeah well I've never seen a properly done crimp in a car

every single one I've seen, I've literally been able to rip out, easily

in fact that's the one thing I love about them because it's easy to rip that shit out

[keen bone]

I own a microfit 3 crimper thats molex brand

boy that shit fucking kicks ass.. 😛

[fast seal]

yeah those look decent

[keen bone]

I mean soldering can be around

... inside of connectors that have glands tightened down and lock into place

https://www.lemo.com/media/catalog/category/B_series-880x544.png

Like this shit

[fast seal]

Yeah anything that does get soldered gets heatshrinked

And again this is like.consumer crap. Motorsport we use super expensive crimps and xonnectors

[keen bone]

heatshrink isnt sufficient.. 😛

[keen bone]

a gland that locks shit down

[fast seal]

Thats what a lot of people use id never

[keen bone]

yeahh thats mehhh.

[fast seal]

Not even for stripping

[keen bone]

I bought spade-type conenctors thta use a more traditional roll-over style crimper

[fast seal]

Those will do decent on some connectors because the die is actually 1cm wide

[keen bone]

because I hate that just "Crush the oval" style of shit

[fast seal]

These ill use for stripping but not crimping basically only a step up from the first trash

Oh yeah its not even supposed to crush the oval you're supposed to have apunch die to punch it

So either of the blue ones

[keen bone]

I got one of these..

[keen bone]

and then this. https://www.amazon.com/ENGINEER-PA-07-Precision-Professional-Spring-Loaded/dp/B000TGFNR0?th=1

for smaller wires

[fast seal]

The pointy in the middle should crush down on it

[keen bone]

thus I still prefer the style that uses the wrap-over-and-down crimp

that bites into the bundle of wire moreso

[fast seal]

Ya I have aswt of the green ones don't like em

[keen bone]

how I wish brand crimpers weren't so go fuck yourself expensive

i only have the microfit 3 because it was on ebay for like 100$

right tools for the job makes such a difference.

much prefer this style for spade stuff and etc..

[fast seal]

yeah those would be nice for that stuff
I use either of the blues usually but ^ pictured is 10-20x better and 100x better than something like the red ones I showed lol

[wraith cedar]

Update: indeed, my usb-C hub (with USB prots on which I plugged a keybaord and a mouse works very well).
But then reminded about scrcpy (https://scrcpy.org/). Even handier since you get a big screen.

[teal heath]

nice 🙂

[heady nexus]

I think I angered the RF gods somehow

my "two zigbee routers screaming at each other at 20dBm ~7 meters apart through two block walls" setup isn't working anymore lol

I actually wonder if I burned out the amplifier on one or both of them. No clue if that's even plausible

[trail fractal]

All electronics can give up the ghost in those ways

[heady nexus]

Working again, seemingly

So now I don't know what to believe. I didn't see excessive interference when things were acting up earlier

[thorn ore]

Solar flares.

[visual eagle]

Hi I'm not sure if this fits any channel, does someone know how to reverse engineer a communication protocol? I have an HVAC system with a dumb wall controller, they communicate over RS485. I want to begin with something relatively easy and passive like reading the temperatures, and then get to things like creating controls for home assistant
I have two MAX485, some arduinos, raspberry pi and esp32-cam for now but I will order a normal esp32
I've connected one MAX485 to the interface passively and I have some hex data but I'm not sure how to time the packets and stuff like that
and I can't really find the temperatures in these packets even when they are updated.
Of course it's a proprietary protocol

[pale lantern]

So hypothetically, how difficult would it be to replace the ESP32 mini on an Airgradient One with a newer ESP32 mini capable of using Thread so that I could put the sensors on my thread network instead of my WiFi network?

[summer pumice]

RS485 is more complex than anything I've reverse engineered before. Honestly, I'm wondering if you're having trouble because they encrypted the data.

[keen bone]

I mean.. maybe give more details of the system and etc.

[keen bone]

that entirely depends on your competency level in tinkering..

and whether or not it uses any components that dont have support already in esphome or etc

[visual eagle]

well it's an recuperation system but its popular mostly in like north Europe or sum, so I called it a HVAC system so people understand. but it works by pulling air out of the house outside and air from outside to the inside of the house, but to not waste heating energy it runs the air through a heat exchanger so the air pulled out heats the air pulled in, except for summer when it skips the heat exchanger and this feature called "bypass" can be toggled from the wall controller.

[keen bone]

by not describing any sort of brand or hardware you don't give any actual details to dig or look into

[visual eagle]

it's Frapol it's a polish company, the wall controller even has "Made in Poland" on the PCB. I've researched and only found some paid software for their smart module, which I don't have and also don't want to pay for this software. So I think I will have to reverse engineer it manually, as it certainly uses a proprietary protocol. It's Frapol Onyx Classic 550 to be accurate, but you can find two types of manuals on the internet, for the one sold with the smart control module and the one sold with the normal control module, I have the second one.

It's control board is based on some kind of ATMEGA IIRC, the wall controller idk because it's covered in this black thing but they both use VP3082 for RS485 transceivers.

[floral juniper]

Try to get data out using a logic analyzer then ask around I guess

[teal anchor]

Replying to a post 3 weeks old next time I would use the reply feature. Of course the post before that was a 2 month gap, so I guess you don't have a very high priority on this convo...

[floral juniper]

3 weeks? Not sure what you are talking about. The last message was 8 hours ago?

[teal anchor]

[floral juniper]

??????

[visual eagle]

well it turned out to be much simpler than I thought, the wall controller broadcasts its settings every second and the central unit broadcasts it's temperatures like normally celsius in hex, the fan speeds are also percentages in hex and all other settings and I just figured it out by doing a discord webhook when the broadcast changes and messing around with the settings and then I'll analyse it but it's nice that it's not much work other than figuring what byte is what and probably I'll make a MQTT or whatever. I wanted to do it with a esp32 but finally I didn't order one so I used a raspberry pi and I think it can stay for now

[visual eagle]

I haven't figured out how it handles negative temperatures, I'll have to wait a few weeks and I'll find out probably

[jagged harness]

I want to make a sensor to go in my bathroom. Are there any measures I should take to protect it from steam? I tend to take long showers that fill the bathroom up with steam, and I'm afraid that will break it.

[teal heath]

what type of sensor?

[jagged harness]

esphome mmwave sensor + maybe a piezo buzzer on it

[teal heath]

seal its enclosure?
a conformal coating?
put it inside the wall? 😛 (mmwave will see through it and you can probably hear a buzzer through it.)
build it cheap enough that when it fails you can replace it without worrying about it 😛

[keen bone]

I mean.. Putting it inside the wall is probably the best shot.. 🤷‍♂️

conformal is another good option

[restive gate]

"Tapo lights L530 have a watchdog that reboots them every 10 minutes if they are unable to connect to the cloud. This will make these devices unavailable for a minute every time the device restarts."

does anyone have a good solution to resolve this? not interested in sharing data with tp-link by connecting the bulbs to their app

[keen bone]

don't buy them.

🙃

Govee makes some matter-over-wifi compatbiel bulbs.. or etc..

[restive gate]

too late. also govee doesn't seem available in asia

[keen bone]

then take your pick of whatever zigbee/matter-over-wifi or matter-over-thread bulbs that exist. 🤷‍♂️

[restive gate]

okay, does anyone have ideas on a solution for someone who already has the bulbs?

[keen bone]

they literally don't come up on any sort of searches for jailbreaking/freeing them.

🤷‍♂️

[teal heath]

tp-link fuckery strikes again. realistically... get something else.

[main vine]

Is the xiao nrf54l15 that much better than the xiao mg24 for battery powered low power devices.

[keen bone]

NRF products are very well known for battery devices and power efficiency

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGbtzlWb-Kc

Like.. up to and including literally passively harvesting energy levels of efficiency

[main vine]

I know it's good but the mg24 is a bit cheaper so i was wondering if it's viable

[keen bone]

🤷‍♂️ for what specifically? because I dont think mg24 has support with esphome or etc..

[main vine]

It supports matter and thread

[keen bone]

so does an esp32c6

[main vine]

But it isnt made for battery devices like the other 2

[keen bone]

I mean..

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/xiao_esp32c6_getting_started/#deep-sleep-mode-and-wake-up

It has a deep sleep mode.. and has a battery input and etc..? 🤷‍♂️

[pale lantern]

I'm still learning a lot of things, but I'm a pretty quick learner. It looks like the newer ESP32 mini I'm looking at that has a Thread/Zigbee radio has the same footprint as the ESP32 Airgradient uses and all the other sensor components are supported by ESPHome

I'm wondering if I could buy all the sensors individually and use the PCB engraver at my local makerspace since Airgradient freely shares the design...

[keen bone]

those expensiveair quality sensor combination things? i mean you can do less sensors cheaper.. but if I recall some of the sensors they use are.. semi costly.

[marsh sigil]

I have a slightly older AirGradient Pro DIY. On my board, the ESP chip is attached via headers to the main board. So there might even be no soldering involved. Look for pictures of replacement parts and the internals, maybe that is the case on the newer ones.

My remaining question would be whether the ESPHome firmware for the AirGradient specifically would include the Thread capability package. You might have to add that package and compile/build your own firmware.

[keen bone]

I think you'd be eating shit a bit on some of the modules and wiring.. 🤷‍♂️

like.. The Co2 sensors (one of them at least..) is legitimately 18$ on digikey..

[pale lantern]

I’m totally open to just putting together my own, I just had heard pretty positive things about Senseair so thought it might be a good foundation to tinker with. Do y’all have air quality sensors you recommend that are different than the ones they use?

[cursive cairn]

I don't know how I managed to do it (never soldered in my life), but man the satisfaction is insane

[teal heath]

thats awesome, and a new skill learned 🙂 soldering is really handy to bee able to do.

[keen bone]

flux is the answer for easy soldier.. 😛

[teal heath]

so... does anyone have knowledge of USB-C PD?
I am working on a mini rack project and it occurs to me that for the smaller devices I could convert them to use USB-PD and then run them though a chunky PD supply.
there are some active cables that do usb-barrel. and some small pcbs you can get to do it etc...
in concept I don't see much of an issue with this.
then we come to 12V... for mini pc's (i think they are 3A supplys stock but i haven't double checked because they are buried in the 19 inch rack) so ideally want up to 36W@12v (at least 2 of, maybe more...)
is there any issues with pulling this much at 12v from a PD supply. given its apprantly optional is there any recomendations on a supply that does it.
or is the better option to go more generic and pull 15v/20v and then dc-dc to 12v?

NB: will the mini pc hit 36w draw very often?... I hope not but specing for it seems like a good plan.

[boreal onyx]

If you've not seen them, apparently these cables are quite good: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5450

You do need to aggressively interrogate the spec sheet, because there are often a lot of rules about how many ports can be running simultaneously at what power levels, for multi-port USB-C supplies

[teal heath]

I saw something similar to that cable. although that one looks more trustworthy 🙂
realistically i think i am only going to want to be pulling 12 and 5v but yeah... product documentation on stuff seems to be a bit hit and miss.

[boreal onyx]

Also you might end up being forced to buy a much higher-rated supply than you'd think you need.

36W × 3 is only 108W, but looking at Anker (let's start with reputable brands) the 200W is the smallest that can do >36W on 3 ports at once (https://www.anker.com/products/a2683-anker-prime-charger-200w-6-ports-gan). The 160W can do 100+30+30, or 100+60, but nothing that would work for you with three ports.

[teal heath]

yeah I was thinking anker or maybe ugreen

i did look at that anker one but doesnt state 12v on its usbc in the spec.

THIS one looks like it can handle it and its on offer on amazon for black friday

again doesnt explicitly say 12v but seems to support pps and stuff so i imagine it probably works...

[boreal onyx]

12 and 15V are always the odd ones out. 5, 9 and 20 are common

Heck, I've got some that only do 5 and 20, nothing else

Including - perhaps somewhat amusingly for a device that takes 12V as input - the USB-C charger I have for use in the car.
You don't want to know how hot that thing gets stepping up to 20V at its full rated 65W

[teal heath]

i ordered the ugreen and a couple of 12v barrel adaptors that were on amazon. will see if it works out. if not i can revisit the drawing board or probably find another use for it anyway

[keen bone]

damn soldering do hit different when i picked up a fume extractor recently instead of playing the "exhale on soldering fumes" game.. 🤣

[teal heath]

looks like we have a winner 🙂

for voltage anyway

[boreal onyx]

Now you get to find out how many of them you can plug in before it freaks out and refuses to switch on another port 😄

[teal heath]

lol, ill get to that when i do a device test down the line.

I got the mains part of the power distribution (and monitoring) done. next stage is to get side panels made and on the rack as the plan is (currently) to have the usb power on the side of the rack

[thorn ore]

It's hard to see because of the electrical tape but did you connect the live wire to the rear terminal of the fuse holder? Load side goes to the forward terminal. This minimises the risk of electric shock if removing an unblown fuse with the power on.

[teal heath]

I did it this way. did I do it "wrong"?

[boreal onyx]

Yep. With the fuse removed, it puts the live contact within reach at the outside end of the holder.
If you connect the live to the end contact, it's buried way down in there where you can't reach

[teal heath]

yeah that makes total sense. will have to remember to not change it live...

honestly, fitting them way a total nightmare. i had to solder to the near tab with it in place which as you can see is tucked inside a gap

cos if i put it on before threading the panel it wouldnt fit through the cutout

if i was redoing it, i would probably rethink some stuff

good spot btw Tom 😛

[olive owl]

Nice extra large Wagos

[boreal onyx]

Definitely shouldn't be commenting on the size of another man's wagos

[teal heath]

yeah i got them ages ago for something else but from AE so got a massive bag, worked out well for this.

[olive owl]

Game recognize game

[thorn ore]

An intact fuse will also contact the live terminal as it is pulled out. If you are holding the other end then ⚡ 😵‍💫

[teal heath]

got the lower side panels done and the usb supply in place

although i realise i actually planned to have it on the other side. but it should be easy to swap cos used skadis mounting. its just i drilled the hole in this side. so will probably swap the side panels.

[jagged harness]

Anyone here know a lot about ATX power supplies?
I'm wondering if using only the 12V rail is bad for it and if the efficiency would be significantly worse than a normal 12V power supply (using it to power LEDs, not a PC)

I have a bunch of LEDs around my apartment. I burned out a 12V 10A power supply by running it like 16 hours a day, every day, for several months (I was running it at like 6-8A)
Instead of spending $20 on a good replacement, I could spend $40 on an ATX power supply, which I feel safe assuming is built to handle constant use. And it could output 18A 3.3V, 18A 5V, and 60A 12V at the same time, so it could have more use later.

Are there any clear problems with this idea? The only downside I see is that it's bigger and twice as expensive. But if it lasts over twice as long as the $20 one, it ends up cheaper.

[keen bone]

using AC to "reduce losses" inside of a rack that size does not stop being funny. 😄

[keen bone]

other solution is just.. get a proper 12V power supply that is known-brand-name

meanwell probably or if you want to.. go on ebay and search up phoenix contact used 12v power supplies.. chunky boys that will never die

[boreal onyx]

Server power supplies are designed to run all day every day, but they are generally only 12V. These HPE ones (from a server at work) deliver their full rated 1600W at 12V.
They do tend to be... not quiet... but they're super reliable 😄

[keen bone]

... assuming they run without having to deal with manual jumping them out or etc..

and of course..

the efficiency curve is best around 80% load or so? And I doubt he's gonna 80% load that shit 😄

[boreal onyx]

Surprisingly, there usually are just two pins on the connector to short out.

Sadly no published efficiency curves, that I can find

[keen bone]

yeah; just in general SMPS tend to be like that.

[boreal onyx]

Here are some newer Dell ones that are rated 96% efficient, and 1800W while being about 2/3 of the size of those HPE ones

[keen bone]

... with all the ear sodomy built in

[jagged harness]

Yeah, I have one of these boards that puts every pin on a screw terminal. The button on the bottom right shorts those pins

[keen bone]

and he probably won't even hit 10% load on those.. so that 96% effifiency is wrong for that..

reasonable PSU sizes folks.. do not need to jump to 120a of 12v or some shit for someone who brought up 12v@10a.. 🤣

[sweet trellis]

Yeah I have a big vertiv desktop ups that was necessary for GPU compute load spiking higher than the usual suspects. When everything but networking is off that thing is an unfortunate 50% efficiency

[jagged harness]

My dream would be building a house that has 3.3V, 5V, 12V, and 24V DC lines in the walls, like the AC wires, with some sort of plugs for them.
I know that's not at all feasible. But it would be so nice

Also having walls that just have floor to ceiling 2020 T-slot channels on them

But the real dream is just owning a house at all

[keen bone]

the problem is the voltage drop

so realistically.. you'd shoot 24VDC through long runs and step it down to 3/5/12 as needed

[teal heath]

yeah voltage drop is an issue on longer dc runs. some alarm systems use it but they tend to have wide range input devices and then run 36 or even 72 volt supplies to compensate for the drop.

I would tend to look for a high quality dedicated 12v supply.
using an ATX supply has some issues. in theory they have a high 12v output capacity however this may be broken across multiple rails and not a single large rail (depends on supply) these rails may have slightly different actual voltages which means if you combine them they can start fighting each other a bit which reduces life of the supply. another issue is that some supplies can be unstable if some/all their rails don't have a min load. For example: I remember using one to test stuff years ago and I ended up having to put a dummy load on the 5v line. (granted this was years ago so maybe newer supplies don't have this issue so much)

but all this being said, its also unlikely to cause any actual major safety issues unless you try and pull the entire load through a single one of its cables. so giving it a go to see how it works out is not necessarily a bad idea as far as I can tell.

[keen bone]

just go with a meanwell thing. 🤷‍♂️ cheap and well made enough

[remote schooner]

i need someone smarter than me to ask some questions about powering an ESP32. im planning on wiring a relay into the garage door button and when i measure the voltage coming into the button im getting like 3.8 to 4v....

I figure i can probably power the ESP off that but im not entirely sure how to clean it up down to 3.3v

i imagine its 5v at the source and just a long thin wire run

so im wondering what i can jam in between that to stabilize it down for the ESP

it's like 3.8 to 4v across the screws there

if this isnt the right spot i wouldn't mind guidance to plead for help elsewhere

[keen bone]

the thing about those garage door button things is..

it measures current for the button part.

on the other side I mean.. Shorted -> button is pressed; not shorted -> led is lit sorta stuff.

[remote schooner]

well I was measuring the wires going back so there's between 3.8 to 4.2v coming in there... an esp is only gonna be like a few hundred mA I figured id give it a shot powering it there to avoid an extra like power supply

I ended up grabbing s7v8f3 step converter and we'll see if it does the trick. if not I'm back where I started for not a whole lot invested

3.8 was just too high to feed into the ESP. not so much the mechanics of shorting the back of the button with a relay

[strong knoll]

I have a 2022 era Target brand "wondershop" prelit christmas tree. It's got a foot button that cycles through a couple pre defined looks on the tree. Anyone know of a project that's smart home'd the tree?

[keen bone]

the better place would just be putting the esp up top 🤷‍♂️

[remote schooner]

... why?

its a 5$ switch with easy contacts to solder to instead of soldering directly to my garage door opener

ill just 3d print a new housing and itll look fine on the wall

also if it ever breaks... its way easier to access the ESP if its at like... shoulder level

[keen bone]

because believe it or not

those wires go into the opener up there too!

.... so just put the relay where it is easy to splice in a connection.

[remote schooner]

... the wires coming in are on screws lol it could not be easier to pick it up

I'll keep it down here on the not needing a ladder level, but thanks for the suggestion

also without figuring out exactly what signal it's sending to turn the lights on vs close the garage door

I'd rather just short the actual button.

nothing about being closer to the actual garage door makes the 3.3v problem any easier. it'll just be a higher voltage I'll have to step down for the esp. it does make the ladder problem much more prominent.

it's also a lot cheaper if I mess up a 10$ garage door button vs trying to solder anything to the actual garage door

[teal heath]

you could try adding a battery to the setup and using a charge board.. the board would supply the voltages you need from the battery and the charge side of it is probably okay with the lower voltage. may depend on the board though. slap an 18650 on it or something.

[remote schooner]

I did think about that... if shorting the circuit drops the voltage enough that the esp shuts down I might try that

it is an unheated garage idk how much a lipo is gonna like it

maybe taping the ESP directly to the battery as a tiny 300mA heater lol

is there a 3.3v board people use for 18650s? I remember I've used like adafruit things for 5v

like for charging logic and power supply

it's been broadly really annoying trying to find things to use for this cause the voltage is like
... nearly what it's supposed to be but still out of spec

I know I have a 5v output charging circuit floating around but it feels really stupid to step like 3.7 up to 5 then back down to 3.3

[keen bone]

most garage door openers on the opener side use push-in terminal connectors with release buttons.

[remote schooner]

great

so. with that in mind

how does that power the ESP where the main problem i care about is not having a charging block

i dont care about triggering the garage door that part is easy lol

[keen bone]

open it and tap if you're being that against a power converter. 🤷‍♂️

[keen bone]

ssr inside reflow oven go pop and short.

🙃

[wraith cedar]

Hi everyone, I just bought this to make a cheap, noisy siren
https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005003338983566.html
Having received and tried it, I can confirm it is way noisier than the zigbee siren I had before.
Now I need to know how I can trigger it remotely from HA. Any ideas anyone?
FWIW, just in case this could a good solution, I've always intended, but never got time or motivation, to try these ESP32 thingies.

[jagged harness]

Just realized something:
A 12V 30A power supply is like $20 but from some no-name brand that has questionable quality.
An ATX power supply from an OK brand can be $40, output 35+A of 12V, 10-20A of 5V, and 10-20A of 3.3V simultaneously, and has a 5 year warranty. That's actually a decent deal for some projects.
Like powering a ton of LEDs may require a lot of 12V current along with 3.3V or 5V for a controller, and be able to handle heavy use.
Also, you could go to a secondhand store and buy a used PC purely for the PSU for cheap

[teal heath]

huh, deja vu?

[jagged harness]

Oh, I forgot I posted a question about there here already, lol. I thought that was in another electroinics-specific server. I haven't gotten a lot of sleep recently

[keen bone]

my preference tends to be for 24v for most leds for any significantly long run because.. well voltage drops obviously.

[full copper]

You could use a d1mini or arduino r4 and connect to home assistant via MQTT

[keen bone]

oh I believe they wanted a step-by-step walkthrough. 🙃

[wraith cedar]

Thanks for the advice: noob question: so, the siren would be connected to the board you suggest, which in turn would communicate with HA thanks to MQTT on wifi ?

[teal heath]

update on the USB supply plan

1 for switch in 2nd U (switch in 1st u will be poe and as such have a dedicated supply attached to the mains distribution)
4 is planned for 2nd mini pc under the one that's there but i have made the housing yet so its tucked there for the moment

do I know if any of it works yet? nope

[cursive cairn]

Success~

[sour haven]

nice, I just did a simalar thing with a pi pico w that I had laying around and a random garage door remote. I need to add a contact sensor or use one of my ultrasonic sensors that I have so that I can tell if the door is open or not when im not home. but then if I do that I have to redo and 3d print a new box to put all of the equipment into again.

I finally got the basic set up for some esp32 voice assistant satellites set up and now I am stuck waiting for my paycheck to get more parts to be able to test everything along side Alexa with the hopes of just replacing her all together.

[tropic cypress]

you may have to combine the 12V wires together for maximum amps output on the 12V rail.

and the same for ground, then connect the green and a black wire from motherboard connector for automatic startup of psu

[teal heath]

the issue is if its not a single big 12v rail but instead multiple then they are likely at slightly different voltages which can cause the rails to "fight each other"

[tropic cypress]

would't that be auto-regulated by psu itself/

[teal heath]

yeah its possible the supply may have some protection to prevent this but it may depend on the supply. and the above hinted at a cheap supply...

[jagged harness]

Yeah, I think that may be why I broke the first power supplies (or it made them wear out faster than normal)
But I wonder if the distance between them causes enough of a voltage drop to stop the fighting.

I'm putting an ideal diode between the new ones and the LEDs. Also I'm using an old ATX PSU for one, and a 12V supply from my first 3D printer. Those are probably higher quality than the original ones too.
I have one at the start of the strip, and the other halfway across it. These loop across a whole room, so I connected ground and power from the start to the end too.

I did plug each into smart outlets. I had it set up so if one is using power while the other stops, it will kill power to both to safe guard against one failing and possibly damaging the other. (Both were strong enough to power the whole LED loop on its own, but they would get noticeably dimmer on the other size).
I also had it set up to kill power to both if usage spiked above the typical max usage by a certain amount (I don't think that ever was triggered)

Maybe I could set it up so that when the LEDs are off, only one supply would be powered. Because the LEDs being off would mean lowest voltage drop and the higher chance of the supplies fighting each other

I know I can cut power on the strip halfway between the 2 supplies to be completely sure the 2 supplies powered in parallel don't cause damage. But I'm in an electronics group, and they said putting a diode between each supply and power should be good enough.
My original supplies died after like 3-4 months of being on whenever I was awake every day. So I may have just worn them out normally

[keen bone]

that is a lot of wires shoved through one hole.. 🤔

[teal heath]

"Said the actress to the bishop"

but yes, it was a 10mm hole but I couldn't get a 4th connector through it with 3 cables already there so I added a 6mm hole right under it and connected them to give the extra space for cables so I could get the 4th in 🙂

[keen bone]

there's certainly probably a product pcb idea for small miniracks..

1u or something giga-usb-c-pd-hub.

😛

hell.. throw in some LiFepo4 cells or something too.. backup powered.. no double conversion

<@&330946878646517761>

[teal heath]

<@&330946878646517761>

[keen bone]

kill it. (crypto bros aren't people)

[sly ether]

Who's the crypto bro?

[keen bone]

the one that was banned 😛

[sly ether]

Sorry, I was busy being snuggled by a dog whilst watching a documentary 😅

[olive owl]

We must stop the spread of the crypto virus

[heady nexus]

CRYPTO-19

[olive owl]

You're not getting rich quick with that adorable behavior!

[teal heath]

some people do this with PoE switches for that purpose.

[teal heath]

judgement reserved until the subject matter of the documentary is revealed...

[olive owl]

Probably crypto

[sly ether]

Titanic, the digital resurrection