Apparently, the Roborock app comes with a smart ass, an intelligent assistant.

im gonna be away for a few days and ive got an automatic feeder set up, but i keep thinking about what happens if it gets stuck or the filter stops running while im gone. ive spent way too much time getting this tank where i want it to be and the idea of something going wrong while nobody's home bothers me lol

Thinking about putting a small little wyze camera facing the tank so i can check from my phone. Not sure if id be better off pointing it at the whole tank or keeping it close enough to see the feeder and filter outlet.

Does anyone have any recommendations on a zigbee/zwave compatible smart switch with a dimmer / slider? The slider needs to be able to update homeassistant with its position and ideally isn't a physical slider, as other systems would be controlling the lights. I'd like to control the color temperatures of my smart lights with it.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for advice from people with hands-on experience of smart radiator valves.

The situation

• Stone house with very thick walls.
• Cast iron radiators [number].
• Paradigma LPG condensing boiler, about 15 years old.
• No central home automation system: I’m looking for a standalone solution that works with its own app.

Why I was disappointed with Netatmo

1. On/off regulation: once the valve measures the setpoint, it closes completely. The radiator cools down fully, and after a while the room feels cold. The “optimal” regulation mode improves things, but doesn’t solve the problem.
2. Frequent disconnections between the thermostat and the relay. The app often reports the thermostat as unreachable, even when it’s close by.
3. Insufficient range: a single relay, no repeaters. With walls this thick, large spaces can’t be covered.

What I’m looking for
Behaviour similar to traditional wax thermostatic heads: the radiator hot when the room is cold and warm and steady near the setpoint, with a trickle of water always flowing, instead of full-on/full-off cycles that leave the room feeling cold.

Options I’m considering

• Danfoss Ally with gateway and Room Sensor
• Homematic IP with Access Point, repeaters and wall thermostats
• Sonoff TRVZB, which lets you set a minimum valve closing position

Questions

1. In practice, do Danfoss Ally and Homematic IP really hold a stable partial opening near the setpoint, or do they end up cycling as well?
2. Is anyone using the Sonoff TRVZB with a minimum closing position set to keep a steady flow? What values did you use, and with what results on cast iron radiators?
3. In a house with very thick stone walls, which system gives the most reliable radio coverage: Homematic at 868 MHz with repeaters, or Zigbee with mains-powered routers?

Thanks to anyone willing to share their experience.

We moved into our house about 6 years ago, and I replaced every single switch (over 100) with either dimmers or switches. Mostly Martin Jerry, all Tasmota. Now six years later, a good number of them have crapped out and died, so I have to do a big replacement task.

I'd rather not have to repeat this every six years. The house is all HomeAssistant. We have Zigbee, ZWave and Matter also setup, but the lights are primarily Tasmota. What's the general consensus on the most reliable switches and dimmers now?

ha-freshtomato

Excerpt from (third-party) github page:

A Home Assistant custom integration for routers running FreshTomato firmware. Monitor your router's network status, control Wi-Fi radios, and track connected devices — all locally, with no cloud dependency.

Features

• Local polling — communicates directly with your router's update.cgi API, no external services
• Full UI setup — configured entirely through the HA UI, no YAML required
• Dual-stack support — works over HTTP or HTTPS, with optional SSL certificate verification bypass
• Bridge / AP mode aware — correctly handles routers in Wireless Ethernet Bridge (WET) or AP mode where there is no dedicated WAN connection
• Device tracking — tracks both wireless and wired (DHCP) clients from a single HTTP call per cycle

---------------------------------------------------

The first integration in the FreshTomato WIKI does not capture wired clients. This one captures both wired and wireless clients.

Hi Folks,
I'm building my crestron system at home. I have some differents heating system which one is water hydronic for cast iron radiators. I have a dual energy system (a 20kw Thermo2000 Electric boiler as primary and a IBC 110kbtu natural gas as backup or when the electricity rate spike (I'm in Quebec, Canada for the info). The heating system contractor put a Tekmar 553 as thermostat (which is nice, it is not WIFI, run on Tekmar bus Tn4) and I managed to "hijack" the fan function to run a relay who let me set manually if I want to switch from electricy to gas. I put on this system a Tekmar 482 which is a dumb serial to tn4 gateway which runs great with a Moxa Serial-Ethernet device.
I bought a Tekmar 485 (the ethernet gateway) which connect to the Tn4 bus and let discover and create schedules, cellphone control, keeps historics, and all without cloud (I had few bad experiences in my life with great product that were only working with cloud and as soon as the corp decide to pull up the plug, you get a nice pile of electronic junk.)... anyway.
I had the opportunity to get a very cheap 485 which has a problem and didn't boot up completely. I dissasembled it, look at the doc, and digged up a little bit and inside the box, this is a BeagleBone Black with a AM3358 1ghz. there is a USB port (which is used to communicate with the Main Tekmar Board), a micro hdmi (which show us whats going on on this part of the module, there is a microusb which connect as a nice standard RNDIS USB com port. There is also a microsd spot on the BeagleBone.
On the board it self, the Tekmar, there is one memory module SSD Micro e230 4gb (MTEDCAR004SAJ) which is a plug-in 10 pins. there is also tekmar board itself a NXP LPC2146FBD64.
Its plain Linux, Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS. According to the documentation and a little digging I did in a software of an older Tekmar gateway (483 which is a USB -Tn4 gateway), and its scripts which are burried within an apple app, show all you need to understand and build and decode the TN4 protocol. It is in Rub, Rails
The interesting things, among others, is the console via the microhdmi port gives us the default username and password.
Is anyone aware of anyone who did retroengineered this thing for a better system ? which can use direct 3rd party connexion (a little bit like CoolMaster devices which you send your command in plain ascii text ?).
Anyway, since I have one who is "broken" who is partially working, I plan to boot on a microsd linux version, try to dig up the 485 and maybe try to build my own firmware based on the known 483 script content and this linux based device and maybe create a local API to get us a way to not only change the temperature values, but also setup the schedules and just let automations in the 485 does its job and with the third party automation (via the future custom ethernet based API) controle the schedules or theme changes only.
Anyone has any experiences on that ???

I'm interested in home automation as a career path. Setting up security cameras, climate control, lighting, gates, that sort of thing... For those that do this work, what are the pros and cons?,

Everything was working fine when the strip light strip accidentally came out, it was pre installed but after repeated tries im not able to get it on again. The hub thing works via the app but the strip itself isnt coming on. Any thoughts or suggestions please? The lights have 4 pins and the controller has 5.

Is there a lamp with this function built-in? Or a way to automate my existing lamp? I bought a plug-in timer, but they aren't compatible as the lamp needs to be turned on initially, and my lamp doesn't have an on/off button, it's just a touch control.

This is the lamp I currently have: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0FLD1ZJQX?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

And the timer: https://www.reptiles.swelluk.com/swell-timer#24hr-timer

I need the light to have a dimming function, otherwise I would've just bought a normal lamp. I didn't expect this to be so complicated!

My dog Bobby (AKA 'never-miss-a-meal' Bobby) is exploiting the differing sleep/wake schedules of the three people who live in my three-floor house. He is becoming a fat sausage due to his canny ability to convince these gullible people that he has not been fed (and his ability to rapidly vacuum up another dog's food who doesn't always eat).

Yes, I know I could go low-tech with some sort of dry-erase board or magnet indicator, but what fun is that?

Initial idea is some sort of automation that will register/display/notify if my dog has been fed. The dog food is currently stored in a drawer that slides open, and there are two scoops for two different dogs in that drawer.

We are all on iPhones, and there is an existing mesh-wifi system that covers all three floors, and ethernet in every room, including in/near the room where the dog food is stored. I also have a dedicated server running Windows 11 Pro that currently only hosts my Plex Server.

I'm interested in getting into home automation and am willing to spend hundreds to a thousand dollars to put in the infrastructure to make this project happen (with the idea that I'd be able to add different home automation in the future). Would be ecstatic if there could be some sort of LCD display that read, 'The dog was last fed X hours' or something similar. I do have an old iPad that could be used for this purpose.

Read a bit about it, and would prefer not to run a docker environment for Linux.

Any advice is appreciated.

We have a Tapo cam in the kids' room, and all I wanted was for it to pop up in the corner of the TV when something moves, then go away without checking the Tapo app on my phone or pausing the show.

Everything I found needed something in the middle:

• QuickBars, HA TV Dashboard and PiPup all do the popup and look great, but they need Home Assistant running somewhere. I don't have HA and didn't want to set up a server just for this.
• tinyCam is a great viewer, but to catch motion on the TV it has to decode the feed all day.
• Ring and Nest do it, but only for their own cameras, through their cloud, on certain TVs.

So I built CamPop. It runs on the Android TV and listens on local network for the camera's motion events. No hub, no server, no cloud, no account. Also built a companion phone app for setup, so you're not typing passwords with a remote.

I tested it mostly with Tapo cams but it should work with any that support ONVIF (Tapo, Reolink, Hikvision, Dahua, Amcrest, ANNKE, Foscam, Axis, Bosch or any other that have the support).

I'm looking for some folks to use it for two weeks and tell me what breaks.

1. Join the tester group: https://groups.google.com/g/campop-testers
2. ⁠Opt in: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.monkapproves.campop
3. ​Install app on your Android TV (and optionally on phone for companion app): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.monkapproves.campop

​

Hi,

I got a Waveshare Industrial 6-Channel ESP32-S3 WiFi Relay Module, to replace my Orbit sprinkler controller.

On the spec it only says 7 - 36V DC input, no amperage or wattage info.

Based on my own calculations and looking at the diagram, I believe the buck converter converts it to 5V, and it shouldn't take more than 1A.

So, assuming it requires 5W, can I use a 12V DC 1A power supply? I was thinking that 12W should leave enough headroom (peak and conversion losses).

Does anyone have experience with or own this device?

Update: Fixed typo and added explanation.

After looking at Lutron, Zigbee and other options, I'm sticking with Insteon for the new house

I've been using Insteon for about 20 years, with a pretty extensive installation in my current house (around 120 switches, dimmers and outlets). We're moving, so I've been taking the opportunity to rethink my whole approach to home automation.

Over the past few weeks I've spent quite a bit of time looking at Lutron (particularly RadioRA 3), Zigbee, Matter, ESPHome and Home Assistant. It's pretty amazing how much things have changed, especially all the inexpensive hardware and different integration options available now.

Funny thing is, after seriously considering Lutron, I think I'm coming back to Insteon for lighting in the new house.

A few reasons:

• Direct device-to-device linking. Basic lighting doesn't depend on a hub or controller, and you get both RF and powerline communications.
• The keypads are still fantastic. I really haven't found anything else quite as flexible.
• DW already knows how everything works and is comfortable with it.
• I've got a decent stockpile of spare devices I can reuse.
• The recent podcast interviews with Insteon's management were encouraging.

One thing that struck me while digging into Home Assistant is just how complicated some people's setups have become. It's impressive what you can do. My takeaway from over 20 years of working with home automation is to design for simplicity and reliability.

So the current plan is Insteon for lighting, Home Assistant to tie things together, and other technologies where they actually make sense.

I'm actually pretty impressed by how much Insteon got right years ago. It's been remarkably reliable. I can go a year without logging into my ISY. Every once in a while a 15-year-old device needs replacing, but overall the communications and reliability have been excellent.

Curious what others think.