I fully expect all the prices to drop by 20%, and not just rise to meet the lack of tax…

I do kinda support this though. I repair everything I can, and regularly buy better quality refurb kit rather than crap new stuff.

Part of me also thinks that fediverse doesn’t need growth for the sake of growth.
That it’s primary function is to be an alternative if people want to use it.

Second lesson: Pi is around 3.

Exactly this. The device either needs to be open enough that it can easily integrate to HA without internet access.
Or dumb enough that I can mod it with an ESP.

Anything that has to go through the manufacturer’s servers goes in the bin, the risks of data theft/rent seeking are too damned high.

I’ve been stepping up my efforts to make the garden more bee friendly, and it’s still declining.
I’ve maybe seen 20 bumbles this year, it’s very sad :(

I’m hoping it’s a typo.
I want to buy one, but need to email about this for clarification first.

On the positive side, UK to distract Trump from MAGA crap for a week.

I am genuinely waiting for the grants to finish (or be updated), as it feels like all the installation companies just hiked their prices to take advantage of the grants. I’ve got the power run, massive radiators, and thick pipes, all ready to roll.

The big one that will really push HPs, imo, will be if gas starts to rise in price relative to electricity.
At the moment, it’s about level in cost to run, even though a HP is 3x+ more efficient.

I’m the slime, oozing out, of your temporal net.

Do you think it was a bit “mission accomplished”?

‘OK, we are recycling the cardboard and the plastics, good job everyone’
“We still need to address the use of fossil fuels, and renewable power generation, though?”
‘No, we have sorted everything, it is OK’

For anyone interested, you can pick a location close to you from this site: https://showyourstripes.info/c/europe/germany/frankfurtammain
(Credit Ed Hawkins)

If it helps for a future purchase, Focusrite’s external interfaces have been amazing for Linux support.

To the point where I didn’t even notice; It just worked perfectly out of the box.

I’m assuming you’ve already checked this, but is your interface set to the same frequency/bit depth between Linux and windows? Or if it uses optical, whether it’s set to the same word clock source.

I keep wondering if I should open a little non-profit shop, specialising in “cheap home assistant stuff that isn’t awful, that I’ve tested”.
Then I remember the absolute chaos involved in running a shop…

I’m currently eyeing up an Airgradient One, which uses the SHT40.
Unfortunately, I don’t have enough tinkering time at the moment to roll out much more kit.

In honesty, I use the relative humidity readings as more of a “it’s dry” “It’s OK” “it’s moist”, than expecting any sort of accuracy!
I’ve even considered mapping percentage ranges to “moist, normal, dry” in HA.

I should probably write a bot to auto-reply when someone pulls a state as a comparison.
(Or ask the resident flamingo nicely to write it 😀)

I’ll put the gist of why hot weather can be a pain in the UK so it’s in the thread, not aimed at you obviously:

• Most housing was built around coping with -5 to 25’c comfortably.
  Which for a long time meant no insulation, and a fire/wet central heating system.
  And not a damn was given about air-tightness.
• A lot of the housing pre-dates WW1
• Air conditioning was not commonplace at all when the majority of houses were built (you could argue it still isn’t)
• Heatwaves were so infrequent, it wasn’t worth the cost of installing air conditioning domestically.
• It gets muggy as hell, with the high humidity making it worse. (But again, it’s variable, so tricky to justify spending money)
• Swamp coolers don’t work due to the humidity
• Lots of people grew up with the weather being (generally) mild enough that opening a window to get airflow was enough to keep cool. (I’ve had family members open the windows on a 30’ day to “cool” my 20’ basement…)
• Leccy is expensive. This is improving with solar and plunge pricing, but most people will want to tighten up their house in other ways before spending £8/day cooling it.

With both our warming climate, and more kit being installed, things are changing, and people are adapting.
More people now understand that cooling the fabric of the house at night when it dips into the teens, then closing the windows in the morning, is a better way to keep it cool.
Building regulations stipulate significantly more insulation, air-tightness, heat gain control.
And air conditioning has dropped in price a lot.
For anyone curious, you can DIY a mini-split for about £500/room, or get a better quality one installed for under £2000.

I mean, that’s where all my sensors are, and they’re doing OK.

My outdoor sensors are classic 433mhz meteorology ones though, as I didn’t want to mess around waterproofing zigbee gear.

Have you considered mounting a door sensor (depending on the letterbox type).
If it has a shutter, you could mount the two parts on the inside, on the edge.
Do americans still use those flag things on mailboxes? As I guess you could also use a door sensor on the flag.

I swear it’s the blackout curtains. I’ll draw them tight on the first night, then have a surprise in the morning if I didn’t set my alarm.

Going back to the source, the quote is: " LIVERPOOL are the UK’s cryptocurrency connoisseurs - with one in 10 (13%) regularly investing and checking their online stocks"

I’m not sure if they’ve bundled regular market investment with crypto.

I knew this would come up, which is why I threw in the “ok for consumer gear” line.
I don’t have any super accurate sensors at home to test against, but to be honest, cheap hydrometers are best for vague ranges. “It’s damp”, “it’s normal”, or “It’s dry”.
Which is actually what I use it for: It’s in the bathroom to send alerts to open or close the windows based on humidity and outside conditions.

Compared to the rest of the sensors in the house, when the windows are open and air in the house is normalised, it’s within 5%, which is about all I could really hope for.