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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • The easiest thing: We use a motion sensor to automatically turn on the light for the stairs. You wouldn’t need Home Assistant for that, but with a little more configuration you can adjust the light levels and colour temperature based on the time of day (not as disturbing at night). We have two rooms which have problems with humidity in one a fan is automatically turned on (basic) in the other a dehumidifier is triggered based on the outside and inside temperature because there are large windows which are producing a lot of condensation otherwise. Now the really specific stuff: My daughter has Diabetes and we need to manage her blood glucose levels. There are alarms but ideally you would act before they are triggered. So we hooked her blood glucose levels to a light in our bedroom which turns on if her levels are getting out of bounds at night. That way she isn’t woken by the alarm, but by one of us and can go back to sleep much quicker.






  • There are lots of cheap Zigbee (multi) buttons available. If you want something a little bit fancier I can 100% recommend Home Buttons. You can either build it yourself (3D printed enclosure, custom PCB) or buy one already built for you. They each fancy an e-ink display you can configure with Material Design Icons (or even custom text in case of the bigger one). They integrate into Home Assistant via MQTT and can be fully used for any automation you would like. You can even change the 4 or 6 button labels using Home Assistant.

    https://docs.home-buttons.com/





  • I know this is technically not an answer to your question, but as a fellow T1 diabetic (for 20+ years) and dad to diabetic child (currently 2½ years old): Is this something that regularly happens to you? I don’t know where you live, but in over 20 years of being a T1 diabetic I never had a vial of regular insulin go bad. I don’t have to worry about the cost of insulin as my insurance would without any questions replace any medications gone bad for me, but I understand that this is a luxury not everyone shares.

    There are products (but I have to assume you are aware of this) that can help you with the temperature safe transport of insulin for everyday use (basically insulated pouches with an integrated cooling pad). That may be something you can look into if this is something you need to worry about.



  • EarMaster@lemmy.worldtoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldOpnsense blocking ads for iOS?
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    3 months ago

    Then he shouldn’t have asked a question if he isn’t open for answers. If an answer is obviously wrong or dismissive of some important detail I would understand it. But if the complaint is It’s not a one-click-fix or I don’t understand what you’re talking about then that’s the best way of not learning anything and not solving the problem.


  • EarMaster@lemmy.worldtoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldOpnsense blocking ads for iOS?
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    3 months ago

    On Android you have to disable the use of Private DNS (or something like that) in the WiFi settings. If this is enabled it will not use your WiFi’s broadcast DNS, but a predefined one. The reasoning behind this (you can believe this or not) is so that on public WiFis your DNS queries cannot be tracked or manipulated by setting up a local DNS.

    I can imagine there is something similar for iOS.

    If this only affects some apps then they have decided to hardcore their DNS servers. The only thing you can do now is to identify these and block the calls, but this may also break other stuff if the servers are not only used to resolve ad URLs.



  • EarMaster@lemmy.worldtohomeassistant@lemmy.world'Touch points' in HA
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    3 months ago

    There are a few buttons around the house. For my wife (and kids to play with) the most important ones are the ones controlling the light in the bedroom. There is a motion sensor covering the door and wardrobe area which can be muted with a button (e.g. if the kids have snuck into our bed and we don’t want to wake them or if either one of us goes to bed later). We use mostly the IKEA Zigbee buttons.

    We also have a great device called Home Buttons in our kitchen. It uses MQTT and has a fantastic battery life (using a 18650 rechargeable battery). It has an e-ink display and six buttons. I programmed it to display several things (you can use one MDI icon and a short text to display for each button) for everyday use, like switching some lights, displaying temperature and humidity and controlling the climate in our conservatory. You have to press a button for it to update (to save battery - even though it easily lasts months).

    The main touch point though is the app. I built three dashboards:

    • A general overview that dynamically changed based on events and time of day.
    • A floor plan which holds every light, sensor and switch in it.
    • A blood glucose dashboard as both one of my daughters as well as myself have diabetes. As I use the same insulin pump as my daughter I cannot use the pump’s app to follow her data as I need the app for myself. So for me this is quite important. My wife uses the pump’s app in follower mode for our daughter.

    But I also made Home Assistant send notifications to our smartphones for several events (dishwasher, washing machine, too hot / cold in the conservatory, low blood glucose levels, kids turning on the TV in the morning). Some of them offer to respond with an action others are just reminders that something needs to be done.

    My wife appreciates especially the notifications I think because you don’t have to think about some things as they pop up when action is due and we both can more easily share the workload as she gets notified as well when I started the dishwasher without me needing to tell her. (This may sound like we’re not speaking to each other, but we’re just not saying things like I just started the dishwasher can you empty it later.)