“NaziAI” has a real ring to it.

I’m in the U.S. and it’s $4-$5. Free shipping with a $10 purchase. Surprised it’s so much more in the E.U.

It’s this one: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805942369090.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2usa

One of my main goals when setting up home automation was making sure the devices I’m using do not need cloud access. The only exceptions are an old Honeywell thermostat that I’ll replace eventually. Everything else, including security camera occupancy detection continues to work if the Internet goes down.

My router only has one open port and that’s for Wireguard. It’s set to a random port number and appears closed to external scanners so I believe my network security is reasonably good. Devices that like to connect to external servers like TP-Link cameras and bulbs are blocked by the router’s firewall.

For occasional external access I use Tasker to detect what network I’m on and then automatically connect to Wireguard when away from home. After the WG tunnel’s up it starts Home Assistant Companion. It’s not as seamless as Home Assistant Cloud, but for occasional use it’s fine.

Warning about Home Assistant: It’s ridiculously addictive. It is also so flexible that I’ve been able to implement almost anything that’s come to mind and ended up with more sensors and automations than I ever thought I’d use.

Seems to be. It reads within 1 degree of a digital refrigerator thermometer.

I use the round version of the same Tuya temperature sensor in my refrigerator and with Home Assistant. For $4 I wouldn’t hesitate trying one in a protected area outside. As long as it’s not directly exposed to rain or sun it’ll probably work fine.

Disaster Capitalism used to just mean assholes taking financial advantage of disasters. Now these fascists have started actually creating the disasters. The draining of California reservoirs should accomplish that nicely this coming summer. Trump’s tariffs, Musk’s take over of the Treasury systems and the coming interruption of Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security should be VERY profitable for all of them.

“All of you peasants will suffer and some of you will die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

Why is it when fascists talk of “pain” to come it’s for everyone else? I’m sure tax cuts are in the works for his Nazi backers to make sure they don’t have to cut back on the number of vacation homes.

CVS and their deliberate, hostile business practices chased me away years ago when I was unable to stop them from auto-refilling prescriptions I did not need. California finally took action against CVS in 2020 after many years of their carefully engineered abuses.

Good to see the company’s crappy behavior continues unabated and there’s no reason to give them another try.

If all you want to know is when the cycles are complete, it’s easy to do without trying to decipher Samsung’s wifi output.

The end of cycle signals on my LG washer and dryer can’t be heard in my living areas and LG smart app requires precise location permissions enabled all the time to function. Not gonna happen.

A power monitoring Zigbee plug was an easy solution for the washer but I could find nothing like that for a 220V dryer. A ZigBee vibration sensor did the trick even though the units are stacked.

My TV continues to chatter to random servers on the internet long after it has turned off. It transmits to a telemetry server on every single button press.

What’s even more irritating to me are the random changes to the TV’s UI. Turn it off for a while and I come back to an entire new set of menu entries and ads!

Home Assistant, OpenWRT and Adguard Home mostly fix those problems.

When my TVs are powered off a Home Assistant automation enables a couple of OpenWRT firewall rules. Those rules block all TV Internet access. When the TVs are powered on the firewall rules are automatically disabled and the TVs work normally. That along with Adguard Home’s blocking of all UI ads makes my TVs almost user friendly.