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

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

The more common local area meshes include

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve been trying to comment more, but we have to post as well

There are also strong movements to healthier eating and a good strategy might be to build on that.

While it’s always dangerous to generalize from personal experience, I know far more people who have reduced their consumption of red meat, or even overall meat, For health reasons over climate reasons

I naively thought we were finally heading this way with climate change. It was always too little, too late, but there seemed to be a global movement by countries to finally take the right actions. Everything was coming together. But then the pendulum of politics swung the other way

Google says livestock production creates 11-20% of global human co2 emissions. Even If we could make that disappear, it’s not enough

Meanwhile energy production is 73% so it’s critical to focus there

Realistically there is to switch to zero for any category of emissions so the only right answer is to cut as many as possible as much as possible

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

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

Do you have a chance to watch more live sports locally? I’m more interested in college hockey and every year take at least on road trip to see my college team play. Locally my town has a college with an older rink that has no moving ads. Now that my kids are in college, I make at least one road trip to see their school team play.

College hockey is much less expensive to see in person and their rinks are a lot less commercialized. Given the ages and much shorter career you can get more invested in a player developing, improving, and get excited if they make the Bigs. My youngest has team autographs from road trips where we happened to use the same hotel as the team!

And to be clear: it’s not just you or your condition. Ads are getting obnoxious and distracting for everyone

Edit: a couple years back I went to see the Islanders in their new rink and it was horrible. The noise wasn’t just loud but painful (my watch repeatedly flashed dangerous noise levels). Everything moved or flashed. It was not enjoyable and I’m never going back

Edit2: I have no idea what streaming college hockey is like but maybe that’s less obnoxious. Might be worth a try

I’ve definitely been afraid of that in recent years. Historically I’ve taken it as an opportunity for my own celebration and health be damned, but so much candy has gotten bad enough that I just don’t enjoy it.

And no I can’t afford good candy for hundreds of screaming kids who will never know the difference.

Of all things, we lost some Azure services the longest. There was some unexpected dependency in our code on aws us-east-1 and the azure services didn’t recover

Still rare, only trolls. If someone is judgy or confrontational I’ll move on. It’s only if they’re trying to start a fight, trying to create an ongoing argument that I’ll block them.

Mostly bad but with u certainty and some hope.

• We passed the 1.5°C threshold that was the goal to prevent the worst effects of climate change for 1-2 years although the threshold is defined as a 10 year average
• we busted through 7 of 9 extinction boundaries
• weather is clearly more extreme and impacting more and more of the population
• climate tipping points have a lot of uncertainty and take place over years so we don’t know until later that we’ve passed one. They are effectively irreversible. There’s a chance we have passed one or more

However carbon emissions have plateaued in quite a few countries. We do have technologies like solar, wind, grid storage, EVs that will have significant impact and are rolling out. It’s not enough and way too delayed but it’s a good start

If we don’t pass any climate tipping points or all the extinction boundaries, we can recover over a century or two

Same here. In particular I like small cheap hardware to act as appliances, and have several raspberry pi.

My example is home assistant. Deploying on its own hardware means an officially supported management layer, which makes my life easier. It is actually running containers but i don’t have to deal with that. It also needs to be always available so i use efficient “right sized” hardware and it works regardless whether im futzing with my “lab”

Isn’t there a commandment about golden idols?

One of my favorites. If you throw in chunks of red peppers and a handful of spinach, it’s got even better nutritional value

Pasta with pesto. But it’s healthier and more fancy looking than you’d think …

• my grocery sells “fresh” stuffed tortellini and ravioli in “family” sized packages that are good for more than a month
• I prefer pesto over marinara, but they each come in a jar and lasts a long time

1. Brown some meat. I like found Italian sausage meat when my grocery has it. I’ve also pulled the skins off (spicy) Italian sausage, I’ve used ground beef, ground turkey, or chicken breasts cut into bite sized pieces. It doesn’t matter which
2. Slice a red pepper into chunks
3. Cook the pasta - remember to save a little pasta water (I always forget)
4. Dump into a colander
5. Put the pot back on the stove
6. Add a few tablespoons of olive oil, a couple shakes of crushed red pepper, and a tablespoon or two of garlic, and cook a minute to draw out the garlic
7. Dump in the pasta, the meat, the peppers , half a jar of pesto and mix it all in.
8. Add the pasta water (you remembered to save it, right?) shaved Parmesan and a handful of baby spinach and mix (this should be right before serving so the spinach is not over done)

Now you have simple pasta but it’s colorful, looks fancy, has vegetables.

The authors approach to not owning anything digital was to attempt self hosting. But the authors reaction to the amount of work was that he shouldn’t own the “self-hosting”? He does not even realize that he’s back to not owning anything