@neil I want to replace my two Google speakers with some decent Bluetooth stuff, could probably get away with one if it's nicely portable.
Sad that Sonos went to shit the moment we got a sound bar from them :/

@neil I installed the exploit on the 2 echo show 5's in the house and they're now running linage.

I am using nubu casa cloud for voice at the moment though as whilst it did work local it's rather slow on my ryzen 4500u mini pc

@neil Home Assistant andESP@Home is a killer combination for DIY home automation. I used to code my own ESP stuff but ESP@Home is faster and better integrated. USB cables with WiFI controlled switches are easy to make and handy for anything that just takes a 5V feed and integrates into Home Assistant and all you have to do is alter a couple of fields in a template.

@neil The genius company that did the “smart stuff” in my new home (50% of which is now repurposed) put in a SIP video doorbell (now replaced) but it was only capable (without hackery) of calling their control panel in the kitchen. You can see who is at the feckin’ door from the control panel, and if you were in any other room of the house, you have to walk past the front door to get to the kitchen. Almost like no one thought about usability.

@neil Nice. I've seen SIP doorbells that only go one way, which I've always thought didn't serve much purpose!

@neil How do you manage the large number of VLANs?
I ask because I wondered about doing one VLAN per IOT device (because, really, the doorbell has no need to be able to talk to the hot water) but decided that it would be sufficiently complex a management problem that I would probably end up making mistakes and I was probably better off just knowing that if there is a lack of hot water, it could be the doorbell, or...

@neil It's even more fun when you see the difference. In my house no one has switched off a bathroom light in years: the main bathroom has automatic on/off with a presence sensor (can adjust brightness with voice command if necessary), the guest bathroom has manual on and automated off 5min after the PIR sensor is clear.

We recently visited the in-laws, and it took several days for us to not forget to turn off the lights when we were done :)

@neil I've put a mmWave presence detector in my office, one which can track the position of multiple targets, and set up general lighting as well as dedicated office desk lights as fully automatic. I set this up about 1.5 years ago and only recently remembered that I still had a physical controller connected to these lights that I had zero interaction with for over a year.

@neil Can you communicate with the person at the door over SIP, or is it effectively just a notification? I can see being able to say "Leave it behind the bin" to a delivery driver could be handy.

(We inherited a v complex video doorbell from the house's previous owner. Must have cost them £1000s if they paid full whack. I've since replaced it with a simple "push button, make noise" one, largely because the old one kept breaking&it didn't seem worth paying £££ for functionality we didn't use!)

@neil and no one is trying to steal your interphone ? ^^’

Just for the fun of sharing a little ; There is so much home invasion and stealing in my area, a small town where thieves know police is at best 20 min away, that I followed some neighbors in a, at first, crazy idea.

I put a smoke grenade well in view trough the glass door and a warning it will detonate on any alarm.

And it work. Finding stuff to steal in 20 minutes in a house full of smoke is no easy task.

@neil congratulations! you just won most hacker sentence of the week. usually we wait until the week is over to make the announcement, but nothings gonna top this. to much awesome.

@neil

There's a utility to being able to say 'Can I help you?' to someone who rang your doorbell to find out if it was safe to break in and take your TV.

@neil does a physical, metal bell not work for you?

@neil I have been on the Alexa model for years and while I have #homeassistant plugged in to my router, I don't know how to use it yet. But I am trying very hard to wean myself off it. This week I reclaim my wifi (ditching eero - moving to TPlink) and my cameras (ring to eufy).

@neil It's nice to be in control of your devices.